The blue Blue Mountains of NSW

From the Snowy Mountains to the Blue Mountains isn't too far. We stopped in Bathurst on the way, an inland city with a University. Eat your heart out Goulburn, this is a different league. It even had a great restaurant, "The Crowded Man" if you are ever passing. Unfortunately our dinner was interrupted by a tropical storm (we had been sitting outside), fortunately we were between courses so just grabbed our bottle of wine and scuttled inside.

The Blue Mountains proper start a bit nearer to Sydney. We stayed in Katoomba, the heart of the region and depending on your point of view, the centre of the tackiest tourest trap in Australia or one of the most beautiful places in the world. Both are true. You can reach Katoomba on the Sydney suburban line train in about an hour so it is very touristy (with museums of handbags, plates and teddy bears among the less sophisticated cultural offerings). I felt sorry for Faulconbridge, a small town near by whose sole claim to fame is that its name is thirteen letters long, no letter is repeated and every vowel is present. Even having a museum of handbags seems a step up from that. And where did the 'u' come from?

About 100 yards from our motel window was Echo Point. The plateau on which Katoomba stands ends in a precipice going straight down 200-300 metres into a vast bowl of sub-tropical forest. In the distance are other mountains, some isolated peaks poking through the vegetation, others, very blue and very distant, forming a wall around the forest. There are waterfalls every half mile or so falling into the forest. At dusk the sky is red on one side, across the bowl clouds drift. Turn around and you can see the tourist tat but why bother!

We walked down into the forest the next day. It's quite tame if you keep to the signed tracks. Until recently, most years some ill equiped hiker would wander off and get lost. Even helicopter mounted heat-seeking sensors don't work through forest canopy and that was that until years later when the remains would be found. But mobile phones have changed all that, if you get lost just dial 000.

Our track was easy to follow but steep. There are steps down and up but there are about 1000 each way. One option is the direct 1000 Stair Route - straight up/down. We aren't macho enough for that and meandered down slowly through "Ferny Bower" and "Fairy Dell" (Australians have a weakness for whimsey). Ferny Bower had a notice listing wildlife we might see. It included ten types of snake though none I remembered from the list at Sydney Zoo, still the Death Adder didn't sound exactly warm and cuddly. As it happened the most impressive creatures we saw were a couple of soot black cockatoos. When we first saw them it was hard to pick out where wings, tails etc started. They were more like a pair of black holes in a pine tree. When they did fly off they showed solid scarlet under their wings. Think of Dracula spreading his cape. There were also lizards and lyrebirds but we're used to them.


It was our last night before returning to Sydney and we had a meal in an excellent fish restaurant in Katoomba with window seats facing a small side street opposite. A beaten up old Holden screeched to halt in the side street. Two identical men got out. Black tee-shirts, black baggies, black hair. As wide as they were tall. And they were tall. They looked tough. The suspension on the car rose a foot when they got out. I thought of a line from Woody Allen, "I know these people, well not exactly people." They banged on a door. If they were collecting rent I'd recommend paying. An old van drew up. A similar figure emerged but with a grey ponytail. El capo. He supervised as black bags are taken from van to house, then a large black crate like object big enough to hold a body. They talked briefly and drove off. We were feeling brave and thought we'd investigate. Perhaps a crime had been committed. Down these mean streets a man must walk .... We crossed the road and into the side street. It was the collection point for a charity shop. The underworld heavies had left a black sofa and its cushions.

So back to Sydney for a peaceful couple of days, relaxing and visiting a friend from Bristol, Peter Aplin. Peter and his wife recently returned to Australia after he had spent about thirty years at Bristol University. It was a wonderful chance to ask all the questions we'd accumulated. Also Peter had worked on SILLIAC which was Oz's first big computer (Sydney ILLIAC) and Eleanor was probably rather bored as we talked about computers and how things work. A few bits of my long lost physics came back.

He mentioned that his brother-in-law had been researching the family tree and found a convict ancestor. This is the prize all Australians seek these days. Normally you find someone who was transported for poaching a rabbit to feed his starving family, stealing a silk handkerchief for his sweetheart or a was a political prisoner (i.e. Irish). Even Australian academics are a bit doubtful about this. At the risk of facing universal outrage, at least one has pointed out that a) British juries were notoriously independent and tended to find defendents not guilty if they thought the punishment would be disproportionate to the offence, and b) the records shows most transportees were guilty of major crimes. So what happened to the descendent of murderers, highway robbers and burglars? I have a theory: they all got jobs at Tourist Information Offices.

With that, it's time for NZ. Last thoughts on Australia? Just send the immigration papers, if they'd have us after that last comment I'd sign up any day. But maybe NZ will be even better.

ee by gum

Kosciuszko National Park (I spelt it wrong last time) is in the Snowy Mountains. It is largely a skiing area in the Aussie winter but at the moment it is walking and looking at mountains, lakes and gum (eucalyptus) tree country.


Some of the lakes are man-made as the Snowy Mountain Project in the late '40s built dams and provided hydro-electric power. I mention the project only because it was the work of a unique Australian politician, Prime Minister Chiffley. In general, politicians are recorded on Australia's list of venemous creatures, below the Taipan snake but above the red backed spider. Every paper and TV news item seems to be full of political scandals (or at least rumours of scandals). Chiffley is the only Prime Minister you ever hear spoken of in positive terms. One politician, in a newspaper article, said "Though I disagree with all his politics, he was a great man". Which is saying a lot in a country where Blair and Brown would be seen as indecently fond of each other.

But back to the gum trees. You can't move twenty yards in Oz without falling over one, having one fall on you or being bitten by something living in one. There are hundreds of varieties. Here are some with wild flowers mixed in. Bush fires burn the trees and vegetation. These ones survived the fire (the bark was burnt and covered with soot however) and the yellow flowers are one of the first things to start filling in the gaps.

It doesn't do justice to the effect - imagine the trunks blacker and the flowers yellower. You may be able to see how the bark peels off the tree. This is a cunning plot by eucalypts. Australian wild life has adapted an old saying, here it's "If it moves catch it and eat it; if it doesn't, eat it anyway". Assorted insects burrow into eucalypt bark and lay their eggs. The eggs hatch and just when lots of wriggly things are getting hungry for fresh young tree flesh, the bark peels off leaving the wrigglies homeless - and surrounded by lizards and birds looking for their lunch.

I guess it's a bit like having an exfoliating scrub. It does mean that the whole of Oz is covered with a layer of bark.


Throughout the mountains, there are signs warning you about animals, wombat, emu, kangaroo, brumbies (wild horses). There are also two different signs warning you about horse riders. One shows the usual androgynous figure on a horse. In the other, the rider is a very well developed woman. Whether different precautions are appropriate I couldn't say. But we hadn't seen anything apart from a rabbit and some unidentifiable road kill until we came to the edge of the mountains.

The last town we visited in the Park was Talbingo, home of Miles Franklin who wrote "My Beautiful Career" (worth reading if you haven't seen the film). It is a beautiful setting with a lake surrounded by a golden plain and the Snowy Mountains in the background. As we were leaving we saw the usual sign.

Then we saw a movement in the grass and pulled over. No emus (we never saw one) but lots of 'roos


About five or six family groups, each with about five to seven animals had gathered in grass land near a pool (and conveniently near a rest area). It was wonderful. I might have got a bit closer but one of the males was giving me a very funny look: "One step closer to my wife and I'll have you ....". A kick from a 5ft tall kangeroo can leave you short of a few yards of intestine. So quietly away.


A good point to stop for now. Oh, I nearly forgot, Thredbo. An out of season skiing resort. Unexciting even by the low standards of small town Australia. I wonder if it was someone rather than the place that left Amanda viewing it in such a golden light?

Towards Shangri-La?

And so as the sun pours down like honey on Kangaroo Valley it is time to say good bye. We have admired your wood turning, tasted your marinated aubergine and fallen into your river. Next stop Kosciusko National Park (pronounced "cossy-us-ko" in Australian but probably not in the original Polish). Amanda had painted such a glowing portrait of the park and Thredbo in particular that we felt obliged to go. Imagine living our lives without visiting Thredbo.

It's over there at the end of the bridge over ... we a field but that's because it hasn't rained much recently. Not since they built the bridge in fact.

From K-Vs lush English greenery we went up into thicker eucalypt bush then down again. Next stop Moss Vale: Gene Pitney is singing at the Wool Shed, and it looks as though it is just a shed. It's a lot more than 24 hours from Tulsa.

We stop on the outskirts of Goulburn "The Fastest Growing Inland City in NSW". Can you sense the desperation: 95% of Australians live on the coast so you aren't exactly going for the biggest challenge around, and only "fastest growing" with a current population of 42,000 isn't as hard as being "largest". Not sure what makes you a 'city' in Australia, judging by the sign it is having a McDonalds, a KFC and two Thai restaurants. Also historic abbattoir and tannery.  We decide to miss it.

Next we miss Canberra. Even the guide book was struggling ("can have pleasant weather in spring and autumn"). Canberra is a compromise: both Sydney and Melbourne wanted to be national capital so neither got it though Sydney got agreement that it be within 100 miles of Sydney and in NSW. It also has it's own port, miles away south of Sydney.

Next we missed a very big lake. Can't remember the name (Prince George?) About the biggest lake in NSW, an oval, 8 miles wide and 10 tall. We didn't mean to miss it. I was navigating and getting more and more nervous. Maybe we'd taken a wrong turn (there is only about one turn off every fifty miles) but everything looked right. Then we saw a viewpoint for the lake, so relief but still no lake. It had turned into a grassy plain. About 60 square miles of water just gone. "So it goes" as they say on Tralfamadore.

Then a series of tiny towns. You have to admire the confidence of Australians, however small the town they always have four lanes down main street even if the road in is just one lane wide. "One day", they think, "this will be a great city, like Goulburn. When the second Thai restaurant opens." But maybe not here:

Still, you can dream:

The other feature common to small towns it that there are women walking forcefully away from them. Actually not just women, the Tumut Rural News (main story "Tumut girl gets Uni place at second attempt") reports that a Sikh doctor lasted only a week before escaping back to India. A local worthy said "They came over for dinner on the second night and he was saying things like 'How can anyone live here?' and 'How do you stay sane?'. I should have seen the danger signs."

We lasted one night in Cooma. Cooma was OK. What do you say? It had shops, a couple of cafes and a shop that sold complicated equipment for doing unnatural things to farm animals. A perfectly normal town. But then we only had to stay one night. After a week you feel differently.