The answers to two questions usually seem to have provided enough information for the early settlers to enable them to map and name the vast land they inhabited.
What is it and what colour is it?
And so it is, with the likes of The Grey and Green Rivers, The Gold Coast, The Snowy River and The Blue Mountains.
Three hours north of Sydney the mountain range's name refers to the appearance that it takes on as a result of the Eucalyptus forests that grow there. The trees generate a fine mist of oil that refracts the sun light creating the blue haze that hangs over the iconic landscape of ridge back peaks and limestone stacks.
Clare assured me of a memorable view from the lookout and true to her word, I will never forget it.
The mist was so thick that even the information board, that might have conveyed some semblance of the hidden majesty, was itself obscured. No Blue Mountains. No Three Sisters stacks. Three hours drive for a no show might seem like a waste of time but undeterred we forged through the gloom to the ominously named Giant's Staircase.
The mist that had obscured the view from the top was the making of the descent and down 650 steps we climbed. Clare loomed out of the fog behind me like some creature from another planet, resplendent in a 4 dollar, head to toe, transparent plastic poncho complete with hood. Looking like a cross between an over sized freezer bag and a refugee from an itinerant biological decontamination team, she rustled with every movement.
Each step was either carved from the rock face or grafted to it in the form of precariously positioned steel structures too proud to call themselves ladders but lacking the front to claim paid up staircase status. Round the contours of the rock face we wound, under over hangs and through tunnels blasted into the rock, at times staring down at precipitous drops and others penetrating crevices deep within the rock face.
Mist swirled around us and the sound of our progress was muffled. Eerie cries from all directions pierced the white shroud that wound itself about us. Periodically shadowy silhouettes would flit out of the murk only to disappear again in a moment.
We met no one and the sense of total physical and sensory isolation quickly became envelopping.
Beside us, the limestone stacks of the Three Sisters remained hidden until a break in the cloud revealed the nearest, and only then a portion a few metres above and below us, the rest losing its form and shape as it dissolved into the wreath of whiteness. The stronger the sun tried to burn off the cloud, the whiter and more obscuring the effect became as the light was reflected.
Without warning the cloud base broke, revealing an emerald forest canopy several hundred feet below us. The shrieking culprits in the mist were exposed as parakeets who soaredin flocks above the tree tops but far below our vantage point. As we descended further, they sat in plain view in the trees about us, some dazzling white, others black, both with a characteristic flash of yellow crest on their heads.
By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase, the air was hot and humid and the ground was soft and moss bound under foot. The base of the cliff face down which we had descended stretched above us into the mists over head. Aboriginal art work decorated the recesses created by the overhangs carved by eons of wind erosion. Leeches hung from low branches, waiting to latch onto us as we passed.
After a walk through the forest floor, we climbed the staircase again, entirely expecting some prehistoric throw back to emerge from the undergrowth behind us.
What greeted us as we climbed was a coach load of Japanese tourists intent on screaming into the mist from every vantage point, seemingly immune to the spell that the scene had cast on everyone else we met on the ascent.
We came to see The Blue Mountains.
I'm rather glad we didn't.
What is it and what colour is it?
And so it is, with the likes of The Grey and Green Rivers, The Gold Coast, The Snowy River and The Blue Mountains.
Three hours north of Sydney the mountain range's name refers to the appearance that it takes on as a result of the Eucalyptus forests that grow there. The trees generate a fine mist of oil that refracts the sun light creating the blue haze that hangs over the iconic landscape of ridge back peaks and limestone stacks.
Clare assured me of a memorable view from the lookout and true to her word, I will never forget it.
The mist was so thick that even the information board, that might have conveyed some semblance of the hidden majesty, was itself obscured. No Blue Mountains. No Three Sisters stacks. Three hours drive for a no show might seem like a waste of time but undeterred we forged through the gloom to the ominously named Giant's Staircase.
The mist that had obscured the view from the top was the making of the descent and down 650 steps we climbed. Clare loomed out of the fog behind me like some creature from another planet, resplendent in a 4 dollar, head to toe, transparent plastic poncho complete with hood. Looking like a cross between an over sized freezer bag and a refugee from an itinerant biological decontamination team, she rustled with every movement.
Each step was either carved from the rock face or grafted to it in the form of precariously positioned steel structures too proud to call themselves ladders but lacking the front to claim paid up staircase status. Round the contours of the rock face we wound, under over hangs and through tunnels blasted into the rock, at times staring down at precipitous drops and others penetrating crevices deep within the rock face.
Mist swirled around us and the sound of our progress was muffled. Eerie cries from all directions pierced the white shroud that wound itself about us. Periodically shadowy silhouettes would flit out of the murk only to disappear again in a moment.
We met no one and the sense of total physical and sensory isolation quickly became envelopping.
Beside us, the limestone stacks of the Three Sisters remained hidden until a break in the cloud revealed the nearest, and only then a portion a few metres above and below us, the rest losing its form and shape as it dissolved into the wreath of whiteness. The stronger the sun tried to burn off the cloud, the whiter and more obscuring the effect became as the light was reflected.
Without warning the cloud base broke, revealing an emerald forest canopy several hundred feet below us. The shrieking culprits in the mist were exposed as parakeets who soaredin flocks above the tree tops but far below our vantage point. As we descended further, they sat in plain view in the trees about us, some dazzling white, others black, both with a characteristic flash of yellow crest on their heads.
By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase, the air was hot and humid and the ground was soft and moss bound under foot. The base of the cliff face down which we had descended stretched above us into the mists over head. Aboriginal art work decorated the recesses created by the overhangs carved by eons of wind erosion. Leeches hung from low branches, waiting to latch onto us as we passed.
After a walk through the forest floor, we climbed the staircase again, entirely expecting some prehistoric throw back to emerge from the undergrowth behind us.
What greeted us as we climbed was a coach load of Japanese tourists intent on screaming into the mist from every vantage point, seemingly immune to the spell that the scene had cast on everyone else we met on the ascent.
We came to see The Blue Mountains.
I'm rather glad we didn't.
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