This plaque includes some entries from the explorer's journals, and reads:
Why did Blaxland want to cross the mountains?
"Brothers John and Gregory Blaxland were among the first free settlers and an early example of business migration. Using free passage, free land and free convict labour, they developed trades in meat, livestock and seal furs. This annoyed the authorities, who expected them to produce grain to help feed the colony.
"Governor Macquarie was more interested in consolidating the colony as it stood, rather than taking risks by spreading settlement. But graziers like Blaxland wanted to expand their holdings. The pastures of the Cumberland Plain were already becoming degraded. Droughts and caterpillar plagues added to the problems.
"After excursions to The Cowpastures and Warragamba River, Blaxland decided on an approach that could lead to the interior. He asked Lieutenant William Lawson and William Wentworth to join him.
Gregory Blaxland Esq. formerly of Brush Farm, Parramatta Rive, discoverer of the Blue Mountain Pass, youngest brother of John Blaxland Esq. formerly of Newington, Kent England late of Newington, Parramatta River
"Today it's easy to trace out the ridgetop route running across the central Blue Mountains by the highway, railway and towns along its length.
"For the exploring 1813 party of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, the way ahead was not so obvious. Some earlier explorers also knew to stay out of the gorges, but had trouble finding the ridges. For us, satellite imagery provides the chance to imagine the scale of what they faced.
1813 - across the 'barrier'/p>
"On May 11 Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson crossed the Nepean River with four servants, five dogs and four horses loaded with provisions. They ascended the ridge that divided the Grose River and Coxs River, without knowing that it ran all the way through the sandstone terrain to join the Great Dividing Range beyond.
"A local kangaroo hunter helped the first part of their journey, but then they had to cut a track through the bush. All three explorers wrote journals. Lawson's appears to have been written at the time while Blaxland publish his - in the third person - ten years later and sometimes uses the same wording as Lawson.
May 12 "Blaxland - in the evening they encamped at the Head of a deep gully which they had to descend for Water found but just enough for the night in a hole in the rock the Horses travelled very awkwardly being much incommoded by the small trees and brush at places and the ridge they followed being very crooked and intricate between the gullies…
May 13 "Blaxland - found a tract Marked [by] and European by cutting the Bark of the Trees
May 14 "Lawson - kept on what we judged the main Ridge between the Grose and Western River. Cut a Road about five Miles through a thick brush this is a very poor Rocky and Sandy Country.
May 25 "Blaxland - they were very much tormented this day the under brush being prickly and full of small thorns…
May 26 "Blaxland - the land to the Westward [Kanimbla Valley] appeared to them sandy and barren.
May 28 "(at Mount York) Blaxland - they Encamped on the edge of the precipice and discovered to their great satisfaction what they had considered sandy and barren land below the Mountains to be forest land - covered with trees and good grass - in the Evening they got their horses down the Mountain when they again tasted grass for the first time since they left the forest land on the other side…they were getting into miserable condition…
May 31 "(at mount Blaxland) Blaxland - they encamped by the side of a very fine stream of water a short distance from a high hill in the shape of a Sugar loaf they left their Camp in the afternoon and ascended to its top which terminated their journey - from which place they saw forest land all around them sufficient to feed the Stock of the colony, in their opinions for the next thirty Years."
"Lawson… our shoes worn out and provisions expended obliged us to return home the same course we came. This country will show no doubt be a great acquisition to the Colony and no difficulty making a good road to it."
[To the left of the main photo - orthophotomap of the Blue Mountains is the following text.]
Did Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson cross the Blue Mountains…
"The three explorers never claimed to have done so, but as Governor Macquarie wrote, they "effected the first passage over the most rugged and difficult part of the Blue Mountains."
"Easier country led west to the top of the Great Dividing Range and beyond, as Evans would soon prove.
"What the 'dauntless three' accomplished was to pioneer a 'white man's' route through the sandstone fastness upon which a road could be built to the west - even if it was a road that is still problematic today."
Access: Best by personal vehicle, as the lookout is a good distance from the Great Western Highway and Mount Victoria
Visited: 1817, Monday, 3 October, 2016