Reflections of a Rural Social Worker: Grieving for losses: Mt Wilson and surrounds, NSW

We visited Mt Wilson in 2008, whilst staying at Lithgow, and found a sheltered world of giant tree ferns and pockets of rainforest. The Gosper Mt fire also spread its tentacles here, but it is my hope that most of the lovely old houses and gardens survived. There have been so many fires that information about losses of buildings is difficult to come by.

By 9 am the fog had cleared to a sunny morning with blue skies and we left to take the Bells Line of Road towards Mt Wilson. Here we followed the zigzag railway, traversed through forests and climbed up and down hills. The shadows cast by the trees flicked across our vision and patches of trees glistened in the sunlight whilst the majority of their fellows remained bathed in shadow. All, however, danced and waved in the breeze as though welcoming the brightness after days of grey skies.

Glimpses of mountains and sheer cliffs could be seen in the blue distance and we began to follow the main railway line through Bell until it turned away from us to cross the Darling Causeway. It is much more difficult to gain the sense of being in a huge wilderness area as we are cocooned by the world of the highway, whereas dirt tracks leave us feeling more at one with nature. Eventually we turned onto the narrower, winding road to Mt Wilson and this took us 8 kms along a ridge through dense bush and then into ferny rainforest where bright green moss covered the wood on the roadside gutters.

We emerged into a land of yellow and orange autumn trees amongst houses and rainforest but were enticed to visit the small local markets. Then we walked down the road to Du Faur’s Lookout – a conglomeration of rocks with views over the Blue Mountains National Park wilderness, back to the Bells Line of Road and down to the course of the Wollangambe River. A short way along the return track we discovered the path to Chinaman’s Cap and the Circuit Trail. In a mood to explore, we took it and were not disappointed.

We wandered through the forest on a wet and slippery track until we reached the rock formation of Chinaman’s Cap which was a short distance from the start. Then we descended to a bank of overhangs dripping with water. The first was decorated with some aboriginal-type art which we suspect was not original (this is not the land of Bradshaw men and I don’t think ochre comes in blue)! I later read that Patrick White (the novelist) used to have a cardboard box of things which he kept here and that he was not impressed with Chinaman’s Cap. We continued around the base of these overhangs for quite a distance and rounded the base of the lookout rocks before finding the one-way track to Phoenix Cave.

This was steep in places with steps cut into steep rocks. But it took us down to a grotto of tall tree ferns with many varieties of other ferns covering an extensive area of hillside and sheltering a veil of water which fell in perfect symmetry across the cave mouth and into a pool that formed the beginning of a clear tinkling stream that gurgled away under the thick canopy of fresh green ferns. Further up the cliff Flannel Flowers, surprisingly still in flower, lined the track but these were more noticeable on the return journey.

After returning to the car we drove through autumn trees and ferny forest to the Cathedral of Ferns (this mountain is capped with rich basalt soils, unlike the poor soils of the sandstone country) and took a short track through a glade of ferns and past a tall Brown Barrel Tree. In the park at the beginning of the track there was ample evidence that Mt Wilson had been discovered, as people picnicked and a few had set up camp. In fact, everywhere up here the traffic was heavy and car parks full. Yet we had encountered no-one else on our earlier walk once we left the lookout area.

After driving around Mt Wilson we stopped in another picnic area and took the Circular Waterfall Track down through fern forests and past a larger and a smaller cascading waterfall, following the creek between them until the track led us upwards again through another ferny gully and back to the car-park where we finally ate lunch.

John then negotiated the roads and lanes of Mt Wilson past huge estates with open gardens (the main reason for abundance of visitors) until we reached Wynne’s Lookout where a very short track took us to extensive views over the wilderness towards Katoomba, Blackheath, Mt Victoria, Bell and back towards Sydney.