HISTORY OF MT WILSON AND MT IRVINE
The Blue Mountains has been the traditional lands of the Gundungurrah and Dharug Aboriginal people for more than forty thousand years as revealed by archaeological studies conducted across the mountains. The Dharug were the main tribe of the Mt Wilson and Mt Irvine districts.
Mt Wilson
Mt Wilson’s European history begins in 1868 when the area was first surveyed by Edward Wyndham and named after Bowie Wilson, the then Secretary for Lands. Mt Wilson has enjoyed longstanding significance in the history of New South Wales because of its unusual development in the late 1800s as an Indian-type hill station retreat for a handful of wealthy businessmen, lawyers, politicians and pastoralists who built summer residences for their families as an escape from the oppressive heat and humidity of Sydney.
Notable early landowners included Richard Wynne (Burwood’s first Mayor and benefactor of the Wynne Art Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW), Edward Merewether (Commissioner of Crown Land for NSW), Henry Marcus Clark (Marcus Clark & Co. department stores), Sir Matthew Stephen (Supreme Court Judge), William Hay (pastoralist and NSW Parliamentarian), and wealthy graziers Edward King Cox, James Dalrymple Cox and George Henry Cox (three grandsons of William Cox, pioneer famed for leading the construction of the first road across the Blue Mountains).
To wander the streets of Mt Wilson, particularly in the spring and autumn, is to be reminded of how these wealthy part-time residents pined for England and Europe. The temptation for landowners to create exotic gardens in this lush & fertile place was indulged enthusiastically, so that the contrast and the tension between the native and the introduced, the natural and the modified, has, over a hundred and forty years, created a village of unique and exceptional beauty.
Mt Irvine
Mt Irvine’s European history starts a little later, in 1897, when Charles Robert Scrivener, a government surveyor, was tasked with mapping a road to the end of Mt Wilson spur in New South Wales. During his survey, he suggested that the area be designated as a national reserve. However, instead of preserving it, the land was opened for settlement and named Mt Irvine.
The first settlers were Scrivener's son, Charles Passefield Scrivener, along with his friends Harold Morley and Basil Knight-Brown, all of whom had recently graduated from the Hawkesbury Agricultural College. Each man took up 10 hectares of land. For twelve years, they worked on building the road to Mt Irvine, spending one month each year working on the project. The road remained a pack horse track for quite some time. Over time, the community of Mt Irvine developed, with residents planting orchards, grazing cattle and building modest and unpretentious structures to live in.
Mt Irvine’s remote beauty and charm, with its in-tact rainforest, tree ferns, and rich volcanic landscape, is a testament to the vision of the early settlers. Today, it remains a peaceful spot in the Blue Mountains, popular for its nut farms, orchards, and scenic rainforest walks.