The Mysterious Blue Mountains

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Hi KANACKI

I read somewhere that the hotel was operating in the 1970s and underwent a series of refurbishments during the 1990s. The AccorHotels group became associated with the hotel from about 2002 until 2006 and then a smaller Malaysian based group took over the running of the hotel, borrowing the name "Hydro Majestic" to brand their other hotels in Asia.

In 2008 the hotel was closed for refurbishment, with the new owners to allow the hotel to be restored and add new facilities. The owners, Huong Nguyen and George Saad are said to have paid $11 million for the property and have spent $30 million on the refurbishment. The hotel re-opening in 2014.

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Hidden deep in bush and backyards in the upper Blue Mountains west of Sydney are up to nine large, mysterious pits. Their exact age or purpose is unknown, but they may well date back to the convict era. Five of these pits are located around Blackheath, where the neatly excavated holes lie on the western side of the railway line between Medlow Bath and Mount Boyce.

The general belief is that they could be at least 170 years old. Some appear virtually unaltered except for eroded edges, but all once required a lot of work, most being dug through hard-packed soil. One, though, has vertical walls cut through sandstone.

Many Blackheath locals believe the strange holes, measuring up to 3.8 metres wide and up to six metres deep, could date back to the pioneering convict road builders in 1814, or more likely, later iron gangs, maintaining the road in the 1830s.

Various uses have been suggested for the mystery pits, but no one theory, except that they might be convict "punishment pits", seems to satisfy most people's curiosity. One empty, hidden pit in Blackheath bush is now covered with reinforced steel mesh laid over three steel pipes, while others are almost filled in to eliminate dangers to pets, bushwalkers and firefighters alike.

Conjecture over the use of the pits varies from long-term food or water storage, animal traps, short-term cool storage of meat for railway workers and water storage for locomotives during construction of the rail line alongside the road in 1867-1868.



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It's also been suggested the pits might have been used for shallow exploratory mineral mining, or maybe to store gunpowder. In theory at least this has merit, as storing explosives away from thieves had the added advantage of low pit temperatures maintaining stability. The amount of water retained in some pits from runoff, however, works against this theory for most people.

Blue Mountains residents still doggedly refer to the sites as "convict pits", "isolation cells" or "convict holes".

The pits run close to the original route of William Cox's stony road, hacked over the mountain ridges from Emu Plains amid rain, severe cold and swirling mists in the winter of 1814. The noisy Great Western Highway still roughly follows Cox's road, which in turn followed in the footsteps of the intrepid three explorers Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, the first Europeans to successfully cross the mountain barrier in 1813 to open up the vast western grass plains to Bathurst.

Because of increasing road traffic, a lot of Cox's rough, early road along the ridges was improved from 1822 by former Newcastle prison camp commandant Lieutenant William Lawson, then commandant at Bathurst, who followed in his own pioneering footsteps of nine years before.

Then in the 1830s and 1840s, up to 300 convicts in iron gangs maintained the colony's vital route to the west, based at stockades such as The Pass (Mount Victoria) where mammoth earthworks were constructed.



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For Blue Mountains, Pete Clifford, one thing is certain, the knowledge that the "scariest" place on the mountains today is "the pits"; two remote convict pits/wells about 400 metres off the road between Mount Victoria and nearby Mount York.

According to local legend, the most feisty convicts were once lowered by rope into these deep pits in the ground overnight to stop them escaping.



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Many convicts who died while labouring on the road were buried in unmarked graves without any religious ceremony and some believe their souls still haunt the bush. Clifford said he was left shaking one night after entering the dark bush at the pits where he claimed a ghost passed through him, screaming at him to "get out".



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He said these "dark entities" made tourists uneasy on the weekend Blue Mountains Ghost Tours he's run since 2002.

"We've had psychics with our group at these convict wells who stay on the bus and refuse to get out," Clifford said.

He said many of the convicts working on Cox's road were Irish Catholic and without official funeral rites their tormented souls might still be in limbo.

"I discovered the pits years ago as a kid while trailbiking in the bush. I don't go to the Blackheath sites on the tours now, though, as I came back there once afterwards and found some people holding a seance," he said.



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Blue Mountains historian John Low said the number of convicts who lie buried in unmarked mountain graves was guesswork.

"People are still struggling for any information, they just want more evidence of this period," he said. "A lot of folklore comes from the truth, but then it gets exaggerated along the way to us today. These pits anyway seem unlikely to be 'convict holes' from Cox's original road builders in 1814 because those 28 men were road building for their freedom. They wore no leg irons.”

"And take the so-called convict graves off the highway at Pulpit Hill [above the famed Explorers Tree near Katoomba]. Estimates range from five to 10 to 20 graves being there. The RTA then did a ground-penetrating radar study on site but only found one grave. Shallow graves, however, may not have left any mark," Low said.



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Blue Mountains Historical Society president Dr Peter Rickwood said later that despite years of research, the exact role of Blackheath's five pits and others remained unknown.

"And more pits are still being discovered. But they're nowhere near the railway line or road. It's very peculiar," he said. "One mystery pit off Station Street, Blackheath, was filled in as a former home owner there was worried a child might fall in it. Firemen also have to be careful in other places while fighting fires. These pits are beautifully constructed and a lot of work has obviously gone into them, but we still have no definite explanation of why.”
 
The Caves House is our next location.



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The guest rooms in the historic Caves House are old, and they take you back in time. They have no telephones or televisions to spoil the experience. Caves House is an icon of Blue Mountains accommodation. In 1897, NSW Government Architect, Walter Liberty Vernon, designed and built the grand Jenolan Caves House, only a minute's stroll from the Grand Arch, as a wilderness retreat. No expense was spared. He used the alpine, picturesque  'Federation, Arts and Crafts' style. 

Caves House is on the NSW State Heritage Register. It has grown to incorporate romantic, historic guestrooms.  Caves House retains all of its beauty and elegance, and offers warm country hospitality. Caves House has hosted visitors from all walks of life, from honeymooners, families, backpackers, international tourists, celebrities and even royalty. Each room is unique - no 2 rooms are alike.

Caves House staff have repeatedly reported that at night they hear children loudly running up and down the hallway in the Vernon Wing, which was the first section of Caves House to be built, in 1897. (The Vernon Wing is currently staff accommodation.) The noise is loud enough to keep staff awake at night, but no children are ever seen.



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Trish Sanders has managed the Front Desk in Caves House for several years. She said that every now and again, guests report seeing a little girl, around six to eight years old, wearing a white long dress, with black boots and carrying a porcelain doll. The girl has been seen on many occasions, mainly in Caves House, but also in the caves. 

One day, out of the blue, a guest approached Trish at the reception desk, told her she was a psychic and that the little girl drowned in the Blue Lake and was looking for her mother.



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We had a staff member a few years ago in Chisolm’s Restaurant, Emily, who claimed that she communicated with the hotel ghosts. Emily claimed that the spirit of Lucinda Wilson is looking after another spirit, a 5-year-old girl, named Marjorie.

The ghost of Lucinda encouraged Emily to talk to Marjorie, who is quite shy. Emily said that Marjorie has dark hair with a straight fringe, came to Jenolan Caves in the early 1900s, was an only child with wealthy parents, so she had a woman who took care of her, like a governess. Emily said that Marjorie accidently died in a bathtub in Caves House and does not know how to ‘cross over’.

Is there any truth to these hauntings?



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It’s always sad and often disturbing reading about a child’s death, after hours of searching, I found no recorded deaths of any child/children in Caves House or any of the caves, there’s no known drownings in Blue Lake or surrounding areas.

However, let’s find out more about Lucinda Wilson.



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After Jeremiah Wilson became the first caretaker of Jenolan Caves, his wife, Lucinda managed the accommodation. Jeremiah grew to be highly successful, even a celebrity of the Oberon region. He not only managed the caves and spent a lot of time in exploration, but he owned several properties, with sheep, cattle and horses.

He ran a thriving business, carrying visitors from Tarana train station, over 50km by horse and cart, to and from the caves – a very long and difficult journey. He and Lucinda often put visitors up for the night, at their own farm where his wife Lucinda would feed them all and put them all up for the night, approximately 20km from Jenolan Caves.

After he had built accommodation at Jenolan, with room for up to 50 guests, Lucinda managed that also, as well as raising 8 children. For many years, the government refused to charge visitors to see the caves, but visitors had to pay Jeremiah to get there and back, and they had to pay for food and lodgings. And to view the caves, they had to pay for candles.



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Until 1880, sightseers could spend the night camping in the Grand Arch, also known as the Devil’s Coach House Cave. In 1867, Jeremiah Wilson, a local farmer, was appointed ‘Keeper of the Caves’. Visitors would write to Mr Wilson advising him of their intention to visit. Meeting them at Tarana train station, he would take them by buggy through Oberon and walk them down last the two miles into the Jenolan Valley, because the decent was too steep and unsuitable for a vehicle.

The night was spent camping in the Grand Arch – ladies on one side, gentlemen on the other. Smoke from their camp fires can still be seen on the stalactites in the Woolshed Chamber of the Imperial Cave. For entertainment a platform for dancing was erected in 1869, the floor of the Grand Arch being rocky and uneven.

In 1880, the Department of Mines, which managed the caves, provided Mr Wilson with materials to erect a building, 40 feet long by 14 feet wide and covered with corrugated iron. This first ‘Caves House’, white washed to provide sealing from the weather, contained 4 bedrooms and a dining room. The kitchen was separate, in case of fire - a common risk at the time.

In 1883, The Australian Town & Country Journal reported:


“It is evident that increase of accommodation at the caves is necessary, at least during holiday times. On examining the visitors' book from January 1 to March 20, 1883, the names of 158 visitors are entered, and during the few days we were there, inclusive of ourselves, the number increased fully 50 more, a well-known contributor to the Sydney papers being among the number. There should then be better accommodation.”



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In 1886, the fee for an overnight stay in this rough accommodation was only 8 shillings. Jeremiah Wilson was flooded by requests for accommodation. As the fame of the caves spread, visitors came in ever increasing numbers, especially when the roads into the valley were completed. The first Caves House quickly proved inadequate, and extensive building work was undertaken.

In 1887, a two-storey wooden building was erected where ‘Trails Bistro’ is today, catering for 30 visitors. The same year, Governor Lord Carrington, and his wife Cecelia traversed the new Six Foot Track from Katoomba. They spent 2 nights at Jenolan Caves, staying in the first Caves House. In 1888, 1,829 visitors arrived, making further expansion necessary.

In 1890, an additional structure was erected, alongside the original Caves House, replacing the 1879 kitchen. Unfortunately, in 1895 fire destroyed the old dining room, kitchen and one of the 2-storey accommodation houses. Jeremiah Wilson was unable to rebuild, and his lease was resumed by the New South Wales Government

He and Lucinda retired to a house in Woollahra. Jeremiah died on 3 November 1907, at their residence, Jersey-road, Woollahra, 68 years of age, and was buried in Waverley Cemetery. 

Lucinda, who bore him 8 children and supported him in all his endeavours for 38 years, went to live with their daughter Maggie. Lucinda died on March 5, 1920, at Ozone Flats, Bondi-road, Bondi, in her 78th year. Caves House to Bondi, Sydney, is roughly 110km.

Perhaps Lucinda Wilson has returned, still managing the hotel her husband created that became an icon of the Blue Mountains, I’ll let you be the judge of this one.

There’s also another ghost that haunts the hotel named Molly.



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