Mount Victoria Heritage Trail

Acknowledgement of Country

The City of the Blue Mountains is located within the Ngurra (Country) of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. Blue Mountains City Council recognises that Dharug and Gundungurra Traditional Owners have a continuous and deep connection to their Country and that this is of great cultural significance to Aboriginal people, both locally and in the region.

Blue Mountains City Council pays respect to Elders past and present while recognising the strength, capacity and resilience of past and present Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Blue Mountains region.

Mount Victoria history & heritage

Mount Victoria is located on the Country of the Dharug and Gundungurra People. It is the first or last village east-west over the Blue Mountains and unique among all others. Its early tourism role and its enduring rural character give it a distinctive townscape unlike any other in the Mountains.

Mount Victoria was an important railway terminus on the western line for many years and a major tourist destination until after World War One. These aspects of the village are still evident in the railway station complex and the large resort hotels that are visual landmarks in the town. The public school was the first established in the Mountains in 1868, and the early date of its post office underlines the importance of the village at the end of the nineteenth century.

European occupation began in the 1830s when a convict stockade was located here for the construction of the Bathurst Road — also known as Great Western Road, and now the Great Western Highway — and Victoria Pass which opened in 1832. The Surveyor General named the place Hassan’s Walls in May 1834, and later it was known as Broughton's Waterhole and One Tree Hill. It was a popular camping spot and resting place for stock near the 1849 toll bar on the Great Western Road. The village was officially named Mount Victoria in 1868.

Mount Victoria was a main refreshment stop for train travellers to Bathurst and was also the starting point for visits to Jenolan Caves via the Six Foot Track. Visitors came up on the train after 1868, as Mount Victoria was the nearest point to the Jenolan, previously known as Binda Caves, or Fish River Caves. It was a bustling and fashionable resort town with grand hotels such as the Royal (c.1860s), now the Victoria & Albert Guesthouse, the Imperial (1878), located on the Bathurst Road (now Great Western Highway), and the former Cooper’s Grand (c.1887) located with views to the railway station nearby in what is now Montgomery Street.

After World War One, with the Inter-War boom of guesthouses and holiday cottages in places like Katoomba and Blackheath, the importance of Mount Victoria as a tourist centre faded. However, its nineteenth century cultural landscape of rural open space within the village has been largely retained.

This project is an initiative of Blue Mountains City Council.

This project received grant funding from the Australian Government.