Almost counterintuitively (for an ex-Brit, anyway) winter is a time of flowering for many native plant species.  Sue and Marchelle went on a walk last week, which even though very close to Blaxland/Mount Riverview was through some beautiful country with lovely flowers.

This is the lookout which they walked to, with views over the Nepean region.

– “The Nepean Lakes.”

Below are some of the beautiful flows/shrubs/bushes which they found.

I must admit to not thinking of the spring flowers in Australia, but this is the equivalent, I believe, and very beautiful, too.

Another lovely walk, and very local to us.  This map shows the location of Blue Pool, in Glenbrook Gorge.

When this was taken (a “screenshot” off my iPhone), we were where the arrow marks, a little below and to the left of the centre, at the Blue Pool.  As you can see, and the crow (or Currawong) flies, this is only about two kilometres from our house, which is about where the second “o” of Glenbrook is placed on the map.

It is a lovely walk down through the bush-covered slopes of the Gorge.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Blue Pool, taken from the northern side where we came down.

The water is very still, with great reflections to be seen in the water.

As is true up and down the gorge, there are amazing rock formations created by wind and water eroding the sandstone, here are a couple of examples seen by just this small stretch of river.

Anyway, it was a lovely walk, straight out of our front door!

Reflections, in the Blue Pool.

As ever, with any image double-click to enlarge.

There are several areas with Blue Gum forests but this one is a pleasant walk from Winmalee.  It’s best done mid-week, though, Marchelle tells me.  Otherwise you apparently have to spend much time dodging mountain bike riders.

The trail is wide and relatively flat, with some extraordinary trees:

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Although the route can be kept relatively level, we walked up to a lookout over the Grose Valley.

Another local walk – this one with no driving at all.  We just walked from our front door down through the village to the start of this walk.  Down to Glenbrook Creek, then along the creek to Duck Hole.

This is our recent walk to the creek with friends Chris and Greg.  The descent was quite difficult in parts, as we didn’t seem to follow any clear and well-used route, although such routes are available – we must just like a challenge!  The valley has been cut deep into the rock by the creek, and the amount water at times is clearly immense: after the recent flooding rain (a couple of months ago) the water must have been at least 5m above its current level, as shown by knots of twigs around the branches quite high up in the trees – knots clearly made by twigs carried down on the floodwater.

The erosion of rock in the creek is astounding, as can be seen in this picture – at first Sue and Greg were completely unaware of the gap beneath them.

The rock is cut away even under Sue, not seen so well in my picture.

Why it’s called Duck Hole is obscure, but there are many such pools along this section of the creek.

More pictures of Duck Hole:

To carry on the theme of walks relatively local to us (meaning within a short drive to the start), Sue and I went on a walk with our friend Marchelle (who has lived in this area all of her life, and consequently knows much about the surrounding country and the walks available).  

This walk was from Blackheath, about an hour’s drive up the Blue Mountains main road) out to a rock formation called Hanging Rock.  

This involved a largely flat walk along a fire trail, to Baltzer Lookout, then a descent to view the Hanging Rock itself.  The cliff faces are sheer and unguarded – apart from an occasional warning sign.

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We DIDN’T go out to pose on the tip of Hanging Rock itself, although it is certainly possible to do so.  The whole rock formation is actually a stand-alone rock mass, separated from the main cliff formation with a very deep fissure only about 30cm wide at the top, but clearly going over 10 metres down.  Not for the faint-hearted to cross, even before you get to the overhanging formation itself …

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Last year I started a series about walks local to our (then new) house in Glenbrook.  This is another “local walk” although it actually starts near Katoomba, so calling it local is a little bit of a stretch – it took us about 40 min. to drive there.

I went with Marchelle Madden, a local friend, and part of the walking group which she has become part of.  They are a varied group of people of about our age.  Actually according to Marchelle they vary from early 50s to early 80s (although the early 80s ones are in very good shape for their ages apparently).  The group on this day were also keen bike-riders as well as walkers.

This is a picture of the group, taken with the “panoramic” ability of my iPhone.  We started off at the end of the Narrow Neck ridge, south of Katoomba, cycling along the fire-trail towards the upper reaches of Warragamba Dam.  We left the bikes at a fire tower before walking to Carlon Head (where the above panoramic view was taken).  Magnificent views over the valley below, and such sights as Ironpot Mountain, Ironpot Ridge and Breakfast Creek.

Back on the bikes and along to the Tarros Steps at Clear Hill.

The steps are to take you down to Duncan’s pass, and although we climbed down them, we did it really just to say that we had, and that was the furthest point of our walk/ride.

It was a lovely day out, covering a lot of ground – we cycled about 20km and must have walked/climbed for several hours as well.  A cool winters day with clear skies made if perfect for the walking.

Some truly magnificent views, this being the view over the Warragamba Catchment Area (which you are not supposed to enter of course).

The cycle back seemed arduous of course, but a lovely day out.

After the success of our previous walks we are off on another …

This time it was similar to the previous ones, in that we simply took the train from Glenbrook Station, six minutes walk from our front door, up four stops to Faulconbridge Station, then down into the bushland.

In this area of Australia the walks start at the top of the hill, and go down into the valleys. So we went down from Faulconbridge into Sassafrass Gully, a descent of about 260m.

We then walked along the valley, visiting Clarinda Falls before walking up the Wiggins Track to Springwood (200m ascent). Opposite the Station there’s a very nice teashop to spend a little while waiting for the train back to Glenbrook.

To give you an idea of what Springwood is like, this is the shop next to the cafe where we had coffee.

Over the last few weekends we have done a couple of local walks which have been something of a revelation – because they are so close and easy to get to!

The first one is from the Nepean Lookout in the Blue Mountains National Park, the Glenbrook entrance to which is only a few hundred metres from our house. Admittedly the Nepean Lookout is half-an-house cycle ride into the Park (I’ve done it before, of course. We drove this time.)

Click to enlarge

We walked from the Nepean Lookout down to Erskine Creek. This is a tributary of the main river, and a beautiful spot. According to the signs, yabbies (small freshwater crayfish) and even platypus can be seen there [very occasionally, I suspect]. It was a truly lovely walk.

Then two weekends ago we did this walk. This was even easier to get to: we simply caught the train two stops up the mountain from Glenbrook Station (200m from our front door!). So we caught the train up to Winmalee Station and walked into the bush from there. We walked down the Florabella Pass for a couple of hours, through some lovely bushland, and ended up in Blaxland.

The walk involved a bit of up and down, but overall descent: the guidebook says the walk involves 330m descent and 280m climbing. It’s a little steep in parts, but really not too bad, and could be done in almost any conditions – it has been very dry recently, but even if we had a lot of rain, Florabella Creek is unlikely to make the walk impassable.

In many ways it’s the best ideologically sound day out – train two stops (to give you an idea, it is about as far as two stops on the London Underground). Then a simple route through a truly lovely valley, and end up at home!

There were some very interesting features to be seen on the walk, and see beautiful areas, like this pool in the forest.

There were also some examples of what I think are Bloodwood Trees