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Heritage Hikes Australia (Katoomba)
Tour
About
What's Available
2 featuresAustralian Museums and Galleries Association
Available Tours
The Historic Newnes Railway and Glowworm Tunnel
On foot explore the Gardens of Stone canyon country before tracing the embankments of the former Wolgan Valley Railway to the iconic Glowworm Tunnel. Your guides connect the landscape with its industrial past — shale‑oil works, 19th century railways and remote settlements — while you experience classic pagoda formations, breath taking views, cool canyons and, conditions permitting, a riverside stop and swim before shuffling into the cool darkness of the glowworm tunnel with its starry canopy of bioluminescent larvae! The hike is located in the heart of the Wollemi National Park and participants will need to be able to walk over rough tracks and trails, climb steps and descend steep gradients carrying a light pack for a distance of 10kms for approximately 5 hours. National Parks grade sections of the walk as medium/ hard
Newnes Ghost Town Industrial Ruins
Take a deep dive into the industrial heritage of the Wolgan Valley and the ghost town of Newnes. Over 3 days and 2 nights, we descend via the Pagoda Track and Old Coach Road to camp at Newnes by the Wolgan River. Day 2 is an exciting day of a light‑pack exploration of the town ruins, from retorts and brick kilns to tramways and workers' cottages learning about the hopes, dreams and stories of an entire community who trusted that this would one day be a thriving place. On Day 3 we exit the valley along the river, cross the ford, climb the steep vehicle road and hop back onto another section of railway to the Glowworm Tunnel, pass quietly through the tunnel (glowworm etiquette!), and then return to the car park for the drive home. Expert guides, good food and a unique experience.
Convict stories and The Old Great North Road
Trace the footsteps of convict road gangs on this 12 km loop through Dharug National Park. Ascend the beautifully engineered, World Heritage–listed Devines Hill road (part of the Old Great North Road) to a former stockade plateau. Then descend the steeper Finch's Line with sweeping views over the Hawkesbury River. Along the way, your guides — professional archaeologists and historians — unpack the human stories, engineering feats, and convict graffiti that still mark the stonework today.
Explore the Snowy Mountain Huts
A classic 4‑day / 3‑night, 55 km alpine pack‑hike linking historic huts. Scattered across the Snowy Mountains high country are the Horse Camp (1950), White River's (1935), Schlink Hilton (1950) and Valentine's (1950) (and, weather/time permitting, isolated Mawsons) huts. Rough timber and iron structures that once sheltered graziers, skiers, scientists, and adventurers. This hike traces their stories while traversing alpine meadows, rivers, and snowgum woodlands. Travel through high country on gravel roads and winding paths with multiple water crossings, big skies and bigger stories. This is a demanding wilderness experience supported by expert guides, meals and safety equipment.
Darks Cave - Enter the world of The Darks
Hidden beneath towering sandstone cliffs near Leura lies Dark's Cave — a rugged sandstone overhang that became both a retreat and a place of inspiration for two of the Blue Mountains' most fascinating figures: Dr Eric Dark, a pioneering mountaineer, conservationist and social reformer, and Eleanor Dark, one of Australia's most celebrated novelists. On this half-day heritage hike, you'll follow in their footsteps, walking through magnificent Blue Mountains bushland, past dramatic views over the Grose Valley, before reaching the historic cave itself. Along the way, your professional guides — archaeologists and historians — bring the story of the Darks, their writing, politics, and adventurous spirit to life.
Old Great North Road - Clare's Bridge: In the wake of the road gangs
The Dubbo Gully and Ten Mile Hollow Circuit is one of the great multi-day walks of New South Wales — and one of the most historically layered. Over two days and one night, this loop through Dharug National Park traces some of the earliest colonial infrastructure ever built on the continent: convict-constructed roads, stone bridges and pastoral tracks that have been largely untouched since the mid-twentieth century. This is not a walk about scenery alone. It is an encounter with the lived experience of the convict road gangs — up to 720 men who quarried, shaped and laid the sandstone that became the Great North Road between 1826 and 1836 — the pastoral families, the failed township dreams, and the quiet persistence of the Dharug people on whose Country all of this unfolded. The loop follows parts of the World Heritage-listed Great North Road, passing through a landscape that still holds its evidence: Clare's Bridge (arguably the oldest surviving stone bridge on the Australian mainland), the ruins of St Thomas's Anglican Church, Fairview Homestead and Upper Mangrove Mountain Cemetery, where at least 21 early settlers rest in bush that has changed little in over a century.
Huts of Long Plain - On the trail of our pastoral past
A classic 4-day / 3-night, ~50 km alpine loop through one of Kosciuszko National Park's most historically significant pastoral landscapes. Long Plain is not a single story — it is a layered cultural record spanning nearly 150 years of mountain life: from the earliest squatting runs of the 1830s through to the final grazing leases of the 1970s, all compressed into a stretch of treeless subalpine plain ringed by snowgum woodland and open sky. Seven hut places mark the route — homesteads, working shelters and ruins — each representing a distinct chapter in the history of Australia's high country. The walk traces an unbroken arc from Old Currango Homestead, the oldest surviving building in the national park, to Bill Jones Hut, built in 1952 and among the last grazing huts ever constructed on the plain. In between lie huts hidden in the treeline, ruins that only the plain remembers, and stock routes that no longer appear on standard maps. The terrain is demanding and the weather often uncompromising — snow is always possible. What the walk offers in return is access to a landscape and a set of stories that cannot be experienced any other way.
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Where you'll be
Goldsmith Place
Katoomba NSW 2780