NEWNES

Catherine, Joshua and their dad went on an overnight Camp at Newnes in April 2002.
Newnes is located about 200km west of Sydney, at the end of the Wolgan Valley. It is surrounded by steep sandstone cliffs, and is the site of an old shale mining and processing town.

From 1906 until the early 1930s there was a shale mining and processing facility at Newnes, and at times the town had a population of up to 2000.

The old hotel is the only complete building left, and even it has been de-licenced and removed from its original location
There are some ruins of the old town and shale works a couple of kilometers walk away, but we didn't go there.

We set up our tent and cooked damper for afternoon tea. We enjoyed it very much, but didn't have a lot of room left in our tummies for the sausages and pasta that we cooked for dinner.

There were a dozen or so other campers, but the camping area was quite big and the sites were quite a long way from each other, so you didn't feel crowded at all.

There used to be a railway to Newnes, but it has long since gone, although some of the old rolling stock is still there as evidence.

We walked up to the "Glow Worm Tunnel". This is an old railway tunnel, and much of the walking track to get there runs along the bed of the old railway.

You can see the remains of the occassional sleeper, but generally there is little remaining evidence of the railway. There are a couple of major wash outs, and plenty of rocks such as the one shown below are strewn along the path.

The old tunnel is built on a curve. It is really dark in the middle of the tunnel where you can't see either end.

There were a lot of glow-worms in the tunnel, and it was really quite spectacular, but our little camera was not up to taking a photo in so little light. The picture at left was taken looking back towards the entrace as we started to walk into the tunnel.