Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Notebook

Notebook

1813–1814
B 795 pp. 6-7
MSS notebook

In 1813 the respected surveyor and explorer George William Evans (1780–1852), was sent by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to find a passage through the interior of New South Wales. He followed the route of the Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson expedition, and became the first European to cross the Great Dividing Range into the expansive lands of New South Wales where he founded the site for Bathurst.

As well as being a competent surveyor, Evans was also an accomplished artist. His View near Grose Head, New South Wales (1809), with its wild landscape and untouched beauty, is thought to be one of the earliest surviving depictions of a Blue Mountains view. The work probably depicts the Grose River near the base of Grose Head, at the foothills of the Blue Mountains.

Impenetrable interior

The Blue Mountains generally remained an impenetrable mystery to colonists until the official crossing in 1813. In 1805, Governor Philip King had described the Blue Mountains as “a confused and barren assemblage of mountains with impassable chasms between.”* 
William Paterson (1755-1810) described his 1793 expedition of the Grose River valley to Francis Peron (1775-1810) as “In vain did the travellers attempt to continue their route towards the interior of the mountains: their difficulties increased at every step; one of these mountains was not less than four hundred feet in perpendicular height; frightful precipices everywhere presented themselves; and no sooner had one summit been escalated, then another appeared still more barren and difficult of access…”** 

Footnotes
* Historical Records of Australia, edited by Fredrick Watson, 1914-1925, Vol.5, p.594
** A voyage of discovery to the Southern Hemisphere, Francois Peron, London, 1809. p.288