Mount Wilson

Postcode: 2786

Mount Wilson is a small village in the state of New South Wales, Australia in the City of Blue Mountains. It is east of the township of Bell.

Mount Wilson is located 8 km north of Bell's Line of Road and 126 km west of Sydney. It is a charming and gracious village with many beautiful cold climate gardens nestled in the Australian bush. This small village is famous today for the fact that between 1912 and 1937 Patrick White's parents lived in a house called Withycombe (it still stands and is located on the corner of The Avenue and Church Avenue). In his book Flaws in the Glass White recalled his time at Mount Wilson in terms of 'gullies crackling with smoky silence, rocks threatening to explode, pools so cold that the breath was cut off inside your ribs as you hung suspended like the corpse of a pale frog.'

The first European into the area may have been the convict Matthew Everingham who may have reached the ridge as early as 1795. Certainly the confirmed first European into the general area was Archibald Bell, Jr, who in 1823 when he was only nineteen, crossed the mountains along what was to become Bell's Line of Road. This was not a solitary achievement. Sensibly he used the knowledge of the local Aborigines who had been crossing the mountains for tens of thousands of years. Although the mountains has been crossed at Katoomba a decade earlier, there was still no satisfactory route through the mountains from Richmond at this time. Bell reached Mount Tomah on his first attempt but could not find a way across the mountains. On his second attempt he followed the ridge across to the present site of Bell and from there made his way down into Hartley Vale where he joined up with Cox¹s road.

The best strategy for any visitor is to get out of the car and start walking. The experience of the town is the experience of its gardens, its avenues of trees, its lookouts and its walking trails and picnic areas. The time to visit Mount Wilson is either spring or autumn. At these times many of the locals open their gardens - some of which are over 100 years old - to the public.

Of particular note are Church Avenue, Queen's Avenue and The Avenue with their rows of plane trees, limes, elms, beeches, liquidambars and pink cherries.

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