Beautiful Blue Mountains

On the doorstep of Sydney, about 70 kms west, is the World Heritage Listed Blue Mountains...much of it an impenetrable forest wilderness region. This unique and beautiful region is over a million hectares, much of it so remote and inaccessible that it has never been walked in by humans. The landscape is inconceivably ancient. When the Grand Canyon was still a shallow creek, these cliffs and chasms looked much as they do today. It is a high plateau which has been carved into deep canyons, sheer cliff faces, and huge gorges with waterfalls cascading down their sides, caves and underground rivers. I could not believe that this remote wilderness was on the doorstep of a city of 4 million people!
As we stood on the edge we were struck, like everyone else, by the bluest sort of mist shrouding the mountains, giving them an azure look. Of course it IS a sort of mist because the millions of Blue Gums exude a sort of oil which refracts the light and gives the area its blue haze...gorgeous. As we sat gazing at the view from one of the many lookouts atop a sheer cliff face of over 350 meters, over a valley stretching for miles into the distance, we felt awed and stunned. A few tourists would wander over, and be silent; then after moments of just looking we would hear them say softly,” Wow!”
We have had many “wow” days since the beginning of the trip, but this region was full of “WOW” days! Each day we would head off to see a different part, thinking we could not possibly see anything better, and each day we would come home impressed. We stayed in a little town called Lithgow on the edge of the mountains because it was smaller and cheaper, and had fewer crowds. Only thing was that it was next to the main Rail line from east to west (i.e. Sydney to Perth) and so trains rattled through at all hours..but after a few days we hardly noticed them. We saw a movie on a Giant Screen ( 3 stories high) called “The Edge” all about the Blue Mountains and it was spectacular and well worth it...scenes of the gorges being taken from a helicopter flying dizzyingly over and around the bends. Another day we went to Katoomba which is where the most spectacular Valley has lookouts and cliff walks right around the ridge, including the famous view of the “3 Sisters”. Here also is the “Disneyworld” part of the mountains ..Scenic World. There was a steep cable car ride into the valley floor where they had made a lovely interpretive walkway meandering through the forest of ferns and towering trees. There was also a “skywalk”...a sort of cable car strung between the two cliff faces which goes over the valley floor and right over a waterfall tumbling way down below...all looked at through the open side windows or a Glass Bottomed Floor! Not for those with vertigo! There was also the steepest railway 52 degrees in the world...an old mining rail which they used to haul coal out of the valley 150 yrs ago and which is now used to scare the pants off tourists as it plunges down the gorge though a part through a tunnel to the bottom. Expensive and touristy, but well worth it.
Other days we drove to scenic lookouts, down valleys, and did amazing walks along the edge of the chasms, marvelling at the view at each different place. The region is dotted with small historic towns dating back to pioneer days with convict built buildings, old English gardens, and grand Victorian hotels. We also went to the peak at which the original pioneer, Cox, found his way through the range and opened the route to the West and new farm lands for the colony. We marvelled at how they brought carriages up these slopes, dragging concrete blocks behind them to slow them down on the slopes on the way down, and seeing the marks the convicts made with their picks while hacking through the rocks to make gateways.
Another day we drove into the Wollemi Wilderness part of the mountains which is the most remote and inaccessible (in fact we could not get very far into it ourselves). It was in this part that an adventurer made the most remarkable discovery in 1994..he found a stand of “Dinosaur Trees” which until that moment was thought to have been extinct for more than 6 million years. Discovering them was as likely as finding a dinosaur wandering through the forest in Botanic terms. They are now known as the Wollemi Pines, huge trees of 40 meters tall, and only about 40 in the known universe. Its exact situation is a closely kept secret but who knows what other rare and unknown creatures and plants exist, as it is largely unexplored.
On another day we went for a ride on the ZigZag railway...an engineering wonder of its time. Trying to get coal and goods down the precipice, an engineer designed this railway to go down the gorge in slopes and then reverse the engine and take it down the next slope to the bottom..incredible when you ride on it and see the bridges and tunnels which were build using the most primitive tools.
There was so much to see and do that we were there for 10 days..our record. One of those days was to fix the car which had a few problems, and there were a couple of rainy, misty days too which were well used to do admin, painting and repairs.We left the Blue Mountains reluctantly, and drove through some scary mountain passes in heavy rain and mist..in some places with tyres briefly spun on the steep road, many 180 degree bends. We also took a “short cut” (it wasn’t!) through the mountains and Hawkesbury River valley with 180 degree switchback twisty corners and two ferries (max veh length 7.5 metres permitted) across swollen rivers...all in the rain and mist. Someone had suggested the route as beautiful, which it was, without mentioning that no one should ever take a caravan there. The sad thing was that we couldn’t SEE the beauty either with the mist! On to the next region which is the Central Coast of NSW!!