A Trip Over the Mountains

On the Tuesday after Scrub Stitchin’ it was time to take Lou and Tony back to Sydney.  As we had all day to get there, we played the tourist a little bit across the Blue Mountains.

Our first stop was at Mount York.  I’ll bore you now with a little early Australian history. The English settled at Sydney in 1788 with the Blue. Mountains not that far west of there.  However, try as they might, they were unable to find a way across those mountains until 1813, when Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson finally found there way across, by following the ridges, rather than following the rivers or valleys, which all invariably ended with cliffs. Once the reached what is now Mount York, they realised they had crossed the mountains.  They continued a short distance further across what is now the Hartley Valley to Mount Blaxland before retracing their steps to Sydney.  

After that Surveyor George Evans found the route from Sydney to Bathurst and in 1814-1815 William Cox, with a band of convicts constructed the road to Bathurst.  Governor Lachlan Macquarie, accompanied by his wife and quite a large party, travelled the road and on 8 May 1815 proclaimed the site for the town of Bathurst.  Enlarge the photo of the plaque to read all the details.

The story of these explorers and others fascinated me when I was little.  We learned about them at school in 2nd class and I received a prize book at the end of the year, choosing “Explorers of Australia”.  These explorers were particularly interesting for me, as my Mum grew up in the valley just at the bottom of Mount York and story has it that the explorers camped on what was part of their property.  I’m not sure how true that is, but it made it all very relevant to a seven year old.

When I was a kid you could see the cairn at the top of Mount York from quite a distance.  Now it is sadly obscured by large trees. 

Getting from the top of Mount York, down into the Hartley Valley also proved to be quite a challenge for the road builders.  Cox’s Road was the first route down, with tree trunks being tied to the back of drays and coaches to act as a bit of a brake.  They then developed Lawson’s Long Alley, the Lockyer Road and Bergoffers Pass, before finally settling on the current route, being Mount Victoria Pass.  When I was in my teens the old roads were resurrected as bushwalking tracks and my Dad, brother and I walked up the Lockyer Road to Mount York and then down Cox’s Road.

There are various plaques around the pavilion in the first photo.  It was built in 1913, to celebrate the centenary of the crossing.  It is interesting to see the language and sentiments of the different times.  Only in the most recent plaque, dated 2013, are the local indigenous people, and the effect it had on them, acknowledged.

I really enjoyed visiting this spot again, as I haven’t been here since my teens.

Our next stop was at Katoomba to visit the iconic Three Sisters.  Imagine being the explorers trying to find your way across that landscape.

Once again, I haven’t been here for years.  I think Mick and I have only been here together once before, many years ago.  It is usually so busy with tourists.  Once again, it was school holidays and was surprisingly quiet.  Happy days.  We had to have a the obligatory touristy photos.

Just near where we parked the car we were treated to a siting of a lyrebird.  This is only the second time we’ve ever seen one in the wild.  It didn’t have it’s feathers up, but was rather lovely to see and hear.

As we continued on towards Sydney I mentioned that the Camping and Caravan Show was on later in the week at Rosehill Racecourse and we were considering going to go down to have look this year, as we haven’t been for a while.  We had a little look online and discovered that it had started that day.  Let’s face it, Mick was about over driving by now, as he has done quite a bit over the last month, so we made a decision to see if we could book into the same hotel as Lou and Tony.  Yes, they had a vacancy, so that’s what we did.  Fortunately, there is a little supermarket/convenience store near there, so we were able to buy the necessary toiletries to do us for the night.  The bonus was that we had an extra evening with Lou and Tony before they flew out early the following morning.  We said our goodbyes that night, as they had an early start.  

The last thing I expected was to be seeing this view on the Tuesday night.

The following morning we made our way to Rosehill Racecourse to check out the caravans and other things on show.  We came away very happy with the van we have, not having seen anything at all that we would rather own.  The only thing we bought was our lunch.

We were taken with this little cutie, if you only had a mid sized vehicle.  Can you believe that it even had a small ensuite.

Fast Ed from Better Homes and Gardens was doing cooking demonstrations.  

Mugging me got pulled out of the small crowd to be a guinea pig.  My, he is tall.

We were treated to a beautiful sunset as we drove home.  The end of a nice couple of days.