Bowenfels

Postcode: 2790

Bowenfels is a small town on the western outskirts of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia.

The town was founded in the 1830's to service travellers along the new road to Bathurst, which opened in 1832. The town was the first settlement in the valley and pre-dated Lithgow by 40 years. The railway opened in 1869, and was electrified in the 1950s, although passenger services no longer service Bowenfels station.

Today there are effectively two Bowenfels. Directly opposite Lithgow, on the western side of the Great Western Highway, is Bowenfels (with the homestead of the valley's first settler, Andrew Brown). A little over a kilometre south along the highway towards Katoomba, is South Bowenfels. Although both are now essentially suburbs of Lithgow, Bowenfels was, in fact, the first settlement in the valley, predating the existence of the larger city by nearly 40 years.

The village emerged in the early 1830s to serve travellers along Mitchell's new line of road to Bathurst, completed in 1832. Mitchell named the township after George Mears Bowen, a former member of his department with whom he had quarrelled.

Several inns emerged in the early days. One was used as a changing station by Cobb & Co. Governor Fitzroy is known to have stayed at Binning's Inn around 1850. The first Presbyterian Church (1842) and national school (1851) west of the Blue Mountains were also established here.

When the railway arrived in 1869, Main Camp No. 5 was set up near where the station at North Bowenfels now stands. The railway enabled the industrialisation and development of Lithgow but it also signalled the decline of the road-town of Bowenfels.

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