The Blue Mountains

“They aren’t blue, and they aren’t mountains”. That’s not what you want to hear when you’ve just paid good money for a day trip into the wilderness, but there was nothing in the terms and conditions that allowed for refunds in the event of inappropriately named geographical features. The “blue” refers to a hazy effect that can be generated by the oils released from the eucalyptus trees at certain times of year and under certain atmospheric conditions. This occurs roughly (and I quote) “once in a blue moon”. In our tour guide’s experience he’d seen the effect once in ten years. As for the “mountains” bit, they’re actually a couple of plateaus and a canyon. By that time my attention had wandered onto the subject of compensation and brutal litigation directed at the tour operator, so I’m afraid I missed the bit where he told us what formed them, but usually in these situations it’s a safe bet to assume that glaciers or rivers had something to do with it.

We walked down into the canyon in the drizzle and past the eucalyptus into a temperate rainforest area. I wore my walking boots, partly because it seemed like the right choice of footwear, but mainly because I was eager to make myself feel better about having lugged them round with me the last 3 months. At the bottom there was a shallow sluggish river that wound it’s way through the canyon and we walked beside it through the trees for a while. We saw loads of “yabbies” at the bottom, which are bright orange relatives of the crayfish that hang around in shallow waters looking for morsels of food. I don’t know what evolution was playing at when it came to designing the yabby, but if you’re made of delicious lobster meat, being luminous orange and hanging around in 2 inches of open water probably isn’t the best survival mechanism.

After about 4 hours of walking we emerged back at the top of the canyon and went off to do some sightseeing at the popular tourist viewpoints. The most famous sight is the “Three Sisters” which are a series of rock towers that remain standing at the side of the canyon. Unfortunately our view was obscured by low-lying cloud, and as I hadn’t purchased the “Cloud Penetrating Radar” option on my brand new digital camera all we could see was mist and fog. I took the shots anyway and resolved to buy a postcard and scan it onto my blog and pretend the views I saw were wonderful.
On the way back we stopped off to watch some kangaroos in their natural habitat – i.e. in a car park being chased by kids intent on feeding them sticks.