"The Crossing" Premiere

The film will be shown on a giant outdoor screen on dusk.
Come along to relive history, learn a little and you won’t see the ending coming! It will be great night to see the film on a huge screen.
Ref: Scott Richadson  scott@visiontv.com.au

THE FINAL WESTERN CROSSINGS PROJECTS - SPECIAL EDITION OF HISTORY MAGAZINE AND MONUMENT RESTORATION

The Western Crossings legacy projects will soon be coming to an end. We have created the website featuring300 photographs from our library collection to commemorate the bicentenary in May 2013 of the crossing of the Blue Mountains by Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth. At the time of the centenary of the crossing in 1913, Frank Walker (1861-1948) was President of the RAHS and a passionate supporter of local history whose personal archive is now held by the Royal Australian Historical Society. As well as glass lantern slides, it includes scrap albums and booklets of news cuttings, photographs and ephemera. The Frank Walker Crossings Collection provides access to a selection of this material to honour both his contribution to preserving historical records about the original expedition, and the bicentenary of 2013 which are now readily available to anyone in the world with access to the internet. Click here to see the collection.
[Frank Walker's Centenary Album of the First Crossing, RAHS Collection]

HERITAGE, Newsletter of BMACHO - Sept-Oct 2012

This article has previously appeared in HERITAGE, the newsletter of the Blue Mountains Association of Cultural Heritage Organisations Inc.

Click here to view/download full newsletter.

1813 Crossing events - for those in Blue Mountains region and Beyond

For anyone interested in theatre, the Crossing! play has been written specifically for 2013. 

You will find yourselves humming the road-building Rapper song about William Cox and his convicts !!

See Flyer below.

See also the official website for the Blue Mountains Crossings Bicentenary 2013 to 2015, endorsed by the Royal Australian Historical Society, Western Crossing Committee and Bicentenary Crossings Committee.

Ref: Dr Siobhan Lavelle OAM , Senior Heritage Officer, Office of Environment & Heritage 

 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE FIRST CROSSING, MAY 1813

Flat Rock is here seen to be a bed of resistant massive sandstone of only moderate thickness. There is a much more continuous interval of sandstone below it which is also above the main vertical cliff of Banks Wall Sandstone. Whether the bed forming the top surface of Flat Rock can be traced laterally has not yet been investigated. However the oblique photo above suggests it is present in the west drainage small valleys just south of the rock. (Photo: 'Divine and bright')

A meeting at "FLAT ROCK", 29 MAY

2013

 ~  all welcome but convened particularly for the geologically interested ~ 

AND ALSO IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE FIRST CROSSING, MAY 1813

Those interested in rocks and the Blue Mountains,and in old things (archaeology/geology) are invited to meet here at 1 p.m. in order to tell each other what their interests are. This is a good spot for sharing such information - as it may well be possible to point in the direction of where you are interested in from this lookout rock that has a large vista.

Although this is NOT an excursion and will last only as long as it takes for each attendee to say what their interests may be, any excursion to other nearby features would be easily combined on the same day. For example, in the close vicinity there are various interesting places that can be visited, and walks that can be done. Advice on where they are can be given. They include the King's Table rock shelter, which is very readily visited. This is where Fr. Eugene Stockton excavated and obtained the oldest evidence of human occupation on the Blue Mountains. 

 To view/download the full document (74 pages, 4.4MB) with many great photos click.

The Crossing Seminar

The Crossing Seminar
Friday, 10 May 2013, 9:00 am to 3:30 pm, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 30 Parke Street, Katoomba

On 11 May 1813 Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth set out from South Creek accompanied by four servants, five dogs and four horses. They walked for 17 days through the bush, marking the bark of the trees to trace their steps. Exactly 100 years later an obelisk was erected at Mt York on 28 May 1913 to mark the centenary.

How did it happen that an event that was modestly reported at the time, and which had limited immediate consequences, by the turn of the twentieth century came to be regarded as one of the most significant events in Australia’s European history? In this day long seminar, four of Australia’s leading historians: Richard Waterhouse, Grace Karskens, Martin Thomas and David Roberts will explore the mythologising of the 1813 crossing, its impacts and reflect on the wider importance of this event to Australian history. The day will conclude with a presentation by a National Parks Discovery Ranger on the Aboriginal heritage of the region and a tour of the World Heritage Exhibition.

Lunch and morning tea included.
Presented by the History Council of NSW.
This event is supported by the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.

READ MORE >

The Crossing Bicentenary – History Council NSW call for registrations

The year 2013 marks the bicentenary of the first acknowledged crossing of the Blue Mountains by European settlers. The crossing was made by Gregory Blaxland; William Lawson; William Charles Wentworth; a local guide; three convict servants; four pack horses and five dogs in May 1813. After three weeks of trekking through the scrub the party reached Mount Blaxland seeing an expanse of potential farming land below. The crossing is considered significant as it led to the opening up of the western plains of NSW to settlement.

Marketing and Publicity

The HCNSW will be running a year long marketing and publicity campaign to encourage and promote community engagement in the bicentenary through locally arranged events. The following benefits will be offered to participants:
• an easy to use registration system;
• each event has a dedicated page with space for an image;
• events are published on our home page;
• the HCNSW stamp of approval;
• inclusion in an overarching professional publicity campaign.
Promote your work to new audiences. The ongoing vitality of the history sector depends on an engaged and appreciative community.
The HCNSW will also host a one day seminar to be held in May 2013.
To list your event or for more information visit the History Council NSW website.
Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

The Crossing Bicentenary – History Council NSW call for registrations

Also of interest:

• ‘Remembering the Women’ – The wives of soldier settlers in New South Wales after World War One
• Can you Spot the Difference? [Sydney Harbour Bridge]
• Staff Pick : Soldiering in the late 19th Century

Commemorating the 1813 First Crossing of the Blue Mountains

(Tablet on Mount Blaxland, RAHS Collection)

The RAHS Makes History: Commemorating the 1813 First Crossing of the Blue Mountains

Presented by Dr Siobhan Lavelle OAM - Wednesday 3 April 2013              

The talk will examine the role of monuments in demonstrating, interpreting and understanding an historic past. The Blue Mountains west of Sydney (NSW) have played a particular role in the white settlement of Australia. Few areas have been so heavily inscribed figuratively and materially by European travellers, settlers, and their descendants. The sites examined in this talk are linked to an early and significant triumphal historic narrative, that of the “First Crossing” of the Blue Mountains by European explorers in 1813.

The presentation will deal in detail with some specific sites from the overall set. What these sites have in common is that they all involved people from the RAHS. The identification and uses of the sites which are celebrated for their presumed links to an heroic past, can lead to debates at many
levels, in particular the intersection of professional or academic histories and perceptions against an independent and popular history or folklore; the dilemma of the romantic and nostalgic against the (presumed) more professional, rational and scientific. With the First crossing Bicentenary occurring in May 2013, this account of earlier commemorative efforts has special interest.

Date:     Wednesday 3 April 2013
Where:   History House
Time:     1.00pm - 2.00pm
Cost:      Free event
Contact: Bookings essential ph. 9247 8001