Denniston Incline and bush walking

This morning we walked down to the main street shops and had a look at some wee market stalls set up on the road side. I bought Katie a necklace from one lady and some lovely Apricot jam from another. Al went to the bookshop and bought the 2nd book in the Twilight series for Thomas to read as he started the first book in the car on the way over Thursday and had only a few pages to go to finish it!

After lunch we headed north to explore the Denniston Incline. This is a rail track built by the very early coal miners in the 1800's up a very steep hillside. Once built they carted railway carriages of coal to the flat land below on a pulley system, with the laden one heading downward, pulling the empty carriages uphill. This was the only way up and down the hill for many years.














Looking down from the top of the incline, it levels out then rounds a corner and has another steep drop to the flatland below.

There was quite a settlement up there in the old days, with a school, small hospital and community hall. Of course now there are only a handful of houses, and many ruins. There is a wonderful information shelter up there with the history of the area along with photos and stories of the terrifying trips up and down the incline in the carriages like the one below.





























This is taken from a photo in the information shelter, and shows the buildings that processed the coal from mines and loaded it into the carriages for the journey below. The photo on below is the same view today, you can recognise the brick chimney against the hillside in the 2nd photo. Just imagine, all the building materials for this were carted up the incline in the coal bucket carriages!















We then drove up the hill further to the start of a 1 hour return walk exploring a couple of old coal mines and tunnels and an old Fan house. Al and the boys did this walk as I had reached my limit for the day.