The Great Western Road - Hartley, NSW, Australia
S 33° 32.706 E 150° 10.558
56H E 237783 N 6284707
This Historical Marker is at the start of the wooden rail fence of what was the main road to Hartley.
Waymark Code: WM10ZFW
Location: New South Wales, Australia
Date Posted: 07/16/2019
Views: 1
The printed metal sign is set an angle on a steel post, just to the south of the wooden rail fence to the northwest of Old Bathurst Road. It reads:
The Great Western Road
"Up until 1832, when the Surveyor General, Major Mitchell completed the Victoria Pass, travelling from Sydney to Bathurst was an extremely arduous and dangerous experience. This new route is basically the Great Western Highway of today.
"The highway used to pass through Hartley until the current bypass was built. The engineering feat of the Victoria Pass, where the top of a mountain was removed to fill a small valley, remains as a memorial to the vision of Mitchell and to the hard labour of the convicts who built it.
"With the growth of Bathurst in the 1850s as a regional centre, following the discovery of gold, traffic along the Great Western Road steadily increased. Hartley was one of the staging points along the road to Bathurst providing food, accommodation and vehicle repairs for travellers. The journey from Sydney to Bathurst in 1856 took 3 days. Coaches reached Hartley by the end of the second day. The Great Western Road, in the Hartley Valley was little more than a single lane dirt road and remained this way well into the 20th century.
"In 1869 the railway bypassed Hartley, signalling the beginning of its steady decline as a functioning village At the beginning of the next century the Great Western Road was used by tourists travelling to Jenolan Caves from the hotels in the Blue Mountains."
Address: Old Bathurst Road, Hartley, NSW, 2790, Australia
Visited: 1108, Thursday, 23 May, 2019