Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

By Patrick Totty

One of the rarest things on this good earth is a grand national park that lies within a hour’s drive of a major city. Two exceptions that leap to mind are Everglades National Park in Florida, about 60 minutes from Miami, and the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, less than an hour from Sydney on a good driving day.

Sydneysiders appreciate the proximity of the park, which reminds American visitors of a cross between the vegetative richness of the Great Smokey Mountains, the mesas of Grand Canyon (although on a far smaller scale) and the rich color of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Their attitude wasn’t always so positive. For years Australians cursed the Blue Mountains before they realized the treasure they had on their hands. The heavily forested sandstone highlands, which begin about 40 miles west of Sydney and rise up to 3,600 feet, seemed impassable. Nobody could figure a route past their high box canyons and dense woods to the imagined riches of the Outback. It seemed that the mountains, named after the oily blue haze emitted by their millions of eucalypts, would forever bar Sydney’s access to its vast western hinterland.

But in 1813, an exploration party consisting of three explorers, their four servants, four pack horses and five dogs, hacked their way over the mountains in 18 days, discovering a surprisingly gentle slope down to the Outback on the Blues’ western side.

They found that passage over the “mountains” – actually a vast sandstone plateau – was really pretty simple: All you had to do was pick a ridgeline path at the mountains’ lower eastern elevations and follow it up and over to the western side.

It was much like a mahout traversing an elephant by starting his climb at its trunk as it rests on the ground, scaling the elephant’s head, clambering along the spine and then sliding down the tail. Come at the beast from the side, though, and the task would be nearly impossible. 

Once the Blues were demystified, Australians lost no time building a road through them. Within only a year after the 1813 expedition, convict laborers punched a 100-mile road to the rural town of Bathurst in the Outback and Sydney had gained almost overnight access to a frontier that stretched 2,500 miles west.

When gold was discovered near Bathurst in the 1850s, swarms of wannabe rich men headed over the mountains from Sydney. It soon became clear that the Bathurst Rd. and horse-drawn vehicles couldn’t keep up with the demand for transport or supplies. By the early 1860s surveyors were scoping out a railway route and the first train across the Blues left the station in July, 1867.

Along with knowledge of the mountains came appreciation: The creamy yellow limestone of the mountains, formed into mesa-like cliffs, and the deep green forests of the flat-topped heights and their intervening canyons were appealing sights to city folks. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, hotels began springing up in the area, increasingly attracting Sydneysiders who were finding the mountains to be a perfect hiking and picnicking destination, just a short train ride away. In summer, the Blues’ modest heights provided an attractive refuge from the coastal plain’s often torrid heat.

When the first auto tried the Bathurst Rd. in 1904 (it was so underpowered it needed a horse to pull it over the summit), the era of motor coach tours and Sunday drives was not far off.

Today you can approach the Blues by road or rail as anything from a wonderful day trip to a satisfying week-long excursion. Routes through them are dotted with little towns that offer every level of accommodation, dining and shopping. Outfitters offer tours that range from narrated bus rides and assisted backpack trips to horseback expeditions alongside and down the park’s canyons.

Highlights of the park include the vista to and from the Three Sisters, a three-peaked sandstone formation that juts out from a forested mesa and looks down a 1,000-foot drop to miles of lush green – a swath created by one of Australia’s most diverse collection of eucalypts. Besides Ayres Rock in the “red center” of the continent, the Three Sisters are easily the most photographed natural formation in Australia.

Australians have protected the mountains, placing 2.5 million acres (about 4,000 square miles) in seven national parks and one conservation reserve*. That area, a World Heritage Site since 2000, covers an area about 1/3 the size of Belgium.

*The parks are Blue Mountains, Wollemi, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes. The reserve is the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve.

Some useful URLs:
http://www.npws.nsw.gov.au
http://www.bluemts.com.au/tourist/Default.asp