HAWKESBURY HISTORY
with Michelle Nichols & Jonathan Auld
The wilderness of Wollemi
The Wollemi National Park safeguards the largest wilderness area in NSW and forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage listed, Greater Blue Mountains Area. Although a large swathe of the park and protected area is contained within the Hawkesbury Local Government Area, it is not well-known by residents.
Wollemi National Park is a culturally significant place for the Darkinung, Wiradjuri, Dharug and Wanaruah people. Contained within the boundaries are hundreds of exceptional Aboriginal sites. The ancient sites include some rare and outstanding Aboriginal artworks, engravings, scarred trees, grinding grooves and other remnants, with the exceptional gallery of rock art, known as‘ Eagles Reach’ discovered in the 1990s. Ex-convict Benjamin Singleton, a Hawkesbury settler, was one of the first Europeans to traverse this area on his unsuccessful 1818 expedition. He wrote that he was discouraged by the“ very high and deep gullies” and also recorded one of the few accounts of contact with Aboriginal people at that time. Singleton’ s party met up with the large group of Aboriginal men near Mount Monundilla, and interacted about their business.
Frederick Robert D’ Arcy was a nineteenth century surveyor who was surveying the area in the 1830s. This included the Colo River and Wollemi Creek, exploring and recording descriptions of the landscape. With his small party, he was possibly one of the first Europeans to trek the rugged wilderness, which in most cases, has not changed a great deal over the past 200 years. On his early sketches, D’ Arcy records the name as Wolomi River, as Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell had called his surveyors to record local names, where possible. Over the
Wollemi Pine foliage, Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah. Photo: M. Nichols, 2019.
years, other than some very minor land use for grazing and the oil shale activity at Newnes, the landscape has pretty much been uninhabited.
The first national park was established in Australia in 1879 at the Royal National Park near Sydney. The idea was to protect unique environmental spaces for the present and future generations to enjoy. Since that date, hundreds of parks have been designated throughout the state. Recognised in 1979, Wollemi is the second largest national park in NSW with 488,620 hectares. It stretches from the Hawkesbury district to the Central West and Hunter regions. The landscape includes forests, wild river systems, sandstone pagoda outcrops as well as swamps and stunning cliffs. The National Park also contains over 350,000 hectares of Wollemi Wilderness, the largest intact natural wilderness area in NSW.
The ruggedness of the area, has resulted in minimum human impact, allowing plant and animal species to flourish. In the year 2000, the area was recognised for its extraordinary value and listed on the UNESCO World Heritage register. It was acknowledged for its significance to the region, nation and the World. The intrinsic worth of the park has been recorded as: spectacular wild and rugged scenery,
View from T3 Track overlooking the wilderness of Wollemi. Photo: M. Nichols, 2023.
its geological heritage values, its diversity of natural environments, the occurrence of many threatened or restricted native plant and animal species … significant plant communities, the presence of a range of important Aboriginal sites and the park’ s historic places.
The stunning Colo gorge and its tributaries within the Wollemi National Park, forms the most extensive sandstone canyon system in eastern Australia. The main portion of the gorge spans over 30km in length and is around 300m deep for much of its course. The diverse natural environment of this area, is also home to exceptional geology, flora and fauna. It is also home to the remarkable community of Wollemi Pines. Believed to be extinct until thirty years ago, the Wollemi Pine is a conifer from the Araucariaceae family and one of the world’ s oldest and rarest tree species. The Bunya Bunya and Norfolk pines are also from this family.
A stand of the exceptionally rare trees was concealed in a protected and isolated canyon within the Wollemi but was exposed in 1994 to David Noble, National Parks Ranger, when he was abseiling. The discovery by Noble was lauded by botanists and scientists and the plant was bestowed with‘ Wollemia nobilis’ in his honour. In its native habitat, the Wollemi Pine can grow up to 40m and their trunk circumference about a metre. A tree has both male and
female sexual reproductive cones and each tree remarkably has the same DNA.
As a precaution, very few people know the location of the groves of the ancient trees within the park, to protect the critically endangered species. Satisfactory conditions allowed the“ trees to survive [ and adapt ] for millennia” in the canyon. Another preservation strategy has been the release for sale of Wollemi Pine plants, in 2006. During the 2019 / 2020 Bushfires, the Wollemi Pines in the wild were protected by the combined efforts of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the NSW Rural Fire Service. Air tankers were used to saturate the area and specialist firefighters established an irrigation system, after being“ dropped into the site from helicopters.”
While there are a number of accessible parts of the Wollemi National Park including Wheeney Gap, Bob Turners Track, T3 Track and the Culoul Ranges, only a small number of visitors have been to the isolated areas of the park. More recently, the Glow Worm Tunnel in the Wollemi National Park near Newnes has been upgraded.
The wilderness of the Wollemi National Park, with its rugged terrain and wild waterways, is renowned for its remote and pristine environment. The park also offers challenging bushwalking and canoeing opportunities for experienced adventurers.
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10 ISSUE 180 // MAY 2025 theindependentmagazine. com. au THE HAWKESBURY INDEPENDENT