Feeling Blue in the Mountains!
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 11 Jan 2015 07:43
The mountains are beautiful and so called due to the blue leaves on the eucalyptus trees found here. The campsite was about 1km outside of the main town. Once we had arrived and set up the tents etc, John and I went to town to provision and Alex sat watching the local cricket game, just next to the site. Within an hour, just as we were heading back it started to rain, and immediately the temperature dropped by almost 20 degrees, down to a very cold 16! We were freezing and worried that we had no really suitable clothing for this kind of weather. That night we were having dinner with Mark and Dawn at their hotel as they were staying nearby and what should have been a short walk ended up as a drive through torrential rain.
The 'famous' wo-man statue - man on one side and woman on the other. At least I am told it is famous in the backwoods of the blue mountains!
The next day things were even worse. It was 15 degrees, wet and very cloudy, with mist shrouding the campsite. First job, off to town to buy a warm fleece each. Although John and I had decided to take the sensible option and visit the caves at Jenolan, probably the only inside thing to do in the mountains, Alex had decided to go hiking. He was very disappointed with the rain and coupled with the fact that the bars here close at 9 or 10pm as they seem to do everywhere in Australia, he had decided to leave for Sydney early the next morning as he has friends living there. The itinerary that we had planned was slowly falling to pieces due to the rain. The forecast was bad everywhere we were due to go until Saturday, the day Alex leaves. We cancelled the beach stay at Wollongong as there is not much else to do there and decided to stay here an extra night in the Blue Mountains as the forecast is good for at least one of the days this week!
The delightful view from our tent this morning - isn't it meant to be hot and sunny here in Oz?
The caves were stunning. They have been there about 340 million years so the formations of stalactites and stalagmites are well established. The caves are all lit so the colours are amazing.
As we hadn't seen Alex all day, and he was leaving the next, and it was still pouring, we cancelled our planned BBQ and headed into town for pizza. Alex's tent was quite damp inside from all his wet walking gear and so he was planning to book into the local youth hostel for the night. I am not sure he will be camping again any time soon! There was music in the bar, the pizza was delicious and we all enjoyed ourselves. We left Alex to it after the 3rd bottle of red wine and were surprised to find him asleep in his tent in the morning. He had gone to the hostel at 1am and to his surprise it was closed and locked, so he had a half hour walk home in the pouring rain - this plus the headache he had from the wine left him in a foul mood in the morning and desperate to get to Sydney and some civilisation!
A few pics of the caves
We went hiking in the morning while he slept his bad mood off. The trail we took was along the cliff edge with lookout points dotted along. The fog was so thick that you couldn't see anything at all, while I am sure the views are spectacular, they were certainly lost on us. By the time we got back, the weather was trying to brighten, but it never really managed it. Alex got the train in the afternoon and we went shopping for more suitable clothing. When we had been walking in the morning, there had been some areas that were quite overgrown and the perfect hiding place for all kinds of nasty things, so we thought trousers might be in order. When we were in the shop, the owner gave us some more, scary advice, never step over a log in the path, alway stand up on it and check the other side in case there is a snake hiding! Brown snakes are quite common here I think and they can give you a nasty bite which can in some cases be fatal. We did ask if people carried anti-venom normally but were advised to use a crepe bandage for compression and immobilise the limb, good advice but might be tricky in practice as where we were yesterday we saw hardly anyone else walking for the whole three hours so help may not always be at hand!
That night we managed to scare ourselves a bit. I had woken up hearing rustling outside. It sounded like something was moving around on the tarpaulin we have at the front of the tent. I was convinced it was something nasty - after all the stories we have heard it is not surprising your brain goes into overdrive especially at 1am! I woke John up, obviously, as there was no way I was going to look, and he tried to convince me there was no problem, I was not entirely happy and made sure I moved our bed well away from the wall just in case. When we got up this morning, we opened the door very carefully and had a good look around before we ventured out!
A baby kangaroo we spotted by the side of the road
The 'view' from the track we were walking along over the valley!
It did eventually clear a bit later in the day!
The next day, our last day in the mountains, we went back along part of the route we took yesterday, to see what we were missing. We also went to Wentworth Falls which are supposed to be the most beautiful in the area. We didn't see the bottom of the falls, just part way as it was 20 minutes or more down some steep stairs, with limited views on the way down, just to walk 20 minutes back up and an hour to the car - we wimped out of the challenge.
The three sisters - an iconic landmark here in the mountains
The view just goes on and on.....
The top part of Wentworth Falls
More what we were expecting having read the travel brochures - sunshine and an actual view!
We are back to Sydney tomorrow for three days with Alex before he heads back to Italy on Saturday evening.
Sent from my iPad