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Despite the area declared to be the site of a new town to be named 'Campbelltown' after the maiden name of Governor Macquarie's wife in 1820, it wasn't until the 1830s that Macquarie's fledgling town would grow beyond a crude settlement. With Macquarie returning to England in 1822 to defend criticisms that his even-handed and generous temperament was 'soft', the successive Governor Brisbane's interests lay elsewhere and it was not until 1827 that the town was officially drawn up and settlers were finally allowed to move into their land in Campbelltown in the early 1830s.

Initially used for wheat farms, the 1870s saw the wheat crops devastated by rust and the land was replaced by grazing cows nd a thriving dairy was introduced to the town. With the gold rush extending the train line to gold town Goulburn, Campbelltown became the bridging city between the outermost post of Sydney and the regional centres beyond it. Following the world wars, the Returned Soldiers Settlement Scheme saw farmland around Campbelltown given to soldiers and their families to set up poultry farms. This settlement would become an intrinsic part of the Campbelltown social fabric with a street name leading out of town towards their farms being given the name Waminda Avenue, the Aboriginal word for comrade yet despite their best efforts, the Campbelltown settlement - said to be the pride of the scheme - was all but dissolved.

Beginning what would be a long history of housing estates in the area, Neil McClean would turn the land of his failed poultry farm into one of the state's first housing estates. St Elmos Estate was filled with fine brick houses which would become homes to the town's workers and would lure residents away from population clogged Sydney and became so synonymous with the region that St Elmo almost eclipsed the name of the suburb in its use in greater Sydney.

As companies started to build factories in the large open spaces on Campbelltown’s outskirts in the 1960s, soon establishing significant industrial areas of Campbelltown. The population of the city continued to grow with the area today established as a major city centre in northwest Sydney complete with a university campus, TAFE campus, hospital and a major shopping centre.