Article by Andy Macqueen - Blue Mountains History Journal-December 2015

ASSISTANT SURVEYOR ROBERT HODDLE’S 1823 EXCURSION IN THE GARDENS OF STONE – AND A DARK SECRET?

Andy Macqueen
P.O. Box 204,

Wentworth Falls, NSW 2782.

 andymacqueen@gmail.com

Abstract
In 1823 Assistant Surveyor Robert Hoddle (later Surveyor General of Victoria) was ordered, as his first substantial job in the Colony, to survey the route of the Blue Mountains crossing defined by Archibald Bell, and then to establish whether a road to the Hunter Valley could be found by heading northward from the Bell area. In pursuit of the latter task he became embroiled in the sandstone pagoda country in the headwaters of Bungleboori Creek, but finally turned back at Birds Rock on Sunnyside Ridge. His brief descriptions of the pagoda rocks and ravines are almost poetic and thus unique in the early literature of the area. However, it is possible that the expedition was marred by an unreported event involving the death of Aboriginal people.

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THE BLUE MOUNTAINS: WHERE ARE THEY?

This paper has previously appeared in Issue 3 of The Blue Mountains History Journal, a publication of the Blue Mountains Association of Cultural Heritage Organisations Inc. 

"This paper is by Andy Macqueen, a well-known Blue Mountains author who has contributed a most thoughtful paper on the meaning of the term ‘Blue Mountains’. Aided by a generous collection of maps he demonstrates that the term means different things to different people. Thus to some the Blue Mountains extend north-south from the Hunter Valley to Picton and east-west from Emu Plains to Jenolan and that latter parameter raises the issue of whether the Blue Mountains should include rocks older than Permian and whether part of the Great Dividing Range should be accepted as being within the area. Andy makes it quite clear that there is no unique definition that is acceptable to all. This scholarly work will for many years undoubtedly be the definitive account of the topic." (Dr Peter C. Rickwood)

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