In late October 1820, Charles Throsby, Joseph Wild and James Vaughan passed through nearby Kowan, led by their guide, Taree.

[7] But the first European expedition to pass directly through Carwoola was that of Charles Throsby, with Wild again and an unknown Aboriginal guide in March 1821.

[8] The first settler and also the first pastoralist to reside on his own large holding in the district was Owen Bowen (1778-1840), a convict who had arrived in the Colony on 2 July 1811, having sailed from Falmouth aboard the ship Providence.

Timothy Beard, a convict who had arrived in the Colony in 1805 and received his pardon in 1817, set up as an innkeeper on 100 acres of land near Campbelltown.

Balcombe had previously been an official of the East India Company at St Helena, and it was here that he befriended Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile.

On 5 August 1824, Governor Brisbane offered Balcombe a grant of 2,000 acres at Menanglo or Marlet Plains about eighteen miles southwest of Lake George.

William Balcombe Snr called his property "The Briars" (after his estate of the same name on St Helena where Napoleon stayed for the first few weeks of his captivity).

[10] It was once claimed that William Snr was responsible for introducing two plants to Australia, the Sweet Briar (Rosa rubiginosa) and the Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica).

But their claim has been proved false, as the family was expelled from St Helena before Napoleon had even died and were barred, as Francophiles, from returning.

Thomas Rutledge bought an estate on the Molonglo Plain in the mid-1800s and called it "Carwoola" from the aboriginal name of land first occupied by Owen Bowen.