Box Vale Walking Track

The Box Vale Walking Track follows the line of an old mining railway line outside Mittagong in the Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia. Coal was mined at the base of the escarpment of the Nattai Gorge, pulled up in small rail carriage buckets to the head of a standard gauge railway, where it was loaded into larger carriages to be pulled six kilometres to Mittagong. The mine only operated from 1888 to 1896 and all the equipment and rails were removed. Today it is promoted as a popular walking track.

The view up the Nattai Gorge from the head of the railway above the mine.

Parts of the track follow the old embankments, offering views down over and through the surrounding forest.

Other parts of the track go along the old cuttings in the sandstone, and natural history is slowly growing over the industrial history.

The main feature of the old line is the 84m long tunnel.

The sandstone there was obviously too thick to cut through. 

The tunnel was hand cut, probably to reduce any risk of shattering the soft and layered sandstone with explosives and causing the roof to collapse. The base of the old sleepers can still be seen and felt in the dark. Trip.

The southern opening of the tunnel is particularly impressive, beneath the honey-coloured sandstone cliff, and trees show the scale. 

Old chip marks can be seen on the walls of the tunnel, hand cut, hard work.

The cuttings seem to have been drilled and blasted. The rock in the walls is fractured and loosened blocks have fallen onto the cutting floor, where the trains once ran. Now tree ferns, which only grow at a few millimetres per annum, are now well established. 

And the rock ledges are used by birds too. Here on the left, a lyrebird has began to build her nest.

The nest is perched on a ledge, where cats and foxes are less likely to be able to find and reach it. So the cutting has benefitted the lyrebirds. This shot was taken in autumn, and it will take the female lyrebird until late winter to finish the nest and lay her single egg. The nest chamber will then be domed and lined with moss and feathers. The chick will then live in the football-sized chamber until it is fully feathered and fledges at six weeks old.