Who Has the Next Dance?
Camped on the dance floor.
The fog has been drifting through the trees all day long. An occasional shower followed shortly by a torrential downpour made the day a bust for extended outdoor activities. It is really not much different then yesterday.
About noon today the downpour changed to a shower. Shortly the shower subsided. A flock of cockatoos flew over overhead. I’ve learned they often fly around and call when the weather is going to break. The newly formed stream flowing next to the picnic shelter was shrinking.
It was time to see where I was.
Yesterday, Steve, my cave tour guide, had warned, “Don’t walk around at night. There’s cliffs you could fall off. It’s a half kilometre to the bottom.”
Cliffs and gorges are why I am in the Blue Mountains, particularly Kanagra Gorge. It is time to find out what the hype is all about. Dawning my aging Gore-tex jacket I set off. Two hundred metres to the lookout. Fog still drifted between the trees. I heard the rapid-fire clicking, tell-tale mimicry, and striking whistles of a lyrebird. A whipbird’s call – the cracking of a whip – emanated from the grayness below... The rock ledge ended. Swirling, gray fog enveloped 270 degrees of my horizon. Moving a little closer to the edge – vertigo. I stopped. It was still several paces to the clouds.
I turned face. My view today would have to be Kanlang Waterfall a few minutes further down the trail. Signs warned of a steep and rough trail ahead. I prepared myself for Tasmania style steep and rough. In New South Wales steep and rough means a flight of well engineered steps held to the rocks by bars of steel. I completed the 1 hour walk in 20 minutes.
With the continuing rain the falls were at their prime. A few minutes later the fog lifted and few rays of sun graced the landscape. I made my way back up the stairs to the lookout hoping to see nature’s unveiling. The fog had vanished. A few wisps of cloud, rain dogs, were rising from the forest. The highest ridges were capped in white. What had been a grey void was transformed into a new and remarkable landscape. The forest below was a palette of greens – looking further towards the horizon it became hazy, fading to grey and then blue. I now understand where the name came from – Blue Mountains.
A few minutes later I made my way along the plateau trail. Water tumbled down the steps. Water poured over the lip of the conglomerate cliff to my right. I walked through the small waterfall.
Five minutes later I glimpsed an overhang through the gum trees. A small panel at the entrance described the area. To the east is the Burragorang Valley. In the 1800’s it was cattle country (today it is buried beneath a coat of water – Sydney’s water supply). Cattle were moved between the low and high country. Kanagra was a mid-point – a meeting place. The caves were used as a social platform. In 1891 a dance floor was built in the cave.
Tonight I made the 10 minute walk from the parking area to the cave, my backpack loaded with a tent, pad and sleeping bag. Right now I’m sitting on the old dance floor waiting for a partner. In front of me is a fire pit. To my right is an ancient, rusted steel pipe. It sits beneath a drip in the stone roof of the cave being constantly filled by dripping water. Before me the dry ground of the cave gives way to a gentle slope. Tonight it has been brought to life by the much needed rain. Gum or eucalyptus trees dot the hillside. There names have escaped me – over 100 species in the blue mountains alone. The trees trunks decorated with moss and lichen. The ever pealing bark on the gum tree trunks is moistened by the rain – releasing the brilliant colours of grey, green, blue, red, orange and pink joined together as if a patchwork quilt.
The afternoon’s sun has given way to rain, a torrential rain again. The land above is interspersed slickrock and heath. The low spots are pools of water now overflowing. Several waterfalls are cascading over the caves lip in front of me.
Only because of the air’s moisture, the fog swirling through the trees and into the cave did I pitch my tent – an effort keep some of the moisture off my swag.
Many years ago the dance floor gave way – perhaps rotted, perhaps burned in a forest fire or maybe just used in a campfire.
Tonight I’m leaning sitting on a natural rock bench typing on a laptop where 116 years ago people danced. I can almost hear the conversation and see the evening’s activity lit by the flickering glow of a campfire. A few people strumming on banjoes, kids hiding behind the trees and beneath the rocks. Everybody refreshed by the much cooler air, high in the Blue Mountains.
Have you ever been stopped by the grandeur of a landscape? A quick glance leaves you spellbound, gasping at the panorama but then quickly you moved on? There is more to see, thinking “I don’t have time to stay here.”
Something I repeatedly discover that the true grandeur of a breathtaking landscape only takes shape after spending time – 30 minutes, 60 minutes, an entire afternoon sitting . . . doing nothing, but it really is doing something. Slowly the landscape changes from a grand whole to the individual elements making up the panorama. Individual trees appear, each with its own character. One branch swaying indiscriminately of its neighbours – a bird’s nest on its end. The greenery of the ground transform from a single green blanket to unique entities: a tussock of grass, a bunch sprouting lilies, rocks blanketed by moss, lichen, liverwort and individual granules of colour. Some rocks changing – one with a twisted grain, not a rock at all, but the remnant stump of a once majestic tree. A single flower – an orchid glowing from the shade, beneath tree’s bent trunk. Waterfalls change from a gorgeous mass of water to individual water streams. The individual streams each different. From one ledge the streams come in pulses – surface tension on the small pool holding back the flow until the pressure it too great. Surface tension breaks and the water flows over the edge. A single, but continuous stream, flowing from a nipple formed by erosion or perhaps minerals precipitating from the water and being bound to the parent substrate. A nearby protrusion. Water forming a drip, an ever growing drip until gravity overwhelms. A single drip breaks off, but wait it is not a single drip, rather a large drip first, followed by a trail, a comet’s tail, of smaller drips all splashing to the ground below washing away the finer soil leaving the pebbles and rocks each being slowly eroded. A splash that changes depending on the drip’s size or perhaps how the slight breeze changes its downward trajectory.
