Wentworth Falls is a village in the Blue Mountains of NSW. Located 105 km from Sydney, it is surrounded by the Blue Mountains National Park. The village is named after a beautiful set of waterfalls, also named Wentworth Falls, that is located to the south of the village (enter via Falls Road) in the Blue Mountains National Park that surround the village.
Also to the south of the Great Western Highway in Wentworth Falls are:
-- Falls Reserve, with great views of the Jamison Valley and Kings Tableland
-- Valley of the Waters Reserve, with great views of the the Valley of the Waters
There are many bushwalks to be taken around the clifftops and down into the valley. These include the glorious Charles Darwin Walk.
Charles Darwin Walk, Wentworth Falls
(Video: John Wagner)
The village of Wentworth Falls itself is a small, relatively peaceful shopping center on Station Street and located just opposite the Wentworth Falls railway station and a park with a war memorial.
Just around the corner, on the Great Western Highway, is a beautiful School of Arts (a library, a theater and meeting facilities) and Pitt Park. On the other side of the Highway is the historic Grandview Hotel (sadly, its front gardens have been recently truncated by highway widening).
Wentworth Falls Golf Course is an 18 hole golf course set amoung beautiful bushland setting. It is operated by the Wentworth Falls Country Club and is located on Blaxland Road to the north of the village.
Wentworth Falls Lake is a beautiful tree-surrounded stretch of water offering safe swimming along with picnic and barbeque facilities, shelters, and a children's playground. Wentworth Falls Lake is home to a number of ducks (admire, photograph but please do not feed them.) You can reach it from the village by crossing the railway bridge and then turning into Blaxland Road and then turning left into Sinclair Crescent.
Coming up from Sydney and just before you reach Wentworth Falls, there is a turnoff to the left into Tableland Road. Drive down this road for some spectacular scenery on the Kings Tableland, a visit to the historic Victorian era house called Yester Grange (set in a 20 acre estate with beautiful gardens), and a great view from MacMahon's Lookout over the backwaters of Lake Burragorang.
The Kings Tableland also contains Kings Table, an ancient Aboriginal site which is believed to have been occupied by Aborigines as early as 22,000 years ago. Please treat this site with great respect.
A Little History
The Aborigines of the Dharuk, Wiradjuri and Gandangara nations have lived in this area for thousands of years.
The first visit by Europeans to the Wentworth Falls area took place when the Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth expedition crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813.
A road was built across the Mountains by William Cox in 1815 and this passed through the Wentworth Falls area.
Wentworth Falls was an early stopping off point for travelers crossing the Mountains. In 1826 an inn called the Bathurst Traveller was erected there (in the spot that is now known as Pitt Park) and the celebrated English naturalist and author of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, overnighted there during a sidetrip from Sydney to Bathurst that he made as a part of his first circumnavigation of the world in the HMS Beagle (1831-36).
Originally known as Weatherboard (named after the weatherboard cottage that William Cox built there) and then as Jamison Valley, Wentworth Falls received its current name in 1879, in honor of William Charles Wentworth, one of the three explorers who first crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813.