I’ve been busy the past few days, so have missed a couple of daily updates. But firstly, there’s horrible news from here in Sydney today: multiple people have been fatally stabbed in a shopping centre stabbing spree. I’m fine and I don’t know anybody who was in the area, in case anyone reading this was wondering.
But to better things. Thursday was very busy because I took my visiting friend from the USA out to the Blue Mountains to get a taste of the national park. I didn’t want to battle peak hour traffic by driving into the city to pick him up from his accommodation, so he graciously agreed to make his way on the trains to my place, arriving at 9am. We drove outwards, against the traffic. It took us just under two hours to reach our first stop: Lincolns Rock Lookout. This is a bare rock ledge on the edge of the cliff, looking west over Jamison Valley, so the sun was behind us, illuminating the view.
From here we drove over to a nearby pie shop for an early lunch. I wanted to get my friend to try a good Aussie meat pie, but I didn’t know any of the pie shops in the mountains. I did some research and also asked my friends, and converged on Mountain High Pies in Wentworth Falls. We both had the green curry chicken pie, which was pretty good. I tried a sausage roll, while my friend had a chocolate croissant and a cookie.
Next stop was the Grand Canyon Track walk. This had been closed following the heavy rain last week, and only reopened at 8am on Thursday, just a few hours before we got there. It’s a 10km loop walk that descends from the car park on top of the plateau down to the valley floor, then along Greaves Creek, which descends into a deep, narrow sandstone canyon for part of the journey.
I haven’t done this walk before, and was amazed at how beautiful and spectacular it is. It was very wet with the recent rain, with water dripping off overhead rocks in many places, so we got a little wet, but not soaked. At one point the canyon opens out into an area surrounded by rock, and a waterfall drops into the space from the cliffs above. The walking track actually goes around the back of the waterfall, just like in the movies (at left in this photo).
In several places the track is cut into the rock and you need to be careful to duck your head to avoid banging it. In one spot the walk goes through a dark tunnel and we had to use the torches on our phones to light the way – although you probably could have managed without light as the tunnel was only about 10-15 metres long. There were a lot of muddy puddles that we had to carefully walk around to avoid getting wet socks. In one place the stepping stones crossing the creek were submerged and people had placed other rocks on top to keep your feet more or less dry, and it was a bit of a balancing act to negotiate safely.
The walk took us about two and a half hours, and was worth every second of it. I definitely want to do it again with my wife one day, but we’ll try after a period of drier weather! After climbing back out of the valley we ended up at Evans Lookout. This has a view of the Grose Valley, which is on the other, northern side of the plateau to Jamison Valley.
We rested here enjoying the view a bit before walking back to the car. Then we drove over to Govetts Leap lookout, which has views of Grose Valley from further north.
Next we headed back from Blackheath to Katoomba, and the famous Echo Point lookout. This is the most famous spot, and the most visited by tourists, so we saw a lot of other people here.
And our last stop was Submlime Point in Leura. Another fantastic lookout spot, with views in the distance of Lake Burragorang in the river valley.
It was close to sunset now and we headed back home. My friend accepted my suggestion to have dinner with me and my wife, so I drove home and after meeting up we walked up to the local shops and had dinner at Turka, a Middle Eastern restaurant. That was really good and a great way to finish up a strenuous day of sightseeing.
On Friday I had a bunch of ethics classes. After the last one I took a trip to Chatswood to meet someone who wanted to buy some of my old Magic: the Gathering cards. he was interested online, and when I learnt he lived in Sydney I suggested we meet up instead of me posting the cards to him. This was good, because he got to see the cards in person before transferring the money to me – it was a significant amount, over a couple of thousand dollars.
After that I got the train back home and enjoyed online board games night with my friends. We played a new game: Word Traveller. It’s a cooperative game where each player encodes a route through a famous city (we used the Paris board) using a hand of word cards to attempt to describe various landmarks on the gridded map. The other players have to determine the route as best they can given the ambiguities, and everyone scores points according to how many point-scoring landmarks they successfully visit. It was fun, but there’s a time limit and the second (and final) round was really tough against that limit.
Today, Saturday, I did some housework, cleaning the bathroom. We also dropped Scully in for a groom and haircut, and then took the time to drive over to Paddington so my wife could visit the markets there. While she did that I walked over to Tonton Bread bakery. I was seeking their delicious apricot/almond croissants. But when I got there I didn’t see any on the counter, so I asked the woman at the counter, “No apricot almond croissants today?”
And she looked really puzzled, and said, “Apricot? We don’t make anything like that.”
I said I’d had them there before, and she said that it must have been a long time ago. But it wasn’t that long ago.. only eight months, in fact. Well. So I got a ham and cheese danish, and a chocolate almond croissant instead (which I shared with my wife). I also got one of their delicious flans for dessert tonight.
We got home, picked up Scully, went for a walk. I went for a run too, but took it easy and only did 2.5 km instead of the usual 5, because I’m still not fully over my sore back – it’s about 95%, but I wanted to not strain it too much. And phew… I think that’s all the highlights of the last three days.
New content Thursday:
New content yesterday:
New content today:
