Blue Mountain National Park – west of Sydney (Katoomba)

 We had a terrific traffic jam driving up to Katoomba from Sydney – looked like there had been a three lanes accident; traffic hardly moved.  Even before that, traffic was pretty awful.  I was very glad I’d become accustomed to left-side driving on rural Kangaroo Island.  LaJean says:  "Fortunately a candy bar in my purse saved the day."  As it turns out, there is very good train service to Katoomba, although getting to the station from the airport is not as simple is at might be, and there is excellent bus service within the park.  Next time we'll use public transportation!

Once we reached it, the resort is very nice; perched at the rim of a deep, lushly wooded canyon.  We stayed in the Echoes Guest House with a magnificent view from the corner suite.  We would highly recommend this place.  It was very comfortable, the staff was extremely helpful and nice, comfortable chairs, good bed, jacuzzi.  Breakfast was included.  The Blue Mountains aren’t really mountains at all as we think of them; rather, a thousand meter high uplift plateau that has been steeply and deeply eroded into several deep canyons with sheer walls at the top, cliffs 100 meters or more.  The erosion has left some isolated bits of canyon wall as mountains inside the canyons, but there aren’t many of those.  The land is sandstone on top of thick clays on top of granite, with veins of oil shales and coal.  Erosion cut through the sandstone into the clay, which eroded much more easily, leaving sandstone overhangs.  Eventually the undercut reaches the point than part of the overhang shears off, leaving a vertical cliff with a mass of more easily erodable rubble at the bottom.  Along the top is a temperate forest, primarily eucalyptus; as you descend into the canyon you enter rain forests, quite dense in places.  At the very bottom, you're back in eucalypt forest, with scattered farmsteads.  Caves extend as deep as five meters under the sandstone every so often.

 Access to much of the canyons is by several sets of stairs, including metal staircases and catwalks, stairs carved into stone, and poured concrete as well as stairs carved into clay with thick timber risers to slow erosion; some of these have been back-filled with gravel.  The largest of these in Katoomba has a total of about 1000 steps – not for the faint of heart.  Once below the level of the cliffs, there are broad, very well maintained hiking trails, mostly on a pretty level grade along the canyon walls; only a few descend into the valley floors.

 On our first day, after a hearty and very tasty breakfast, I set out through the southern canyon, Jamison Valley, toward a distant point called Mt. Solitary.  Actually, the point I intended to head for is a rock formation called Ruined Castle; I did not realize until I got there that Mt. Solitary is a much higher formation, part of the canyon wall cut off from the rest by erosion.  It was a lovely early autumn day, temperature in the mid 20s (mid 70s F).  It was the first chance since leaving Portland for a really good long workout; I hiked along at a good clip most of the way, except for one stretch where the canyon wall had quite recently fallen.  Through that section the trail was pretty much a goat track, as bad as some of the worst trails in Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot, except thankfully the rain forest had not yet grown in over it so at least I didn’t have to fight brush.  But I did have to back track looking for the trail, scramble over heaps of boulders, all the rest.  One other interesting note about the trail:  In at least a couple of places it passes right through a vein of coal, so the trail surface is coal dust mixed with small chunks of coal.

The rain forest is beautiful, mostly dense and shaded although there is an occasional grove of eucalyptus with little brush, where some sun filters through.  Tree ferns grow as high as twenty feet, thick vines hang from many of the trees.  I saw only a little wildlife, although I heard several species of bird.  Most maddening was the Bell-bird,” actually “Bell Miner.” I met a fellow from New Zealand who told me the bird resembles in sound a larger bird of theirs also called the Bell-bird.  In any event, when you walk into a grove of them, their pealing calls sound exactly like a carillon of bells – in one grove there must have been a hundred or more birds, but for the life of me I could not spot a single one!  An Aussie chap I met said they are about the size of a large robin, dark green, and if I could succeed in seeing one I’d be doing better than he’s ever done – my guess is, looking up at a canopy of leaves against a bright sky I probably saw several but could not pick them out from the leaves.

On the way back down from Ruined Castle, I heard a rustling in the brush.  The terrain was relatively flat there, so I left the trail to investigate.  It was a large lizard, dark grey with yellowish markings. I only caught a glimpse or two of him darting from one bush to another.  Fortunately, as I was chasing him down he scrambled up a tree, at which point I knew I had my picture.  Not so fast!  He did a really good job of keeping the tree between me and himself; the most I could get was a bit of his shoulder.  He kept climbing higher, though, so at last he quit climbing and I was able to get on the same side of the tree, where I took several pictures. I later learned he is a goanna; apparently they’re rather a nuisance to back-packers, since they like to come into camp and steal food. But I was also told by a guy in the outdoor store where I bought contour maps that they can be useful for survival food – “If you run low on tucker just knock one in the head; they’re quite good eating.”  I also saw several large birds on the way back in the undergrowth, a dark smoky grey in color, about the size and shape of a male pheasant, except the long plumed tail droops downward at the end.  I was later told they were lyre birds. They were in thick brush and I never did get a clear shot at a photo.  Where I saw them was always in much thicker brush and steeper terrain; I didn’t even consider heading off the trail to try to capture a photo of them.

 The second day, it was rainy with thick fog; we spent the first half of the day hassling with our travel agent about some ticketing problems, doing laundry, etc.  About noon the drizzle let up, so we drove down into one of the valleys, below the cloud level, and took a walk along a long rural lane.  We saw a white faced heron, then LaJean managed to spot one of the Bell Birds. Once we had seen one and knew what we were looking for, we saw several; I got two great pictures of one, and a third odd picture, the same bird with his butt in the air, his beak deep in the dead leaves and twigs, searching out insects.  The bird is actually olive colored on the back, more or less lime green belly, certainly no larger than a robin.  Very pretty bird, actually, although not as pretty as the showy crimson rosellas, of which we saw several.  We also saw a huge flock of white cockatoos in a cow pasture, probably doing the same thing a flock of chickens would be doing…  I haven’t been able to find information about their diet; by their heavy beaks I would take them for seed eaters, and we saw them cracking small, hard nuts in Sydney, but they probably eat bugs as a supplement.

I also took a picture of LaJean crossing one of the stiles they have where the trail crosses from one paddock to another.  They put three logs of different heights on each side of the fence; usually they plant a pipe in the middle to hold onto.  It works fine, but in the damp climate, several of the logs were already half rotted away; they must have to replace them every few years.

 The third day, it was still foggy but not really raining.  I decided to hike down into the Grose Valley on a loop suggested by the guy in the outdoor store, down a 2000 foot descent into the Blue Gum forest, then along Govett’s Creek, through Rodriguez Pass, up Greaves Creek, through the Grand Canyon and Neates Glen back to Evans Lookout Road.   LaJean will not drive here, so I took a bus out to Hat Hill Road and walked 2 ½ miles from there to Perry’s Lookout, the trailhead.  The busride was interesting; they combine school bus with public transport, so we went down several little residential lanes - and the bus driver periodically interrupted our conversation to yell at some of the rowdier school kids.

The trail down from Perry’s Lookout is one of the hairiest I’ve ever gone on – fortunately they have carved and built steps in several places, and set steel pipe hand rails next to some of the worst.  None of it is exactly vertical, but the ground was wet clay, and even the stone, which would ordinarily have a good grip for shoe soles, was often covered with half-rotted, slimy leaves.  I snapped a couple of pictures but in the hairiest parts I was too busy staying on my feet to take any.

 I hadn’t got much more than a hundred meters down before I was completely below the fog, as I had hoped; the view was spectacular (when I could spare the attention from examining the trail!)  I hadn’t counted on the brush being so dewy – I was soaking wet for nearly the entire hike.  Worse yet, when I reached bottom I stopped next to a log, and started to unzip the bottoms of my trousers to turn them into shorts, when I saw several leeches clinging to my shoes.  The shoes weren’t doing them much good, so they were waving their other ends around, looking for something more to their liking.  With difficulty, and with the help of a stick, I knocked them off, and decided to keep my trousers on and to keep moving until I could find a big dry rock to sit on.  When I did, I found that even that is not enough; while I was stopped for lunch one dropped from a tree overhead onto my arm!  I think they sense heat, even from ten meters or more distance.  They are an interesting animal, pretty in their own way, but I couldn’t get used to the idea of a slug-like animal sucking my blood.  Nor could I convince myself to leave one alone long enough to snap its picture.

 Other than the leeches and the wet brush it was a fun hike.  In the Blue Gum forest I heard a rustling in the brush and a thumping that had to be a kangaroo or wallaby – the brush was too thick to try to beat out into the brush to see it.  Fortunately, a few hundred meters down the trail I heard another rustle, right next to the trail, and a swamp wallaby jumped out, bounded a a half dozen meters from me, then stopped to graze on some bushes. Apparently their comfort zone extends to about 7-10 meters.  I whipped out my camera, took one picture.  He heard the camera’s electronic whirring and turned to examine me, so I got another picture with his face turned toward me.  I’m told I was pretty lucky; they’re nowhere near as common in New South Wales as on Kangaroo Island, and they’re ordinarily quite shy creatures.  They seem to be like deer, in that if you hike far enough from the noisy crowds they lose some of their shyness.  I think I could have stood there watching him all morning without his caring.  Had I stayed still long enough, I might even have managed to get a bit closer.  He was very pretty, with a fine, thick coat, dark brown; almost black face and hands.  But I also figured that if I stood still that long I'd be covered all over with leeches - so I moved on.

 The upper part of the valley was pretty thick with wet brush; I was able to catch only an occasional glimpse of the spectacular rock walls.  The trail followed the creek for a couple of kilometers; several pools looked promising for platypus habitat, but I don’t know if there are any in the Blue Mountains, and in any event I saw no sign of any. Eventually the valley narrowed and the trail began to climb steeply, with many staircases up sheer rock walls around small waterfalls.  At one point I had a very hard time finding the trail, but eventually realized that it was necessary to cross a wide flat rock over which the creek ran.  A little farther on I had an excellent view back down the valley.  I took one picture of the rock walls there.  Not much farther on the trail entered the area called "Grand Canyon,” actually a deep narrow canyon, not much wider than Oregon's Oneonta Gorge, as much as 200 feet deep and ranging from 20 to 35 feet wide, with mostly sheer walls, undercut with fairly deep caves in places.  Many of the caves had still pools, some as deep as 4 or 5 feet, lined with ferns, ferns growing out of the cave ceiling, sometimes a small waterfall at the far end.  One particularly spectacular cave had two gigantic ferns, eight feet high and with a combined spread of about 15 feet, partially shading the pool.  Unfortunately I could not get far enough back for a picture.  Another pool was in a tunnel, formed by a huge boulder leaning against the opposite canyon wall, with a lovely little waterfall at the far end.  It was too dark in the canyon for pictures.

 At about that point I began to encounter tourists from the Evans Lookout Road, first in twos and threes, eventually in large guided groups.  My clothes, mudstained and soaked with dew and sweat, made quite a contrast with their neatly pressed tourist clothes!

 After a kilometer or two, the trail climbed up a series of steps and passed thorugh a 5 meter long tunnel to a long, level passage close to the upper wall of the canyon.  The passage seemed to take advantage of natural under-cut caves; in places it consisted of metal catwalks.  For about half the length, I had to walk hunched over because the top of the cave was as little as five feet above the walkway.  By here, the gorge had narrowed to as little as ten feet; you could not see all the way to the bottom, but you could hear the water rushing over the rocks below.

 I reached the top of the canyon a little too late too catch the bus from halfway down Evans Road, so had to walk all the way to the Great Western Highway, a total walk of maybe two miles.  I was lucky, and reached the highway just before a bus – the same one I rode out on, by coincidence – came by.  The total walk was pretty long, and I was plagued for the last third of the way by a blister on one of my little toes, so I was happy to get home to a cold beer and a hot jaccuzi.  Ironically, the sun finally came out just about the time I got home.  The next day, when we had to leave, was clear and beautiful!  But that, of course, is mountain weather in the autumn just about anywhere.

 The Blue Mountains are quite beautiful, lush with several species of eucalyptus, especially the blue gum, which fills the air with its oils; apparently the haze of eucalyptus oil is what gives the  mountains their blueish cast.  The entire region is incorporated as a town, and resembles very much the Sun Valley or Lake Tahoe areas.  Most of the people who go there are interested in visiting the viewpoints and shopping in the tourist shops; everywhere there are signs warning of how difficult the trails are; I quickly learned to cut the time estimates for a walk  by about 50%, and to disregard the warnings about difficult trails.  Prices, on the other hand, were a very pleasant surprise.  For most things, the prices seemed quite reasonable, even before we figured the exchange rates.  We had dinner three times at this neat, funky little restaurant in a converted movie theater, called the Savoy.  There, I had some of the best lamb I’ve ever had, a fillet (equivalent of a tenderloin)  bathed in a delicious red wine and lime sauce, with a delicious salad and chips.  LaJean had an equally delicious breaded veal cutlet; with a bottle of quite good shiraz / cabernet / ruby cabernet blend and a dessert (which we really didn’t need) the price came to less than $75 Australian – about $40.00 U.S.

 I don’t know that I would go to the Blue Mountains every time, or maybe again at all, but we enjoyed the visit tremendously, and the hiking was very good.  We found the people friendly, helpful, and genuinely interested, just as we have everywhere.  The Australian reputation for friendliness is not at all exaggerated.  And for what is fundamentally a very urban resort area, Katoomba seemed surprisingly unspoiled.  But then, we were not there during high season.

O’Reilly’s Rain Forest Resort, Lamington National Park

O’Reilly’s (http://www.oreillys.com.au/default.htm) is much larger than we thought – it was recently expanded to 200 guests, and they have organized activities throughout the day.  Our suite was very comfortable, luxurious actually, and our balcony had a fabulous 60 degree view out toward a distant range of mountains, some deforested, some still covered in forest.   The autumn weather is magnificent – slightly cool at night, warming up to mid 70s daytime, a few puffy clouds.

 The night we arrived I went on a guided walk to see glow worms – they weren’t very active partly because of the extended drought.  We did see quite a few in an eroded stream bed; just dull monochrome glows, not as spectacular as fire flies.  Still pretty interesting.  On the walk, however, we also saw a bandicoot and a couple of possums, one brush tail and one ring tail with a baby clinging to its back.  We also saw a large group of pademelons grazing in a meadow.

The pademelons are really neat, about the size of a small dog or a very large jack rabbit, like miniature kangaroos.  But they are nocturnal, spending their days in the rain forest; very hard to get pictures of without really sensitive film.  I’ve tried several times, and only have two rather mediocre pictures to show for it.
 
 

The first day we were here I went on an all morning guided walk, which was worth it; I did get a much better sense of what I’m seeing.  We also both went on a short guided bird walk in the morning before breakfast, where we were introduced to two species of bower bird, and shown a bower bird nest; we were also introduced to several honey eaters.  The really beautiful ruby rosellas are all over the place, so tame it is very easy to get good photos of them.  They also have a beautiful fluting call.  I took several pictures later that afternoon at the parrot feeding station.  Later, one of the staff members caught a black python at the feeding station; after showing it to the guests they hauled it off several miles to release it.  I think the pythons probably think of it as a python feeding station.

 On the guided walk through the rain forest I learned to identify a stinging tree, similar to stinging nettle but with a worse sting (important to recognize!) I also saw a black skink; none of my photos turned out because of the low light, and an owl called a night jar, really just a big ball of fluff, since it spends the day in a hollow spot in a tree with head under wing.  The elkhorn (staghorn) ferns and bird’s nest or crow’s nest ferns are really magnificent; they attach themselves to the trunks of trees, forming cups often clear around the trees where they catch falling leaves and other debris as well as moisture.  There is also a climbing fern, a thin black vine with fern leaves scattered all along, that clings tightly to tree trunks.  The forest canopy is quite thick for the most part; it is difficult to get decent photos.  The rain forest isn’t very damp right now, after an extended drought, but it has as many vines as I expected – fines crawling over vines, some as thick as 6 or 8 inches, all struggling toward the sunlight. There are also scads of ferns, at least two dozen species, including a couple of familiar ones (maidenhair and birds’ nest) and many new ones.

 The night of the first day we went to a "Bush Dance” for a while; didn’t dance because both of us still have nagging blisters on our toes.  It was interesting to watch but after a while we felt pretty tired so went home and to bed.  We met several fellow holiday makers, most from Australia, all quite nice.  We especially enjoyed Eric and Yvonne, from Melbourne.

The second day I went off on a longer hike, over 20 kilometers, 12 or 13 miles, up to the ridge, Mt. Bithongabel and Mt. Wanungara.  The trail was wide, well graded, like hiking on a sidewalk almost; I probably averaged about 6 km per hour, 3.5 mph.  The day was really fine, the terrain similar to the coast range; in fact it was very much like a hike in the coast range in the middle of September except all the plants, animals, and birds are different.  Ferns and vines everywhere, some palms, lots of eucalyptus and Antarctic beeches, at least two dozen distinct musical bird calls.  The ridge is formed by two sides of an ancient volcanic caldera, and there is a cone in what would have been the center; it was very reminiscent in form of the Goat Peaks wilderness or 3 sisters except for the lush rain forest vegetation all over everything.

On the way down I passed a number of beautiful waterfalls. At one of them I saw a blue spiny crayfish crawling up the rock, and got several pictures of him, one with his claws out in fighting position (after I moved him to a different spot for photo opportunities).
 

I also found several spider funnels and trap-doors, and managed to get good photos of the nests (but not the spiders; they weren’t at home).
 

After dinner, LaJean and I were walking home when we saw several pademelons, including a mother with a joey in the pouch; the joey was big enough to graze.  He kept climbing back into the pouch to hide, then he’d stick his head out and both of them would graze, then he’d climb out and go bounding enthusiastically all over the lawn, then back to mama.  They graze on the grass, the ferns and flowers in the beds, the leaves off the shrubs and trees.  Unfortunately they are very shy; there was no way they would let me within about twice the range of my photo flash, so no pictures.  It was certainly a fun thing to see, though.  The joey stands about ¼ to 1/3 the height of its mama, but the pouch seems endlessly elastic.  He climbs in head first, then squirrels around inside until his head is poking out the top.

 Michael O’Reilly, grandson of the person who originally took out this land, is very active in the management of the resort, and always stops by everyone’s table to visit at dinnertime.  He is very good at remembering names and what you planned to do during the day, and is unboundedly enthusiastic.  He loves to shoot the breeze, and is very successful at adding to the atmosphere of the place.

The third day I made another long trip up to the ridge, this time going over into the next valley.  It was similar to yesterday’s trip; very pleasant, almost magical in spots.  On the way back, I found several trapdoor and funnel spider nests; here are a couple of the pictures I took.
 

LaJean says:  You would love O’Reillys.  We stayed in one of the new rooms which really are luxurious – a large bed/sitting room, separate living room with wet bar, balcony overlooking the park, large bathroom with jacuzzi, separate showers, great view from the tub.  Every evening we enjoyed a glass of wine on our balcony and fed the rosellas.  At first they seemed nervous, but they quickly got used to us, and we realized that we could move them around all over the place as long as there was birdseed in our hands.
 
 

The last evening a king parrot came in to feed - unfortunately, he drove off the rosellas.  He was very pretty, though, and didn't mind posing for pictures - as long as the birdseed held out!
 
 

 They have lots of educational programs – guided walks, little bus tours, video programs, etc.  The food was excellent, the staff friendly and helpful.  The O’Reilly’s say “Strangers are treated as friends, friends as family, and family is gold.”  It not just a saying; they really treat you that way.

 The road up here was the pits - like the worst back roads in northern California or Idaho.  Don’t drive; take a coach or bus.  I’d stay 4-5 days here but probably no more than a week just because there are so many other places to see.

Next:  Stage 4, Lady Elliot and Heron Islands on the Barrier Reef

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Last updated September 15, 2002
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