21 February 2012 – Glorious morning, million dollar view. The sun rises slowly on the Lost City, and the night’s mist gives an eerie look to the place. I just love it. Coffee and cereal, watching the sun rising. Doesn’t get any better than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
9AM, time to go. I’m heading north to the Glowworm Tunnel, about 30k from here. Well it rained heavily last night so the track is now muddy as, but Troopy gets through it like it’s the Nepean highway. I reach the Wollemi National Park and start walking to the tunnel. The walk gets me through a small stream to the tunnel, which was dug almost a century ago to allow the railway to Newnes, on the other side. Now the tunnel is dark as ever, and populated by thousands of glowworm which makes it look like a starlit sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The sign at the carpark said one hour and return to I keep going, thinking it’s a loop… Not quite. 90min later I reach the carpark indeed, but at Newnes… DAMN ! Oh well, it’s only an hour and a half back…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next, the “Black Fellow’s Hand Cave” which is only reachable by 4×4, so says the map. Off I go. Indeed, the condition quickly degrades and Troopy has got a new paint job \ud83d\ude42 On the way in, I couldn’t see the paintings so I’ll come back tomorrow. It’s a narrow path, which twists and turns, ups and downs through mud, sand, water and in between this massive canyon that looks a million years old. I love this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hit the end of the road, Newnes. It used to be a mining town, when it was built in 1907, and, almost a hundred years later, the scenery hasn’t changed much. Everything looks from a past century. Even the hotel manager. Inside it’s crowded with objects, pictures, ads, … from its glorious era. As I inquire about the place and the details for the camping, we chat about this and that, then he points me to another part of the camping site, across the river, where I would be all alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fine then, this looks like a place for me. The water isn’t too high, but the bottom is sandy and slippery, and on the other side, a big field welcomes me. I park under the eucalyptus and set up camp. Lamb stir-fry tonight. Another quiet night watching the stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next day I wake up with the sun, and a bunch of kangaroos are peacefully eating the grass around me, like I’m not even there. I have my bacon-eggs-baked beans breakfast watching the roos enjoying the first rays of sun, slowly eating and looking at me in turn, as if they’re saying “yeah we know, it’s cool, right ?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Breakfast, dishes, cleaning up, on the road again. Well the river is higher this morning but. no worries, I’m soon on my way back to the Black Fellow’s Hand Cave, this time I do find the paintings. WOW ! To think these were painted thousands of years ago, this is just amazing. I walk silently though the place, taking it in quietly. This cave was inhabited by a whole tribe at some point, children played here, fires burnt there, and the place looks intact, like they left yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stayed there a whole hour, then headed south, to the Kurrajong Heights. I find the track to enter the park but it’s closed, for fire season the sign says. Fire season ? Really ? With the weather we’re having right now ? Gotta be kidding !
\nThe signs says there is another track to enter the park, which is supposedly open. About 5k down the road. Fine then, I’ll go the back way. Well the second track is closed as well. So I pull the hand-break to take a look at this other sign, I then hear a crack and in a split second, I pull back, my car is trying to hit me !! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It turns out the hand-brake snapped, and Troopy slammed into the gate, missing me by a foot. Not too much damage to either the gate or the truck, only the bullbar moved a couple of inches backward. Another thing I’ll have to fix next week. Along with the left speaker’s bracket that snapped and one of the locks for the overhead storage. Minor details, which I prefer to break now than in the middle of Mongolia. Not that it won’t happen too though…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, most parks closed, rain expected for the next three days, time to go home I guess.<\/p>\n\n\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
21 February 2012 – Glorious morning, million dollar view. The sun rises slowly on the Lost City, and the night’s mist gives an eerie look to the place. I just love it. Coffee and cereal, watching the sun rising. Doesn’t get any better than that. 9AM, time to go. I’m heading north to the, Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,188,375],"tags":[63,197,47],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-blog","category-photos","tag-4-x-4","tag-new-south-wales","tag-troopy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/walkabout.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Newnes.jpg?fit=1024%2C678&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27S7o-7B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47807,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/47807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkabout.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}