"............Hidden deep beneath the eucalypt laden flanks of the Blue Mountains lies a labyrinth of narrow chasms, underground waterfalls and concealed ferny glades. The action of water over millions of years has carved into the heart of the sandstone bedrock, an ancient crack or fault line transformed into a deep cleft where a creek now flows. Over aeons of time, the water has created smooth walled rock pools and waterfalls that tumble over steps and pauses in the gradually descending watercourse. These are places of dim light and cool, damp breezes where plant life clings to any weakness in the smooth walls. Canyons vary from a single creek entering a slot for a few hundred metres to complex linked watercourses which can run for a few kilometres.

The Blue Mountains are one the few places in the world with such a profusion of deep, narrow canyons. The unique combination of conditions required for canyons to develop has meant that although there are hundreds in the sandstone plateau country of our own back yard, there really is not a comparable region anywhere else with so many canyons concentrated in one area.

The water which has worked so hard to sculpt the rock is an erratic master................"

Originally published in Experience Magazine in 1996 as an article on Blue Mountains Canyoning titled "Down Among the Glow Worms"