7.3.11 – From explorers to honeymoon couples (Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia)

Moira and Meg in Katoomba

7.3.11 – From explorers to honeymoon couples (Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia)

When we were in Virginia, USA, we travelled to the Blue Ridge Mountains, gentle peaks swathed in tall trees.  Today, it was the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.  We swept on for mile after mile of open, sunny road, which became increasingly forested on either side.  At last, we reached Katoomba, on the central spine of the Blue Mountain range.  The air felt cooler and mountain fresh as we wandered up the main street, past numerous antique shops, containing rocking chairs, glass lampshades and all the other usual bric-a-brac and curios.  Katoomba’s history dates back to the early explorers, who tried and tried again to find a way through the mountain passes and dense forests, to the wide planes they knew had to be on the other side.  Many lost their way and their lives in the process.  Then the miners came, to harvest the gold within the mountains’ depths.  More recently, Katoomba’s beauties drew honeymoon couples, and it became a centre for candlelit dinners and romantic mountain walks.  Now it’s tourists, cameras swinging, baseball hats shading their eyes, who fill the hilly streets.  Maybe it’s for fear of these multinational crowds that in the public loos the toilet rolls were padlocked to the wall!

We located a pub called The Old City Bank.  Not terribly hungry, I ordered a starter only, of potato wedges and dips.  George ordered an Old Bankers Burger (first take one old Banker, slice finely....).  When my plate arrived, it was about twice the size of a normal plate and piled high with huge wedges.  Obviously a history of feeding hungry explorers, miners and honeymoon couples had left its mark.

View from Echo Point

And then to Echo Point and its curved viewing platform.  Suddenly, a majestic vista opened up before us.  A wide valley extended deep below us into the blue distance.  High orange, cream and grey cliffs on either far-off side, and between forest, dense and a myriad shades of green, lapping the cliffs in soft waves like a gentle green sea.  The distances were immense, the depths awesome.  The sun came out.  Far below us, the trees looked like tiny plants, not immense gum trees.  From our vantage point far above, the forest canopy resembled a soft green fleece, patchworked with the shadows of the clouds moving slowly across the valley. To one side, three sharp pinnacles of orange rock pointed their fingers at the sky – the Three Sisters.  Apparently there were once seven sisters, until erosion did its thing, and downsized the family.

Forest floor

We eventually tore ourselves away and drove a short distance to the Scenic Railway.  Here a large yellow cable car bobbed and slid its way out to emerge through the trees onto a cliff edge, down, down, down, heart-stoppingly sharply, till we reached the forest floor.  We wandered the board walk, now at the base of the huge trees, that had looked so minute a moment ago, slung with water vines, twisting round and over them, hanging down like ropes.  Primeval ferns about twelve or more feet in height spread their brilliantly green feathery leaves above our heads. Colossal turpentine trees swept up to the canopy high above.  It was easy to see how dangerous exploration of this would have been.  The forest was dense and dim and it would have been impossible to chart a course by stars or sun.  Immense boulders blanketed with moss reared up amongst gullies which were almost invisible under fallen leaves and bark.

Miners' Hut

This area was mined for coal at the end of the 19^th. century, and the remnants of this were still visible – a little wooden hut complete with rusted metal cooking range, a coil of cable whose wooden reel had long since rotted away, a deep cut mine entrance, which you would have had to stoop low to enter, some bogies on the rails, filled with coal.  The way up again was via the world’s steepest railway, originally built to carry coal up the hill.  The train awaited us, red seats at a crazy angle, forcing you to almost lie back with your legs in the air.  Then it started, and in no time the angle changed so dramatically that you were sitting upright, being pulled by hawsers up a near vertical slope on little rails.

And so home to Picton, to pack and sleep our last night under George and Moira’s roof.  The next stage of the adventure awaits us!