25 April

It’s always surprised me that Lithgow has a reputation for being an unpleasant place to live. The valley is beautiful. It’s also known as a ‘hole’, probably by people who failed geography in high school. It’s a valley. That valley is higher than about 80% of Blue Mountains towns and villages (and is in fact the highest point, if you include the highest point of Lithgow), and is 300m higher than Bathurst, for example. One of the things that’s beautiful about living in Lithgow is that you can pretty much walk anywhere in town in not too much time. The valley does that, it puts natural limits on the sort of suburban sprawl cars produce. So the geography defeats the car, which is rare in modern cities. There is some spread now outside the valley, but the main core of town will always be that walkable city. You don’t get that feel at all in towns West of here, which are all dominated by cars.