Blue Mountains

We left the hotel about 8, which meant pretty smooth sailing through Sydney's suburbs on the way to the Great Western Hwy and the Blue Mountains.  I had  been looking forward to seeing Blue Mountains National Park since that was one of the places in Australia about which I had read very positive things.  We had no issues with traffic and arrived at the Wentworth Falls area.  We were a bit disillusioned as there were already tour buses and masses of people, in compete contrast to all of our other national park experiences.  We did take a walk down to the Falls and stopped at some viewpoints, all of which was quite pretty and impressive, but it still seemed crowded.

Our first real glance at the typical Blue Mountain landscape.  Although we had been driving through the Blue Mountains for much of the morning, we were on a plateau that was relatively flat.  The road also followed a narrow strip of land that is not in the park and privately held, so you had no feeling of being in ascenic area.

Susan and I are at the top of Wentworth Falls.  The light made good pictures of the falls themselves impossible.  Another beautiful sight that we couldn't photograph were the many cockatoos which were flying below us as we looked down the cliffs--they were simply too far away for the lenses we have.

Our next stop was the national park visitor's center at Katoomba, and that's where the real disillusion set in:  the place was overrun with buses and tourists and the track down to the famous Three Sisters formation was literally stop and go with all of the people.

Buses lined of after dropping off the tourists.  This is only a fraction of the buses as many are parked several blocks away waiting for the pick-up time.

We did manage to make it to the formation, took a couple of obligatory photos at Echo Point (also quite beautiful, but not tranquil by any stretch.  In addition, the parking there was $4 for the first hour and $4.80 for each hour thereafter and the "info center" was little more than a souvenir stand, so we got away ASAP for a "peaceful" picnic lunch.

The vista from Echo Point.  Very nice, but I had to wait for a space to clear out at the rail to get this unobstructed picture.

The Three Sisters formation.  This is where we literally had a traffic jam on the stairs to the last view point.

We went to a city park with a view over the escarpment, but the wind was so fierce that we staggered simply walking to the table.  In fact, we ate on the ground behind a tree trunk to minimize the wind--thankfully the tree didn't blow over!  There are no good photos here as we couldn't even hold steady in the wind to take clear pictures.  Katoomba as a whole seemed to be a very frenzied place, so we decided to go a few km farther to Blackheath for the night.
Although having its share of boutiques, antique shops and galleries, Blackheath was much calmer than Katoomba and at least a bit less touristy.

A well-decorate public toilet in Blackheath.  The design is by a local artist and fashion designer, Jenny Kee who uses aboriginal motifs in her work

Our first stop was the national park info center, which was almost deserted and was most helpful with regards to trail information.  We went to the Govetts Leap overview a short distance from the visitors center and had a completely different experience with the Blue Mountains, more akin to prior national parks with no crowding and scenic tracks.  We only walked for a few minutes, but it was enough to erase our initial negative impression and we decided to spend two nights in Blackheath so we could have a full day (and a weekday rather than a Sunday) and perhaps do a longer hike.  To improve our mood even more, "the change" (Australian for a weather front moving through) occurred (in this case a cool change) and the temperature dropped from about 35 C in the afternoon to a low of 10 C that night (a drop of about 45 F) and a projected high for Monday in the 20s!

Susan at Govetts Leap, a spot that seems typical of at least some areas of Australia:  rolling hills on the plateau with sudden, dramatic plunges into valleys with waterfalls and pockets of rainforests in the valleys.

Horseshoe Falls (just a wisp) as seen from Govetts Leap lookout.

By this point, we were in need of laundry and unfortunately our motel did not have self-service machines, but did offer laundry service for A$10 per load.  The local laundromat was closed Sunday and not open till 9 am on Mon, but the web site of a laundromat in Katoomba said it was open daily from 6 am til 10 pm.  As it was only a little after 8 pm, we decided to drive back the 15 minutes and get it all done that night.  On arrival, the internet was, of course, wrong and it closed at 9 instead of 10.  By the time we figured out the machines and got change, we only had enough time before the doors locked to do one load of washing, so it was back to Blackheath for the night (with one load of wet clothes) then return to Katoomba in the morning to finish.  So the laundry cost us A$17 directly for machines plus two round trips to Katoomba and the motel would have done the two loads for us for A$20--count on the Schlagers to do anything to save a buck!
Side story:  Drama at the Laundromat--     Our annoyance with the laundry was somewhat tempered by the experience of a young woman patron we met there.  She was delayed because the drier had not dried her clothes adequately and she needed to stay for an extra cycle.  She was done about the time we arrived, i.e., 30 minutes before closing, but when she went to the car park (which had a direct access door to the laundry), they had locked her car in.  That alone would be very annoying, but she was heading back to Sydney that evening to return the rental car and catch a 6 am flight to Brisbane in order to meet with a family whose house she was going to watch while they were away.  Her car was gone when we arrived the next morning, but we don't know if she made her flight or not.  In any case, it made our annoyance seem very minor by comparison.
So...we did get up early and finish laundry before starting the day and still managed to be out on the road (or more accurately the trail) by shortly after 9.  We went to Evans Lookout and did a 6.3 km circuit called the Grand Canyon track.  It was a spectacular walk, but not in the same way as the US Grand Canyon.  This canyon is "grand" not for its sweeping scope, but for its extremely narrow width (less than 10 m in places), extremely sheer walls (vertical for including overhangs), lots of waterfalls/cascades, and extremely dense growth of trees and ferns.  While gorgeous, it was not very photogenic in the sense that lighting was difficult and perspective was lost with photos, hence only limited posts here which do not really capture the scenes well.

Some of the impressive, carved stairways on the Grand Canyon track.  The trail was first opened in 1909 and much of this kind of work dates from then.  However, the park service is refurbishing a lot of the track and now flies in stone, wood, etc., by helicopter instead of 100% manual.  All the same, it is still back-breaking work.

Susan descending a stairway in a typical rain forest valley.  This one had a bit more open canopy so there was enough light for a photo.

Susan on the Grand Canyon track walking under an overhang, over which a small waterfall is flowing.

In the early afternoon, we drove to the historic town of Hartley, about 15 km west.  It is a virtual ghost town at this point, but preserved by the NSW park service.  It was founding in the 1830's when the Great Western Hwy route was first established, but faded in the 1880's when the Great Western Railway did not pass through, then resurrected for a short time in the early 20th century due to automobile traffic to the Jenolan Caves.  Unfortunately, as for the laundry, our information (this time a printed brochure rather than the internet) about operating hours was wrong and the site was closed on Mondays (the day we were there).  On the positive side, there were no fences so there was free access to the exterior of the buildings and reasonably good signs with descriptions, so the trip was not a total washout.  The saddest part was that the closed visitor center displayed a prominent ice cream sign, which would have been an ideal afternoon delight.

Old rectory and Catholic Church (mostly hidden behind the tree)  looking down the old Great Western Hwy.  A number of other buildings are in various states of preservation, most of them residential but there is also an old service station from the 1920's.

The Harley Court House//Gaol, built in the 1830's with convict labor.  It's a very impressive, substantial building for the frontier that long ago.  Platteville certainly does not have any public buildings of this quality left from that time.

We finally went to the Pulpit Rock overview for another striking, panoramic view of the cliffs surrounding the valleys--a view that was actually more similar to the US Grand Canyon than the morning walk we took.

Pulpit Rock with the escarpment in the background.  This view fits the US understanding of Grand Canyon a bit better that the Australian Grand Canyon.

Susan and Wesley on the Pulpit Rock.

Another view of them on Pulpit Rock showing the last flight of stairs leading down.  It is very steep and feels precarious, although I'm sure it's very safe.

After a full day, even though the weather was much cooler, we were pretty tired and rested some in the early evening.  After dinner, we took a short trip to Hargraves Lookout to watch the sunset.  The sunset was nice, but if we had gone  the previous day, it would have been fabulous.  On Sunday, the sky had been a bright red-orange with many high clouds to reflect the light (observed from the highway on our futile evening trip to do laundry so no photos) and Monday was a pretty typical yellow sunset.

Looking east from Hargraves Lookout with the sun setting.  The white building to the left of the escapements is the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Medlow Bath, the next town east of Blackheath.  It has an interesting history and was apparently started as a spa, but it turned out there were no spa waters available for "the cure."  

The actual sunset from Hargraves Lookout--nice but "average" as the Australians might say.

We were told that the reason it was so read on Sunday was the increased smoke in the air due to wildfires across NSW.  After a slow, cautious drive back to Blackheath (evening is a prime time for kangaroos to jump in front of cars), we prepared to hit the road again in morning and head (generally) south.