Capertee

Postcode: 2846

Capertee is a small town 20km north of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. Situated on the Castlereagh Highway between Lithgow to Mudgee, Capertee is surrounded by National Parks, grazing land and coal mining. The Capertee Valley forms a part of the catchment area of the Hawkesbury River.

Capertee was a temporary terminus of a railway branch line from Wallerawang on the Main Western railway line. When the line was extended to Mudgee, there was no flat ground on which to build a crossing loop, so Capertee ended up with an unusual dead-end crossing siding instead.

Capertee is a quiet little tablelands village, located 186 km north-west of Sydney and 42 km north of Lithgow. It sits on the peak of the Great Dividing Range, about 800 m above sea-level and has a population of about 180 people. The water from the western slopes flows west to the Murray while the eastern slopes drain into the Pacific Ocean. Grazing, farming, timbergetting and the local mines and power stations constitute the basis of the local economy.

The district was occupied by the Wiradjuri people prior to white settlement. The first European in the immediate vicinity was James Blackman who journeyed north from his depot at what is now Wallerawang towards Mudgee in 1821. Blackman's Flats and Blackman's Crown still bear his name. As they traversed the steep slope of the latter, the party would have seen the Capertee Valley stretched out below them.

Sir John Jamison, a wealthy grazier and entrepreneur, established a large cattle station known as 'Capita' in the 1820s. The Corlis and Gallagher families fled Ireland's potato famine and took up land in the valley in the late 1840s. Both established enormous sheep properties focused on wool-growing and exerted a great influence over the valley.

One of the few sources of good water was found near the intersection of the roads north to Mudgee and east into the valley. A resting place developed here, known as Capertee Camp.

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