Govetts Leap Lookout 2

At Blackheath we are a bunch of stirrers and truth stretchers liars ... if truth be actually told. There's a statue in one of our parks which depicts a bushranger (highwayman or frontier outlaw, depending on ones's culture) mounted on a horse which is attempting to leap from a cliff. Underneath it says "Legend of Govetts Leap".

Depicted at the local (and freshly upgraded railway station) there is a huge mural of the same mounted bushranger, bearing sacks of ill gotten gold, suspended in mid air, having just jumped from a cliff to avoid pursuing police, with the words "Legend of Govetts Leap" beneath it.

The casual visitor can therefore be forgiven for believing that way back in the nineteenth century, some bushranger, named Govett actually DID leap from a cliff into the cavernous Grose Valley below and that the site where that occurred must have been Govetts Leap Lookout". Right?

WRONG.

The somewhat more prosaic (and rather disappointing) truth is that Govett was a government surveyor, working on Cox's Road (the first route over the Blue Mountains). Govett visited this location and spied a lovely waterfall. As Govett was Scottish and his local word for a waterfall was "leap", he described  the waterfall accordingly. And so the feature is called "Govetts Leap" and the place, from which you can SEE it, is "Govetts Leap Lookout". 

This blip is a follow up to one I did the other day. This one shows a spread of images illustrating the various features of the freshly renovated precinct, just a bit back from the clifftop. The extra is a pano from the highest part of the site.