Lapstone Zigzag

Google Maps today: www.google.com.au/maps/search/lapstone+Zig+Zag+Railway/@-...

Useful map! Wish I had online access to it a few years ago when trying to find the exact location of Arthur Streeton's 'Fire's On' 1891. He was looking NW at the eastern portal of the first deviation (see note), when the deviation was being built. See - Via Merryjack

Sorry, notes do not work on this stream - it is the cutting mid-right bottom, where it says 'Tunnel Portal'.

Streeton's vantage point for both the oil painting 'Fire's On' and the watercolour study for it called 'Cutting the Tunnel', is known as Smike's Lookout and is located at the top of Tunnel Gully above and to the east of the intersection with Smike's Gully, 200m NE of Lapstone Oval. Streeton refers in his letters to being "perched on the top of my rocky point of sight", to which some of the navvies "crawl up the rock to see the picture". Smike was Streeton's nickname and is used in his letters to fellow artist Tom Roberts.

When trying to locate today the spot used by the artist in 1891, the most important point to realise is that both pictures show not the tunnel portal, but the cutting that led to it. The site of the work face depicted by Streeton is located some distance eastwards from the present tunnel portal.

An interesting feature of the prominent rock platform located at Smike's Lookout is that it intrudes about 1.5 m over the gently curved line of cutting that had been made in 1891. A series of drill holes in this platform are in the line of the cut curve. The drill holes were not completed, and the shelf was never blasted off in the line of the curve. Ergo, Smike's friends - the navvies - demonstrating their interest in his work that he himself has noted in his letters, left this shelf for him to use as a vantage point for his sketching. It remains an interesting yet plausible hypothesis!

Reference: Lapstone Hill Tunnel, conservation & management plan, Chris Pratten and Robert Irving 1993.

Blue Mountains Library, Local Studies Thanks very much for that information. Local knowledge is always invaluable. It would be interesting to find out if "Smike's Lookout" and its drill holes is still there, and the exact co-ordinates. A challenge to intrepid bushwalkers, though I know the area is well overgrown.
Brian G has some excellent photos in this album - www.flickr.com/photos/summitvista/sets/72157645507743352 including this one "Streeton's Tunnel" -

Trove wasn't around when I last looked at this ten or so years ago. Here is a report of the inquest into the accident which killed James Kippling - fascinating reading. - trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101076371

Oddly enough there was a similar accident a couple of months later - trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101076736

Thanks Beachcomber, the tunnel works had a shocking safety record, the accident a few months later was the one that Streeton witnessed and explains why the trolley of spoil depicted in the watercolour study for Fire's On was replaced by a trolley bearing a body in the major oil. Streeton describes the accident in a letter to Roberts:

...and now I hear 'Fire, fire's on', from the gang close by.. .BOOM! and then rumbling of rock, the navvy under the rock with me, and watching, says, 'Man killed!'.. .More shots and crashing rock, and we peep over; he lies all hidden bar his legs. All the shots are now gone except one, and all wait, not daring to go near; then men, nippers, and a woman hurry down, the woman with a bottle and rags...and they raise the rock and lift him on to the stretcher, fold his arms over his chest, and slowly six of them carry him past me...

The accident happened on December 16th, and the navvy Edward Brown, aged 26, was a "general favorite among his fellow workmen". The inquest held at Glenbrook the day after the accident, before Mr J K Lethbridge, District Coroner, and a jury of seven, found "that the death was an accidental one, no blame being attached to anyone". The Nepean Times reported that there can be no doubt that the poor fellow unthinkingly fired the pop shot after he had lighted either one or two of the deeper ones, and while he was yet in the act of stooping to apply the match to the unignited fuse the explosion occurred.

Another Fatal Accident at Glenbrook. (1891, December 19). Nepean Times (Penrith, NSW : 1882 - 1962), p. 8. Retrieved October 6, 2017, from nla.gov.au/nla.news-article101076736

Blue Mountains Library, Local Studies Fascinating stuff! Thanks.

Love this map and the file resolution. Printed a poster and give to a very appreciative young trainspotter!

Peter Hofland That's the way!