THE BLUE MOUNTAINS & SYDNEY, ONE MORE TIME

Our last week in Australia was spent in and around Sydney, tramping in the spectacular Blue Mountains and doing the city sights one more time. This time round, our camera was doing what it says on the tin and we just couldn’t leave Australia without photos of two of the world’s most recognised landmarks - no one would have believed that we’d been there!

Fresh from the flight from Alice Springs, we boarded a double-decker train in at Sydney Central for the two hour journey into the Blue Mountains. The window of the seat that I wanted was obscured by graffiti so I utilised my trusty backpackers toolkit containing wet-wipes and toilet tissue to clean the window much to the tipsy amusement of a man who tumbled into the seat in front of me. How unfortunate it was then, when Transport Police boarded the train an hour later, he had ‘lost’ his $20 ticket and was slapped with an immediate fine of $200! We travelled through woods and small towns, and through our crystal clear window, caught tantalising glimpses of spectacular scenery through breaks in the trees. It was evening by the time we arrived at Katoomba so we had to wait until morning to don our boots and go in search of the dramatic landscape we’d seen hints of, and we didn’t have to wait long. Just a couple of streets down from the hostel we disappeared into the bush on the Prince Henry Cliff Walk and were almost immediately bowled-over by the view from a lookout point on an over-hanging rock high above a deep wooded canyon. I don’t think I’ve ever looked down on anything from such a height before – the trees looked so small it was impossible to pick out individual specimens from the canopy far below. After ‘oohing’ and ‘wowing’ for a while we got back on the track through the eucalypt forest, stopping to read information plaques on trees like the Sydney Peppermint, Red Bloodwood, Stringy Bark, Turpentine and the splendidly named Scribbly Gum. Ferns, mosses and other green things on rocks covered most of the shady and damp forest floor. The lookout points just got better and better as we went along, and at Echo Point we were able to look back at the spectacular Three Sisters. Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo make up the sandstone three rock formation that rises steeply from the woods of the valley floor nearly one kilometre below. It was really difficult to stop taking photos as we kept on thinking that the next shot could be ‘The One’, but by now we were hungry and as we had no picnic, we walked another couple of kilometres, then left the track and headed back for town, planning the next day’s tramping.

Prince Henry’s Cliff Walk had taken us along the edge of the plateau but the next day we descended into the canyon and into the Jamison Forest, following tracks directly under the Cliff Walk on the valley floor. The first part of the descent involved taking the Skyway cable-car horizontally across part of the canyon in a car that had a glass floor and as it slid towards the edge and out over the abyss, you could hear little sharp intakes of breath and little squeals from the passengers. I remember feeling a little reassured when I heard the controller in the car tell someone that the system had been imported from Switzerland about five years ago – they make reliable watches so …. The second part of the descent was in another cable-car, but this time the drop was so steep that it was almost vertical! The views were stunning as we slid down past cascading waterfalls and trees clinging to the sheer walls of the canyon and it was all over too soon.

We had chosen to walk two tracks that day, firstly the Federal Pass, that wanders off into the valley a little and is the lesser tramped of the tracks as it is rougher going and a longer distance. It eventually links up with the Dardanelles Pass which is easier underfoot and snakes along the bottom of the cliff face, back to the cable-car station. We started with a short section along a board-walk in the lush rainforest, surrounded by fern, Lilly Pilly and Sassafras trees and many others that have not been blessed with unforgettable names, where there was a notice that advised – 1. The boardwalk can be very slippery when wet, please take extreme care and do not run. 2. If you hear a loud crack and rushing noise, please ignore 1 above. Love it!

Out we went onto the track proper, over and under fallen trees, across creeks, the track going up and down through the ferny undergrowth, the whoops, whistles and warbles of birds all around us. Then we stopped … Obscured by the undergrowth, about 20 metres away we could see something that looked like a quivering pair of very long horns with curls at the end. We stared and strained our eyes and took photos of course, then saw that there were long, fine feathers between the ‘horns’ and realised that what we were watching was a lyrebird strutting his stuff, giving a magnificent display of his tail feathers to some passing bird. I’d never seen a photo of a lyrebird but I remember drawing one about thirty years ago in a geography class, with a duck-billed platypus next to it and thinking that I’d probably never get to see one – wrong! It really made our day. We stopped for our picnic at a clearing in the forest that is surrounded by huge boulders and known as the Dining Hall, which was rather fitting for our luxurious fare (remember that we’ve had picnic training from West Australians!).

We made our way back along the Dardanelles Pass which was far easier going and we saw far more people in the first five minutes than we’d seen all morning on the first track. We came to a sign that said Echo Point and an arrow pointed upwards to the Three Sisters, not that we could see anything through the trees, so we just had to take their word for it. A very animated and excited chap (a Pom) had told us earlier on that he’d seen a freshwater lobster in the pool at the bottom of a waterfall so Marc ventured down to the waters edge to have a look and I spotted it from the path above! To me it looked pretty insipid, but to Marc who saw it in sunlight, it was a rainbow of blue, green and red and well worth sliding down the bank to see. We arrived back at the cable-car station via the remnants of an old coal mine with tools, bits of machinery and track still lying around. The coal was transported up to the cliff top via the steepest funicular railway in the world, and the rail was now an alternative method of transport for trampers returning up to the top. As the open car rises so steeply, if passengers were to start the journey sitting in the normal upright position, chances are that they would fall forwards and out and a lot of paperwork would ensue, so you clamber into your seat into a half lying-down position. The thing clatters into action, then you shoot up the side of the cliff face and what no-one tells you at the bottom is that it goes through a long, dark shaft that’s dripping with cold water which all comes as a bit of a surprise and a lot of gasping. The wide-eyed look on the faces of waiting passengers at the top was a picture! We took the glass-bottomed cable-car back to the town side of the canyon and went back to the hostel where we enjoyed that magical moment when you take off your boots, sit back and say ‘ahhh’…

Our last couple of days were spent in Sydney where we’d started our Aussie adventure two months earlier, but where the camera had packed up just in sight of Harbour Bridge on the first day. Back in photo mode, we walked down to Circular Quay, old hands by now, not needing the city map and took photos of the bridge and Opera House (still say that it’s a bit shabby) in bright sunshine. Not content with having separate photos of the two icons, we walked back across Circular Quay and through the Botanic Gardens to a spot called Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, this being the only spot where it is possible to get both structures in the viewfinder at the same time. Mrs Macquarie’s Chair is a stone seat which was carved by convicts into the rocks of a small headland jutting out into the harbour many years ago at the request of one-time Governor Macquarie’s wife, from nearby Government House. She probably enjoyed many a gin and tonic at this spot whilst enjoying splendid views of the harbour on an evening, but we had one eye on the views and the other on some of the blackest clouds I’ve ever seen and the approaching storm. Would we make it back into the city before the deluge? No. We sheltered under an overhanging rock for about an hour then decided to make a run for it and got absolutely drenched. By the time we squelched into the city centre, the sun had come out again and we were steaming like a couple of cows.

And so our two months in the land of the kangaroo and didgeridoo came to and end and we were on our way back to New Zealand, where the seed of this round the world adventure had been sown five years ago when we had spent a month in the Land of the Long White Cloud. We flew into Christchurch where Marc’s Great Uncle Alun was waiting for us at the airport. We drove into the familiar setting and house at 120 Fleete Street, which was a bit of a surprise, as the postcard we’d sent two weeks previously, with full details of our arrival had been sent to number 36!