Celebrating 20 stories for 20 years of the Deerubbin Building

20 February 2025

In 2025, Hawkesbury City Council celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the Deerubbin Centre. Home to Hawkesbury Central Library, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, community meeting rooms, and commercial spaces, the building is a valuable hub for creativity, culture and learning for the Hawkesbury community and beyond.

To celebrate this milestone, Hawkesbury City Council Arts and Culture will hold a series of special events and see the completion of several major projects across their sites, coined through the program 20 Stories of the Deerubbin Building.

These events include the Dr Rex Stubb’s OAM Commemorative History Symposium, Hawkesbury Library Service Seniors Expo, A River, A Mountain, A Field, A Road exhibition and Plein Air Picnic family event at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, a new Cabinet of Curiosity display in the building’s atrium and many more

The 20 Stories of the Deerubbin Building also highlight exciting upgrades to Library and Gallery facilities. In March, the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery will undergo a long-awaited upgrade to the gallery lighting system, which has been in place since the building opened 20 years ago. This will provide more advanced lighting to exhibitions in the gallery for many years to come. Proudly funded by NSW Government and Hawkesbury City Council.

Later in the year, Hawkesbury Central Library will also receive an exciting improvement to its facilities, with the development of the new Digital Hub which will offer community members access to specialist computer equipment and improved technology resources. This has been funded by the NSW Government under the Public Library Infrastructure Grant 2023/2-24 program.

About the Building

Officially opened on 25 June 2005, the building was the culmination of several years of planning. Comprising of 85,000 bricks, 8,500 square metres of painted walls, and one of the largest single concrete pours undertaken in NSW at the time, the Deerubbin Centre has been a vital space for Hawkesbury community.

The centre takes its name from the word the traditional Aboriginal owners of the region, the Dharug people, gave to what we know today as the Hawkesbury River. It was selected as a result of a public submission program for the naming of rooms and facilities within the cultural precinct. The spelling of the building was derived from an early colonial interpretation of the word, however in recent years with help from local Dharug elders and linguistic researchers we now understand the spelling as Dyraubbin.

Architects Pont, Williams and Leroy Pty Ltd described the Deerubbin Centre as “a building that fits comfortably within the town’s urban fabric”. Set amidst paved and landscaped grounds, the Centre features underground parking, a café and a specially commissioned public artwork titled ‘Hospital Beds’ located in the courtyard between the building and historic Hawkesbury Hospital.

You can learn more about the Deerubbin Building’s history in the 2005 commemorative booklet here: https://www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/4222/CommemorativeBooklet.pdf