Lithgow

Lithgow is a city on the western edge of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, in a valley of coal seams west of Sydney. The Zig Zag Railway, built in 1869 to carry trains down the steep escarpment into the valley, made the town possible.

The Wiradjuri people are the traditional owners of the valley. It was named after William Lithgow, the auditor-general of the colony, and coal mining began there soon after the railway arrived. The Eskbank Ironworks opened in the 1870s, and in 1907 the Hoskins family began making steel at Lithgow, the first steel produced on a large scale in Australia. The steelworks moved to Port Kembla on the coast in the 1920s, but coal mining and power stations kept the town at work. Lithgow coal also fed the steam locomotives of the western railway, and the town became a city in the 1940s.

Coal from the mines of the Lithgow valley is burned at the Mount Piper power station north of the city to make electricity for the state. Timber from the pine plantations of the district is milled for building.

Blast Furnace Park keeps the brick ruins of the Hoskins blast furnace in a park beside a lake. Eskbank House Museum, a sandstone house of the 1840s, shows the history of the town and a collection of Lithgow pottery. Lake Lyell, a reservoir west of the city, is used for sailing, kayaking and fishing for trout, with a campground on its shore. The Glow Worm Tunnel, an old railway tunnel in the Wollemi National Park north of the city, is lit by thousands of glow worms.