Word: caley
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...Pulling ourselves, scratched and sweating, up a rocky bluff out of what Caley named the Devil's Wilderness, it's easy to imagine why he needed to gather his men that night and urge them, as he recounts in his journal, to continue. When they had arrived at the edge of this plunging valley, Caley noted that it seemed "to bid defiance to any man." Going down was brave, says Ian Brown, who leads the Mount Tomah group. A modest, quietly spoken man with a wry sense of humor, he was one of the three men who in 1997 became...
...Caley's plan was always to head straight for the hill now known as Mount Tomah. But the country wouldn't let him, continually pushing him along spurs, forcing him into steep gullies and bringing him to the edge of ha-has, the dreaded chasms that on several occasions seemed to open at the party's feet. Often they had to retrace their weary steps. The bush remains as trackless today as it was then, a labyrinth of wood and rock. Few know its secret corners and paths as do modern explorers like Brown, Andy Macqueen and Wyn Jones. Macqueen...
...Caley's wilderness is not as remote as it once was. Sydney's suburbs lap at the range's feet, and at night the sound of trucks several kilometers away drift faintly into tents. On one ridgetop a mobile phone rings. But these are small intrusions into a stern wilderness. There are few walkers out here, and standing on one of the many ridges, the view in every direction is of implacable bush. There are still unexplored gullies out there; in one such nook, north of Caley's route, the Wollemi pine, which Wyn Jones helped identify, made international headlines...
...brisk tone of Caley's journal offers little praise for his surroundings. The names he bestows along the way - the Devil's Wilderness, Dismal Dingle (a valley "like a coal-pit"), Dark Valley - hint at his impressions. When his men spotted two crows, they joked that the birds must be lost, "or else they would never stop in such a place as this." Climbing in the heat through one windless gully after another, pushing through prickly scrub amid leeches, flies and furious ants, sweaty and smeared with charcoal from burned trees, it's understandable why he spent little time...
...modern walkers, free from the uncertainty and food worries that plagued Caley, have time to revel in their surroundings. Giant red waratah blooms stand on thick stalks like sentinels beside dark pools. Slow slugs colored electric pink and pale green come out after the rain, when the rich brown, gold and silver-gray hues of wet bark glisten. Huge flowers adorn gnarled banksia trees so old they would have been sprouting when Caley passed by. Owls call to another in the dark, and the stars, which Caley thought he was seeing when he found glow-worms in Luminous Valley, glitter...