Blue Mountains (New South Wales)

thumb|[[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal hand stencils in Red Hands Cave, near Glenbrook]]

thumb|Broken china from ruins near Asgard Swamp, where a coal mine was opened in the nineteenth century

The Blue Mountains (Gundungurra/Dharug: Colomatta or Gulumada) are a mountainous region and a mountain range located in New South Wales, Australia. The region is considered to be part of the western outskirts of the Greater Sydney area. The region borders on Sydney's main metropolitan area, its foothills starting about west of centre of the state capital, close to Penrith. The public's understanding of the extent of the Blue Mountains is varied, as it forms only part of an extensive mountainous area associated with the Great Dividing Range. Geologically, it is situated in the central parts of the Sydney Basin.

The Blue Mountains Range comprises a range of mountains, plateau escarpments extending off the Great Dividing Range about northwest of Wolgan Gap in a generally southeasterly direction for about , terminating at . For about two-thirds of its length it is traversed by the Great Western Highway, the Main Western railway line and the proposed Blue Mountains tunnel. Several established towns are situated on its heights, including Katoomba, Blackheath, , and . The range forms the watershed between Coxs River to the south and the Grose and Wolgan rivers to the north.

Once considered impassable by settlers, the 1813 expedition by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson opened up the interior to British settlement. Today, the Blue Mountains area includes the local government area of the City of Blue Mountains. Since the early 2010s, the region's biodiversity and infrastructure has been severely affected by massive bushfires of unprecedented size and impact. In 2018, 8.4 million people visited the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands Basalt Forests is a prominent forest community within the ecoregion.

Etymology

The original name for the Blue Mountains in the language of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples is Colomatta (more accurately pronounced Gulu-mada). The meaning of the name is "koala place" from colo + matta. and is derived from the blue tinge the range takes on when viewed from a distance. The tinge is believed to be caused by Mie scattering which occurs when incoming light with shorter wavelengths is preferentially scattered by particles within the atmosphere imparting a blue-greyish colour to any distant objects, including mountains and clouds. Volatile terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains may cause Mie scattering and thus the blue haze for which the mountains were named.

History

Geological history

A sandstone plateau dominated by a landscape of eucalyptus forests, the Blue Mountains are located at the top of a 470-million-year-old quartzite. In the Permian period, a shallow sea covered the region, when rivers brought shales, siltstones and mudstones. Then during the Mesozoic period, rivers dumped vast amounts of sand, burying the other sedimentary rocks. By about 1 million years ago during the Pliocene era, the Blue Mountains began to form, carving out deep valleys and steep cliffs, with an elevation of 3,900 feet.

Aboriginal inhabitants

The Blue Mountains have been inhabited for millennia by the Gundungurra people, now represented by the Gundungurra Tribal Council Aboriginal Corporation based in Katoomba, and, in the lower Blue Mountains, by the Darug people, now represented by the Darug Tribal Aboriginal Corporation.

The Gundungurra creation story of the Blue Mountains tells that Dreaming creatures Mirigan and Garangatch, half fish and half reptile, fought an epic battle which scarred the landscape into the Jamison Valley.

The Gundungurra Tribal Council is a nonprofit organisation representing the Gundungurra traditional owners, promoting heritage and culture and providing a support for Gundungurra people connecting back to Country.

Examples of Aboriginal habitation can be found in many places. In the Red Hands Cave, a rock shelter near Glenbrook, the walls contain hand stencils from adults and children. There are also carved images of animal tracks and an occupation cave. The site is known as Kings Tableland Aboriginal Place and dates back 22,000 years.

Australian colonial history

Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, first glimpsed the extent of the Blue Mountains from a ridge at the site of today's Oakhill College, Castle Hill. He named them the Carmarthen Hills, "some forty to sixty miles distant..." and he reckoned that the ground was "most suitable for government stock". This is the location where Gidley King in 1799 established a prison town for political prisoners from Ireland and Scotland.

The first documented use of the name Blue Mountains appears in Captain John Hunter's account of Phillip's 1789 expedition up the Hawkesbury River. Describing the events of about 5 July, Hunter wrote: "We frequently, in some of the reaches which we passed through this day, saw very near us the hills, which we suppose as seen from Port Jackson, and called by the governor the Blue Mountains." During the nineteenth century the name was commonly applied to the portion of the Great Dividing Range from about Goulburn in the south to the Hunter Valley in the north, but in time it came to be associated with a more limited area. This idea was, to some extent, convenient for local authorities. An "insurmountable" barrier would deter convicts from trying to escape in that direction.

A former convict, John Wilson, may have been the first colonist to cross the Blue Mountains. It is also believed that Matthew Everingham, 1795, may have also been partly successful based on letters he wrote at the time which came to light in the late 1980s. Wilson arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and was freed in 1792. He settled in the bush, living with the Aborigines and even functioning as an intermediary between them and the settlers. In 1797 he returned to Sydney, claiming to have explored up to a hundred miles in all directions around Sydney, including across the mountains. His descriptions and observations were generally accurate, and it is possible that he had crossed the mountains via the southern aspect at the Coxs River corridor, guided by the Aborigines. but he had accomplished much as an explorer. He was never recognised as the first person to cross the mountains, possibly because his Coxs River journey could not be verified, while his route west of Mittagong may have been the "long way around" for a colony that had its eyes fixed on the sandstone fortress west of the Nepean.

thumb|left|Route of the [[Gregory Blaxland|Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth Crossing of 1813]]

thumb|left|The typical blue haze in the [[Jamison Valley behind the Three Sisters, New South Wales, Australia.]]

Between 1798 and 1813, many people explored various parts of the mountains, from the Bilpin Ridge to the southern regions, today the site of the Kanangra-Boyd National Park. Still, they did not find a definite route across the mountains.

The 1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains by Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth is officially credited as the first successful European crossing. Blaxland set out with Lawson and Wentworth on 11 May 1813 and succeeded in crossing the mountains by 31 May. They ventured as far as to what is now Mount Blaxland, just west of Coxs River.

In November 1813, Macquarie sent the surveyor George Evans on an expedition to confirm the apparent discoveries made by Blaxland and his party. He was also told to see if there existed enough arable land to justify settlement. The issue had become more urgent because the colony was in the grips of a drought.

Evans and his party reached the Fish and Macquarie rivers, and the site of Bathurst. On 7 July 1814, construction of a road across the mountains was begun by William Cox. The work was at the behest of Governor Macquarie. 30 convict labourers and 8 guards completed the road on 14 January 1815 after 27 weeks of hard work. with many misty days.

Geography

thumb|left|Neates Glen, outside [[Blackheath, New South Wales|Blackheath]]

thumb|upright|Upper [[Wentworth Falls (waterfall)|Wentworth Falls as viewed along the National Pass walking track near the town of Wentworth Falls]]

thumb|right|The [[Greater Blue Mountains Area is considered to be part of Greater Western Sydney region.]]

The predominant natural vegetation of the higher ridges is eucalyptus forest. Heath-like vegetation is present on plateau edges above cliffs. The sheltered gorges often contain temperate rainforests. There are also many hanging swamps with button grass reeds and thick, deep black soil. Wollemia nobilis, the "Wollemi pine", a relict of earlier vegetation of Gondwana, is found in remote and isolated valleys of the Wollemi National Park.

Mountain peaks

The Blue Mountains Range contains smaller mountain ranges: the Bell Range near The Bells Line of Road and north of the Grose River; the Explorer Range, south of the Grose River extending west towards Mount Victoria; the Caley Range, Erskine Range, Mount Hay Range, Paterson Range, and the Woodford Range. The major recorded peaks are:

unnamed peak ()
Mount Piddington ()
Mount Boyce ()
Mount York ()
Mount Banks ()
Mount Wilson ()
Kings Tableland ()
Narrow Neck Plateau ()
Mount Solitary ()
Mount Hay ()
Mount Irvine ()

The Blue Mountains are a dissected plateau carved in sandstone bedrock. They are now a series of ridge lines separated by gorges up to deep. The highest point in the Blue Mountains, as it is now defined, is an unnamed point with an elevation of , located north-east of . However, the highest point in the broader region that was once considered to be the Blue Mountains is Mount Bindo, with an elevation .

A large part of the Blue Mountains is incorporated into the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage Site, consisting of seven national park areas and a conservation reserve.

The Blue Mountains area is a distinct physiographic section of the larger Hunter-Hawkesbury Sunkland province. This is in turn a part of the larger East Australian Cordillera physiographic division.

center|thumb|800x800px|[[Megalong Valley]]

Bushfires

The main natural disasters to afflict the area are bushfires and severe storms. In recent years the lower mountains have been subjected to a series of bushfires which have caused great loss of property but relatively little loss of life. The upper mountains had not had a major fire for some decades until December 2002 (the Blackheath Glen Fire) and November 2006 when an extensive blaze in the Grose Valley threatened several communities including Bell and Blackheath (the Lawsons Long Alley Fire). This latest fire burned for almost a month but was extinguished, mainly due to a change in the weather, without loss of human life or property. A program of winter burning seemed to have been successful in reducing fires in the upper mountains.

In recent years, the bushfires have become far more destructive and expansive than before. The region was severely damaged in the 2013 New South Wales bushfires. However, even this was dwarfed by the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, during which the entire mountain range was devastated at a scale never seen before. According to preliminary reports, up to 80% of the World Heritage Area has burned as of January 2020, many of these being areas that had never burned in any previously observed bushfires. These destructive blazes have been linked to accelerating climate change. There have been fears that the blazes may severely reduce the biodiversity of the area and even wipe out some of the threatened species in the area, such as the regent honeyeater. The area totals roughly , including the Blue Mountains, Kanangra-Boyd, Wollemi, Gardens of Stone, Yengo, Nattai and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, plus the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve.

This site was chosen to be included on the World Heritage list because:

Fauna

thumb|[[Platypus in the Blue Mountains]]

The Greater Blue Mountains Area is inhabited by over 400 different forms of animals. Among them are rare mammal species like spotted-tailed quoll, the koala, the yellow-bellied glider, and long-nosed potoroo. There are also some rare reptiles, like the Blue Mountain water skink. There are also some dingoes in the area, which form the top predators and hunt for grey kangaroos.

Tourist attractions

thumb|View from [[Wentworth Falls, New South Wales|Wentworth Falls carpark ]]The Three Sisters near Katoomba, New South Wales is one of Australia's most-photographed landmarks.
The Giant Stairway walking track runs down a cliff into the Jamison Valley, near the Three Sisters, providing access to nature walks through the valley.
The last remaining apple orchard on the Shipley Plateau.
The Prime Ministers' Corridor of Oaks, at Faulconbridge, near the Great Western Highway.
Red Hands Cave in the Blue Mountains National Park near Glenbrook is one of the best examples of Aboriginal art in the area.
Lincoln's Rock in Wentworth Falls, New South Wales offers spectacular views of the Jamison Valley. Formerly known as Flat Rock, it was named after Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall (climber) in 2013.

Recreational activity

The Blue Mountains are a popular destination for rock climbers, mountain bikers and hikers as well as canyoning and other adventure sports. These sports are well catered for by guiding companies and equipment stores located mainly in Katoomba.

Popular climbing destinations include the Centennial Glen cliffs near Blackheath and Mount Piddington near the town of Mount Victoria. Climbing is currently banned on The Three Sisters.

Mountain biking takes place mainly on the many fire trails that branch away from the main spine of the Great Western Highway, such as Narrow Neck, Anderson's Fire Trail and others.

Likewise many of the fire trails are popular with day hikers, though many dedicated walking trails exist away from the fire roads.

Canyoning in the Blue Mountains is a popular sport and caters for various skill levels. It carries inherent dangers, yet for those with the appropriate skills or those looking to take a guided trip there are many great opportunities to experience a different view of the Blue Mountains.

There are numerous abseiling options available in the Blue Mountains including single and multipitch routes. There are some restrictions though with certain areas being closed for abseiling.

Cricket is a popular sport in the Blue Mountains, with the Blue Mountains Cattle Dogs representing the district in the Western Zone Premier League, Country Plate and Presidents Cup competitions.

Collapse of the Dog Face Rock cliff face

At 4 am on 28 January 1931 a cliff face known as "the Dog Face Rock" collapsed into the Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains. A second collapse from the same cliff face occurred on 2 May 1931. Every year there are up to 200 people who are lost or injured in the Blue Mountains.

Gallery

alt=View of Jamison Valley from north escarpment, outside Katoomba: Three Sisters far left; Mount Solitary left of centre; Narrowneck Plateau, far right|center|thumb|700x700px|View of Jamison Valley from north escarpment, outside Katoomba:Three Sisters far left; Mount Solitary left of centre; Narrowneck Plateau, far right

References

External links

Official Blue Mountains National Park website
Visitor's Guide to the Blue Mountains – Visit NSW