Thanks for the report guys.

Cheers
Lotsafreshair

My greatest fear and thrill (in retrospect) was Danae Brook.

If this stuff isn’t basalt, it’s an odd sort of sandstone. It’s much harder than the typical tan-coloured sandstone you find in the Blue Mountains plateau. This case study identifies a ‘basalt’ cap on Mt Hay (~7km NW from here); this layering appears remarkably similar to the geological construction of the rock formations in my ‘back yard.’

There’s a spot about 75m beyond my back gate, where a ~150mm thick layer of gray, finely grained, very hard rock (which I previously identified as basalt as a result of the aforementioned Villanova case study), has eroded and has exposed the underlying sandstone. This is forming a new cave. If this capping layer is not basalt, but rather iron concentration in the sandstone, I’m wondering why it’s grey and not reddish.

All that aside, I need to offer a bit of advice on parking to reach the fire trail that leads to Paradise. Caley Lane does not have improved drainage, so the grassy area on the downhill side (across the street from the houses) of Caley Lane, where you folks and others have been parking of late, can become very soft & muddy when we have had a lot of rain (and it’s been nearly incessant recently). I had to hitch up a chain to my ute to pull out a visitor’s car which had become stuck out of the grassy area the other day. Thank heavens the driver didn’t just gun it and hope for traction, because that car would have gone sideways over the cliff & likely have landed upside down on Glossop Road.

There is another public access point to the fire trail which you can find about 30m west of the intersection of Tollgate Drive and Railway Parade. There is a large sandy clearing right at the mouth of the fire trail where there is room to park at least 4-5 cars. This spot is not prone to becoming muddy. It is public land, along a power line easement corridor, so no one will give you any grief for parking there. You can walk straight on to the fire trail without having to contend with the normally overgrown Caley’s Repulse.

Also, since there’s been an increase in the numbers of bushwalkers on the fire trail, I’ve set up a WiFi access point in the back of my house (SSID DawesParkFreeWiFi) which will cover about 50m of the trail behind my house, for the use of anyone who needs it. 3G coverage up here is really poor, so please feel free to use it. You should find signal right around here. There’s no password required, but please be kind to my 200Gb/month data allowance. A couple of Gb per day for visitors should be fine.

Also, should you be a twitterer, you can find me @weezmgk.

Cheers,

Brian

Only negative is that I don’t use them for walking on the trail or bush bashing so I use a second pair of lightweight runners. I might have to try them out on the trail to see how they go.