Blue Mountains: Overrated or bad planning?
Tuesday, 13 January
For my last day in Sydney I decided to go to the Blue Mountains. After hearing from a close friend (Mike) that it was a real highlight when he was studying in Australia, and that another friend (Georgie) had got a tattoo of one of the mountain ranges, I felt compelled to go. Admittedly, I was not feeling 100% on the morning of the trip as I had stayed out late the night before playing pool in a non-specific bar in the city. I also stayed a little longer than I should have because there was someone that caught my eye and I was hoping I’d be able to strike up a conversation with them at some point. I won’t go on…if you want to know you can ask!
To get deep into the mountains, and access the best hiking routes and views of the valleys below, it’s a slightly tedious two-and-a-half-hour drive on the motorway. It was an unpleasant drive, largely because I had to constantly put my foot to the floor so my little Kia didn’t frustrate the local Aussies trying to get to work behind me.
After about an hour, my eyelids were starting to droop despite the ‘long black’ coffee I had ordered from a motorway service station. I decided to curtail my journey at Springfield, a small town right on the threshold of the mountains.
I saw a sign for ‘Martin’s Lookout’, so I made my way down a windy gravel road and reached a dead end which could only have meant a lovely trek lay ahead, right? As you can see from the first photo, I was feeling optimistic, bag straps firmly on and ready to explore.
I found Martin’s Lookout (second picture) after about two and a half minutes and got a pretty amazing view (albeit a little overcast) that reached out over the eucalyptus forests that span the landscape. Apparently the eucalyptus oil gives it its blue haze. I just saw haze. I did, however, see a sign for ‘perch ponds’ which were only a 2.5km trek away down into the valley. This seemed reasonable, I thought, and I began my plunge into the thick forest.
The floor was a little wet following a thunderstorm the night before so I slipped and slid my way down this tight track, ducking branches either side of me. And unbeknownst to me at the time, spiders tend to remake their webs after a period of rainfall. I must have walked into fifty webs that criss-crossed the forest trees. I felt like Frodo in Shelob’s lair (apologies for the niche The Lord of the Rings reference). After several attempts to spit the webs from my mouth and ruffle them from my hair, I reached the bottom a little flustered and a little ego-bruised.
I looked up and I was surrounded by dense forest and a disappointingly small pond. I then looked around and it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t seen a single person on this trek. A wave of anxiety hit me - maybe I’d missed an announcement on the news? Maybe all the other Aussies and travellers had seen a bushfire warning, it had been 40 degrees the day before after all. Naturally, I did a little ‘Google’ on my phone and the initial AI summary read ‘high fire danger’ and ‘total fire bans’ across the region. My mind started racing.
After devouring a rather squished sandwich I had prepared the night before I broke into a hurried walk back up the mountain. I looked at my phone again to see which way I should go and my phone signal stated ‘SOS’. I longed for a hiking buddy who would have calmed me down at this point. In fact, I just needed to hear another voice, it was eerily quiet. I found the track again and put on my only podcast that I had downloaded on Spotify. Unfortunately, that meant I had the voice of Stephen Bartlett in my ears for the journey back. That’s how desperate I was.
What did help was that I had taken out all of the spider webs on the way down so I didn’t have to worry about those on the way back up. After a very sweaty two-hour return hike uphill I finally saw my Kia emerge through the thicket, never had I been happier to see a car.
Clearly the trick to a good hike is to have a well-planned route, not be hungover and to not be so distraught when you walk into a spider’s web. On another note, I could quite happily have gone to the lookout, taken in the view, taken a photo and then taken the car keys out of my pocket and driven home. No need to plunge myself into the valley below with all its crevices and lurky thingies.
I also realised that I had left my rain jacket on the rock I was sitting on when eating my sandwich. In fact, this made me reflect; now that I’m six weeks and halfway into my trip and, having stayed in 14 different rooms from Airbnbs and hotels to pretty grimy motels and Ol’s bedroom (not as grimy), I thought I would take a stock check of my items. Like my mum’s car keys which seem to remain persistently out of reach in the ether somewhere, I’ve always struggled to keep track of my belongings. It’s a bad habit. So far, I’ve managed to lose a few things along the way including: earbuds, goggles, swimming shorts, a towel, a pair of socks, a hotel room key, Ol’s house key. This won’t come as a surprise to many but yeah not bad for six weeks! But as Marie Kondo once said, ‘The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't’.
