[3] The crossing enabled the settlers to access and use the land west of the mountains for farming, and made possible the establishment of Australia's first inland colonial settlement at Bathurst.

[5][11] Early in 1813 Blaxland, who wanted more grazing land, obtained the approval of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and approached Lawson and Wentworth to secure their participation in a new exploratory expedition following the mountain ridges.

He sailed for Australia on Wednesday, 1 September 1805 with his wife, three children, two servants, an overseer, a few sheep, seed, tools, groceries, and clothing.

He was also one of the first people to plant grapes in Australia and make wine, for which he was awarded a silver medal and later a gold one from the Royal Society of Arts, London.

In 1802 he was sent to school in England and returned to Sydney in 1810, where he worked for the governor, Lachlan Macquarie, and was given a land grant of 708.2 hectares (1,750 acres) on the Nepean River.

[15] The party left from Blaxland's South Creek farm[16] near the modern suburb of St Marys in western Sydney, on 11 May 1813 and crossed the Nepean River later that day.

[13] His journal, written in the third person, records their progress in detail, including their reasons for believing they had achieved their goals and deciding to turn back: They now conceived that they had sufficiently accomplished the design of their undertaking, having surmounted all the difficulties which had prevented hitherto the interior of the country from being explored, and the colony from being extended.

Wentworth's journal indicates his inspired impressions of the landscape: A country of so singular a description could in my opinion only have been produced by some Mighty convulsion in Nature – Those immense unconnected perpendicular Masses of Mountain which are to be seen towards its Eastern Extremity towering above the Country around, seem to indicate that the whole of this tract has been formed out of the Materials of the primitive mountains of which these masses are the only parts that have withstood the violence of the concussion.

Here we had a fine view of all our Settlements, our progress was here stoped by an impassable Clift from going either South or West- Mr. Blaxland Wentworth and Self left our Camp with a determination to get down some parts of this broken land.

No doubt this is the Remnant of some dreadful Earthquake In recognition of the successful crossing, all three explorers were rewarded by Macquarie with a grant of 1000 acres of land west of the mountains.

[13] Surveyor-General George William Evans was dispatched by Macquarie in November 1813 to follow the path taken and travel further to determine the best route to access the arable farmland.