Weekend Warrior Series: The Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains are a must for anyone visiting Sydney. Easy to get to by car or train and known for its rugged views and eucalypt forests dotted with waterfalls and walking trails it’s no wonder there are more than 1million visitors each year. While you’ll be hard pressed to find a bad view anywhere in the region, my favourite parts are those lesser-known, harder to reach areas where you’ll have the views all to yourself. If you like camping, hiking and the smell of Eucalyptus, this weekend is for you.

Travel Time: 2 hour drive from Sydney

Highlights: Anvil Rock, Perry’s Escarpment, Balthazar Lookout

Distance Covered: 280km round trip from Sydney to Perry’s Lookdown (some unsealed roads).

If you have more time: There are 140km of walking tracks to choose from, so stay another few nights and try them all!

__

Turning off the highway from Blackheath, the road quickly becomes unsealed as we headed towards Perry’s Lookdown Campground. This is an absolute gem of a campsite. Small and secluded, you can pitch your tent beneath the shade of Eucalyptus trees. There are stone benches and seats near each pitch and makeshift firepits (although technically not allowed – and definitely not during a fire ban). It also has the nicest longdrop toilet I’ve used in a while. It’s suitable for tents only, so there’ll be no huge RVs with generators disturbing the peace. Walk a couple hundred metres and you will be standing at the edge of the escarpment looking across to Mount Banks with the whole Grose Valley below you. There is no running water at the camp site so make sure you BYO enough for drinking and cooking. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

After setting up camp we set off to explore the surrounding trails. Anvil Rock is a very short walk but has incredible views that you’ll get to enjoy alone, as this lookout seems to have been mostly forgotten by others. Carved rock steps lead to the top of the rock (named as it resembles the shape of an anvil) from which you can see Sydney on a clear day. The nearby Wind Eroded Cave is also worth a visit. It has a huge wave-like overhang, caused (as you’d expect) by wind erosion. Pulpit Rock was our next stop. While there were a couple more people here than on the last trails, it was still extremely quiet considering how good the scenery was from this isolated pinnacle. Walking right to the edge of the jutting blade makes you appreciate just how high up above the valley floor you are. There’s also a great trail starting from Pulpit Rock which meanders the whole way along the escarpment eventually reaching Govetts Leap Lookout. The 7km return track passes waterfalls and heathlands and provides an ever-changing vista of the Grose Valley.

We were blessed with a super clear day and sunny skies, but the downside to that, is that when the sun goes down, the temperature drops – and fast! Even in Spring, we were facing lows of -2 C, and found out the hard way that our Butane stove doesn’t work very well when it gets that cold. But of course, clear skies also mean amazing stars. We braved moving away from the campfire to head back to the view point to watch the Milky Way over the Grose Valley. Amazingly, we could also see the light pollution from Sydney, over 86km away.

The next morning we woke to the clearest sunrise. Watching the sun come up, the landscape completely transforms. As the darkness fades, the escarpments glow with the sun’s first rays as it dances across the rock formations. This is my favourite time of day. Not only is the light stunning, but I love the stillness and quiet before the rest of the world wakes up.

On that note, a few of words on camping etiquette. There are some things which I just cannot abide on campgrounds. Most campers I know rise with the sun, and are asleep soon after nightfall which makes it completely inappropriate to turn up at 11pm and start sawing firewood and playing the guitar (badly). Kumbaya around the fire was never cool. And to the very vocal girl…he may have been rocking your world, but the rest of the valley doesn’t need to hear it and we definitely didn’t want to know about it.

That aside, and determined not to let two bad eggs ruin our camping fun – after sunrise we packed up camp and headed to Baltzer Lookout, an easy 8km return walk but with outstanding views. The trail follows a ridge along a rocky bluff before ending at the edge of an escarpment looking down at the valley and an amazing jutting block of sandstone known as Hanging Rock. This overhang has become detached from the main cliff and is a rock climbing staple. To get out to the point of Hanging Rock requires jumping a gap between the main cliff, and I wasn’t game enough to give it a go, so instead we enjoyed the views from the escarpment before heading back up the trail and driving back to Sydney, slightly grubby and smelling of wood smoke – definite signs of another great weekend away.