Camping in Australia's Blue Mountains - Part 1

After paying $10 a night for hotels for the last 4 months, it was a real blow to pay $100 for much worse accommodation than we were used to in Sydney (lovely city though it is). But camping is free (and awesome), so we bought some rail tickets for the small mountain town of Blackheath, 2.5 hours outside of the city. Here's Jen at Sydney's central station:


And here's the station at Blackheath.

From there we met our future hosts--a very nice family named the Nortons--who would keep our non-essential camping things (such as laptops) until we returned. They dropped us at the trail head, and we hiked a (very) short way to Perry's Lookdown, a camp site on the edge of the Blue Mountains.

We pitched our tent, and felt very satisfied with ourselves.


We usually like to find out what might kill or injure us before we camp in a new place, and in the Blue Mountains the answer is snakes and spiders. The funnel spider is a particularly venomous variety. We spotted the web of one on our way to the lookout.

Right next to the lookout is a large wind-eroded rock face, which was also impressive.


Rain clouds started to gather as we walked back to our tent, and it started to drizzle shortly after our return, not letting up until morning.