Blue Mts, Pt 161 (16/2/07)  (Pictures)

While we were parked at the Boggy Swamp Rest Stop, a car came in after dark. We were eating dinner. Someone from the car got out and looked into their engine compartment. After dinner I went out to see if they needed any help. It turned out to be a young couple hauling a heavy trailer with a station wagon. Two kids and a cat were asleep in the back. They were moving to Lightning Ridge where the guy was raised. The woman was pregnant, due in two weeks and they wanted to get the heavy moving done first. They were just waiting for the car to cool from the climb through the mountains. So hearing that he was from Lightning Ridge, I had to ask about opals. And being from Lightning Ridge, he just happened to have a few in a plastic bag in his pocket. He let me show them to Cheryl, and I brought them back to him. But he insisted that I keep them! The engine cooled and they drove away into the night.

We left in the morning South on the Putty Highway, winding and steep ups and downs, but a very good road. We kept checking regularly for cell (mobile) phone coverage. When we found a decent spot near Kurrajong, I called John Elliot, a MapInfo user in Bathhurst I had exchanged emails with. We agreed to meet at his house/office in Bathhurst later in the day. With that out of the way, we looked around Kurrajong, an upscale community next to the Blue Mountains National Park. We moved on steeply uphill to Bilpin, which had a sign near the edge of town that was really just a huge version of a tourist brochure with a map. Bilpin has a good number of apple orchards which were ripe but their fruit stands didn’t seem too busy. Most had white netting, probably hail protection stretched over the whole orchard. We drove down a narrow dirt road and found a seldom-used National Park with a picnic area and a trail to Waratah Falls. We walked down to the falls after our usual lunch of bread, salami, cheese and olives (including this time some leftover cheeses from the Hunter Valley Cheese Factory). The trail followed a creek hugging the undercut rock cliff to a nice little waterfall.

When we got back to the Nissan, the front tyre (tire) was completely flat. We couldn’t find the hooked rod that fits into the jack and I had to turn it by hand with a small screwdriver. When the spare was finally on, the truck would not start. The battery connection had jostled loose again. Luckily another car had just arrived to give us a boost. We entertained them by backing the whole rig (SUV and trailer) around until we could climb back up the narrow road. We stopped at a tire store in Lithgow, the next sizable town and found that the tire could not be repaired. So we had another one, that Larry Geno gave us before we left mounted and put on the front across from the original spare. Then the tyre guy broke one of the three mounting bolts for the spare putting it back on its rack.

We were pretty burnt out by the time we found John Elliot’s house in Bathhurst about 5 pm. It was great, however, to talk to someone in Australia who uses the same software I use, MapInfo. John works at home and in the field doing exploratory geology. He helps mining companies find gold, silver, copper etc. While John and I were learning about each others work, Cheryl and Chris, John’s wife, got to know each other and Chris cooked us up a wonderful meal of lamb chops, sausage, broccoli and new potatoes. We brought in the Viognier wine we found in the Hunter Valley the day before. John’s daughter, Elizabeth, was there with her 2 young kids. She is finishing some teaching requirements before she re-joins her husband in Switzerland. So there was a lot to talk about and eat and we barely got away to a caravan park on the other end of town, in time to register and set up for the night.