Just west of Sydney is a place so celebrated it is on the World Heritage shortlist of natural wonders. It is so celebrated that this last week a seventh grader half a world away came to my reference desk wanting to write a report about it.
What is it? Named the Blue Mountains, it has no mountains and during our visit was more white than blue. The gorges, ravines, precipices, waterfalls are not the result of piled granite plates wearing down, but from the erosion of tipped table land, so that it seems more of a diminutive, greener Grand Canyon, and it is lovely.
Susie and I settled into a small town called Blackheath for a few days to explore the canyons. The first day we hiked the most famous trail at Echo Point, the one that loops around the Three Sisters, pillars of rusty rock. There is an aboriginal tale about marriageable daughters and war that I didn't quite catch attached to it. It could be the Three Spinsters, or the Three Amazons.
The trail descends steeply into the canyon, runs the ravines for a few miles, then climbs sweatily back out. It is decent first day workout. We did the circuit, admired the views and the fact that we had any breath left, then went for beer.
The next day brought fog. It was less fog than windjammers of cloud sailing down the road. They sailed in midmorning, dropped anchor and stayed. But a bit of murk wasn't going to change our plans. We marched off briskly in the direction of a reportedly spectacular lookout called Govett's Leap and another called Pulpit Rock. (Where perhaps Govett's funeral sermon was delivered). We expected the clouds to lift at any time. They never did.
It was like pushing through cotton. The lookouts were all blank. We would stand at the precipice, and look and look, and peer and squint. Nothing. Nothing but swirling white. Directly below, a few hundred feet down, we see for a moment the outline of a tree clinging to the cliff, and nothing below. Nothing but slow swirling, almost palpable white. We were in the clouds. It made the canyons before us more immense and surreal because we had to imagine them. It felt strange, like the waiting room to Heaven. We expected St. Peter to step out of the mist.
After hours of trails along the precipices with no views, we turned inland and came across a rocky waterfall with a pool below. Since we had encountered no other hikers all day we knew we had the place to ourselves. Feeling in need of refreshment we decided to take a swim and damn the water snakes. No sooner had we stripped to our undies and jumped in, than a party of Hollanders, an student and his prim parents, arrived at the pool, stopped and gawked. We stuttered out an insincere welcome and exchanged talk about the weather. We may have invited them to join us. They departed quickly.
That night back in the tiny rustic town of Blackheath we had Parisian dining experience, three courses of things I couldn't spell, pronounce or imagine. Spare yes in the inimitable French way, but gorgeously tasty.
We were served by a memorable waiter, 'Cyril', who uttered his words so deliberately, so carefully, he might have been confectioner squeezing out curls of frosting. As he spoke, he held his right arm behind him, like a half folded wing, and made us laugh.
The next day the clouds moved on. We headed back to the canyons to see what we could see.
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