Bilpin

Bilpin is a small town on the historic Bells Line of Road in the City of Hawkesbury local government area in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, New South Wales.

Bilpin is a small town on the historic Bells Line of Road in the City of Hawkesbury local government area in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, New South Wales.

Bilpin is known as "Land of the Mountain Apple". Fruit orchards and beautiful gardens thrive in the fertile soil and the road is lined with roadside stalls selling home-made produce, especially during summer. Bilpin apples and Bilpin apple juice are well-known around Australia.According to RP Data, Bilpin is the 'most loyal' suburb in the Sydney area, with locals staying for an average of 21 years in the same house.

Opinions differ as whether Bilpin is in Dharug or Darkingung land, although Gregory Blaxland differentiated between the 'plains natives' (Dharug) and the 'Branch natives of the mountains'(Darkingung). Bilpin is an Aboriginal word which may mean "mountain". Pulpin was an Aboriginal guide in 1816 and his name may also be a source of Bilpin's name. In 1823 a young man of just 19, Archibald Bell, was shown the route from Richmond to Mount Tomah through what is now Bilpin by Darug men Emery and Cogy. On a second trip in 1823 he found a way across to what is now Lithgow. There is no evidence in Archibald Bell's journal to suggest that he was shown the way across by an Aboriginal woman who had been kidnapped. In March 1834 the surveyor, Felton Mathew, accompanied by his wife, camped "at Bilpen a farm of Mr Howell's" Children's author, Hesba Brinsmead, was brought up in Bilpin and wrote several books set in the region, including Longtime Passing (1971), for which she won the Children's Book Council of Australia award. Meredyth Hungerford (a relative of Hesba Brinsmead) was another local author, writing "Bilpin: the Apple Country" and "Exploring the Blue Mountains".