The grandeur of Wentworth Falls has attracted European visitors since Macquarie named them Campbell Cataract in 1815.
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Barron Field visited in 1822, deciding that "the spring month is the fittest to make this excursion".
Baron de Bougainville visited in 1825, Governor Brisbane naming the Falls Bougainville Cataract in his honour.
Baron Charles Von Hugel in 1834, Charles Darwin in 1836 and Louisa Ann Meredith in 1839 all stayed at the Weatherboard Inn while they explored the flora and fauna of the falls.
There was even a road built to the falls in 1868 so that Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, didn't have the "horrors" of the walk there.
However, the most remarkable visitor was the Blind Traveller, James Holman, who "saw" Wentworth Falls in 1831.
Holman, born on October 15, 1786, was invalided out of the Navy by an illness that first afflicted his joints, then finally his vision. At the age of 25, he was rendered totally and permanently blind.
Pensioned-off in 1812, he became bored doing nothing, studied medicine and literature at the University of Edinburgh, and then began a series of "Grand Journeys" about which he wrote on his return to London. He published his account in four volumes in 1834-1835, "A Voyage Round the World, including Travels in Africa, Asia, Australasia, America, etc., from 1827 to 1832" (available from Project Gutenberg).
Completely blind and suffering debilitating pain and limited mobility, Holman undertook his solo journeys around the world, relying upon "human echolocation". He became known as the Blind Traveller.
He toured Australia in 1831-2, and, returning from Bathurst to Sydney on October 10, 1832, visited the "celebrated cataract, called Campbell Cataract by Governor Macquarie, but afterwards re-christened Bougainville Cataract by Sir Thomas Brisbane, the former in honour of his lady, the latter in honour of the French commodore who visited it".
The police guide accompanying him did not want Holman to stand close to the edge because even sighted people had been scared by the depths below.
Holman ignored him, noting that "on the summit of the waterfall, much to the horror of the serjeant (sic) of police who accompanied me, I stood on the brink of the perpendicular rock that looks down into the yawning abyss... While I stood there contemplating in sightless wonder the sublimity of the scene, I could not help thinking of the blind gloster (sic) at the cliffs of Dover" (referencing 'King Lear' by Shakespeare).
The blind man stood on the edge of the cliff, contemplating the sounds and smells of the waterfall but not the sight.
Holman died on July 29, 1857.
