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THEME STORY: CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS

 
With the fledgling colony of New South Wales facing starvation, it was imperative to find new arable land.  The deep gorges of the Blue Mountains sandstone plateau had proved unassailable through a quarter of a century, and in any event nobody knew what lay on the other side, or at what distance.  
 
In 1813 landholders Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, guided by previous descriptions of exploratory journeys, decided to follow ridges rather than valleys.  After 21 difficult days, they succeeded where many others had failed in finding a way to the other side of the Blue Mountains, and reported extensive ‘plains’ (grasslands) to the west.  
 
Technically they had not crossed the mountains but they did find a pasaable route.  Surveyor George Evans followed closely behind and pushed further west to become the first European to cross the Great Dividing Range itself.  He crossed and named the Bathurst Plains and continued for about 30 miles (50km) down the river he named for Macquarie, before returning to Sydney early in 1814 to report what he had found - ‘the handsomest country I ever saw...a vast seemingly endless tract of land well watered and most suitable for grazing’.  This was extraordinary news for a colony that had come close to starving.
 
William Cox followed the trail of Evans in 1814, and with a party of 28 convicts and 6 soldiers managed to construct a road across the mountains in just six months - a truly prodigious undertaking.
 
By April 1815 the Governor and Mrs Macquarie and their large retinue travelled the hastily constructed road and, at its terminus on the Macquarie River, inaugurated the town of Bathurst – a distant outpost of the colony and, indeed, of the Empire.  Macquarie termed the new country Westmorland (perhaps a pun on ‘West-more-land’) and made some modest grants near Bathurst to test its suitability for settlement.  Despite the seemingly boundless grasslands there, the Governor was careful to restrict depasturing of stock in the district, concerned that the colony not spread too far from Sydney. 
 
Exploration of the interior
 
The Governor was, however, keen to advance knowledge of the country even further, tasking Surveyor General John Oxley to trace the whole course of the Macquarie.  In company with Evans, Oxley set out in 1818 from Bathurst and established a depot in what Oxley named the Wellington Valley. 
 
Oxley pushed on from Wellington, past the sites of Dubbo and Warren, but became confounded in extensive marshes about 100km (60 miles) short of the Macquarie River junction with what would later be called the Darling River.  After striking east he crossed the Castlereagh and Peel Rivers and described the Liverpool Plains, before emerging on the coast at a place he named Port Macquarie. 
 
Despite severe droughts through 1813, 1814 and 1815, followed by a plague of ‘caterpillars’ and another bad run of drought in 1818 19, followed by the sinister combination of floods and plague, the lands west of the Macquarie River were the only districts in which Governor Brisbane did not make land grants up to the mid-1820’s.  He still wanted the colony to remain compact and manageable.
 
It may not have been a hub for settlement but, perched as it was on the edge of the mapped world, Bathurst was the jumping off point for a journey of exploration by Allan Cunningham in 1823 when he linked the central west with the Liverpool Plains via Pandora’s Pass.  In that same year the depot which Oxley had established at Wellington Vale took on a new role when Governor Brisbane set up there an establishment for ‘superior’ educated convicts to ensure that they were sufficiently well behaved before being assigned for duties suited to their education.  These convicts had skills that were in short supply in the colony – they became private tutors, bookkeepers, reporters and clerks.  This was an interesting social experiment. 
 
Wellington Vale saw off Captain Charles Sturt on his journey of 1828-9.  Once drought had dried out the marshes that had thwarted Oxley on the Macquarie and Lachlan Rivers, Sturt explored further along these to try solving the ‘riddle of the rivers’.  East of the Great Dividing Range, which stretches from Cape York in the north to western Victoria, the rivers flow to the coast, but at that time no-one knew for sure where the westward-flowing rivers led.  The dominant theory was that they flowed to a vast inland sea.  Sturt showed that the Macquarie ran north-west to join the Darling River while the Lachlan ran west then south-west to join the Murrumbidgee River.  This in turn joined the Murray River, which was met further west again by the Darling, emptying to the sea on the southern edge of the continent.  Sturt had broadly traced the layout of the vast Murray-Darling river basin. 
 
Bathurst also served as a base for Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell in 1835 when he travelled the Bogan and Darling Rivers, and again in 1836 when he followed the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee Rivers.  Mitchell was hoping (it seems) to prove that Sturt had been wrong about the rivers, but in fact he proved that Sturt had solved the ‘riddle’. 
 
Transport routes
 
As settlement expanded at Bathurst and in the Central West, transport routes became a limiting factor.  The most difficult constraint was the perilous descent from the plateau to the plains, originally built as Cox's Pass on a grade of 1 in 4 (about 15 degrees) and plied by bullock teams dragging tree trunks behind them as a brake.  
 
Numerous lines of road were tried for the descent before the Victoria Pass was opened in 1832.  This was a considerable feat of construction, employing extensive cut-and-fill techniques pioneered by Scots engineers.  This reduced the grade to one in fifteen and allowed horse-drawn vehicles to ascend or descend over about half a mile (800m), without angular traverses or sudden breaks.  The first motor car travelled descended the pass in 1904, but it required assistance from a horse to be able to get back to the top.
 
The Victoria Pass remains in use today as the main route of descent to the plains and, although much modified by modern engineering, some sections are still supported by the original convict built cut-and-fill retaining walls.  
 
An even greater challenge was finding a way to continue the railway to Bathurst.  This was one of the main aims of the colonial government, requiring very extensive engineering works.  The Lithgow Zig Zag was the second of two zig zags (switch-backs) constructed to carry the railway over the mountains. The first at Lapstone Hill carried the line up the eastern escarpment (on the Sydney side).  On the western side the larger Lithgow (or Great) Zig Zag carried the line down into the Lithgow valley.
 
Constructed just over 50 years after the first crossing of the mountains, this was a major engineering feat of its day on a world standard, and was the most expensive public works yet undertaken by the colony.  Its opening in 1869 enabled the railway to reach Bathurst in 1876, linking the agricultural and mining districts of the Central West with the prt of Sydney.  Although the Great Zig Zag itself was by-passed in 1910 by a series of 10 tunnels, the Bottom Road is still used today, connecting Sydney with Perth on the other side of the continent.  
 

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Text and HTML © 2007-08 Mark Butz
Last update 07 April 2008
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