Saturday, November 22nd.—We left Redfern Station at 8 a.m., in a special train provided for us by the Government, to make an expedition up the Blue Mountains. The party consisted of Sir Alfred Stephen, the Hon. George Dibbs, Colonial Treasurer, Mr. Critchett Walker, Principal Under Secretary, Mr. Barton, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Harnett, Sergeant-at-Arms, Mr. Fosbery, Commissioner of Police, and Mr. Loftus; as well as of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Joseph, who had been most kind in asking us to stay with them at Double Bay, and four other ladies.
Breakfast was served on board the dining-car attached to the train immediately after starting, and if the truth ought to be told, we were eating all day long, with the wherewithal so close at hand. We passed Parramatta, or Rose Hill, the ancient Sydney, and saw its old Government House, now used as a lodging-house, and the church, with its two little towers, which was to have been a cathedral church.
At Penrith Station we were at the bottom of the Blue Mountains, and had our first comprehensive and beautiful view of them, tracing at the same time our zig-zag line up their sides. Soon we crossed the Nepean, or the more familiar Hawkesbury on a stone bridge, which has so lately been the scene of Canadian Hanlan's rowing feats. After passing Emu Plains, so called from the herds of emus that used to roam over them, we reached the first zig-zag. In eight minutes more we had ascended 600 feet.
The train at the zig-zag is run to the end of the gradient, points being shifted by the guard, and then run up the gradual ascent of the next level. It certainly is a much simpler method than that in America, where the train describes a circle round the corner, whilst clinging to the mountain side. We had a beautiful view over the rich cultivated fields of the lowlands in the country of Cumberland—a changing, ever-shifting view, as we ran along the side of the mountain, and then turned upwards to face the opposite way.
The air felt brisker and colder as we got up into higher altitudes. After reaching the summit we went through many miles of gum-tree woods, the young, tender shoots yet crimson in their spring foliage. Lovely glimpses of deep gorges we had, dimly defined by the trees sloping downwards into the shadow of the ravine, but with that all-pervading dull greeny-grey blue, produced by their dense covering of gum forests. It seems to me that no scenery in Australia can appear very beautiful. One view must be much like another on account of the terrible monotony of the gum-tree. How we longed to-day to see some of these deep gorges in the mountains clothed with the different shades of green produced by our oak or beech or chestnut!
We passed Faulconbridge, the beautiful mountain home of Sir Henry Parkes, who had very kindly asked us to spend part of the day with him, but we were anxious to go on to the Lithgow and the second zig-zag. Katoomba, with the Great Western Hotel, is the spot where most of the visitors from Sydney stay, its great attraction being its splendid situation overlooking the Cunimbla Valley.
At Blackheath we got out of the train, and found a break waiting to take us the two miles to Govett's Leap. We drove along a sandy road, looking at the masses of wild flowers that bordered it, or grew in the underscrub. We noticed particularly among them the wild lobelia, and the blue iris, and the Australian "edelweiss," which they call the "flannel plant," and which has a varying number of petals, from seven to fourteen; but above all there was the beautiful waratah, that wiry flower, glorious in its deep crimson colour, and resembling an artichoke dipped into cochineal, as one of our party remarked. As we were looking and talking about the flowers, quite unexpectedly, and with a sudden alarm, we found ourselves on the edge of the precipice of what is called "Govett's Leap." Twelve hundred feet below us there was a plain, shut in on all sides by titanic walls of granite rock. I call it a plain, for it seemed so by comparison to where it narrowed imperceptibly to the gorge, only wide enough for a narrow river to flow through, and which lost itself to us under the blue haze of the distance. This plain was covered with sassafras, or spinnefex, a stunted undergrowth, amongst which peeped up the bare heads of rocks, and all around and beyond them was only the grey-blue undulations of a sea of gums. Just to our right there was the black shiny cliff, over which trickles the falling mist of the waterfall called Govett's Leap. It is dignified you perceive into a waterfall, but here droughts are so frequent, and water so scarce, that drops trickling over a rock must be so called, or none would remain in existence. The waterfall is not called Govett's Leap, as many would suppose, after some legendary convict's leap, escaping from the pursuit of his gaolers, but after the name of the first surveyor of the Blue Mountains.
Govett's Leap, Blue Mountains.
The great beauty of the scenery in these mountains lies in the grand expanse of the valleys that open out sheer at your feet, under precipices of from 300 to 500 feet and in the curious formation of rock that generally surrounds them, standing out into their midst in jagged masses or formations that take the shape of something human.