Blue Mountains

This part of the Great Dividing Range to Sydney's west is probably best visited by car, but the area can also be accessed by train. It is about a two-hour trip. Katoomba has the best views, including the Three Sisters, but Leura is pleasant.

There is also a pleasant walk from Wentworth Falls, known as Darwins Walk because Charles Darwin walked along it in 1836.

Tradition has it that the mountains are named because of their colour alone, but it helps to recall that the authorities in early Sydney were naval officers who would have served in the West Indies, where Jamaica also has Blue Mountains. The early authorities were also the people in charge of the early exploring parties, and guess who got to write the names on the map!

Whatever the origin, the mountains get their name from their appearance, as seen from Sydney on a clear day. These days, you need a strong wind for the best part of a day, and even then they are not seen clearly. It is commonly claimed that the blue colour is due to oils from the gum trees being released into the air. Don't believe it: dust is just as likely to be the culprit, tied in with what physicists call the Tyndall Effect.

Governor Phillip got close to the Blue Mountains in the first year of settlement, in a characteristically naval manner (he was a sailor, remember!), by taking a boat up the Hawkesbury. The next year, Lieutenant Dawes tried to cross the mountains, and was prevented by "ravines that were nearly inaccessible".

Until 1813, white settlement was kept to the coast by the apparently impassable mountains to the west. It is odds-on that the aborigines knew their way around the mountains: obviously they had no intention of inviting Whitey in if they could avoid it!

Many people think it likely that escaped convicts had wandered far enough up the mountains to discover the secret. If the blacks did know they way across, then there would be foot trails that would be easy enough to follow, but our historians seem not to have thought of that. Maybe historians don't go bushwalking often enough.

Whatever the real story, three gentlemen, Blaxland, Wentworth (who was later to own Vaucluse House) and Lawson found their way up into the Blue Mountains, and within a few years, hordes of white settlers were following them over, and spreading out.

As the railway passed up and over the mountains in the 1860s, so the mountain towns lost their importance as staging posts, and the whole area turned to a tourist spot. The valleys were largely impossible to farm, and they were arid sandstone soil in any case: people went on out into the west to farm.

The park runs into the Wollemi National Park in the north, and Kanangra-Boyd in the south. The main attractions in this area lie within the Blue Mountains National Park. You may prefer a more "touristy" visit: say Katoomba, Mount Victoria, and Hartley. A word of warning: if you go walking anywhere, don't drink the water in the creeks and streams!

The fastest route to get there is via the Great Western Highway and the Western Freeway, while more pleasant routes are to be found through Richmond and Windsor, Bell's Line of Road, the Mount Tomah Gardens and Mount Victoria. You could even combine a trip to the Blue Mountains with a trip to the Wisemans Ferry area, or to Jenolan Caves and Oberon, and so along major roads to the Southern Highlands.

The Jenolan Caves are beyond the mountains themselves, though still in mountainous country. They are limestone caves, some of which are lit and open to the public on guided tours. It can be very cold in the caves in winter, and snow is possible in the area. On the way there, you may like to consider a brief stop at the Hartley Historic Site, just after you turn off the highway onto the Jenolan road.

To thaw yourself after the cold caves, visit the Norman Lindsay Gallery, 14 Norman Lindsay Crescent, Faulconbridge, to see Lindsay's warm, joyful, voluptuous nudes, his paintings, etchings, sculpture, ship models, novels and memorabilia. The gallery is open 1000 - 1600, except on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.