Ride of a lifetime

For many Sydneysiders, the Blue Mountains is a go-to getaway and the best seat in the house from which to experience the region’s spectacular beauty is Scenic World.

- KANIKA SOOD

Its steep railway (steepest in the world, according to its website), Scenic Skyway, and Scenic Cableway provide magnificent views of World Heritage sites and access to walkways through dense foliage. This is where Anthea Hammon works.

For all its beauty, the Scenic World site was originally used in the late 19th century to haul coal and shale mined in the Jamison Valley below. It was owned by John Britty North, who established Katoomba Coal Mine. He sold the lease of the colliery in 1945 to Harry Hammon, who with his wife Mary had three children named Peta, Philip, and Julie.

Middle child Philip took over from his father in 1994 and ran the business for nearly 17 years before passing the baton to two of his five children, Anthea and David.

For Anthea, the love for the family’s asset and the engineering that is its backbone took root early. “I used to follow my dad [Philip] around because he always worked Sundays,” she says.

“I loved watching it all and thought, ‘Wow, it must be cool to build those.’ The steepest train in the world is a pretty amazing piece of machinery and it’s way bigger than you, and pretty cool to be looking at.”

As she got older, Hammon worked in front-of-house areas such as ticketing and retail. In 1993, as she was starting high school, Scenic World undertook a major overhaul of the Scenic Railway. “I remember I got the day off to come and watch them craning the big winch into the winch room. They had to take the roof off. And getting to watch those really big engineering feats was just fascinating,” she says.