About Cammeray, NSW

Cammeray is a residential suburb located five kilometres north of the Sydney Central Business District (CBD) and is part of the North Sydney Council local government area. Cammeray is part of the Lower North Shore region of Northern Sydney. == History == === Aboriginal culture === Cammeray takes its name from the Cammeraygal people, an Aboriginal clan who once occupied the Lower North Shore. Radiometric dating (carbon dating) indicates that indigenous peoples lived in the Cammeray area at least 5,800 years ago and Aboriginal shell middens have been discovered at Folly Point and cave paintings in Primrose Park. === European settlement === Prior to the 1920s, the suburb was known as Suspension Bridge reflecting the now Long Gully Bridge that joined Northbridge to Cammeray. Cammeray was slow to develop mainly due to its steep topography and remoteness from transport. Despite the land boom of the 1880s and plans for a suspension bridge across Flat Rock Creek, development in the Cammeray area was mostly confined to the south of the suburb with some boatmen‟s houses on Folly Point. The rest of the district was very rural consisting of bushland, dairies and market gardens. Cammeray was also the site of Sydney's first quarry, with sandstone blocks from the quarry making many of the first buildings in Sydney town.An Australian politician and solicitor, Joseph Palmer Abbott, built Tarella, a two-storey Italianate mansion in Amherst Street, c. 1886, on land he had acquired in 1881.