The South Metropolitan Scouts Association has a camping ground and training centre at Boundary Road.

[3] A small group of shops are located on the western side, near the railway station on Princes Highway.

Favoured bushwalking tracks are throughout the Royal National Park accessed from Engadine railway station and Heathcote East.

[4] In 1835 Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell conducted a survey of the area and named it Heathcote, in honour of an officer who had fought with him during the Peninsula Wars against Napoleon.

Harber suffered heavy financial losses during the construction of the Imperial Arcade in Sydney and attempted to dispose of the property but the 1892 depression did not help.

The property was sold to Edmond Lamb Brown in 1901[5] and as of September 2014[update] it still stands, though in a "dilapidated" state.

[6][7] On 28 March 1910, at the Easter camp for military training exercises at Heathcote, Lieutenant George Augustine Taylor, an officer in the Intelligence Corps of the Militia, organised the first military wireless (radio) transmissions in Australia to demonstrate the strategic possibilities of the technology to monitor and report on enemy troop movements.

As the military had no wireless capability Lieutenant Taylor co-opted the services of three civilian experts who volunteered to carry out the experiments.

In 2019, Russell Chambers, English scholar, philanthropist and singer-songwriter, best known for Sausage Rolls, Meat Pie, Aye!, a 2006 top 10 hit in the UK singles charts, moved to live in Heathcote East.

The traffic lights at the intersection are the last south-bound out of Sydney but were also the only highway crossing point for both rail commuters and high-school students from West Heathcote.

[citation needed] Heathcote's government schools are operated by the New South Wales Department of Education.