Trip to the Blue Mountains

Two years ago when I visited Sydney to present on some research I've work on with K, we ran out of time and didn't have the chance to go to the Blue Mountains, which he had told me about several times in emails. We said we would leave it for another time, but I wasn't sure when that might be. So I feel lucky that today was had the chance to go with K to the Blue Mountains, together with two of his friends.

We left the house at 6.20 to catch the train to meet up with two of K's friends, one of which I had let us stay at her house in 2013 for a presentation in Melbourne and one of which did us the favor of reading through our book manuscript. Both are great.

Pic through the window of a speeding train.

Another pic from the train window. Note the fall colors. You can tell that the trees with fall colors are imported, because there are no indigenous deciduous trees on the Australian continent, as I learned today. But I also learned that there's an indigenous deciduous plant in Tasmania.

We got off the train and arrived in the town near the Blue Mountains National Park.

The other day when we went on the Harbour walk, K mentioned the Australian Impressionist school that had a camp on the Harbour, called Curlew Camp. He said that the Australian Impressionists were trying the paint the unique way that light interacted with the landscape in Australia, in the southern hemisphere. I've looked at the paintings online and really like them. I've also been thinking about what quality of light I would name as uniquely of this place. And I think it would be the way shadows seem to get very dark very quickly. I could just be imagining things, but I think when shadows appear, they block the direct light, but then there's not a lot of refracted light (maybe?) that lights the places that are shaded from the direct light. In any case, as we walked by this store selling "Slow Food" and illustrating their slowness with a snail, I thought the snail icon and the dark, netted shadow of the tree were equally striking.

The cafe we ate scones at. I also had some hot chocolate. It was 9 degrees c at 9.00 this morning. (16 degrees at 3.00, for the high).

Over the course of about a kilometer, the town faded into country and we were getting close to the hiking trails.

And close to the overlooks.

K said the Blue Mountains are called the Blue Mountains because of the blue haze above the valley, produced somehow by the eucalyptus trees that cover the valley floor. K also said that one of his friends from Texas visited the park with him and said that the area looks like the US Southwest, except with trees. I think that's a good observation! And I was glad to have it pointed out, since I've often wondered what the US Southwest (particularly Escalante or the San Rafael Swell) would look like if the climate changed and it became very wet and covered in trees. K also commented that usually, mountains are things that we look up at, but the experience of the Blue Mountains is to be at a high elevation and look laterally at the other buttes and down at the valleys.

Look how close this building (a house?) is to the edge.

Just so you don't think we were in the wilderness at this point, I'm posting a picture of the scene on the other side of the street.

Clearly, an introduced tree!

A famous rock formation called "The Three Sisters." They've got the same name as a formation in Goblin Valley Utah.

I was one among many picture takers.

Earlier in the week I told K that I remembered seeing parrots in the trees in the Blue Mountains when I visited during Christmas of 1991 or 1992. He suggested we might see some birds flying in the treetops, in flocks, down in the valley. We looked but didn't see birds. We saw a green balloon far below.

Now we were beginning the trail. 

I liked this bark.

See what I mean about the shadows. Sometimes it seemed like film noir, oriented around trees. 

But in the direct sunlight, everything was bright.

Heading up to an overlook.

Here, I pointed the camera high enough that the tree in the foreground met the trees in the background.

These banksia cones and their flowers, below, were really cool.

Down the trail we went. We didn't share the trail with many people, but we did share it often with a small stream.

I saw these on the ground, banksia.

The sun reflecting in the stream on the trail.

K took us to a rock that had special significance in his family history, and and he gave each a copy of a poem he had written in 2008 related to it. Later I asked if I could quote a little of it here: "Were they happy, for those years at least? / too cruel to think otherwise / we say yes, a good life."

There was a curtain of stringy bark at the rock

Some of the rock texture in the area where we each read K's poem.

Heading down from the rock.

I stopped for a second to look at this, uncurling into the world.

There was a Bridal Veil Falls here. My pic didn't turn out well, so look here. And to see the Bridal Veil Falls just up the road from us in Utah, look here.

We passed under and overhang.

A stream along the way, with just the kind of clear and cold water that I love.

This wasn't Bridal Veil Falls but another series of cascades.

The bars on the fence made it look like someone took a dark pencil to the rocks.

Some of the homes were right on the edge of the valley's wall.

This one, for instance.

We hiked out of the valley and came up in a residential area.

I liked these shapes in the fence.

K pointed out the effect produced by the fall colors against the unrelenting green of the native Australian bush, and  he said that the one superimposed on the other made seemed like a good metaphor for Australia. 

There was a bed and breakfast that we stopped by because it was so picturesque.

They said this was a newly discovered species of native Australian pine, a carryover from eons ago, that is now being grown in Australia.

As we walked along the road, it changed from suburbs to resort-town-type shops and cafes. One of the cafes had cockatoos in front of it. Thinking of W's request that I take some pics of cockatoos if I could, I got close up and took several pictures. Even if they weren't wild, I thought, W and S would like to see them.

I didn't zoom in to get this pic. I was this close. 

While I took the pictures, I had thought the cafe placed the birds outside to attract a crowd. But K and his friends told me they were wild and that they were just hanging out. K said that someone in the crowd had seen one of the birds swipe a sugar packet and open it. I doubt I would have gotten so close to the birds if I had known they were wild.

After eating at a cafe (I had a lamb wrap), we headed to the train station to make our way back to Sydney.