Trials and Tesselations

Had a weekend away in the Blue Mountains with Andy and Ian...partly because I wanted to get a bit of training in for the City 2 Surf, partly because i've not been for a bit of sightseeing but mostly because I just like exploring! For those that don't know, the Blue Mountains lie West of Sydney by about 2 hours. Parts of the mountains are sacred to the Aboriginies and have been for thousands of years. The majority of the mountains are plateau tops with steep canyons, covered with forest - mainly made up of the Eucalyptus tree. The oil given off by the trees gives off a blue haze as it hits the sunlight, enveloping the views with a beautiful blue mist when the conditions are right - hence the name. One thing's for sure, they certainly are beautiful. For those that have ventured that far in the blog there is a photo of me looking out from Echo point on one of my first posts.


The first day we found many dells and nice waterfalls, as can be noted by said photos.

Anyhoo...we decided to get off the beaten track and hit some of the trails into the deep valleys to see what we could find - i was hoping for at least some dangerous wildlife of some sort, saw none at all... but I was wary of snakes. You see, the little buggers like to hide under piles of leaves during the winter period and only move when you sort of stand on them, which I was quite happy not to do - especially as the kind of terrain we were on to was not for your average walker and littered with fallen trees, branches, twigs and piles of leaves. Boulders and steep inclines, wet slippy drops and rock overhangs, mud, ferns and plenty of logs to clamber up and over. We managed about 15km over the two days, which isn't much really, but gives you some idea of the terrain. My calves are killing me!

This picture was taken after we double-timed it to the top of said cliff to Martin's lookout (probably named after you, Wak..? lol) which was hell. My legs were like jelly by the time we got to the top, having been some 100m vertically below the lookout minutes earlier deep in the valley bottom. Doesn't sound like a lot but believe me those steps hewn into the rocks were a royal pain. Mind you, no pain, no gain....

What we also did was some de-bunking. It's important to note that the weather in Australia is not always hot and sunny and we did our best to prove it. I thought i'd get a great picture of the view to put on the blog but ended only with this....

The above view should have been across into the distance from a sacred meeting point for the Aboriginies - King's Tableland - which is a remarkable rock plateau with tesselations all over it - as can be seen here. The second photo shows a small pool with grooves in the stone. These grooves are worn into the rock by the aboriginies sharpening their tools, such as spear heads, and then they cool them in these pools.


Finally - disappointed that we didn't get the 'pay off' of the view, we returned the next day when the air was a little clearer to get an 'after' shot to the above 'before'...very nice view after all...