Cox's Road and Early Deviations - Woodford, Old Bathurst Road Precinct is a heritage-listed former colonial road and now fire trail and road located at Old Bathurst Road, Woodford in the City of Blue Mountains local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built by William Cox from 1814, with the support of a convict road party. It is also known as 1814 Road, Old Bathurst Road, Old Western Road and Coxs Road. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 31 July 2015.
History
The road from Emu Ford to Bathurst, a distance of was completed in only six months during 1814 and 1815 by a working party composed mostly of convicts. Governor Lachlan Macquarie decided to have a carriage road constructed across the Blue Mountains, to the country which had been "newly discovered" by Europeans in 1813. Cox assembled a team of thirty convicts and eight guards to build the road across the Blue Mountains. He was assisted by two Aboriginal men: Colebee from the Darug Tribe and the Boorooerongal Clan and Joe from the Mulgoa Clan.
The so-called "First Crossing" of 1813 took place on the traditional lands of the Dharug, Gundungurra, and Wiradjuri people. Other routes through the ridges and valleys of the Blue Mountains had been used by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years.
Cox was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset in 1764. He married Rebecca Upjohn at Clerkenwell, London in 1789. Cox arrived in NSW on board the "Minerva" in January 1800. Cox became Chief Magistrate at Windsor in 1810 and in July 1814 Governor Macquarie made William Cox the Superintendent of the works for a new road over the Blue Mountains. His first wife died in 1819 and Cox married Anna Blachford in 1821. He died on 15 March 1837.
Cox's road party reached the Linden area by late August 1814, and remained at Linden - Woodford until around mid-September, by which time they had moved on to the present day vicinity of Hazelbrook. It was the first time they encountered the steep rocky platforms and the ever-narrowing ridge. Cox's style of road-building was pragmatic and primitive. Confronted with rocky platforms and sharp drops, he generally had his men clear the flattest parts, removing an "immense quantity of rock" where necessary, and usually marking out the line with shallow chiselled gutters and utilising the rock platform as a pavement; where the road ran over the shallow soils, it was often marked out by rows or low walls of rough, broken stone.
The construction and completion of the road are recorded in Cox's Journal. Cox's journal indicates that three areas, in particular, required extensive cutting through rocky outcrops, at Linden to Woodford, Wentworth Falls and the descent at Mount York.
Cox wrote describing the Linden - Woodford area as follows:
The actual building of the road involved the definition of a trafficable route which was then cleared of vegetation (trees being cut-off below ground level but rarely "grubbed out"), boulders, and rocky outcrops. The formation of the road itself was as minimal as the terrain allowed, with low side-cuttings and embankments as necessary. In very rocky terrain cuttings were made into the mountain itself, the natural rock providing the road surface or pavement. It is possible that some of the stepped rock platforms may have initially been partly filled or levelled with earthen ramps, although Karskens (1988) suggests that Cox mostly left the road pavement in an unformed, natural state due to the haste with which the road was being constructed.
By 1817, (and for two decades after) the Linden to Woodford section was according to botanist, Allan Cunningham, "the most rugged and oppressive stage of the whole journey on account of the sandstone rocks on which the road is formed". He also noticed that the NSW Government carters had already created "small circuitous routes in the bush".