National Heritage Trails

The Trails  /  New South Wales

Great West Walk

Parramatta to Katoomba

Registered Colonial Walking 140 km 6 to 9 days Easy to moderate
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The Three Sisters from the Furber Steps on the Great West Walk

The Three Sisters from the Furber Steps. Image courtesy of Destination NSW

Places along the way

From the colony’s second city to the mountain passes.

A walk that starts among Australia’s oldest buildings and ends on the cliff tops of the Blue Mountains, on the lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. Most walkers take the mountains downhill, from Katoomba to Emu Plains, and the eastern half is threaded with train stations for day sections.

1

Parramatta Park and Old Government House

The colony’s second city

The walk begins beside the river in Parramatta Park at Old Government House, a National Trust property and the oldest surviving public building in Australia, on Burramattagal country.

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2

The Cumberland Plain

Woodland and rivers

Through protected Cumberland Plain woodland, public parklands and the creeks and rivers of western Sydney, with reminders of the farms and grazing runs that once covered the plain, to the Nepean at Penrith.

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3

Woodford Academy

The old inn on the highway

The oldest complex of colonial buildings in the Blue Mountains, a National Trust place that began as an inn in the 1830s and served as a gentleman’s retreat, guest house and exclusive school before its life today as a venue for art, performance and talks.

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4

Katoomba and the cliff walks

Journey’s end

The final day follows the cliff line above the Jamison Valley to the Three Sisters and Echo Point, one of the great views of the mountains, and finishes at Katoomba station.

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History and First Nations stories

From the first Government House to the passes over the mountains.

The Great West Walk was mapped by The Walking Volunteers and delivered by the councils and land managers of western Sydney and the Blue Mountains, opening as far as Penrith in 2019 and reaching Katoomba in 2022. It joins the seat of early colonial government at Parramatta to the mountains that hemmed the colony in for a generation, on the lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples whose pathways across them came first.

National registration ties two National Trust places, Old Government House and Woodford Academy, into a single journey that any Sydney walker can join by train.

Stories connected to Country are told only with, and as guided by, their custodians, under the First Nations custodianship protocols at the centre of the register’s governance.

Plan this journey

Itineraries, transport and places to stay.

A sample eight day walking itinerary is shown below, shown east to west. Many walkers reverse the mountains section and descend from Katoomba to Emu Plains rather than climb the thousand metre elevation.

Days 1 to 3 · Sample itinerary

Parramatta to Penrith

Sixty five kilometres from Old Government House across the Cumberland Plain to the Nepean River, with train stations along the way.

Days 4 and 5

Emu Plains to Woodford

Up into the lower Blue Mountains to Woodford Academy on the Great Western Highway.

Days 6 to 8

Woodford to Katoomba

Through the mountain villages to the cliff walks, the Three Sisters and Katoomba station.

Shorter options

Station to station

The whole walk intersects the railway, so almost any section can be done as a day walk with a train home.

Itinerary shown is indicative, prepared for the register’s pilot phase. Final itineraries, transport connections and weather feeds publish with the trail’s national launch.

For schools, walkers and researchers

Take the trail with you.

School resources

Curriculum aligned resources for every trail, so a class can walk its local history, free, forever.

Printable guide

The full route, places and stories in a printable guide for the trail, ready for the track.

Nearby trails

Explore the register for more journeys, searchable by state, theme, mode and duration.
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