BLUE TRAIL 17: Around Londonderry Reserve, River Lett Catchment

The River Lett received its name when someone reading the 1814 survey notes made by Surveyor George W Evans did not pick up that he’d intended to write the word “rivulet”. It is a relatively short waterway with an eclectic series of landscapes along its course. 

In an accessible section, motor traffic crosses the Joseph Morris bridge, named after a local pioneer whose descendant, Barry Morris, was an apple grower who became Liberal State MP for the Blue Mountains until disendorsed due to a court case involving “joke” phone calls made in theatrical voices. 

A few hundred metres downstream, the waterway filters lazily through a bed of reeds along the boundary of the Londonderry Reserve. Nearby is a property owned by the children of a woman who kept emus raised from chicks brought from Cobar. 

The surviving emus often greet visitors who pull off the road near Londonderry Reserve to admire the birds and the excellent view of Mount York (where the three explorers, whose tracks Surveyor Evans was following, realised in 1813 that they had crossed the mountains into a new landscape).