John Whitton Memorial Place, Emu Plains
John Whitton was the Chief Engineer of NSW Railways from the late 1850s to 1890 whose major achievements include the Zig Zag viaducts (Lapstone and Lithgow) and the original Hawkesbury River bridge at Brooklyn. His memorial cairn stands in a currently sadly neglected, weed-infested reserve.
The memorial to this pioneer of access to the Blue Mountains is next to a car park accessible via Mitchells Pass Road from Glenbrook or the old highway from Emu Plains. The area has been a popular locality for exercise and fresh air for household members during the recent crisis, especially for those making the few hundred metre pilgrimage to the Knapsack Viaduct, one of the most beautiful of Whitton’s sandstone structures. It is beside the bicycle route from the new foot/cycle bridge across the Nepean to the Glenbrook Tunnel area.
Blue Mountains Council has put huge effort, with significant input from the Blue Mountains Conservation Society, into planning the future of Knapsack Park which virtually adjoins the John Whitton Memorial Place.
(photo by Christine Davies)
John Whitton Memorial Place is part of the so-called Western Sydney Parkland City. It is time it was festooned in layers of native vegetation as a tribute to the beautiful region that Whitton opened to the eyes of the world. It certainly deserves better than the layers of weeds, layers of graffiti and layers of State Government bureaucracy that presently bedevil it.
©Don Morison
|
|
|
