The Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains

A walk beneath a blazing Austral sun, Through poor, thin scrub, 'mid charred and ring-barked trees, Almost too bare to rustle in the breeze Which o'er the mountain tops will weep anon. And now there bursts mine awestruck gaze upon The mighty valley, bathed in sleeping seas Of forest, with vast caryatides Of rugged sandstone precipice, whereon Its tree-clad sides do rest. A blue haze spreads Like far, faint peat-reek from a Highland cot, A light wind blows to meet me from the heads, Until I dream that I am standing, not Upon a mountain-gorge, but on a bay, With coves and headlands stretching far away. Well might the famous naturalist* exclaim That this was Sydney Harbour moved inland, When he beheld the giant gorge expand With capes of huge outstanding cliffs to frame And separate the deep-sunk coves-the same As our great port, had there but been a strand Beneath their feet, of shimmering, silvery sand, And deep blue water where the forest came. What stranger freak hath Nature played than this? To mould two masterpieces on one plan, And set the one among the fastnesses Of mountains, scarce accessible to man; But leave the other where the sea breeze brings The commerce of the nations on its wings,
 * Charles Darwin on his Naturalist's Voyage.