Words fail me, like a 195 year old bridge

March 9, 2026

Oberon holds the largest manufacturing operation in NSW west of the Nepean River. It has quarries which, together with others out this way, have been providing building materials for the new Western Sydney Airport. Like everyone who lives on the western side of the Sandstone Curtain we like to get food and fuel and furniture and other things than come from over East. Farm produce and minerals from the region head east to the markets of Sydney, as does the output of our factories. We like to visit our friends and relatives who live over there.

And today we find out that road transport to and from everything west of Mount Victoria relies on a causeway built in the 1830s by convicts wielding picks and shovels. Goodness knows how much money was spent on the road-to-nowhere at Hartley but now that road is open to local traffic only, and all the other traffic, including some (but not all!) heavy vehicle transport, is expected to drive through the middle of Lithgow. Past Bunnings. Past the schools. Past the entrance to Woolworths and Macdonalds. Using roads that are narrower, steeper and twistier than even Victoria Pass.

Have I mentioned that the part of Victoria Pass which has failed and will be repaired (maybe) at some unknown time in the future was built almost 200 years ago about 20 years after the first ever road over the mountains was constructed?

Thank you to the Blue Mountains Historical Society

It's absurd that a quarter of the way into the 21st century road transport between the largest city in Australia and the majority of land in the state depends on the manual work of some 19th century convicts. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

I thought I'd let my imagination run wild and think of how things might have been if someone had thought like the builders of the Millau Viaduct in France and put a bridge across the valley from Mount Victoria to the Lett River hill. But to quote Darryl Kerrigan: "Tell him he's dreaming".

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