In Their Spare Hours 

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Du Faur was the embodiment of Victorian ideas of progress, a keen advocate of "opening up" territory. Having established his Grose Gorge forward base he employed a Mr. Thompson, a companion of the late explorer Andrew Hume, as camp keeper and guide. Discovering an overgrown survey track (1857 ), he hired three men to clear it. A week later he had a direct, twelve mile track from Hartley siding. Later, he confessed, his only regret was that the road had not been maintained by government. Indeed he intended asking government to spend a further fifty pounds to extend the track to the foot of the Govett's Leap Falls. Du Faur hoped for a comfortable carriage ride to the valley floor, together with a picnic amongst Nature’s spendour, encouraging others to enjoy its beauty.
He also hired two artists: the photographer Joseph Bischoff and the Tasmanian painter, William Piguenit. Bischoff had been part of the original train journey, as evidenced by a train passenger recalling that "our orifactory glands at once advised us that photographic material formed part of the luggage."
After taking photographs from above, Bischoff appears to have reached the camp by the newly cleared track. Using heavy and cumbersome, wet plate photographic equipment, he spent ten days in the Grose.
Piguenit, sometimes daubed  Australia’s first ‘native’ romantic painter’, arrived on the fifth day, when most of the first group had departed. The landscape artist spent three weeks  sketching and painting the Valley's waterfalls, cascades and lush vegetation, delighting in the tree and birds nest ferns.
DuFaur’s party enthusiastically aided both artists, by felling trees and clearing bush. Indeed the very first afternoon was innocently recorded as "spent felling trees to clear views for the photographer and the sketcher". In the following weeks the exercise was repeated several times. However, when bushes and nearby vegetation was burnt off to clear the area of black snakes, Bischoff strongly protested. The fires must be stopped, he said, as they created a haze that would spoil the photographs.
The Claims
The "spare hours" explorers also hoped to be “the first”- but of what? Writing under the psydonym ‘Junevis', one of the original adventurers begged the conceit of thinking their party the first "white folk" to reach the base of Govetts Leap. They had already learnt that the 1857 railway survey team had reached the Grose Valley floor. Yet it seemed probable to them, that they were at least the first to reach the base of Govetts Leap.
They were not. With amazing rapidity, a Bathurst watchmaker claimed to have "explored the whole of the valley and falls above Mt George" in 1847, nearly thirty years earlier. He gave brief, convincing evidence that he had done so, describing a more direct route to the Govetts Leap Falls.
Still, the "spare hours" explorers did have an purposeful objective: mapping the valley floor, and securing natural images for the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876. Only a few months before, Du Faur had proposed "to collate a folio of Blue Mountains scenery worthy of  transmission to Europe." It was to include photographs, drawings, topographical maps, letter press and geological items.
Du Faur later recalled bright and favourable weather for his expedition, yet it was fatal to photographic success. Outdoor photography worked best in even light. So Bischoff, he claimed, had to rephotograph the scenery with large twelve by fifteen inch (30x40cm) plates and equipment, enough hand loads for five men.
Ever the consummate publicist,  he used the journey to advance the nascent NSW Academy of Art, the precursor of the Sydney’s NSW Art Gallery. As its secretary he had conspicuously championed the local landscape as artistic subject matter, saying
Within a few hours ride of Sydney there is scenery which, for sublimity or grandeur, is not perhaps surpassed in the world; but for some amount of popularity…gained, principally by visitors from other colonies, they would almost be unknown to Sydney people, even by name.
Later that year, the Academy held an exhibition of Grose Valley scenery, principally of Bischoff's photographs. Before an audience of one hundred and twenty people Du Faur, gave a account of their party’s activities and achievements. He emphasized the expedition's geographical achievements: measuring the height of the cliffs, the exactitude of the survey work, the fine delineation of the Gorge's topography, the accuracy of plans and lithographic reproductions etc. Comparision were made between the scale of Govetts Leap Falls and London's St Paul's Cathedral. There was a commentary on the photographic work, an outline of future tasks, and the state of financial support.
Late in his speech Du Faur came closest to identifying this adventure as recreation. Sydney’s bushland- the Shoalhaven, the Wollondilly, Burragorang, Warragamba, Coxs, the Colo river valleys afforded a healthy field of exercise for the young men of our own city.
His expedition was a blend of art and science, but he hoped it encouraged  all those with spare hours to  "join in such undertakings… furthering a taste for natural scenery". This recreation had no name, it’s form was vague, it exponents scattered, but, it was a beginning.