The Megalong Valley

For those who know, the Megalong Valley is very special. It’s a place where as children their parents took them for picnics, horse riding and swimming in the clear waters of Megalong Creek. It is one of Australia’s well kept secrets with its extraordinarily serene and rural landscape, majestic sandstone escarpments, native forests, wonderful bird life and unparalleled sunsets when the declining light paints magical pictures on the escarpment walls - yet it is so close to Sydney. There’s no urban encroachment whatever. No subdivision is permitted because the Megalong sits at the centre of Sydney’s water catchment and is adjacent to the World Heritage Blue Mountains National Park.

The valley is very old, its bedrock first laid down 450 million years ago. About 250 million years ago the area that we now know as the Blue Mountains and the Sydney Basin was inundated by the sea which deposited a deep layer of sand. Over many more millions of years this sand hardened into the sandstone which at the beginning of the Triassic period, 200 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed Australia, was tilted upward by teutonic forces to create the sandstone plateau that is the basic mountains landform today. This uplift caused rivers to run more vigorously, erode the relatively soft sandstone and create the vast network of canyons and gorges - one of which is the Megalong Valley.

Finally, around 17 million years ago, molten igneous rock vented into the valley laying down the granite from which Dryridge vineyard soils are derived and which can bee seen today in the form of large spherical boulders.

As part of the Gundungurra First Nation territory, the Megalong Valley is profoundly important to Aboriginal people and rich in their heritage. Megalong is thought to have meant ‘Valley Under the Rock’. For over 20,000 years it was an important indigenous pathway linking southern parts with the Hunter Valley; and sections of the Six Foot Track also formed an ancient route to the western tablelands.

Following European discovery of the way west through the Blue Mountains, from 1838 a few hardy families settled in the valley grazing cattle, various forms of agriculture and logging shortly after that. There has been significant mining activity too concentrating on kerosene shale on the eastern escarpment. The first shale mine opened in 1870 and the Megalong township of 200 was quickly established - its ruins can still be seen along the Six Foot Track towards Katoomba, a short and pleasant walk from the estate. The last of the mining was in the first few years of the 20th Century.