Australia's Blue Heaven

26.03.2016 32 °C

The dawn chorus in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney is a cacophony of tinkling carillon rung out by the bell birds that nest in the eucalyptus forest carpeting the valley floor punctuated by the screeching alarms of cockatoos as they whirl above the surrounding sandstone cliffs…

And there you have it – in 49 words without punctuation – a simple description of a breathtaking experience that no photo can truly encapsulate. But here’s another view…

There are vistas, and viewpoints, in every direction along the escarpments overlooking the deep ravines that snake their way through this ancient landscape. Millions of tourists, and locals, daily flock to Katoomba, and a string of smaller towns, to peer down into the canyons. While the more agile hike down the near vertical trails for the sheer pleasure of scrambling back up, we did not…

However, we did climb to the topmost point where a blacksmith’s anvil has been cemented to a pinnacle. The view was spectacular...

It is Easter weekend and still 32 degrees on the coast but the Blue Mountains are frequently clouded in a refreshing mist and blanketed by cloud. So, as we left the mountains to drive the final 100kms to Sydney, we passed a continuous stream of traffic crawling at a snails pace the other way. We had sunny days in the mountains, but these giant sandstone caves have been sculpted into the cliff face by millions of years of wind and rain…

The Blue Mountains are not high, roughly three thousand feet, and are not actually blue.
It was once believed that the ultramarine haze that appears to hang over the mountains was caused by eucalyptus oil given off by the trees. However, it seems that the actual cause is the considerably less romantic phenomena known as Rayleigh’s Scattering.

After driving more than 9,000 kms we have finally dropped off the wheels and are spending the next few days in the heart of Sydney. Before the Blue Mountains we visited Canberra, the capital of Australia. It is a sleepy city filled with bland architecture and, perhaps, the most extensive series of war memorials anywhere in the world. This entire avenue is lined with cenotaphs…

Judging by the number of war memorials it would be easy to believe that Australians are continually at war, and the ugly concrete bunker that is the Australian parliament building might well have been built with this is mind…