The Wandering Tattler

This morning we drove for about two hours westward, from low-lying Sydney to the rugged and spectacularly eroded escarpment that leads to a 3,000-foot-tall plateau that stretches across most of the continent. The flanks of these “mountains” are extremely steep and are thickly covered by a rich eucalyptus and tree-fern forest, which in many places qualifies as a temperate rainforest. The Blue Mountains, like the Great Barrier Reef, were designated a World Heritage Site to encourage conservation. Greater Sydney stretches away from the sea for scores of miles in all directions, its suburbs extending into the national park. When we arrived at the first overlook site, thick fog filled the chasms and canyons, while the profiles of tall pinnacles and jagged ridges were revealed in openings of the dense clouds. We took several short hikes and then walked down a long boardwalk into the rainforest interior, where we hoped to hear a superb lyrebird, one of the world’s greatest avian mimics, but instead met a family from New York City. (The New Yorkers were two parents and a son who had come to Australia for the wedding. The son, in his mid-twenties, was a Democrat who worked in the State Department for Condoleeza Rice). We returned to the rim of the canyon via an elevated tram. As the day progressed, the clouds and fog broke up and we were treated to broad vistas and stunning views into the bottom of the forested canyons. We found a site off the beaten track called “Sublime Point,” which was a lookout at the tip of a long narrow ridge that extended far above the forest and provided magnificent views in all directions. At this lookout we were joined by a couple of young South Africans who had moved rrecently to Melbourne. They gave us some advice for our impending, brief visit to their city.