BLUE MOUNTAINS – 16 May 2025
I’ve known about the Lost City area of the Gardens of Stone NP for many years now but never visited it. NPs have now taken this area and created a tourist destination with a good walking track and parking. Trish and I had a couple of hours on our way to Oberon so thought we’d check it out (and cross another walk off my wish list).
We set out from Katoomba with the intention of doing the walk and finishing by 4pm so that we weren’t driving to Oberon in the dark. Nothing worked to plan.
We’d encountered drizzle and overcast weather on the way up the Great Western Highway but when we left Katoomba on the way to the Darling Causeway (on the way to Lithgow), it seemed we were driving through cloud, visibility was down to maybe 100m, we wondered whether the walk through the Lost City would be worth it with the low cloud.
By the time we got to Lithgow, we were back below the cloud, so we were positive. Trish set Google Drive to take us to the Lost City southern car park. We knew that the State Mine Road would get us there but Google had another idea and sent us through Lithgow to Reserve Road, which we confidently followed – all the way to a locked gate in some sort of Army property. By this time it’s 2pm and we’d planned 2 hours of walking. But, not to be deterred we told Google Drive to take us to the State Mine Road. We weren’t overly confident about the road, in years gone by it was 4WD only.
The first hint of “something interesting” massive rock faces with pagodas on top.
As it turned out the road was beautiful, recently graded and not a pot hole in sight. On the way up to the parking lot, we spotted these amazing caves in the pagodas.
“We’ll have to come back one day and do some exploring here” we agreed.
How nice are these, just beckoning to be explored.
At the high point of the road we found the Lost City car park access road, only to discover that it was “closed” for some sort of work. Ah well, when we come back we’ll at least know how to get there! So, we headed back down the road to check out those caves.
We stopped off at what looked like a parking spot for the views, so hopped out to take a shot. This is looking over to the Lost City area – lots of pagodas apparently.
It turned out the parking spot was the start of a dis-used fire trail out along the ridge. We followed the trail out to the end (what looked like a spot for the locals to have a campfire and a few beers. Along the way found another nice cave, not as big as the others though.
In front of this cave was a 3m eroded gully, we went upstream a ways and found a safer spot to cross. If you look carefully at the ferns in the right hand corner, you can just see a rope coming out of the ferns which was attached to a tree – we didn’t see this at the time.
We headed up a well defined track and came across a few minor caves. Then turned back to approach the larger ones.
This one was a little difficult to get to. Trish did a climb up to the base grabbing onto ferns, it was very slippery after all the rain. It was then that I spotted the hand-line/rope so was easier for me to get up. But then we were at a slope with just fragile looking ferns to hold on to. I went right to the top, Trish decided that half-way was good enough (those ferns weren’t really meant to hold our weight).
At the top, looking down.
Trish back down to the rope – we slid down on our butts.
The obligatory selfie – sort of “what were we thinking climbing up there?”
Me coming down with the aid of the hand-line. It was quite trecherous.
Over to the next cave. This too had a muddy slippery slope, so we figured that it wasn’t worth the risk to go to the top.
Instead, Trish found a route over to the next cave, a muddy track but then an easy step up to where she is. Up to the next level was a bit more risky, she made it up to the flat spot, but I had to grab hold of her feet/legs to get myself up (she kindly guided me down). I wasn’t too happy going up, there was at least a 5m drop below us. Trish explored further on but I stayed put. “Nothing more to explore” she said, for which I was thankful.
Looking into the last cave.
We’ve agreed that it is definitely a place to come back to (maybe to add onto a Lost City 1/2 day trip), so much to explore, and I guess we were sort of happy that we couldn’t get into Lost City because this meant that we could check out the caves.
So, another trip for the Wish List lol. Right on 4pm, when we said we’d start out for Oberon, we set off … on the way to our next adventure.
Banner Image: lichen from one of the pagodas across from Lost City.