March march

Not so much a march as a meander, this month's bushwalk took us along a creek that the 26-year-old Charles Darwin followed when he spent time in the Blue Mountains during the voyage of the Beagle. Our leaders had chosen this particular route in honour of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth
Little has changed since he made the trek, other than the trail being better groomed and signposted.





We took a break where the creek flowed over a large rock...



...and into sandy pools whose limpid surface reflected the sunny sky.





Eventually, we arrived at the cliff edge where the water dropped abruptly out of sight. At the same spot, Darwin recorded in his notebook: "...suddenly & without any preparation, through the trees which border the pathway, an immense gulf is seen...The class of view was to me quite novel & certainly magnificent."



There is a sturdy fence at this point with the following warning attached to it:



Shortly afterwards, we came to a vantage point where we could see for ourselves the dramatic cascade, tumbling over the "most stupendous cliffs I have ever seen", as Darwin described them.