Macquarie Fields is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Macquarie Fields is located 38 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Campbelltown and is part of the Macarthur region. Macquarie Fields is surrounded by bushland. Nearby Macquarie Links, is a high-security housing estate beside an international standard golf course. The suburb has multiple high schools including Macquarie Fields High School and James Meehan High School. History The original inhabitants of the Macquarie Fields area were the Darug people of western Sydney. The rich soil of the area was home to an abundance of plants which in turn attracted animals such as kangaroos and emus, both of which along with this part with yams and other native vegetables and fruit were part of the diet of the Darug. They lived in small huts called gunyahs, made spears, tomahawks and boomerangs for hunting and had an elaborate system of tribal law and rituals with its origins in the Dreamtime. However, following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, they were pushed off their land by the British settlers. Macquarie Fields was named by early landholder James Meehan in honour of the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie. The area was surveyed by Meehan in the early 19th century. Although transported to Australia as a convict for his role in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Meehan had trained as a surveyor in Ireland and in 1803 was appointed an assistant to NSW Surveyor-General Charles Grimes. In 1806 he was granted a full pardon and in 1810 became Surveyor-General. For his work, he was granted a number of parcels of land including in what is now Macquarie Fields and neighboring suburbs. He used the rich soil to grow cereal crops, fruit trees and to graze livestock. The property changed hands a couple of times after Meehan's death and in the 1840s, Samuel Terry built a Regency mansion, Macquarie Fields House, which still stands to this day. It is now listed on the Register of the National Estate. In 1883, then owner William Phillips subdivided the land to create a new town he called Glenwood Estate with grand boulevards and fine buildings. A railway station was added to the line in 1888 but the depression of the 1890s meant the grand town failed to materialize with only