Bushwalking

The first thing I've done once I had my student status is to subscribe at the outdoor sports club of the University. You know that I like mountains and all outdoor activites ! So I went to the blue mountains with two nice people of this club,Steve and Su Li. That was definitly a good introduction to this area. The plan was to go a bit off-track along some ridges to a river, follow this river, camp there and return to the start place along another ridge.

We knew that we should cross the river few times, but at the end there was more water than expected. It means that we had to cross the river several times, to walk on dense vegetation areas during few hours. It was impossible to cross everywhere so we had to guess which side of the river would be better... The dense vegetation made our progression quite slow and I had the feeling that I'll become a part of the forest... we saw some nice black snakes near the river. It was more like an adventure than a standard hike !


The blue mountains are mainly covered of gum trees (eucalyptus), bushes, pines, and the area is really huge and isolated. In comparison to Switzerland, we saw nobody during two days and it is rare to have mobile phone network. By walking on the bushes, the gum tress, and the vegetation near the river I had different feeling and memory of Canada, Pyrénées, Indiana jones, and Into the wild ! Why are the blue mountains called so ? Just have a look on the next picture:


I don't wan't to get into details but with some distance a scattering of UV light effect give this grey/blue colour.

I saw there my first Wallaby, which is a kind of small Kangaroo:

There is many different specis of Kangaroos (eastern, western, red-Kangaroo) & Wallabies (agile, red-necked, rock-wallaby...). the rock-wallaby is kind of equivalent to our mountain goat I guess !

During the drive we also saw some wombats. It's quite a stupid animal, smaller than a pig. You can see some dead wombat near the road because they are walking quite slowly and seems not to be afraid of cars ! I don't know if they even run but when I saw one on the forest he was just walking out of my direction...

Finally we saw a possum crossing the road, a kind of small cat/rat, which tends to eat quickly your food when you don't keep an eye on it.

If you are still reading you may want to check this photo album.