In 1815 the Blue Mountains were first identified as a unique landscape when Governor Macquarie took a tour over them and located the nineteenth century principles of the Sublime and Picturesque within its' landscape. Until this time the Blue Mountains were considered to be a hostile impenetrable barrier to the West. This paper examines some of the ways the Blue Mountains has been represented in the past, and has been identified as a tourist destination through interpretations imposed on the landscape by the tourist industry since that time. The areas covered deal with the heritage of British Colonialism as a way of forming opinions about the Australian landscape. Then, the theories of the Picturesque and Sublime are examined when applied to the Blue Mountains landscape. The final chapters in this paper deal with contemporary issues that have shaped the way the tourist industry is encouraged to encounter the Blue Mountains landscape / Master of Arts (Hons)