The Blue Mountains

This weekend’s trip took me west of Sydney to the Blue Mountains where I got to experience some spectacular views of the Jamison Valley, Wentworth Falls, The Three Sisters and Katoomba Falls. The weather up in the mountains was just beautiful. It was very clear and the air was very fresh and crisp. The temperature only reached about 19 degrees Celsius which is about as cold as it gets in the middle of the night in Sydney these days. I also got to ride the steepest railway in the world!

The day began with a quick stop at Olympic Park, home of the 2000 Summer Olympics. It was pretty neat as we got to see markings of the heights and distances for long jump, high jump, triple jump and pole vault. Let me tell you it was extremely impressive. It’s a bit hard for me yet to be able to comprehend exactly how long and high these measurements were because it was all in meters, but just looking at it was astonishing. Then there was also a gazebo-type building that had TV screens surrounding you and it had the sights and sounds of all the big events and it was cool because you really got to feel what the atmosphere was like during the actual events. The most memorable one was probably the sprinting events where Michael Johnson dominated with his gold shoes. I got the chills from watching him blow everyone else away and listening to the crowd in surrounding me was neat, too.

After Olympic Park we headed to Featherdale Wildlife Park which is a small zoo on the outskirts of Sydney. It was all pretty much the same things that I got to do at the Cairns Tropical Zoo, but it was very fun to play with kangaroos and wallabies again and pet the koalas. They also had lots of beautiful birds there and I even got to see a joey (baby kangaroo) that one of the staff members was holding as well as one that was still in its mother’s pouch. It was so funny because it was down in the pouch, but then the mother got scared for a little bit and hopped for a few meters and then when she stopped the little joey poked its head out of the pouch to see what was going on and make sure everything was alright. Too funny!

After Featherdale we moved on along to Wentworth Falls which is where I got my first glimpse of the Blue Mountains and Jamison Valley. In case you’re wondering, the reason they are called the Blue Mountains is because there is a high concentration of oils in the atmosphere from eucalyptus trees and when that oil mixes with the air it creates a bluish color that surrounds the valley in certain areas. Now, the Blue Mountains aren’t really mountains at all. This area is actually a series of plateaus surrounding the Jamison Valley, but it is at quite a higher elevation above sea level than Sydney and it does snow sometimes in the Blue Mountains, so it has the feel of being in the mountains. Anyway, at Wentworth Falls we took a short hike down to a lookout to get some good views of the waterfall and the valley, but we didn’t actually walk down to the waterfall. That would have taken another couple of hours.

From Wentworth Falls we stopped for lunch in a small town called Leura, which is the Aboriginal word for lava. Then we moved onto one of the more noted landmarks in the Blue Mountains, The Three Sisters. This rock formation, like most other landmarks in the area is given its name from an Aboriginal story. This one had something to do with three brothers who fell in love with three sisters. The three sisters were turned to stone by a witch who said that when she returned from fighting in the war, she would return them to their human forms. However, the witch perished in the battle and so the three sisters have been stuck like this ever since. That’s the short, condensed version of the story, but it gets the point across. Anyway, I got to hike down the side of the cliff and touch the Three Sisters and you also get a really good view from out there as well. It’s a bit scary though walking down the side of the cliff because it’s so steep and such a long way down, but I made it out safely.

ScenicWorld was our last stop of the trip. This place is built at the top of a large coal mine that is no longer in use. We took a nice stroll down the side of the cliff once again, and unlike our previous walks, we did not have to walk back up this time, since we were going to ride the Railway back up. Anyway, this was the best walk of the day and we really got into some deep forest where it was pretty dark and cool, but also sort of mysterious. I enjoyed it a lot because it gave me that feeling of a rainforest again, sort of like at Cairns. There were all sorts of overhangs on the side of the cliff where the aboriginals would seek refuge from storms and bad weather. We also got some great views of Katoomba Falls from the walk, which was just like Wentworth Falls, it didn’t contain a whole lot of water falling at once, but it fell really, really far where toward the bottom it looked like a lot of the water had pretty much turned into mist. Once we finally got to the end of our walk, we arrived at the Katoomba Scenic Railway, which is the world’s steepest inclined railway. It was used many years ago for the coal mining. They used it to get the coal from the bottom of the cliff to the top and also the miners would ride it up and down as well. They still had a lot of the equipment and railcars that were used many years ago on display. Riding the railway was cool, because when you first get into the railcars, you are leaned way back, so you know it’s going to get real steep and it sure did. It was like riding a rollercoaster up the first big hill and we did it backwards. However we knew we wouldn’t be going back down it really fast on the other side. Once we got back to the top of the cliff we had to scurry to the bus because we were already behind on time, but that was the end of the trip and we headed back home to Sydney.

I was very fortunate to pick a good day to visit the Blue Mountains because apparently the weekend before, it was very cloudy and you couldn’t see anything. In all honesty, there isn’t too much point in going to the Blue Mountains if you can’t see out into the valley or see any of the waterfalls, so I was grateful to be blessed with such good weather!