| Historical notes: | The road from Emu Ford to Bathurst, a distance of 101 miles [163 kilometres] was completed in only six months during 1814 and 1815 by a working party comprised mostly of convicts. Governor Lachlan Macquarie decided to have a carriage road constructed across the Blue Mountains, to the country which had been 'newly discovered' by Europeans in 1813.
The ridges and valleys of the Blue Mountains, have been used as a transport corridor by people for tens of thousands of years. In the first 25 years of the settlement at Sydney Cove, several attempts were made to cross the mountains, but none resulted in a recognised successful crossing. Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth, searching for new pasturage made their famous 'first' crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813. The so called 'First Crossing' took place on the traditional lands of the Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri people. Other routes through the ridges and valleys of the Blue Mountains had been used by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years.
William Cox was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset in 1764. He married Rebecca Upjohn at Clerkenwell, London, in 1789. Cox arrived in NSW on board the 'Minerva' in January 1800. Cox became Chief Magistrate at Windsor in 1810 and in July 1814 Governor Macquarie made William Cox the Superintendent of the works for a new road over the Blue Mountains. His first wife died in 1819 and Cox married Anna Blachford in 1821. He died on 15 March 1837.
The hill now named Mount Blaxland is situated 11 kilometres south-west of Mount York and 8 kilometres south of Lithgow. In the published version of his Journal Gregory Blaxland wrote that on 31 May 1813:
'The party encamped by the side of a fine stream of water, at a short distance from a high hill, in the shape of a sugar loaf. In the afternoon, they ascended its summit, from which they descried all around, forest or grass land, sufficient in extent, in their opinion, to support the stock of the Colony for the next thirty years. This was the extreme point of their journey.' From the summit of Mount Blaxland the view westward is actually more confined than this 'all around' description suggests, comprising the folds and valleys of the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range. There are, extensive views east over the Hartley Valley to the western side of the Blue Mountains escarpment towards Mount York, Mount Victoria, Mitchells Ridge and Mount Piddington.
(S Lavelle, 2013: Chapter 8 'Mount Blaxland: The Terminal Point and the Re-Claiming of Ownership' p.186).
Mount Blaxland was named by Surveyor G. W. Evans, sent by Governor Macquarie to confirm the discovery of a passage over the Blue Mountains, in November 1813. Evans also plotted the location of the three sugar loaf shaped hills (Mount Blaxland, Lawson's Sugarloaf and Wentworth's Sugarloaf) on the map he prepared showing the traverse of the route he had followed.
(G. W. Evans, 1814, Plan of Journey to Bathurst from Emu Ford to Bathurst, prepared by Governor Macquarie's direction for the Guidance of William Cox, State Records NSW, Map SZ 160-162, SZ 313-315, SZ 316.)
William Cox began to examine a route for the road in the vicinity of Mount Blaxland on 11 December 1814. He commented in his Journal as follows:
Sunday 11 December
At 6 a.m. sent six men back to the mountain to complete the road. At 7 sent 10 men forward to encamp at Blaxland's Mount under Watson's charge. At 8 set out on horseback, with Mr. Hobby and Lewis (John Tye and a soldier having previously gone) to go as far as the Fish River to examine the ground for a road. After passing Mount Blaxland we ascended a high ridge and found it still continued to ascend until we got extremely high. Continued on until noon and found the ground very unfavourable for a road, when I made up my mind to return by the route Mr. Evans laid down on his chart; but to my great surprise found it impracticable to make a road even for a horse. I therefore returned and examined all the ridges and valleys for several miles and got back at sunset extremely fatigued and much disappointed. ...
(Whitaker, 2014: Chapter 4, William Cox's Journal: 65-66).
A line which climbed a very long, steep and high ridge to the south of Mount Blaxland was selected and road-making commenced under the supervision of Mr Hobby by 13 December 2014. A few days later Cox noted that the road was completed 'except [for] turning some rock out of it after you ascend the hill at Blaxland's Mountain'. The road was finished as far as Jock 's Creek by December 17 and to around Mary Anne Creek by December 24. Cox's Journal records that ten small bridges were built over creeks between Cox' s River and the Fish River.
During his tour over the newly completed Cox's Road in 1815, Governor Macquarie also described both Mount Blaxland and the road in the vicinity:
Mrs M. and myself mounted our horses at the foot of the first high hill near Mount Blaxland, it being excessively steep and long, for which reason I have named it Fag-Hill. A range of very lofty hills and narrow valleys, alternately form the tract of country lying between Cox's River and the Fish-River, which tract I have named Clarence's Hilly Range in honor of H.R. Highness The Duke of Clarence.
(Macquarie, Journals of His Tours, entry for 1 May 1815, p. 94. See also Mackaness, Fourteen Journeys, p. 69)
A survey of the route of the Bathurst Road was completed by James McBrien in 1823. McBrien's fieldbook for this survey included a note that the road begins a 'descent at the end on [or of?] the highest point of Mount Blaxland'.
(J. McBrien, 1823, Field Book No. 205, p. 44, State Records NSW)
Over the next few years minor deviations and improvements were made to Cox's Road in this area of hilly country. In 1827 letters describing a journey to Bathurst along Cox's Road were published in the Australian newspaper under the pseudonym 'X.Y.Z', probably by Captain William Dumaresq who had been appointed Inspector of Roads and Bridges in 1826. Describing his journey, 'X.Y.Z.' wrote:
The road from Cox's River is good enough, but every quarter of an hour you must dismount, either to walk your horse up or down the hills, which are tremendous and follow one another in rapid succession. Mount Blaxland is long and steep, and the road is taken over the very summit. The view does not repay you for the trouble of ascending, but ascend you must or stop and starve, for it is a desolate and barren place. (Mackaness, Fourteen Journeys, p. 181).
By 1829 Major Edmund Lockyer had selected a new line of road to Bathurst which completely abandoned the route via the Clarence Hilly Range and the Fish River. Lockyer's Road was soon superseded by that proposed by Major Thomas Mitchell, who had become Surveyor General in 1828. Mitchell re-surveyed the line of the road between Mount York and Bathurst, preparing a map showing a new line in 1830. This map showed the route of Cox's Road to Bathurst via the Fish River as the 'Present Road by Mt Blaxland'. Considering he had found a superior route, Mitchell ordered the transfer of the convict gangs from work near Mount York to the Mount Victoria descent in January 1830.
( 'Sketch of the Road to Bathurst' marked out in 1830 according to a sketch made in 1827', Anon.,[but probably T. L. Mitchell] circa 1830, State Records NSW, AO Map 5027. Same map also included in Mitchell's 1855, Report on Roads).
These developments meant that the old Bathurst Road 'by Mount Blaxland' was little used, except as access to private properties, which in this area were being occupied from the 1830s. |