a quiet location for local residents to relax. At Emu Plains, the western bank of the river provides a location for outdoor theatre productions on warm summer nights. The eastern bank at Penrith provides barbecue facilities and children's play equipment, as well as a wide pathway running for several kilometres for strolls along the riverbank. The eastern bank is also the home of the Nepean Rowing Club. History Pre-European history Aboriginal people used the river regularly and their fish traps could be seen at Yarramundi before sand and gravel mining redirected the river. Charles Darwin also wrote of people at Emu Ford, commenting on their skill with spears, while Watkin Tench of the Royal Marines also noted their use of spears, lines and nets to capture fish. The people of the Nepean region also regularly traded with people of the western plains via a route that Bell followed when he laid down an alternate route over the mountains, now called Bells Line of Road. Near Penrith, since 1971 numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Cranebrook Terraces gravel sediments deposited by the Nepean River 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, according to repeated, revised and corroborated radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating. At first when these results were new they were controversial. More recently in 1987 and 2003 dating of the same sediments strata has revised and corroborated these dates. A great many more artefacts made by people have been found in the region dating back to within the last 5,000 years. Karskens et al. have made an attempt to recover, integrate and map archaeological data of the area from both published and unpublished reports. European settlement When the British colony was established at Sydney in 1788, the Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, charted the coast 50 km north to the mouth of the Hawkesbury and around 32 km upstream till they were stopped by a waterfall, most likely at Hawkesbury Heights. Phillip named the river after Lord Hawkesbury, later titled Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool, President of the Privy Council Standing Committee on Trade. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Watkin Tench set off to walk inland, west of Sydney. About inland, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, he discovered a large river which he named Nepean after Evan Nepean, the Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and a close personal friend of Arthur Phillip. It took about three years to realise that