The Blue Mountains Railway Tourist Guide was published in the last half of the 1800’s. This is a compilation of scanned pages from what would have been a hardcover guide.
“THE TOURIST RESORTS of the Colony are yearly attracting greater attention, while the convenient train services and cheap fares arranged by the Railway Commissioners are doing much to make them more popular.
The Blue Mountains are at once acknowledged as the premier resort of the excursionist, alike from their natural beauty, the advantage from a health point of view of a visit to them, and their convenient location to the capital city.
Tourists’ guides, descriptive of the Mountains, are legion, and it is not sought so much in these pages to give a florid description of the rocky fastnesses and waterfalls as to point a “finger post ” to the more prominent of the scenic resorts lying between Lawson and Mount Victoria. The maps attached will, it is confidently. believed, be found to meet a “long-felt want” to the stranger within our gates and to those who have not yet enjoyed the beauty of the mountains scenery.
The run from Sydney, via its Western suburbs and Parramatta, to Penrith is accomplished under the hour, and is of interest, particularly if made for the first time, and more especially if seen in spring, when the country is green, and the orangeries beyond Parramatta glow golden with their fruit; but the Mountains are the vantage point, and the glance is turned westward, the “Hills” coming nearer with every beat of the powerful locomotive.
PENRITH is 34 miles from Sydney, and is at the foot of the Mountains, although the River Nepean lies between them. The Nepean warrants a visit if time permits, as a few miles above Penrith it boldly breaks into the Mountains, flowing then placidly: under beetling cliffs, and, at a convenient distance from Penrith, opening into the “Basin,” a magnificent sheet of water hemmed in by the hills, and affording a splendid halting-place for the”
Our source was the State Library of NSW.
