It's Not Easy Bein' Blue

Blue Mountains, from waaaay up.

My last stop on my tour of Victoria and News South Wales was the Blue Mountains. It is the mountainous region that most closely borders Sydney. It is also listed as a World Heritage site by the United Nations, so I knew it had to be on my list of things to check out (because the UN is obviously the wisest and best run organization on the planet...) The Blue Mountains get there name from the bluish hues that the mountains take on when seen from a distance. The color is created by a mixture of atmospheric light deflection or mie scattering, combined with the abundance of eucalyptus trees which can be found on the forested slopes. (Wikipedia lists the reasoning as caused "when incoming ultraviolet radiation is scattered by particles within the atmosphere creating a blue-greyish colour to any distant objects, including mountains and clouds. Volatile terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains may cause mie scattering and thus the blue haze for which the mountains were named." I hope that cleared up any questions.)

When visiting the Blue Mountains it is sometimes hard to find a good day for viewing the range as the area is also known for constant fog and mist, I however (and for once), was lucky. Especially considering that for the better part of my Five-Day Mission it was rainy and foggy. To state the obvious the view was breathtaking, and something I could never begin to describe on this humble electronic page, so you'll just have to take my word for that. However, I was a bit vexed over the accessibility of the mountains themselves. I experienced a few problems during my time on the mountains, that may be worth noting, because I always want to share my mistakes with the Internet.

First off, I went to the Blue Mountains without a very concrete plan on where I needed to go and what I needed to see. I just assumed I would find an information office and grab some leaflets on the major sights and attractions. So when setting the destination on my GPS, I naturally selected the address for the Blue Mountains National Park. This all seemed rather simple at the begging of my journey, but what the GPS failed to inform me, in that tiny female voice of her's, was that the Blue Mountains National Park did not official begin until you are several hundred feet off the ground. Thus, it was that I followed the directions onto a road that eventually turned to gravel, and then eventually turned to dirt, and then eventually turned to pitted dirt full of holes that were capable of swallowing my little yellow four-door coup. (You could understand how that probably would have lost me my deposit.) All of this happened while the Yellow Hornet and I were steeply ascending up the side of a rather intimidating mountain. Still like a man possessed I plowed on. In hindsight alarm bells should have started the minute I saw hikers wearing 4-inch spiked climbing shoes and carrying day packs full of water, or 4x4 Trucks and SUV's fighting their way up the same road I was now forcing my laughably undersized car to climb.

I reached the peak of my journey near the hiking track for the Golden Stairs, which is the most famous and serious hiking trails in the entire range. I was tipped off to this by the sign that labeled the 9-hour track's difficulty as "You're Probably Going to Die." I however, had just ascended up several hundred feet over terrain that no man in his right mind would have crossed, so I was feeling lucky. I had no intention of doing the entire hike, as I was armed with nothing but sneakers, a small water bottle, jeans, a light-jacket, and a stick I found leaning against the start of the trail (obviously where its previous owner had left it after falling several miles to his gruesome death.) I hiked out for about twenty minutes in one direction, before the sheer stupidity of what I was doing began to dawn on me. I can't be sure if it happened while I was clinging to the face of a rock wall in a desperate attempt not to get too close to some of sheer drops I faced, or if it was the German hiker I met as he headed past me in the opposite direction, and his look of general alarm at my under-prepared attire. Regardless, I turned back, but before I did, I found myself towering over a majestic panoramic valley full of startling mountains, and wide deep valleys. The distance of everything was almost beyond comprehension, especially as the horizon of blue mountains rose up in the far distance to meet the blue sky.

The Three Sisters

Following my high-flying stupidity and return to sea level, I was finally able to locate the visitor's center and more level walking paths from which the Blue Mountains could be viewed, though at a lower elevation. The only problem with this was that the walking paths all ran from the visitor center along a constructed viewing platform from where one could view the Three Sisters rock formation. Around that viewing platform were parking meters. As I could not leave the Yellow Hornet in a metered spot (because I'm not paying 2 dollars for 30 minutes of parking,) I had to drive outside of the town center to find an unmetered spot. I accomplished this, but found that the spot I was parked in had a time limit of two hours. I originally, thought this to be no problem, and I set off to explore.

I first took in the Three Sisters, which is famous for an Aboriginal legend that surrounds three sisters of the Katoomba tribe that fell in love with three men from the neighbouring Nepean tribe, but marriage was forbidden (as it so often in in these stories.) The brothers were not happy to accept this and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle. Battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder to protect them (because that's what you do... I personally would have turned the opposing army into stone, but that's just me). Anyway this elder was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back. It is an interesting tale, which turns out was created by white Australians in the 1930's to generate tourism for that area of the Blue Mountains, but I digress.

Katoomba Falls

The sight was amazing and I then wished to journey to see Katoomba Falls, a misty spraying water fall that hung high over the valley itself. The walk time listed the trek as an hour there and an hour back. This complicated my life as I knew I had just wasted 20 minutes looking at, (and taking stupid pictures of myself with,) the Three Sisters. So I did the only thing any rational person would, I walked very fast. It turns out that their two-hour track can be done in one hour and fifteen minutes, and there is still enough time for sightseeing, picture taking, and even philosophical pondering (admittedly, this was my fifth day of me by myself, with no other substantial human contact to speak of, and I was probably going a little stir crazy.) The falls were amazing.

I finished up the rest of my day by traveling around the Blue Mountains and taking in some of the random wonders that were located in the valley regions around the mountain such as the Leura Cascades or the myriad of lookout points around the slopes of the mountains. I was exhausted by the end, but I felt pretty accomplished. Not only had I seen beautiful scenery, but I had defied death on top of a mountain, navigated my way up a cratered road, dodged a parking ticket, and even broke the walking track record for the Katoomba Falls Hiking Trail. Yes, I went to sleep tired and happy, knowing that in the morning it would be back to civilization, and city life, and boy what a city...