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Mount Hay —
Exploration Ancient and Mondern
Most people know Mount Hay as the rounded
summit which you see beside the two-humped Mount King George, peering
above the long line of the Blue Mountains Tableland, as you look from
Sydney across the intervening plain. To geologists it is known as one of
the basalt caps that break the level skyline of the Blue Mountains
sandstone. To walkers it is a round hump at the end of a ten to twelve
mile ridge from Leura. You tramp out along wooded plateau-land past
Table Hill, where there is a green swamp and a perennial pool of clear
water; past Three Knob Hill, three grassy mounds capped by rugged,
weathered rocks; along treeless, heathy ridges, where the ironstone
prevents even the hardy gum tree from growing; and finally to Butterbox
Point beside Mount Hay, where the long vista of the Grose Gorge opens at
your feet, cliff-hemmed from its source at Hartley Vale to far below
Mount Hay, a forested valley looking as virgin as in the days before the
white man arrived (illustration page 22). Mount Hay itself, being
covered with fertile basalt soil, grows luxuriant vegetation which
prevents it from having a really first-class view; but where Mount Hay
fails, Butterbox Point makes up, for it provides a grander view of the
Grose Valley than any other point, and from it you seem to stand right
above the silvery ribbon of the river nearly 2,000 feet below.
It was natural that the Round Mountain, as
Mount Hay was first called, should attract the attention of the early
settlers, and in 1789 Governor Phillip's curiosity caused him to send an
expedition to take a compass-line march from the plains to find out all
about it. Anyone who knows the Blue Mountain gullies will not be
surprised that the party returned in five days without even having seen
their mountain, and extremely glad to get out of those labyrinthine
gorges.
Dixon was the next person to attempt to
reach Mount Hay, but instead of doing so he got enmeshed in the Grose
Valley at its foot, and when at length he emerged on the plateau, he
"thanked God"— to use his own expression—that he had got out alive, and
he never had the slightest desire to repeat the expedition.
Mitchell went about the matter more
systematically, and at his instigation Govett, of Govett's Leap fame,
made a survey of the ridges leading from Leura across the plateau in the
direction of Mount Hay, and by this means eventually found the right
one, got out there successfully, and Mitchell followed with his own
theodolite a short while after. Explorers are not given to
under-exaggerating their discoveries, and Mitchell returned with a
sketch showing the cliffs of the Grose Valley sheering right down to the
river, and a description of the scenery as "very wild, consisting of
stupendous cliffs 3,000 feet deep." Mitchell does not give the date of
his visit, but it would be in the eighteen-twenties, and there is no
reason to suppose the view from Mount Hay was different then from what
it is to-day, a wild view it is true, but the cliffs are only about 500
feet and the valley is not more than 2,000 feet deep in all.
Other people must have followed, but so
far we have not been able to locate their records in the Mitchell
Library, or ascertain who made the track down into the Grose, by what is
now called Lockley Pylon, from the spur of Three Knob Hill. All we know
is that this route was brought under the notice of the walking clubs by
our own Reg. Shortridge, and has accordingly been called Shortridge's
Pass, and now forms a favourite route to the Blue Gum Forest in the
Grose Valley.
The next person after Mitchell, of whom we
have record, as having made Mount Hay his especial hobby, is Mr. Frank
Walford, former editor of the "Blue Mountain Echo," and this brings us
from the ancient to the modern explorers. It was he, apparently, who
discovered the only known practicable route from the plateau to the
Grose Valley at a point nearer to Mount Hay than the Lockley Pylon
route.
Mr. Walford's mantle has now fallen on the
shoulders of the writers of this article. Marie Byles's interest dates
back to 1918, when she and her father added their names to the select
few in the visitors' book, which consisted of a bottle placed in the
cairn on the summit of Mt. Hay, while Marjorie Shaw's interest dates
back to 1925, when she and her parents went out to Mount Hay and back in
one day.
When membership of the S.B.W. brought us
together, our mutual interest in Mount Hay made us decide to try to
re-discover Walford's route, which no one seemed to know about, and
generally to explore the ridges and gullies of the plateau. The first
attempt to reach Walford's route was made from the tops, when Marjorie
led an official Bushwalker party out, but failed to find any way down
those sheer cliffs. Next attempt, we decided, should be made from below.
We had only a two-day week-end at our disposal, so we mutually egged
each other on to make the most of it. Marj. said we would travel light,
take no tent and camp in a cave. Marie agreed, but a little dubiously.
"Do you think," she said, "we shall find a
cave near water?"
"Pooh!" said Marj., "before I joined the
Bushwalkers I never heard of needing to camp near water." So Marie at
once pretended she had never really wanted such an effeminate luxury.
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw kindly entertained us
for the Friday night at their Leura home. Marj. had apparently decided
we would leave at 6 a.m., but Marie said "5 a.m." very firmly, and Marj.
at once pretended she had really meant 5 a.m. all the time. So at that
hour we turned out of our warm beds into the dark, wintry night-air, and
were off along the track a quarter of an hour later, then down
Short-ridge's Pass, and at the Blue Gum Forest in time for breakfast at
9.10 a.m. Breakfast eaten, we picked up the track down the Grose. We
knew we had a bis: day before us, and it was delightful to find this
excellent track taking us right along below the cliffs of the Mount Hay
Plateau, sometimes through open grassy flats, sometimes through dark
sassafras- and coaehwood-forests. But time was fleeting, and, when after
four or five miles the path became overgrown with lawyer vines and thorn
bushes, we looked with anxiety at those precipitous crags above. How
soon would they break down ? If they went on much longer the allotted
time would have elapsed and we would have to return the way we had come.
After five or six miles they did show signs of breaking; but when we
looked again round the next corner, there they rose sheer as before. So
we went on again more anxiously than ever, but at last we saw a gully up
which a line of trees appeared to climb right to the top. We decided to
try it.
It was the middle of winter, but the
midday sun was unpleasantly hot as we struggled up the steep grass- and
bracken-slopes, literally dragging ourselves up by tufts of undergrowth.
Then we reached the rocks. Would they "go" ? We hauled ourselves and
then our rucksacks up on to various ledges. Yes, they did "go." Soon
after 1 p.m. the cliffs lay below and a wooded slope above, and we
decided that this must be the forgotten Walford's route.
The climb was only half done, but the rest
w,as an easy if strenuous struggle through steep bushland on to an open
spur, and then on to the main ridge which is fairly thickly wooded. The
gully up which we came proved to be the third beyond Mount Hay, a point
to remember if you approach from the Mount Hay Plateau to the Grose, for
from above there is no means of telling which gully ends in sheer cliffs
and which does not.
We camped at the col before reaching Mount
Hay. As Marie had anticipated, we did have some difficulty about water,
and had to fill the billies with teaspoons from pools in the rocks.
There was plenty of water in the stream below the col. But who would
camp down below when there is a perfectly good cave on the heights
above? Below our cave the plateau dipped away in tier below tier till it
reached the coastal plain, beyond which the lights of Sydney glimmered
on the eastern horizon, with Pennant Hills Wireless Station conspicuous
among them. But that was the only sign of civilisation: for the rest
there were the. silent hills and no light except the light of stars. In
the morning, Venus hung like a lighthouse lamp above the rocky pile on
our left, so we called it Venus Beacon and set off to climb it before
returning homeward by the usual route along the ridge to Leura.
Are Shortridge's Pass and Walford's route
the only two ways off the plateau? Hudson Smith, of the Hikers' Club,
investigated the only likely gully near Lockley Pylon, got up on to a
shelf, found a blank wall of rock above, and then spent a hectic twenty
minutes in getting down again. The deep gully, whose stream flows from
Three Knob Hill, splits the plateau in two, and has its exit under Mount
Hay and Butterbox Point, provides another possible route, and in search
of this, Marie went from the Blue Gum Forest to where this creek emerges
from the plateau intothe Grose Valley. With some difficulty she went a
short way up the Canyon, but was blocked by a waterfall and apparently
cliffs on all sides, some rising in fifty-foot relays, some rising sheer
five hundred feet. If it was this gully down which Dixon got, "it was no
wonder he thanked God he got out alive!
But the glimpse of that gorge was so
fascinating that, accompanied by Ernestine Anderson, we decided to
investigate it from above, and go as far down it as possible. We camped
near Butterbox Point, where there was both a cave and a stream and no
necessity to spoon water from rocky pools. From there we followed the
course of the stream towards its source, finding that every tributary
ended in a waterfall, and that the seemingly gently sloping wooded spurs
turned into caverned cliffs at the bottom. Still we went on hopefully,
and eventually succeeded in making our way to what seemed a gentle slope
right to the creek bed. But when we came to go down, we found the same
cliffs as before, a little more broken, that was all. We were able to
climb down till we stood on the verge of the final gorge. Fifty feet
below ran the dark mysterious waters of a stream hemmed in by caverned
cliffs, a stream whose waters had never seen the sunlight, and whose
boulders had never known the foot of man, and Ernestine quoted:
"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through
caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."
Up and down the valley the cliffs rose
higher than ever, and deep beneath their many caverns flowed the Many
Caverned Creek. And this was the stream we had so lightly decided to
cross next day on our way home! Perhaps some day an enterprising person
will seek to enter its gorge at its source in the green swamp under
three Knob Hill and follow it down, but it will not be anyone with a
tendency to claustrophobia! It is gorges like these which make you
appreciate the feelings of Governor Phillip's explorers.
For us, our ambition changed from seeking
the waters of the Many Caverned Creek to merely standing on the brink of
its precipices. And next day we walked along the open, heathy spur from
Butterbox Point to where the Many Caverned Creek emerges from its
cliffs. This time we got down a little gully to a point perhaps halfway
down the crags. Across the Many Caverned Creek the red ochre cliffs rose
five hundred feet, sheered and cleaned by recent landslips, and below us
the waters of the creek dashed out from their gloomy defile into the
sunlight of the gum-clad slopes of the Grose Valley. Coming back we
climbed an isolated rocky knob, guarding the entrance of the Many
Caverned Gorge. We called it Peanut Point, built a cairn on top, and
reckoned it as a "virgin peak."
Govett's Leap Creek.
Are there any other ways off the Mount Hay
Plateau except by going further east than Walford's route where cliffs
break down altogether? We doubt it, but we have still to try the side
facing
MARIE B. BYLES and MARJORIE SHAW.
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