Living in the Mountains – Jim Tulip

This story by Jim Tulip was published in the book, This Tortuous Ridge: Linden to Lawson, edited by Eugene Stockton in 2014. Most young Australian students in the 1950s, learned of the way the early settlers of Australia were prevented from crossing the Blue Mountains West of Sydney because of the ridges and cliff s. A way across the mountains was eventually found by the explorers Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth after they had been shown the way by Aboriginal people. The principal blockage to the journey occurred in the mid-Mountains hence the name of the book, This Tortuous Ridge, which is a series of essays about the mid-mountains where the Blue Mountain Education and Research Trust is located at Lawson.

The year 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the Crossing of the Blue Mountains. The year 2014 has marked the completion, hopefully, of the Great Western Highway across the mountains. It may have taken two hundred years to build a highway that the Mountains needs and deserves, but it has proved well worth the wait. The achievement of a modern stylish and well landscaped four lane highway is a triumph. It is an event of Australian significance and importance. The road itself tells a story worth the telling.

The new road helps define the life of the villages along its winding length. Linden, Woodford, Hazelbrook, Lawson and Bullaburra have a much quieter lifestyle than the villages or towns of the Upper and Lower mountains. Traffic and lifestyles, here, simply slip by with little fuss. The highway seems to run alongside the railway: they are a companionable duo, snaking along together in intimate closeness to houses and shopping centres. Yet it is also here that one experiences the thrill of the Indian-Pacific Express passing through on weekday mornings, and the busy Inter Urban and Country Link services going about their daily workloads. One can stand on the high overhead bridge at Woodford and count the engines and trucks of the coal trains coming down from Lithgow and Wallerawang – 4 engines and 50 coal trucks each time. Something of relaxation mixed with work is felt in a way that characterises the lifestyle of mid mountains villages.

The Great Western Highway along “this tortuous ridge” offers at this central point remarkable vistas to the north, to the west, to the south and to the east. Views of Mt Banks, Mt Hay and Mt Tomah across the Grose Divide open up as if in cinemascope, while the sense of the Cumberland Plain lying there at one’s feet is always enjoyable – with a fairytale Sydney just discernible on the horizon. The scope of the mountains is felt in a peaceful way. Miles and miles of eucalypt forest, the pattern of gullies and gulfs falling away off the ridge, and the benign haze – the famous blue haze – hovering over everything: these are compensations for the lack of dramatic cliff faces and sandstone escarpments that the Upper Mountains have. Gentle rolling hills that one can walk in and where one can be part of the Australian flora and fauna (not too much fauna these days!) are a pleasure that local people know for its value. Magnifi cent sunsets and sunrises are neighbourly events.

Bushwalks to the north and south of Lawson and Hazelbrook tell a similar story of a mix of old and new. To the south are the Adelina Falls, Terrace Falls, Junction Falls, Federal Falls and Bedford Pool Circuit while to the north there are the Empress Pass, Frederica Falls, Dante’s Glen and Echo Bluff . After good rains they offer the pleasures of waterfalls and running creeks and fern laden gullies. Often, however, their faded glories suggest uncertainties as to who should be caring for them, municipal and higher authorities or private citizens living in the neighbourhood. Local people nevertheless will tell you where to see purple boronia at its best, or the special rewards, say, from walking around the swamp that lies at the foot of Blue Mountain, hidden away north of Lawson. In Woodford there is the Gypsy in Wilson’s Glen where angophoras in seasonal change make for a bold picture.

Living here has many quiet values. Even the Great Western Highway, which we have to live with day by day watching the cars fl ash by, is becoming a matter of pride and joy. Its completion is always pending. But you know you are in the Mid Mountains when you get into the Woodford Bends on your way home and welcome the eucalypt forests hanging over the towering cuttings (never taking your eyes off the road, of course).

Jim Tulip spoke at the launch of the book This Tortuous Ridge – Linden to Lawson in December 2014. The video below is his address at the launch.

A young Aboriginal Woman writes of her love of country – Taylor Clarke

The Aboriginal People of the Burragorang Valley was launched on Sunday, 20 November 2016, this book commissioned by Fr Eugene Stockton under the auspices of the Blue Mountain Education and Research Trust (BMERT). It is a hugely valuable piece of research that has been the personal endeavour of historian, Dr Jim Smith, over a period of decades. This is a piece of history of local interest to those of us who live in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney but will be of more important interest to indigenous people everywhere. The Burragorang Valley is situated on the Southern edge of the Blue Mountains and is the place where at least five different rivers meet. In the 1950s this valley was flooded to provide the main fresh water supply for Greater Sydney via what became Lake Burragorang and Warragamba Dam. The Aboriginal people who had lived in the valley, possibly for centuries, and later mainly poor Irish settlers, were forced out of the valley to make way for the flooding of the Valley.

The address by Dr Jim Tulip, former Associate Professor of Literature and Religious Studies at Sydney University, to explain more about the book, and introduce Taylor to the audience.

Taylor Clarke writes in the foreword “As one of the youngest descendants of the Riley clan of the Burragorang Valley, it is my honour and privilege to write the foreword introducing this incredible book. Jim Smith, through his research, correspondence with my relatives and with others from the Valley, has painted a very strikingly beautiful and unique picture of what life in the Burragorang Valley was like.”

“Burragorang was different, and this is what made the Valley so special. The black and white people lived together in relative harmony. The patchwork of my heritage is one of many colours, and I am proud of each and every black and white relative who lived and worked in the Valley.”

“Jim Smith captures the beauty, and also the fiery will and perseverance of the Valley’s people, living through some very tough times. Burragorang Valley bred strong and formidable, hard-working people who didn’t want to leave the Valley, as my family were forced to do when the Dam was built. On behalf of my family, we would like to thank Jim Smith for the work he has done for us and for our community. His passion for research and conserving history has been such an asset and a privilege for us, as, without his tireless effort, we would surely not have compiled such an extensive family and community history. His work has been invaluable and we are so happy that we have been part of this process in sharing the stories of our ancestors.”