Blue Mountains

We got our same taxi driver to take us back to the camper van rentals depot. Even better, we picked up the same Miss Maui as we had dropped off. A couple of hours west of Sydney are the Blue Mountains. This fortunately avoids a drive through central Sydney. We are staying in Katoomba. We stopped here to get supplies and both felt concerned. It conjured up memories of Aldershot in its latter years, but I did get a great coffee.

Our campsite was a bit out of town, and really pleasant. But then we walked over the road to see the Katoomba Falls, the local attraction. Oh My Word, what a change. The view before us was enormous. A massive vista of gorges, mountains, valleys, trees and rock faces. See for yourselves.

I know Aldershot has Long Valley for tank testing, but it’s never going to be able to compete with this!

The actual waterfall the area is named after was also spectacular at 230m high.

We briefly explored the walks at the top of the gorge that go to loads of lookouts, before heading back to eat. Lookouts is an Australian term for places you can stand on a cliff, with your toes wrapped over the cliff edge, at least 200m above the valley floor.

Then Sue wanted to go back to walk up to the 200m drops in the dark and enjoy looking out into miles of night. The trails were lit and the gorges and waterfalls were floodlit so it did make for an eerie but sensational experience.

See what I mean about Eerie but Sensational!

The next morning, we went to Scenic World. I was thinking, we now have to pay to get into look at the scenery we had already been looking at for free. But as usual, I was wrong. Scenic World is perched at the top of the gorge cliff. It has a little train decent into the valley below, a cable car decent to a different location on the valley floor and a glass bottom cable car across the valley, for anyone insane enough to stand on glass 260m above ground level.

We initially went on the train decent, which is actually the steepest decent for a train in the whole world.

It was the way coal miners in the 1870’s went to work. Sue and I were first in the queue so were able to take the front seats. The train descends through a tunnel and then the natural gorge, but you are basically concentrating on not face planting into the mesh screen at the front of the train as it goes down what feels like a sheer drop.

On the valley floor there were a number of walks through the rain forest.

One walk provided the whole history of the coal mining activity, even showing the shaft the men/boys used to crawl into and the tools they used to mine 20,000 tons of coal per annum.

The cable car across the gorge gave us a great view of the Katoomba Falls. on the far side we walked around the gorge to see the three sisters.

The Three Sisters

After Scenic Workd we headed back to cook up some steaks on the BBQ. Here’s a picture of our very exclusive restaurant that evening.

So the Blue Mountains, or more specifically, Katoomba, had redeemed itself in style. Before leaving we drove about 17km to Wentworth Falls on our journey out of Dodge, well Dodgy Katoomba.

Wentworth Falls is another feature of this particular National Park. We arrived very early, and enjoyed the falls while very few people were around. We also enjoyed a pretty bird having breakfast.

In front of Sue was a sign saying, "Do not climb over the barrier. Rocks are slippery even when dry and you are near a 100m drop." Sue come over here. I want to do a selfie.

Sue!.......Sue!........Hold on, I will see if I can get a rope

Once I had retrieved Sue and we had walked to a few more of the landmarks in the area, we set off for Port Stephens. We have almost 300 hundred kms to do, so sit back, buckle up your seat belts and we will see you all there.

Lots of love Sue & Trev xxx