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The Explorer's stump
![Explorers Tree, Katoomba c1890, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (PXA 1031, 25)](https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/slnsw.dxd.dc.prod.dos.prod.assets/home-dos-files/2019/11/SLNSW-c007660030h.jpg)
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The stump is the remains of a tree supposedly marked with the initials of Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth when they crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813. However, while it was common for explorers to blaze or mark trees as they ventured off their maps into uncharted territory, there is no evidence these three men marked this tree. The explorers' journals never mention carving or marking trees and the following year as William Cox constructed the road through the Mountains from 1814-15, there was no mention of it in his journal either. The first mention of the tree in the published record did not occur until over 50 years after the crossing. The Reverend William Woolls from Parramatta wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald about eucalyptus trees and in doing so, commented on a blackbutt tree ‘which the late Mr W Lawson cut his initials with a tomahawk in 1813... This interesting tree, so intimately connected with the first expedition over the Blue Mountains, is standing on the side of the Bathurst Road at the summit of Pulpit Hill.’ Mythology around the tree was further fuelled during the 1870s and the 1880s with illustrations, sketches and photographs appearing in newspapers. A stone wall was erected around the tree to protect it but smothered and killed it by 1903. Meanwhile the plaque installed on the podium was found to have an inaccurate inscription suggesting Pulpit Hill was the ‘farthest distance reached’ by the explorers in their first attempt to cross the Blue Mountains. Nonetheless its role as a symbol of colonial enterprise was celebrated in the Centenary of the Crossing in 1913 when the stump was decorated with streamers and banners.![The postscript describing the 'Explorers' Tree' in Rev Woolls letter on Genus Eucalyptu, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Aug 1867, p2 via Trove](https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/slnsw.dxd.dc.prod.dos.prod.assets/home-dos-files/2019/11/SMH-26-Aug-1867-p2.jpg)
![The Explorers' Tree, Katoomba c1910, courtesy Mitchell Library, State LIbrary of NSW ([PXA 635/381)](https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/slnsw.dxd.dc.prod.dos.prod.assets/home-dos-files/2019/11/SLNSW-a105383h.jpg)
It has also weathered protests.
One week before the Australia Day 1988 bicentenary celebrations, an Aboriginal Flag was painted on part of the stump reminding visitors that there was a deep time dimension to Australian history not recognised by the colonial story of exploration, and it is this perhaps that is the most enduring legacy of the tree, not as a marker of exploration itself, but as a canvas for how Australians wanted to depict their history, and how as our national narratives shift ‘previously venerated sites are marooned'.
Notes: Lavelle, Siobhan. A tree and a legend: the making of past and place in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales [online]. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 89, No. 1, June 2003: 1-25. Availability: <https://search-informit-com-au.ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/documentSummary;dn=200306258;res=IELAPA> ISSN: 0035-8762. [cited 20 Nov 19].![Detail of a tourist map from 1909 showing the Explorers' Tree, courtesy National Library of Australia (MAP RM 2468 (Copy 1))](https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/slnsw.dxd.dc.prod.dos.prod.assets/home-dos-files/2019/11/nla-obj-231839988-detail.jpg)
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