Background Briefing
In 1813 New South Wales remained a British penal colony, but competing ideas about its
future were developing.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie saw New South Wales as predominantly a place where freed convicts would engage in self-sufficient, small-scale agriculture to feed the growing colony.
Wealthy free immigrants, often enticed by the British Government to settle, saw the colony as a place where they could establish large landholdings on which to run cattle or, increasingly, sheep. They saw convicts as cheap pastoral labour rather than farmers working small plots of land.
Macquarie developed expensive public works but he was under pressure to generate the income to pay for these developments, rather than relying on British Government expenditure.
Continued convict and free immigration, as well as internal population growth, and several poor seasons — of drought, floods and insect infestations — put increasing pressure on the need to expand the colony beyond the encircling ring of the Blue Mountains. At the same time, however, Macquarie did not want to provide a means for convicts to escape the boundaries of the colony’s settlement.
In 1813 he authorised three wealthy immigrants — Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth (who was born on a convict ship on the way to New South Wales) — to organise an expedition to find a way of crossing the Blue Mountains.
Several other explorers had tried to cross the Blue Mountains previously, and some may even have succeeded, though we are not certain about this.
The mountains were difficult to cross because of the rugged bush, many gorges and cliffs — but there was a way, by
following a particular ridgeline. Aboriginal people knew at least two ways over the mountains (paths that are, today, followed by two major roads) but they were not involved in the 1813 crossing — Blaxland was dismissive of their knowledge.
The party found the ridgeline, and succeeded in reaching the end of the Blue Mountains and observing some open land, although they did not complete a crossing of the Great Dividing Range, and did not see the great
plains towards Bathurst.
After the party returned to the colony, Macquarie sent a surveyor, George Evans, to check on their findings. Evans followed their route, and then went much further, seeing the Bathurst plains. He returned, and Macquarie commissioned a narrow and rough road to be made — but one that was intended to be restricted for use by authorised travellers.
Despite attempts to limit expansion of the colony, it gradually happened, and the plains were opened up to settlers who then took up the land, displacing the Aboriginal inhabitants in a series of bloody conflicts.
As Australians began to look to heroes in their history to obscure the convict ‘stain’ of the nation’s past, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth and their crossing of the Blue Mountains was seized upon as one of the great
nation-forming achievements.
Today, with our awareness of the harm as well as the good that resulted from the opening up of the area, we are more
inclined to ‘commemorate’ the crossing, rather than ‘celebrate’ it, and to place greater weight on the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the destruction of their society and culture than previous generations did, with their greater
emphasis on the advantages of national development.
In 1813 New South Wales remained a British penal colony, but competing ideas about its
future were developing.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie saw New South Wales as predominantly a place where freed convicts would engage in self-sufficient, small-scale agriculture to feed the growing colony.
Wealthy free immigrants, often enticed by the British Government to settle, saw the colony as a place where they could establish large landholdings on which to run cattle or, increasingly, sheep. They saw convicts as cheap pastoral labour rather than farmers working small plots of land.
Macquarie developed expensive public works but he was under pressure to generate the income to pay for these developments, rather than relying on British Government expenditure.
Continued convict and free immigration, as well as internal population growth, and several poor seasons — of drought, floods and insect infestations — put increasing pressure on the need to expand the colony beyond the encircling ring of the Blue Mountains. At the same time, however, Macquarie did not want to provide a means for convicts to escape the boundaries of the colony’s settlement.
In 1813 he authorised three wealthy immigrants — Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth (who was born on a convict ship on the way to New South Wales) — to organise an expedition to find a way of crossing the Blue Mountains.
Several other explorers had tried to cross the Blue Mountains previously, and some may even have succeeded, though we are not certain about this.
The mountains were difficult to cross because of the rugged bush, many gorges and cliffs — but there was a way, by
following a particular ridgeline. Aboriginal people knew at least two ways over the mountains (paths that are, today, followed by two major roads) but they were not involved in the 1813 crossing — Blaxland was dismissive of their knowledge.
The party found the ridgeline, and succeeded in reaching the end of the Blue Mountains and observing some open land, although they did not complete a crossing of the Great Dividing Range, and did not see the great
plains towards Bathurst.
After the party returned to the colony, Macquarie sent a surveyor, George Evans, to check on their findings. Evans followed their route, and then went much further, seeing the Bathurst plains. He returned, and Macquarie commissioned a narrow and rough road to be made — but one that was intended to be restricted for use by authorised travellers.
Despite attempts to limit expansion of the colony, it gradually happened, and the plains were opened up to settlers who then took up the land, displacing the Aboriginal inhabitants in a series of bloody conflicts.
As Australians began to look to heroes in their history to obscure the convict ‘stain’ of the nation’s past, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth and their crossing of the Blue Mountains was seized upon as one of the great
nation-forming achievements.
Today, with our awareness of the harm as well as the good that resulted from the opening up of the area, we are more
inclined to ‘commemorate’ the crossing, rather than ‘celebrate’ it, and to place greater weight on the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the destruction of their society and culture than previous generations did, with their greater
emphasis on the advantages of national development.