Out of the blue
Floating from a rope, we’re lowered 20 metres into the canyon. I land on the rock floor with a yelp of glee. Above us, shafts of sunlight protrude into the dark and secret chamber, home to water dragons, yabbies and bats. I can’t help looking for Gollum.
Outside iconic must-see landmarks like the Three Sisters, some of the best things to do and see in the Blue Mountains lie beyond the gaze of the common tourist.
Two hours west of Sydney, the indigo ridges are technically not mountains but a sedimentary plateau that rose some 170 million years ago. Carved by millennia of water erosion and bound by the Nepean, Hawkesbury, Colo, Wolgan and Cox rivers, the region is home to about 1000 canyons including Australia’s greatest-known number of slot canyons, those deep, dark, narrow chasms beloved by adventurers.
The Grand Canyon by the village of Blackheath is one of the most beautiful and accessible says Dan Mitchell, our guide with the Blue Mountains Adventure Company. We’re in a keyhole canyon, he explains: a large, round cavern with a narrow slot above. Bathed in the sound of trickling water and distant lyrebirds, it’s now the course of a creek. However, a river once raged through here.
An experience that encompasses abseiling, scrambling over boulders and logs and wading and swimming through freezing water, canyoning is an
