The Lapstone Zigzag
[Two Part Series]
First Shown: 11 November, 2019 on YouTube
This Documentary retraces the path the first steam locomotives took to cross the Blue Mountains. In the 1800's no one believed it possible to cross the Blue Mountains until three stockholders, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth saw the necessity to find new pastures for their cattle, so in May, 1813, the three set off from South Creek with four attendants, pack-horses, and several dogs and successfully blazed a path through the mountains to the Western Plains.
The following year, William Cox began the construction of the first road west of Penrith, the Great Western Road and Lapstone hill was one of his most difficult tasks. The steepness of the grade up Lapstone made it was a days’ work for a team of sixteen bullocks, drawing a heavy dray, to negotiate the short two and a half kilometer climb. There were seven turns or “Traverses” as they were called, on the steepest part of the hill.
The first section of the western railway line to Parramatta, was opened with much rejoicing on the 26th September, 1855. Then, towards the end of 1857, Governor Macquarie directed, Mr. Barton, Clerk of Works, from the Colonial Architect’s Office, to determine the best line for a railway to the west. A very elaborate and careful exploration of the country between the Nepean and Bathurst was made, extending over three to four years, in the course of which several lines were surveyed and levels taken, but were afterwards abandoned for various reasons, as the broken nature of the country, the suddenness and the length of the descents, rendered the discovery of a practicable line a task of extreme difficulty.
