The oil extracted from the Newnes shale was never high grade, so the enormous effort that went into all this shows how desperate Australia was for oil.īits and pieces from the shale mining days remain, like this ore car by the side of the track. Not least, a railway was built from Newnes up along the eastern cliff face of the Wolgan Valley to a point where a tunnel took the rails through to the Newnes plateau, and on to a connection to Sydney. Quite substantial works were undertaken including not only the mine with two drives but also retorts and even coke ovens. Newnes was established as a shale oil mining town in 1906, north of Lithgow in the Wolgan Valley. Since I’ve noticed a bit of misinformation creeping into online stories recently it might as well be me. Despite that, this was a wonderful place to escape to, and I suppose somebody needs to tell the story of the Newnes pub. I had ridden my newly acquired second-hand XL250 the 200 km up from Sydney, and right in the middle of the ten-meter river crossing the chain came off. Newnes is the place where I first realized that Someone Up There had it in for me. There are several wonderful ride destinations just across the Blue Mountains from Sydney, and as a bonus you get the ride over the mountains by Bells (sic) Line of Road thrown in.
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