Lithgow and the Western Blue Mountains
The far side of the range, where the sandstone breaks into pagodas and the day-tour coaches have long since turned around. Lithgow is World Heritage country by any measure and it is also, honestly, not somewhere a Sydney day trip goes. Here is what is out there, and how you would actually reach it. The Blue Mountains guided tours all work the Katoomba corridor instead.
Where Lithgow sits on the World Heritage Area
West of Mount Victoria, past the top of the range and down the other side, at the point where the plateau gives way to the tablelands. Two of the eight reserves that make up the Greater Blue Mountains Area sit on its doorstep: Gardens of Stone to the north-west and the vast Wollemi wilderness to the north-east. The National Parks and Wildlife Service puts Gardens of Stone at approximately two and a half hours from Sydney and five kilometres from Lithgow.
Gardens of Stone and the rock pagodas
The reason to come. Gardens of Stone National Park protects rock pagodas, sandstone cliffs and canyons. The pagodas are beehive-shaped formations weathered out of the same rock that makes the Katoomba escarpment, and they are found almost nowhere else. NSW National Parks names Baal Bone Gap picnic area as the jewel in the crown, with Pantoneys Crown mesa and the Newnes Plateau cliffs beyond it.
The park is always open and may close for poor weather or fire danger. Getting to most of it means fire trails: Crown Creek is a horse riding and mountain biking route, Ben Bullen is four-wheel drive and mountain biking.
The Wollemi edge
Wollemi National Park is the largest reserve in the World Heritage property and runs north from here into country with very few roads in it. It is the reserve the Wollemi pine is named for. For a visitor without a four-wheel drive and a plan, it is scenery seen from the edge rather than a destination.
Railway heritage
Lithgow's industrial history is the other half of its case. The Zig Zag Railway was built in the 1860s to bring the main western line down the escarpment, and it is one of the notable pieces of nineteenth-century railway engineering in Australia. The Lithgow Blast Furnace site records the town's iron and steel period. Operating times and ticketing for the heritage railway change and could not be confirmed from an official source, so check directly before planning a day around it.
How far it is, and how you get there
| From | Roughly | How |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney to Gardens of Stone | 2.5 hours | Great Western Highway, own vehicle |
| Gardens of Stone to Lithgow | 5 km | Own vehicle |
| Sydney to Lithgow | Beyond Katoomba on the same line | Blue Mountains Line, continues past Katoomba |
| Katoomba to Lithgow | Over the top of the range | Great Western Highway or the train |
The Blue Mountains Line does continue past Katoomba and Mount Victoria to Lithgow, so the town is reachable by train from Sydney. What is not reachable by public transport is the country the town is worth coming for, which is fire trail and unsealed road.
Why no Sydney day tour comes this far
Arithmetic. A day tour already spends four hours driving to reach Katoomba and get back, out of a ten- or eleven-hour day. Adding the run over the top of the range and back would leave almost no daylight at the other end. That is why not one of the guided days goes past Mount Victoria, and it is a consequence of the map rather than a gap in the market.
Doing it from Katoomba instead
The workable version is to stay a night in the upper mountains and drive out from there, which halves the road time in each direction. A private vehicle with a driver can be routed anywhere within its hours, so it is the one kind of booking that could reach this side of the range if you asked and paid for the day. See the private tours page for what that costs and where to stay for the overnight case.
The park itself is covered on the national park page, the layout on the map page, and the fares on Blue Mountains Tours.