Stranded in Scenic World

Today we travelled to the Blue Mountains National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site and an area of breathtaking sandstone plateaus, escarpments and gorges set amongst seemingly endless eucalyptus forest. We got off the train at the sleepy town of Katoomba, our gateway to the Mountains and Echo Point – the site of the Three Sisters cliffs. The train ride took over two hours and stopped at dozens of nowhere stations on its route through the sprawling suburbs of Sydney. One after another towns with names like MacDonald Town and Zig Zag came and went. When we finally arrived and clambered out of the packed train car we immediately felt hit by the cold and quickly put on an extra jumper and coat, at 4 degrees Katoomba was well over 10 degrees cooler than the city.

After familiarising ourselves with the town map we strolled along the main road for 2km to Echo Point, from there we would eventually make our descent down to the valley floor. The road was wide and lined either side with model-like white wooden houses topped with Australian flags and faced with creaky wooden porches and manicured lawns. As we turned off the road and into a car park we were suddenly met by an incredible and expansive view of mountains and forest that stretched out to the horizon. After taking a few photos we continued down a dusty foot path to the first Sister, the only one of the three that can be reached by foot. The path traced the cliff edge, meandering close to the cover of eucalyptus trees that looked alien to us with their brown papery layered bark that had peeled away exposing pale trunks. We descended a few hundred steps, at some points down near vertical metal ladders across the cliff face (not recommended for those with a fear of heights) until we reached a foot bridge that spanned the 1000m gorge to the Sisters. This was a truly surreal sight and one that was made all the more dreamlike by the white cockatoos perched in the trees above us squawking loudly.

After visiting the first Sister we made our descent down the remaining 1000 steps to the forest floor of the Jamison Valley. On the ground we felt as though we’d discovered a lost world far removed from the noise of Sydney. We located a route map and decided to follow a well-trodden trail to Scenic World where we could get a lift to the cliff top aboard the Scenic Cableway – Australia’s steepest aerial cable car. Happy with our plan for the day we made a start on the 5km trek along the valley floor. Unfortunately when we arrived we discovered that neither of us had actually brought any cash! The cable car was within metres but the $10 ticket price might as well have been a million dollars. This kind of diffusion of responsibility to plan and prepare has happened before but never to the extent that we've found ourselves hopelessly stranded in the shadow of a towering sandstone monolith somewhere inside 10’000 square kilometres of eucalyptus forest. We were stuck, all we could do was watch in apathy as the mammoth wheels at the mountain base began to turn, pulling happy families skyward, their smiling children safely aboard with arms waving down at us through the glass floor.

We stood there for an unknown quantity of time staring up at the cable car as it deposited its carefree cargo at the top of the cliff. With the temperature hovering just above zero we knew we had to get out of the valley before nightfall, but with only two hours of daylight remaining walking the 5 km back to the base of the Three Sisters and ascending the thousand steps to the top was out of the question. We would have to find another route back to Katoomba. It was then that we noticed a smaller sign beneath all the others, one that pointed to a route out of the valley on foot. This sign was obviously ignored by the majority of people visiting the forest floor, only the unfortunate 1% who found themselves stranded without money or food would ever know of its existence. This sign was an afterthought for fools. It even had an emergency telephone number on it and a warning about leaving plenty of time to safely ascend the valley wall. It pointed in the direction of an old disused coal house we had past a kilometre back, behind the coal house was another thousand step trail that would take us to the top. Resigned to a choice between either a 5km or 1km walk before an unavoidable 1000 step climb we chose the closer of the two and reluctantly set off for the coal house.

As expected the walk was exhausting. Half way up we stumbled upon an old bench, rotten and twisted it had clearly waited a long time to be sat upon again. It was fixed beneath an overhanging sandstone ledge. We committed the location to memory as a place to come back to in the advent of a sudden downpour, but secretly we both chalked it down a place to possibly survive the evening if our tiring legs finally gave out before the top. Another hour past and we both agreed that this was as close to the book ‘Into the Wild’ as we ever wanted to be, though by now our communication had devolved to a series of monosyllabic words, grunts and nods between stops. We decided to take a break at Victoria Viewpoint, a clearing that overlooked an enormous and truly majestic waterfall. Here we found a collection a rock slabs to rest on and an information point that explained how the slabs had been used as a barbecue at the turn of the 20^th century. Only in Australia could you stumble upon the archaeological remains of a barbecue in the middle of a national park.

We left Victoria Viewpoint and headed back into the forest, the eucalyptus leaves shimmered with the spray from the waterfall. We pressed on up the trail passing a large rock formation called Witches Leap, a giant ball of sandstone that had eroded in such a way that it now resembled a witch’s head. But by this point our luck had changed and we felt relieved to be able to make out the cliff top through the trees above us - we were going to make it out before nightfall. Once back in civilisation we made an emergency sandwich and refreshment stop before catching the two-hour train ride back to Sydney. The Blue Mountains photo album will be on the site soon.