Rydalmere is approximately 21 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Parramatta.

[citation needed] The district comprising modern day Rydalmere, Ermington and Dundas was initially called "The Ponds" because of such natural features occurring above Subiaco Creek.

Shortly after Schaeffer's, further grants were given to several emancipists, eight marines and two crew of HMS Sirius, on the northern bank of the Parramatta River at Rydalmere and Ermington.

The Darug fashioned tools and spears for hunting native animals and collected wild berries and flora as a valuable source of vitamins.

Their stable bark canoes often carried a small fire in the middle – built on a mound of soil to allow them to cook their catch fresh.

[citation needed] Soon after Governor Phillip's arrival with the First Fleet of convicts from England in 1788, Parramatta was developed as a farming settlement to feed the new English colony.

An annual feast was held by Governor Macquarie to encourage Aboriginal people to leave their children at a local school, but this focus later shifted to Blacktown area.

[5] The first Roman Catholic archbishop of Sydney in Australia, John Bede Polding, had been taught by the nuns of Stanbrook Abbey in England as a little boy.

In 1849, he appealed to the abbey to provide nuns for a Benedictine monastery that he was founding on the 600 acres of Hannibal Macarthur's old Vineyard Estate which he had purchased.

In response, Dame Magdalen le Clerc was sent to join Sister Scholastica Gregory from Princethorpe Priory, and the two founded what is now Jamberoo Abbey.

[6] Rydalmere was named by Thomas O'Neill when he purchased much of the acreage of the Vineyard Estate not occupied by the nunnery, after it was put up for sale through the trustees by the Sydney Roman Catholic diocese in 1877.

Despite the myth surrounding O’Neill coming from England’s Cumbrian Lake District, he was born in Tipperary, Ireland in 1830, and accompanied his parents to Australia as a young lad, where he finished his education.

RiverCat catamaran type ferries work the Parramatta River route due to shallow waters, particularly during low tides.

It intersects with Victoria Road at a flyover interchange on the eastern edge of Rydalmere and crosses the Parramatta River over Silverwater Bridge.

O’Neill donated the neighbouring land to the Catholic Church and school, while the rest of that subdivision appears to have been purchased by Frederick Randall, the Postmaster.

Disaster struck when Sydney was hit by a storm with gale force winds on Friday 23 September 1892, resulting in the hotel being blown down.

[citation needed] He inspected the hotel, where everything appeared ok, but then he heard noises and talk coming from the Catholic Church next-door, indicating illegal drinking taking place.

[25] A weatherboard Post Office building originally stood near the footpath on Victoria Road, but was relocated back near the bank adjacent to the shops in the early 60s.

In the New South Wales Parliament, Rydalmere falls within the Parramatta electorate, currently represented by Geoff Lee,[30] a member of the Liberal Party.