The Historical Marker sign, down the hill from the Rest Area, has the following information:
A Traveller's Account of Bulls Camp
The road is now in this spot remarkably good, and at a place called the Twenty Mile Hollow, the road is now made by the prisoner gangs as good as the most capricious taste could desire.
The traveller will here find a pretty spring of excellent water and, as it is the first handy place for twenty miles, he should now halt and take a drink. The vegetation here becomes more dwarfish, [with] stunted eucalypts of box and ash, and several varieties of the honeysuckle (banksia) and now and then the telopea or waratah.
[Captain William Dumaresq, 1824]
Aboriginal Heritage
The traditional lands of the local Aboriginal people encompass the Blue Mountains. The crossing by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth in 1813 and the subsequent building of Coxs Road along with the associated growing settlements had major impacts on the traditional way of life of the existing Mountains communities.
About Coxs Road
In July 1814, Hawkesbury magistrate William Cox commenced his commission from Governor Lachlan Macquarie to build a road across the Blue Mountains and on to the Macquarie River at Bathurst. The 42 convicts in his working party were chosen because they capable of hard work, and their reward was to be their freedom.
They made 101½ miles (163 km) of road in a remarkably quick six month period through rugged mountain country, building numerous bridges, splitting hundreds of posts and rails, cutting stone gutters and drains with picks, removing trees, scrub and large boulders in six months without serious accident or loss of life.
Although most of Coxs Road has been covered by later roads and railways, there are nearby two remaining significant examples of the work of Cox and his men.
Continuing east on the Great Western Highway off Tollgate Drive take Railway Parade to the left remnants of the road can be accessed behind the houses in Glossop Road featuring cuttings on both sides of the road as well as drains. The second site is east of this sign on the further side of the Great Western Highway, where remnants of Coxs Road can be seen a little way along Hepburn Road.
Road Building
Coxs road party was equipped with basic but essential tools. These included felling axes, cross-cut saws and hoes for clearing the path.
Then there were the crowbars, tomahawks and sledgehammers for breaking and moving stone. Working with stone also needed a single iron maul and wedges 'of sizes' for quarrying.
Supporting equipment included some carpentry tools, pit saws, a smith's anvil, small bellows and steel along with two sets of blasting tools and 25 lb of gunpowder.
Rocks had to be smashed or blown out of their path, and hullies crossed with wooden brisges or causeways.
William Cox wrote in his journal about buidling the road through the vicinity of Linden and Woodford.
Monday 29 August 1814
Commenced operations on the mountain, with all the men… Had to remove an immense quantity of rock, both in going up the mountain and in the pass leading to the bluff on the west end of it. Examined the high rock well and fixed on making a road off it from the bluff instead of winding around it. Began cutting timber and splitting stuff to frame the road off the rock to the ridge below it, about 20 feet in depth. The men worked extremely hard and smart to day.
Visited: 1325, Sunday, 16 July, 2017