Australian colonial history teems with enterprising pastoralists who broke the land and remoulded it in their own image. Richard Rouse, a cabinetmaker from Oxfordshire, began clearing his first 100 acre grant on the upper reach of the Hawkesbury in 1802 and became superintendent of the Parramatta lumberyard in 1805. As a farmer, businessman and civil servant he never looked back, investing in town and country holdings, livestock, and horse breeding with ever-increasing success.

In 1812 Rouse went to Vinegar Hill to build a tollhouse for Governor Macquarie, and in 1813, with the hill renamed for him, began clearing and building on his 450 acre land grant there. His sons and stockmen were among the first to push flocks across the Blue Mountains in the early 1820s, and by 1825 he was rich enough to retire to Rouse Hill to run a now burgeoning farming and grazing empire from there. With his sons setting up stations and amassing vast acreages for him on the far side of the mountains, Rouse continued through the 1830s developing other farms closer to home on the Cumberland Plain, building a fortune that would set his family up for generations.