CALEY'S REPULSE ... AGAIN!

Meanwhile, as the three explorers rose in stature as local heroes, Caley's Repulse languished forgotten after a deviation of the Western Road in the 1830s took travellers away from the site. Interest in the relic was not revived until a group from the Australian Historical Society located what they identified as the remains (“the lower tier of stones”) of the original pile in 1912.

Spurred on by the approaching celebrations to mark the centenary of the crossing by the cairn's original discoverers, they obtained the support of the Centenary Committee to restore it “to something like its original condition. A suitable inscription was prepared but never attached to the rebuilt cairn. While they were well aware that the cairn could not have been the work of Caley, they never doubted its 'European' origins. Later historians have questioned the validity of the A. H. S. 'discovery' and some have argued that the cairn was in fact of Aboriginal rather than European origin. Whatever, Caley's Repulse has never achieved the same level of popular veneration as the Explorers' Tree.

© John Low 2001

 

CONTENTS:

• Introduction

  
  

• Caley's Repulse, Linden

  
  

• The Explorers' Tree, Katoomba

  
  

• The Obelisk, Mount York

  
  

• Caley's Repulse – Again!

  
  

• The Centenary Celebrations in 1913 and the Memorial Pavilion, Mount York

  
  

• Explorers' Lamp, Lawson

  
  

• The Inter-War Years: Memorials at Glenbrook & Penrith

  
  

• Post World War Two: Re-enactments & Sculptures




• Some Concluding Reflections

NOTE:

This article and images cannot be used without the author's permission.

Photograph courtesy Blue Mountains City Library, Local Studies Collection