Australia’s Blue Mountains in New South Wales are a nature lovers dream, especially if you love the color blue. The eucalyptus forests create a unique natural phenomenon. The evaporated oil from the leaves emits a mysterious slate-blue haze that lazily lingers like a beautiful blue aura over the landscape.
Related: Iconic Sydney Travel Highlights – The Gateway to Australia
While staying in Sydney, I set up a day trip with a tour group by bus, destined for the Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains. (There is also an option to take a train to the Blue Mountains from Sydney.) When I planned the trip, I was mostly interested in seeing the Blue Mountains, considering the caves as a bonus. But as travelling usually goes, the best part of the day was completely unexpected, with the revelation of Blue Lake. One of the best ways to get perspective and envision the blue haze hovering over the mountains is from a distance. The 90-minute drive to the caves was enchanting, as we began to see the beautiful blue haze from the eucalyptus forests blanketing the mountainsides.
First stop at Jenolan Caves, the oldest caves in world.
The Jenolan Caves are the oldest and largest open cave system in the world, taking you deep into a catacomb of limestone, with over 40 km of passages available to explore. Since Australia is the oldest continent in the world, travelling there often involves hyperbole, when it comes to going back in time. In the Red Centre, I visited the oldest river in the world (Finke River) and observed the oldest sand dunes in the world. Is it any wonder that the Jenolan Caves are the oldest open cave system in the world?
When walking through the bedrock maze, you get the unique, cold-eerie feelings that you only get from spelunking. For me, it feels like I am trespassing into a secret place, where lonely spirits hide. The jaw-like mineral deposits of stalactites and stalagmites opening from the bedrock, appear as a mouth wide open to swallow prey into a lithospheric abyss. When the stalactites and stalagmites grow together, they create a column. This seems to exemplify the connection between spirit world and earth.
Blue Lake at Australia’s Blue Mountains
Just outside the Jenolan Caves, I discovered the biggest surprise to the day at Blue Lake. I was enchanted by the ethereal green-blue lake, engulfed by eucalyptus and palm trees. The surreal color comes from the refraction of the light upon the limestone deposits and bedrock. Mysteriously, the lake also reflects back the trees surrounding it, painting a beautiful montage of greens, blues and teal on the still water. There’s a Riverwalk, continuing on from the lake, meandering through the bush. Also, this is one of the few locations where the elusive duck-billed platypus lives. This is one of the few native species that is only found in eastern Australia, including Tasmania.
My Aboriginal Dreamtime
My experience at Blue Lake awakened my insights about the Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime. Sacred sites, like Uluru and Blue Lake, automatically connected me with the roots of the ancient, Aboriginal culture over 50,000 years ago. Since staying in the Red Centre of Australia, the concept of Dreamtime lingered on in me. In a moment’s flash at Blue Lake, the word “Dreamtime” came very much alive to me! The Aborigines believed that we all inherit Songlines from ancestors, also known as Dreaming tracks. Along these Songlines or Dreaming tracks, one traditionally sings the land into existence. And simultaneously, the step into the ether world of past, present and future, known infinitely as Dreamtime.
After living with a long writer’s block, poems began to flow from my Mindstream. I heard the winds of my Songline and, thus, sang Blue Lake into existence from my center of being. It’s a synchronicity, when a place strikes the chords of my Songlines: “I am on track,” the Dreaming track that is. Then, poems flow through me. I will carry this lesson with me on my future travels. It was sacred to learn from the Aborgines’ ancient wisdom and connection to the land.
Australia’s Blue Mountains – Three Sisters’ Rock Formations
Lastly, after being pulled away from Blue Lake, against my muse and will, we visited the Three Sisters Rock Formations. This was very grounding for me following the hypnotic world at Blue Lake. These 3 rock pillars are approximately 900 meters high and conspicuously outline the horizon, with their eroded sandstone shapes. There’s an Aboriginal legend behind the name in those 3 sisters. They turned to stone for protection by their 3 lovers but weren’t able to be turned back to human form. It was a hazy day and the mountains looked somewhat muted here. Yet, it just seemed to add to the mystery of the day and the legend.
Overall, my day was amazing and so balanced. I experience the subterranean world of the caves, the beautiful blue lake waters and the magical Blue Mountains. Ideally, I would love to go back and spend more time bush walking in the Blue Mountains. And it would be fun to arrive by train.