|Pearsons Lookout offers
outstanding views of the Capertree Valley and
Gardens of Stone National Park
Capertee (including Capertee Valley and Glen Davis)
A small town on the edge of the largest enclosed valley
in the Southern Hemisphere.
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
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
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
In 1851 a 48-kg gold nugget was discovered in the area by
an Aboriginal prospector and other finds were then made on
the Turon River and nearby creeks. This greatly increased
traffic on the Mudgee road and inns began to appear.
Capertee village sprang from one such inn - James Shervey's,
which was known to be in existence at Capertee Camp by 1870.
A post office opened in 1875 though by 1880 there were still
no more than a dozen buildings in the village.
The railway arrived from Wallerawang in 1882.
Consequently Capertee acquired a school; albeit in the form
of a tent, which was replaced by a pre-fab building in 1883.
More importantly, the railway enabled the exploitation of
the area's known mineral resources - coal, limestone and oil
shale. The latter was discovered on the future site of Glen
Davis in 1873. The first mining tunnel at that site was
established in 1881 and other mines began to open around
Capertee in the 1890s, including one on Blackman's Crown.
Capertee naturally benefited from the economic activity
although there was little development other than the opening
of a police station, lock-up and courthouse.
Two other small villages soon sprang up around the new
mines - Airly Village, about 8km east of Capertee and
Torbane which acquired a railway siding. By 1898, about 200
men were working on the Torbane project. It is thought that
between 1896 and 1903, 140 000 tons of oil shale were
extracted. For shelter the miners used caves formed by
erosion in the sandstone cliffs.
However, shale production went into decline around 1903
as it is the nature of oil shale seams to narrow out rapidly
from the section of greatest thickness and hence to soon
become uneconomical to pursue.
By 1913 work at the mines had virtually ceased. A new
company did build an aerial railway to the Torbane siding
and established a retort in 1924 but it was a short-lived
venture. Nonetheless the population did not go into a rapid
decline. Locals sustained themselves by sundry ventures and,
despite the hard times, enrolment at the school peaked at 82
in 1920 (it was down to 9 in 1970).
During the Great Depression refugees from the high rents
and unemployment of the cities built mud huts and camped
along the Turon River.
After the works at Newnes closed down in the early 1920s
agitation increased for a reopening of the Capertee works as
it was the only source of oil in Australia. A committee was
set up in 1933 to investigate the feasibility. Its report in
1934 led to the formation of National Oil Proprietary Ltd
(NOP) in 1937. Although the committee recommended
re-establishing the Newnes works, the other option was
eventually chosen - that being the old oil shale tunnel
established in 1881 at the eastern rim of the Capertee
Valley (i.e., Glen Davis).
The degree of government assistance and concessions
indicate that the enterprise was to be of no great
commercial success. Looming war may have increased desire
for independent fuel resources but the proposed production
levels were not that significant. Nonetheless the works were
opened in 1938 and a town of about 2500 people quickly
developed around the works which employed 1600 people at
their peak in the 1940s. It was named Glen Davis after the
Davis Gelatine interests who headed NOP.
Supplies were already running out by 1949 and the end of
Chifley's Labor Government meant the end of heavy and
on-going assistance from the government. Costs were high,
output was low and cheap crude oil was available from the
Middle East. Consequently the works closed in 1952. The
machinery was stripped in 1953, leaving the ruins which
Open-cut coalmines had also been established in the
valley but these began to dwindle in the postwar years due
to competition from continuous operation mining overseas.
Nonetheless Capertee again survived. A heavy tax on road
freight greatly benefited Capertee railway station.
Furthermore wool prices soared during the Korean War
(1950-53) and changes in working hours for rail crews
resulted in crew changes taking place at Capertee where many
took up accommodation.
However, in the 1960s, wool prices declined, the
introduction of diesel trains changed work patterns on the
railways and local sheep farmers suffered from a new
emphasis on cattle. Consequently the town diminished
In the seventies, some of the old properties were
subdivided and sold as hobby farms and retirement retreats
to city dwellers, bringing people into the valley, though
mostly at weekends. When oil prices increased after 1975,
coalmining took an upturn and new mines opened, though the
industry has been in decline since the mid-1980s. An
open-cut gold mine briefly operated atop a mesa in the
valley though it closed in the early 1980s due to the
collapse of gold prices. A diamond mine is now operating at
Things to see:
|St Judes Catholic Church
built out of corrugated iron
The highway is the main street. There's a school, a police
station (the solitary policeman covers a territory of about
5000 square kilometres), the adjacent courthouse, a memorial
hall, a bushfire brigade, a post office, a railway station
just off the highway, the pub, a garage and a couple of tiny
Life centres around the pub and the school. The pub first
appeared around 1870. It was burned down twice and the
present structure (built in the 1930s) incorporates some of
the sandstone from the second building (c. 1895).
The school was opened in 1882, although the present
school house dates from 1923. The Kookaburra army recruiting
march of 1916 camped on the floor of the Capertee school en
route to Sydney. During that war 52 local men (a goodly
proportion) joined the armed services.
The memorial hall was built in 1951 as a tribute to the
80 men who enlisted in the wars of the 20th century. The
bricks were collected from the abandoned shale refining
retorts at neighbouring Torbane. The old lock-up (1897) can
still be seen behind the modern police station.
Just 2 km south of town, on the Mudgee Rd, is Pearsons
Lookout. It furnishes outstanding views of the Capertree
Valley to the east. Nearly 30 km across it is the largest
enclosed valley in Australia. Rising dramatically from the
valley floor is Pantoneys Crown, a column-like, flat-topped
mountain, named after William Pantoney, one of the members
of the first European expedition through the area - that of
John Blackman in 1821.
Gardens of Stone National Park
Recently gazetted, the Gardens of Stone National Park
includes Pantoneys Crown Nature Reserve. It is a very
beautiful wilderness area of limestone outcrops, precipitous
sandstone cliffs, pagoda-like rock formations and a
diversity of fauna and flora. The area is ideal for
bushwalking, particularly in the MacLeans Pass area,
although there are no marked trails nor facilities (be sure
to take a map and compass). You can walk to Pantoneys Crown
from Baal Bone Gap.
The access road is pretty much 4WD-only. It is signposted
'Gardens of Stone National Park' at Ben Bullen where the
Mudgee Rd crosses the railway line. It leads through to the
Wolgan Valley Rd which heads north-east from Lidsdale to
Newnes. For further information and a map ring the
Blackheath National Parks and Wildlife Service Office, tel:
(02) 4787 8877.
Turon Gates Camping Area
Just 1 km north of Capertee is a gravel road on the left
that heads west for 12 km to the Turon Gates Camping Area on
the Turon River (where gold was discovered in the 1850s).
There are log cabins and camping sites, with opportunities
for horseriding, canoeing, fishing, sailing and bushwalking,
tel: (02) 6359 0142.
Glen Davis is an old shale-mining ghost town on the Capertee
River, 35 km east of Capertee at the eastern rim of the
The first mining tunnel, established in 1881, later
became the basis of the major mining enterprise which opened
in 1938. A town of some 2500 people developed around the
mine, which was named Glen Davis after the Davis Gelatine
interests who headed the mining consortium (for further
information on the mine and its history see the general
introduction to Glen Davis).
The operation closed down in 1952 due to high costs and
the increasingly small output, leaving what remains today -
crumbling furnace ruins, retorts and collapsed shafts
covered in vegetation and surrounded by steep sandstone
cliffs and a profuse array of birdlife.
Glen Davis has a picnic-barbecue-camping area with an
amenities block and a privately run museum with displays
relating to the town and shale mining history. It is usually
only open on weekends and entry is free.
There is a bushwalking trail (22 km return) to Newnes up
the Green Gully, in the Wollemi National Park, following the
old pipeline track. There are lyrebirds, cycads, banksia
serrata and assorted eucalyptus. Information on this walk is
available from the museum.
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