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Blue Mountains sign

 

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Edwin had the of the only femal

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Blue Mountains

alin e South Wales, Governor Lachlan ght to increase the colony's raparmy to wn food. He instructed settlers to grow an ane sheep and carde but many ders fused to comply and continued to fork when drought struck the Sydowy ew deperste for new pastures

Charles Wentworth William Lawson Blaxland, keen to expand their holdings. acquire to support an attempt to res They departed Inu Prains with horses gunde and the conuict servants.

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Soon after British colonists established their first settlements in New South Wales, they began searching for new pastures for their stock. They explored north and south, and inland as far as Evan (now Penrith), but found their way further west blocked by the Blue Mountains.

Local Gundungurra, Dharawal, Wiradjuri, Wanaruah, Darug and Darkinjung peoples knew and used two main routes to cross the Blue Mountains. But most Europeans saw the range as a forbidding maze of sandstone bluffs, deep gorges and dense bush. Then, several expeditions managed to penetrate part way into the mountains, travelling up the Burragorang Valley, inland from Richmond, and around the range to the south.

In 1813 Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth forged a route directly west from Evan. The following year a road tracing their route was built across the range and settlers began moving stock into the inland slopes and plains of Wiradjuri country. In the following decades the Blue Mountains became a holiday destination for Sydneysiders, and today more than three million people visit each year to admire the rugged views and walk the forest trails.

Bol

Visitors view the Blue Mountains National Park from Echo Point Lookout, Katoomba 2010

photograph by Jaime Para Var National of Austral

Sandstone from Winmalee in the Blue Mountains collected 2011

National Museum of Australia

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Uploaded on February 26, 2023
Taken on February 26, 2023