The image above, showing the main street of Lithgow, NSW, is a beautiful snapshot which captures the essence of a thriving industrial town. Today, Lithgow is seen by many as a tourist town, and a base from which to explore the Blue Mountains, Central West and Jenolan Caves. Yet once, Lithgow was a thriving industrial centre.

The first European settlers to make the Lithgow area home arrived in 1824, and it was only three years later that the name Lithgow was bestowed on the area, by famous explorer Hamilton Hume. Yet over the next nearly forty years, only another four families made their homes in the Lithgow Valley, as it was relatively isolated. Then, in 1869, the Western Railway Line connected Lithgow to the Sydney township and the area began to thrive.

With the railway providing easy transport not only for people, but for goods, Lithgow began to transform into an industrial settlement. Coal mining was the first industry in the area, followed by iron manufacture in 1875. By 1900, Lithgow produced the first steel to have been entirely manufactured in Australia and a proliferation of other industries soon followed. In the early 1900s Lithgow manufactured everything from bricks to iron to pottery to small arms. In the wake of World War Two, the industries in Lithgow went into decline and in the late 1950s a power generating plant was built at Wallerawang, near Lithgow. Today, Lithgow is mainly seen as an historic tourist town.