Tragic News

Yesterday, just after posting about our walk last Sunday near Lawson in The Blue Mountains, I saw the news of a tragedy that happened in the same area. It involved a British family out walking near Wentworth Falls. I will not go into detail about the incident except to say that two members of the family – the father and his youngest son – lost their lives when they were caught in a landslide. The mother and an older brother were both badly injured. Let’s hope they are both OK. The couple’s 15 year old daughter raised the alarm. She was uninjured (I think) but clearly very distressed. Our thoughts are with them.

This happened on Monday which was another sunny day when people were still keen to partake in outdoor activities like hiking.

The irony is that after so much rain, despite the conditions being far more dangerous than usual, the waterfall at Wentworth would have been fantastic. There were certainly a lot of people out and about in the mountains the day we were there. As I pointed out in the post, after so many day of rain I think people just wanted to get out of the city. We certainly did.

Landslides and rock falls can happen at any time but after so much rainfall the conditions in the mountains are even more dangerous. It’s a risk we so rarely even consider. The bad weather stops and we all come out to play. But also the chance of something like that happening are so small we tend to be too over-confident about our own safety. Food for thought…