Macquarie Park is located 13 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Ryde.

Contact with the first white settlement's bridgehead into Australia quickly devastated much of the population through epidemics of smallpox and other diseases.

The most substantial undisturbed area is the Wallumatta Nature Reserve in North Ryde, which is owned and managed by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service.

The area was once filled with market gardens, poultry farms and vast tracts of bushland, with many beautiful picnic spots and waterfalls.

The mid-1960s saw the establishment of Macquarie University and the 'Macquarie Park Employment Area' which saw the rezoning of 'Green Belt' bushland to allow for industrial activities.

It attracts many local and international companies from high-tech fields including electronic, scientific, computing, medical, communication, pharmaceutical and business supply.

Large businesses in the suburb include: AstraZeneca, Avaya, Bilfinger, BOC, Canon, CA, Compuware,[8] CSC, Fujitsu, Fuji Xerox, Ford Australia, George Weston Foods, Hitachi, Hyundai, Johnson & Johnson, Kenwood, Kimberly-Clark, Kyocera, Lucent Technologies, Memjet, Metcash, NielsenIQ, Nestlé Purina PetCare, Nortel, Novartis, Optus[9] (moved in late 2007 from North Sydney),[10] Oracle Corporation, Orix, Philips, Raytheon, Sanofi, Siemens, Smiths Medical, Sony, Toshiba, TPG Telecom, Warner Music Group and Wesfarmers Industrial & Safety.

Macquarie Park has a wide variety of restaurants and cafes and is known as a major dining destination in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney.

The objective is to provide housing and employment close to transport to help meet Sydney's growth needs, including up to 2,400 new homes by 2021 and up to 5,800 by 2031 that are within a ten-minute walk from Macquarie University station.

[25] Like the rest of the Sydney basin, Macquarie Park has a humid sub-tropical climate with warm to hot summers and cool, damp winters.