Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Blue Mountains New South Wales

By Mike Williams

The Blue Mountains are a famous Australian mountain range just west of the city of Sydney.Sydneys expanding metro pushes up to the start of the mountain range at penrith and in the hawkesbury areas.

The mountains officially start about 60 kilometres to the west of Sydney.The famous Blue Mountains National park starts near the western side of the Nepean River and all the way in the west to the trout laden Coxs River.

The plateaus and deep gorges descend to over 500 metres but also rise to snow capped points over 1,000 metres above sea level.The majority of the Blue Mountains National park is listed as a World Heritage area which also includes seven national parks.They were listed in the 1970`s as conservation areas.

The Blue Mountains area also includes local government areas of the City of Hawkesbury, the City of Blue Mountains, the City of Oberon and with its most westerly city being Lithgow.

It is well known that there were thousands of years of habitation before white settlers moved into the area.They have left us their art as a reminder of their presence.The well known hand stencil art is in Red Hands Cave at.We have also found axe sharpening areas.

It is now known that the koori inhabitants used two main paths to move around through the mountain areas.The bilpin ridge was the most often used followed by the Cox`s river.The river paths were easier and lead to the farming area called the kanimbla valley.

Initially, european settlers considered the sandstone mountains impossible to penetrate due to the variety of extreme weather conditions encountered as well as the thickness of the vegetative canopy.The myth of the difficulty was encouraged by the authorities in the hope of scaring the convicts away from thoughts of escaping.

A former convict, John Wilson, is believed by some historians to have been the first man known to history to have crossed the Blue Mountains.He lived with the aboriginals and returned to Sydney in 1797 and claimed to have moved over 100 miles in a circuit round Sydney.

Wilsons descriptions of the areas were later proven to be fairly accurate but he may not have been recognised as the first one due to the authorities of the time seeking to confuse convicts on the possible escape routes they could use.He was killed by aboriginals after abducting one of their women.

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