Australia 2019 – Day 10 – Blue Mountains National Park

Yesterday I forgot to mention that, as I was driving from Canberra to Goulburn, the highway ran parallel to what in my GPS was shown as a very large lake or reservoir. But it was not. It was a dusty depression that apparently had not seen any water for a few months. Later another so-called lake ended being yet another dust bowl. It only comes to show that Australia is in the midst of a serious drought. As I learned in my visit to the museum yesterday, over the last 2,000 years Australia has suffered some epic 100-year droughts. I understand that Perth, in the arid northwest, has invested on a large desalination plant, and I wonder if Sydney and Melbourne have started looking at such plants as insurance? [Note: They have not. I asked a fellow camper from Melbourne if she knew anything about the drought or a desalination plant, and she told me she had no clue ☹]

Today I traversed the Blue Mountains, which are barely 75 kilometers from Sydney, and they are absolutely fantastic! They are the Australian equivalent to the Colorado Plateau and the Grand Canyon. So, they are a geologic plateau (i.e., a crustal block where there has not been any significant deformation since the Triassic, except that they were uplifted, as a block, in post-Triassic time). The exposed sequence again defines a regressive sequence, with shallow marine and coastal lagoon environments represented by the Permian units, and a thick Triassic fluvial sequence (braided rivers). It would be a delightful place to teach a sedimentology course, were it not for the fact that roads are narrow so there are very few places where you can stop to see the rocks.

Being so close to Sydney, the road through the mountains has been developed with pretty fancy retirement or vacation houses, along a string of very delightful towns, such as Glenbrook, Katoomba, and Blackheat. The real punch, however, is when you drive to the edge of the towns and almost fall off the cliffs into a broad green valley. It is a breathtaking view, much reminiscent of the Grand Canyon (OK, not as impressive as the Grand Canyon, but not too far behind). There are several vista points on places where the cliff of Triassic sandstones juts out, and there is a great cliff path that connects many of  these points, from The Three Sisters on the west to Sublime Point on the east.

I decided to spend the night here, thinking that tomorrow I could see other parts of the mountains. As it is, this national park allows wilderness camping, so I found a quiet point and prepared to spend the night. The problem is that by 6 pm the light is gone, so I went to bed super early. I normally sleep 8 hours, so by 2 am I was awake. I managed to cat nap in short intervals from 2 to 6 am, but after 12 hours in bed my back was definitely hurting.