Blackheath, NSW

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About Blackheath, NSW

Blackheath is more than its lookouts, wonderful as they are; here is a chance to show images of its people, shops, parks, characters, streets, school, pets, animals, flora, fauna, macros, Rhododendron Festival, gardens, swimming pool, railway, hotels, artists, writers, volunteers, bushfire brigade...

Blackheath (1065m)
The location of Blackheath was named by Governor Macquarie while returning from the west in 1815. On his way out he had given it the name Hounslow, after Hounslow Heath in England, but reconsidering, he wrote in his journal: "This place having a black wild appearance I have this day named it Black-Heath." In the early 1830s Andrew Gardiner opened The Scotch Thistle Inn and in the 1840s a convict stockade was established here. A railway platform was opened in 1869. Blackheath was proclaimed a village in 1885 and achieved municipal status in 1919.

Shipley
The plateau was named by Robert Smith Longton who took up land there in 1892. He named it after his birthplace near Bradford in Yorkshire, England. Shipley is famous for its orchards.

Megalong Valley
The name Megalong is of Aboriginal origin, said to mean roughly "valley under the rock". The valley, first surveyed in 1838, was settled long before the railway crossed the Blue Mountains, the pioneers travelling up from the districts of Burragorang and Camden. In the 1880s, with the opening of the Six Foot Track from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves and the development of shale mining, the population at the Katoomba end of the valley increased and a small mining township grew up at the base of Nellie’s Glen. When the Megalong Valley Road opened in 1897 and mining operations began to peter out, the orientation of the valley community shifted to Blackheath.

Medlow Bath (1050m)
The location here of Brown’s Sawmill saw the first railway platform opened in 1880 as Brown’s Siding, Pulpit Hill. This was changed to Medlow in 1883 to avoid confusion with another Brown’s Siding near Lithgow. The origin of the name Medlow is uncertain, the argument coming down to it being either a corruption of the Aboriginal word for Megalong or a borrowing of the name of a small town in the north of England. In any event, the name was changed again in 1903 when the addition of Bath was made to distinguish it from another Medlow in NSW and to mark the imminent opening of Mark Foy’s grand Hydropathic Bath. In the early 1900s Foy purchased three properties on the cliff edge, including the Belgravia Hotel, and incorporated them into the complex known still as the Hydro Majestic.

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Great shot!
Seen in the Blackheath group–
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/merryjack/3896285940/" title="Hanging Rock, Grose Valley by Merryjack, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2585/3896285940_ec16f22713_t.jpg" width="100" height="67" alt="Hanging Rock, Grose Valley" /></a>
www.flickr.com/groups/blackheath_nsw/
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Great shot!
Seen in the Blackheath group -

www.flickr.com/groups/blackheath_nsw/
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