Travelling Pathetically - High Altitude Edition*

 *Disclaimer: The term "high altitude" should only be understood in the context of the rest of Australia. The author of this blog is not intending to make disparaging comparisons between the altitude mentioned in this blog entry and the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains or indeed an overfull landfill.

I traveled to meet old friends in the Blue Mountains the other week.  I envisioned a relaxing weekend high (see disclaimer) above the expanse of Sydney surrounded by bushland.  Unfortunately I was thrown into controversy the moment I arrived.  Without bothering to give me her traditional greeting of "What the hell are you doing here?"  My friend immediately took me to task for not giving her a job.  Well not a job exactly.  The word "job" implies payment and possibly even appreciation for effort put in.  Neither of these were on offer.  What she was annoyed with was that I had managed to acquire correspondents in Tasmania and New Zealand but had never once offered her the post of Blue Mountains correspondent.

The more she talked about it the more I saw the value of the idea.  Particularly since foam was forming at the corners of her mouth and there were kitchen knives within easy reach.  But there were other reasons apart from sheer self preservation for bestowing such an honour upon her.  My Blue Mountains correspondent (as she must henceforth be known) has had a quite exciting life.  She's beaten off muggers in Rome, belly danced in the Middle East, fled furious (and slightly misinformed) anti American crowds in Mexico and more recently separated her shoulder into many more pieces than it should logically possess as the result of a motorcycle accident.  By comparison with my Tasmanian correspondent (currently on a one woman crusade to exterminate huntsman spiders) and my New Zealand correspondent (doing dubious things with milking equipment) the prospects of exciting action packed stories for this blog seemed good.

"Congratulations," I announced, "you've got the position." (I steered away from the word "job" at the last minute).  "Now what exciting tales have you got for me?"

"Let me tell you about my garden," she said eagerly.  Before I could ask questions like "Why?" she was off and racing.  After about two hours of breathless explanation as to why the acquisition of a particular bush was quite the personal coup I interrupted nervously.

"Is the exciting bit coming?"

After a couple more hours of garden exposition I interrupted again with more than a hint of desperation.

"Let's go for a walk."

"Around my garden?"

"No!"

With the garden of my Blue Mountains correspondent very temporarily off the list of conversation topics we cast about for some slightly less well organised plantlife to wander about in.  Fortunately Wentworth Falls, the sliver of the Blue Mountains my correspondent calls home, has quite an abundance of such stuff.  For various physical reasons we decided on a small and gentle walk.  I was still semi crippled from playing a game corporate soccer several days ago while she had learnt that more than nine hours a day on her feet caused the tear in her achilles tendon to give her some distress.  We decided on a gentle walk of only a few kilometres to the bizarrely named Minnehaha Falls.

We started in a park that backed onto untamed bushland (well untamed except for the walking path, occasional bridge and ladders to help with the steep parts) and set off into the wild as our ancestors might have done ages ago if there had been a parks department to make a path for them first.

As you can see we weren't exactly hacking our way through the jungle

At first there were distressing signs of civilisation like roads, electrical towers and so on but as we progressed these faded away and we were left with reassuring signs of civilisation such as a path to walk on and bridges over the difficult bits. 

Given that we were heading towards a waterfall you will not be surprised to hear that water played a role in our journey.  It trickled next to us, past us and sometimes spread itself rather incoveniently over the path we were supposed to follow.  Hardened campaigners like my correspondent and myself took these trivial inconveniences in our stride without complaint.  Or at least I stopped complaining once my correspondent threatened to eviscerate me if I didn't shut up.

This isn't the falls in question, just a lumpy creek bed

We paused for photos or at least I paused for photos while my correspondent rolled her eyes and contemplated abandoning me to my fate.  The fact that we were close enough to civilisation for even me to find my way out probably decided her against it.  Where the water wasn't making the path annoyingly muddy it compensated by posing photogenically against a backdrop of trees and shrubs.

Of course the presence of a waterfall indicates that there is a reasonably abrupt elevation change in the offing and our general progression was downward.  It was gentle, indeed barely noticeable at first, but it became more emphatically vertiginous the closer we got to the base of the falls.  The occasional sign warning us that chunks of the very solid looking cliff side were known to hurl themselves at unsuspecting passersby didn't exactly fill us with confidence.

Apparently bits of this have been known to leap out and scare tourists

Despite the presence of feral cliff sides we weren't exactly exploring virgin territory.  I always like to keep a look out for animals when I go on walks but on this occasion the principal animal I saw was other human beings similarly making their way downwards to the natural pool at the bottom of the waterfall.  We managed to avoid them for the most part and got away with a number of abrupt greetings and the occasional insincere smile.

To encourage us to continue on our downward journey the scenery teased us with occasional hints of what was to come.  We needed no such encouragement, we would have descended to the gates of Hell if that had been required.

The tempting vision leading us downward

Or at least I would have.  When we reached a reasonably flat chunk of land my correspondent abruptly halted.  Her achilles tendon, it appeared, had given due warning as to how much it was prepared to tolerate and this was it.  It was obvious that the descent would only get steeper from here and having led me into the woods Hansel and Gretel fashion she was now prepared to abandon me to my fate.  Wishing her good luck (and silently hoping that she was devoured by dingoes) I set forth on the final journey alone.  I had literally walked about ten metres when I was given evidence of how sensible my correspondent's decision to stop was.  To get us down the last couple of hundred metres to the base of the falls a number of extremely steep sets of stairs had been bolted to the cliff side.  Trying to navigate those with a damaged foot would have been torture.

Looking from the bottom up

Since my feet were largely undamaged (apart from their general reluctance to haul me around) I made it down the stairs with ease and after a brief pause while I vomited, gasped and commended my soul to God I was ready proceed.  It was cooler now thanks to the shade of the trees that we had been above at the start of the walk.  Which was good as I hadn't fully recovered from the stairs and complete physical collapse was still a possibility.  After skirting some more of the unpredictably violent cliff face I suddenly came face to face with our target; a small but decided waterfall cascading into a beautiful pool.  I lifted my camera and stopped.  Where should I point the camera?  At the muslim family group with ladies in full niqab?  At the pool, currently home to two or three attractive young ladies in what I can only describe as pleasingly inadequate bikinis?  The area was small and there were quite a lot of people enjoying the surrounds.  So many in fact that it was virtually impossible to take a photo without intruding on someone's privacy.  I eventually took a photo of the falls.  There is some random guy in the background but I'm hoping the water was in his eyes and he didn't notice me photographing.

This is the fewest number of people I could hope to get in the photo.  The guy in the background is checking out the girls swimming in the pool (out of shot).

If there had been fewer people there I would have been tempted to linger, it was a beautiful scene.  As it was I thought guiltily about the correspondent I had left to die further up the track and decided to return to see if I could recover her corpse.  By the time I had gasped and wheezed my way back up the ladders it was touch and go whether she would have to carry me out of there achilles tendon notwithstanding.

However I was made of sterner stuff and after a brief number of hours to recuperate we struck out for home.  On the way back I saw a baby brown snake and a lizard without a tail.  There was a fair distance between the two and I'm not making any accusations.

For the record my correspondent's garden is lovely and she is rightly proud of it.