Australian history teems with enterprising pastoralists who broke the land and remoulded it in their own image. Richard Rouse, a cabinetmaker from Oxfordshire, cleared his first 100 acre grant on the Upper Reach of the Hawkesbury in 1802 and was made superintendent of the Parramatta lumberyard in 1805. After that, whether as farmer, businessman, or civil servant, he never looked back, investing successfully in town and country holdings, livestock and horse breeding.  

Rouse first went to Vinegar Hill to build a tollhouse for Governor Macquarie in 1812. Then in 1813, with the hill renamed for him, he began clearing a 450 acre grant there. His eldest sons and stockmen were among the first to push flocks across the Blue Mountains, and by 1825 Rouse was rich enough to retire to Rouse Hill and run his burgeoning farming and grazing empire from there. With his sons establishing stations and amassing vast acreages for him across the mountains, he concentrated on his business interests in Parramatta and upon establishing family farms on the Cumberland Plain.