Blue Mountains aka Rain Valley

Blue Mountains:

It was a slow start, but we finally made it to the National Park of the Blue Mountains. Now, when you read National Park, you, just like us, probably think Wilderness, Loneliness, Unspoilt nature... well, you’d be surprised, just like we were if this is what you think a national park looks like in Australia. What a shock it was when we passed the Blue Mountains sign on the Great Western Highway, and all you could see was the six-carriage way road, with thousands of cars driving on it, electric poles and Mc Donald’s. This is what the Blue Mountains National Park first look like.

Thankfully, it only stays that way while you are on the main road. As soon as you deviate from the highway, you end up on little roads, sometimes nothing more than dirt tracks to drive on.

Yee Hah!

We spent our first night in the middle of nowhere. As it was already dark when we arrived, and it was raining, it wasn’t the best condition to set up camp. But we were quite pleased with the cosiness of our car. How lovely to fall asleep next to your loved one, listening to the raindrops falling on the roof of the car. But when we woke up the next morning and it was still raining, we found it slightly less romantic, even quite annoying.

Ju on the hunt ...

During the day, we saw some splendid scenery. Unfortunately, it was too windy and too cold to fully appreciate it.

As the night falls early here (it’s pitch dark by 6 pm), we quickly looked for a spot for our second night. The Park caters for all kinds of adventurers, from posh hotels to a simple patch of grass in the bush. The latter suits us fine, as it’s free and we don’t even have to pitch the tent as we sleep in the car. We found somewhere, by a river. As we arrived early, we managed to set the bed in the car, make ourselves a cup of tea

and even go for a stroll by our patch. We hadn’t walked for 50 metres when we met with.... kangaroos.

Ju is on the hunt...

She found her prey...

... and shot!

In total, we saw 6 different ones. They were not shy at all, as you can see, we could get quite close to them. It was the first time I saw a kangaroo out of the zoo, I was really impressed. They are so funny, the way they move, the way they eat, how high they jump. We are still on our early days of wild life spotting, so we can’t yet really make the difference between kangaroos and wallabies, but it’ll come.

Phil made a magnificent fire (Man=Fire).

As I was sitting by the warm flames, eating my soup, with my husband, I was thinking: ‘This is perfect, it couldn’t be any better, I could stay here forever, and nothing could spoil that wonderful moment’ until it started raining. Zut alors! We took refuge in a big hut, where some other campers also took shelter, and we spent a lovely evening by the fire place in there, chatting with them , getting some good advice on where to go and what to see next.

The rest of the night, however, wasn’t so great. We slept very badly because we were so cold; freezing even. I can hear some of you from here, saying: ‘But I remember them saying they were leaving because they were fed up with Scottish weather, they were looking for the sunshine somewhere else’ and you would be right. People around here say that it’s not usually that cold here at that time of the year, it’s really strange.... basically, really bad timing from us.