Talk:Blue Mountains (New South Wales)

The Blue Mountains are not a range of sandstone mountains. They are a disected sandstone plateau.

Nowhere are the sandstone gorges up to 1000 m deep. The maximum depth is around Mt Banks and the Grose River where the elevation ranges from 1062 m to 300 m.

The area of the City of Blue Mountains local government area (BM LGA) is stated as 1433 square kilometres on their website www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/ This seems to be written from the BMCC point of view rather than a neutral point of view. Many people would be referring to a much larger area when they refer to the Blue Mountains. Bushwalkers would talk about the Grose Valley and areas within the city of Blue Mountains as the central Blue Mountains, areas around the Kanangra Boyd National Park and Lake Burragorang as the southern Blue Mountains and areas in Wollemi National Park as the northern Blue Mountains. From that point of view the area of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area would be a better estimate of the area of the Blue Mountains. Others may include much of the developed areas near the National Parks as part of the Blue Mountains. The National Parks and Wildlife Service Blue Mountains Region covers a much larger area but not all of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area is within that region!

In this regard, while parts of the City of Blue Mountains (the National Parks) are part of the world heritage area, the rest of the local government area is not.

We need to be clear what Blue Mountains this article is talking about. It seems to keep changing.

The Blue Mountains Range extends north west into the Lithgow local government area and is tenuously connected to the Great Dividing Range by Wolgan Gap. It is mostly separated from the GDR by the Coxs River valley. 1111 m is not the highest point on the Blue Mountains Range. It may be the highest point in the City of Blue Mountains. It gets to at least 1190 m in the Lithgow local government area.

Stringybark forest is not the predominant vegetation on the higher ridges of the Blue Mountains Range. Above about 800 m the predominant vegetation on the ridges is "Blue Mountains Sandstone Plateau Forest". This is an open forest dominated by Eucalyptus sieberi Silvertop Ash and Eucalyptus piperita ssp. piperita Sydney Peppermint. Neither of these species is a stringybark. Other species in this forest type include E. oreades, E. radiata, E. sclerophylla, E. oblonga and E. mannifera. Of these only E. oblonga is a stringybark.

Heath is found on the plateau edges above the cliffs. It is quite extensive in some places.

The Wollemi Pine grows in one remote and isolated valley in the Wollemi National Park in the northern Blue Mountains not on the Blue Mountains Range nor in the City of Blue Mountains local government area.

In recent years extensive bushfires have caused only the loss of a handfull of houses in the Blue Mountains. The 1950s and 1960s were much worse. This is true of the Greater Blue Mountains area not just the local government area. There is certainly the potential for great loss of property and loss of life. Compare this with loss of over 500 houses, four lives and $300 million damages in Canberra, the capital of Australia, in January 2003.

The upper Blue Mountains (within the BM LGA) have had large fires in recent decades. The Bell Range fire in January 1994 burned from the upper mountains all the way to the Hawkesbury River at sea level.

The Mount Hay and Mount Hall fires started in the "upper mountains". There have been extensive wildfires in the southern and northern Blue Mountains in the 1990s and 2000s.

It is wrong to say "A program of winter burning seems to have been quite successful in reducing fires in the upper mountains". Hazard reduction burning is seldom successful in the higher elevations of the Blue Mountains Rural Fire District (roughly the same as the City of Blue Mountains). It is normally too cold and wet to burn in winter and too dry and risky to burn in summer. Burns are attempted in spring and autumn but seldom are hot enough to remove enough fuel to make a real difference above 800 m. At lower elevations well planned hazard reduction burns are often successful.

--144.131.98.43 08:44, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

There is a separate article Blue Mountains City Council so I have moved the City of the Blue Mountains material there. This article can refocus on the mountain range. Nurg 07:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

This article has obviously been vandalised, can someone revert it? I don't know how. Thanks Naysie 12:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The blueness

I was told the eucalyptus oil story growing up in the area, but have come to doubt it. I have since seen blue distant mountains on sunny days all over the world. I think it is just the same refraction of light that causes the sky to be blue. What do you folk think? Rumiton 09:43, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

David Iredale

Does anyone have a reference for the death of David Iredale on Mt Solitary a year or so back? Am doing an article on Mt Soli and would like a reference for David's death. I have a clipping but it does not have the date and page number.

Sardaka (talk) 11:17, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Page move

There are many Blue Mountain ranges, and it's not clear to me why this range is more notable than some of the others. Is there any objection to moving this article to Blue Mountains (Australia) and redirecting Blue Mountains to the Blue Mountain disambiguation page?Northwesterner1 (talk) 00:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I have checked the first ten pages of Google, and all links for Blue Mountains go directly (and exclusively) to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia. These results would seem to suggest that the Blue Mountains here in Australia are very notable indeed. Figaro (talk) 08:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the page should not be moved. . --User:Adam.J.W.C. (talk) (talk) 08:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The first ten pages of Google? Are you sure you're not searching www.google.com.au? I just searched for the term "Blue Mountains" on www.google.com. A hit for Blue Mountain (ski resort) in Canada shows up on the first page. Hits for Blue Mountains (Jamaica) and Blue Mountains (Oregon) show up on the second page, along with hits for several companies named Blue Mountain. The Blue Mountains, Ontario shows up on the third page. It's true that the Australian Blue Mountains seem to be the most common result, but the other "Blue Mountains" have enough notability that it would be appropriate to send this search term straight to the disambiguation page. A random reader entering "Blue Mountains" into the Wikipedia search engine may indeed be looking for the Australian mountains, but I believe searches for the other mountains are common enough that disambiguation is in order. You have to think globally. Readers in North America will be more likely searching for one of the other ranges. Blue Mountains (Oregon) is the only "Blue Mountains" defined in the American Heritage Dictionary and Random House Dictionary. If you go to dictionary.com and type "Blue Mountains", you're going to get the Oregon range. Glancing down the list of Special:WhatLinksHere/Blue_Mountains, I can see several articles linked to this page by mistake, and I think moving this page to a more precise title would help clear that up.Northwesterner1 (talk) 10:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I can see your point. After all, this is an international encyclopedia, and, as there would appear to be a number of 'Blue Mountains' (something I was not aware of, until this discussion arose), all Blue Mountains should receive equal acknowledgement. I also notice, from your link above, that this article used to be called Blue Mountains (Australia), with tha page being later redirected to the present title of 'Blue Mountains'. Incidently, I do not agree with your suggestion that the Blue Moutains page should be redirected to the 'Blue Mountain' disambiguation page, because people looking for the Australian Blue Mountains page would be looking for the article under the title 'Blue Mountains' (not 'Blue Mountain'). Therefore, if this page was to be again changed to the earlier title, then I feel that the title 'Blue Mountains' should become a 'Blue Mountains' disambiguation page (not just a redirect link to the 'Blue Mountain' disambiguation page). In fact, I think that 'Blue Mountains' and 'Blue Mountain' should be distinctly separate from each other – with 'see also' links to the other page - i.e. the 'Blue Mountains' disambiguation page could have a 'see also' link to that of the 'Blue Mountain' disambiguation page, and vice-versa. By the way, I notice that you live in Oregon in the United States, where there is the Blue Mountains Range you mention, so I understand why you are personally interested in the change being made. Figaro (talk) 09:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)