The main view is from the walking track on the western approach to Mount Banks. In 1804 George Caley and his party approached from the eastern side, suffering from hunger and exhaustion they could continue no further and struggled back to Sydney. The Blue Mountains were to remain impenetrable to the colonists until 1813 when Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and William Lawson followed the ridges not the valleys and found a route to the fertile inland west of the great dividing range.
The vegetation changes as you approach the mount from Montane heath on the exposed Narrabeen sandstone dominated by Eucalytpus stricta, allocasurina nana, Leptospermum attenuatum, Patersonia sericea (see flower pic above); to Moist basalt cap forest on the slopes, dominated by E. fastigata, we found a rich deep soil with wombat warrens and active birdlife.
The flesh of the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) is described as tasting like ham and was a prized traditional food; children would be sent down the burrow feet first and would call and beat on the tunnel when they located an animal which was then dug out; they would also be night stalked and speared.
It is interesting that the word for wombat in the Dharug language of the lower Blue Mountains is wombat, although in Gundungurra, which was used in the upper mountains around Katoomba and in the high valleys, it is goolung. The inland Dharug language is related to the coastal language used around Sydney Cove in 1788, whose speakers, the Eora, acted as informants to the colonists and provided much of the local nomenclature, hence the animal's common name as we know it. If the settlers had asked the mountain people their name for the animal instead, we might now be calling them goolungs not wombats; not quite the same ring to it though...
