The Blue Mountains

2nd March 2007,  The Blue Mountains, Australia

04

Today we headed out of Sydney into the Blue Mountains National Park which is a large range directly west of the city.  Before we head out we take a detour to the famous Bondi Beach.  It is rather like Brighton Beach but sunny and with more people running up and down in speedos.  It is very nice however and there is a lovely Pavillion that faces the beach with an outdoor theatre and loads of lovely old photos of people on the beach in the early 20th century.

The drive to Blue Mountains takes a couple of hours and our first stop off is in Katoomba at Echo Point.  Here you get amazing, sweeping views of the Blue Mountains National Park including the 'Three Sisters' rocks which are an important site in Aboriginal history.  The mountains are not blue but earn their name from the bluey-haze that is given off from the oil of the Eucalyptus tees.  We then travelled round the corner to Scenic World which is a good place to go to see the mountains in different ways and learn about the mining industries that thrived there a hundred or so years ago.  We went on a cable car down into the rainforest which was pretty stunning and then took a 3km boardwalk through the forest.  As you walk through there are still artefacts lying around from the mining industry including a miners hut.  The mining industry was quite indescriminate in the way they approached getting the coal and so forth from the mountains.  There are photos of how it looked whrn they were working there and it is quite amazing to see how the forest has recovered and reclaimed its land.  We travel back up via the worlds steepest railway.  This form of transpot was adapted from a railway that used to take up the mined coal.  As the industry declined, the owners saw it as a good and lucrative way to get people up instead.  Daniel loved it, Rachel hated it.  You are tipped forward as you go up an almost vertical cliff and feel like you are going to fall and then to top it off the train goes through a tunnel in the cliff.

05

We overnight in nearby Blackheath.  The sites here are council owned and quite expensive but it is a lovely site set in forest land, very peaceful and spacious.

3rd March 2007 - The Blue Mountains to Port Stephen, Australia

Woke up on our lovely site to the sound of 'laughing' kookaburras.  We head up to Govetts Leap which is in Blackheath which is another amazing look out point over the mountains, possibly even better then the one at Echo Point (and the parking is free here!).

We are moving on to Port Stephen today and it is a lovely drive through the national park and forest to get there.  For long stretches we are the only vehicle on the road with just a few houses dotting the landscape and we didn't think of Wolf Creek once, honestly.  It's still a long drive and we're glad when we get to Port Stephen.  We stop off at Nelsons Bay then head up to Shoal Haven.  The site is council run again and therefore a bit over-priced but it's in a fab location right opposite the sandy beach along which we take a nice long walk.  Later on we stroll down to the Shoal Haven 'town' for a drink.  It's Saturday night and not the nicest of places to be honest (because of the people rather than the place itself) but it's ok and we find a nice enough hotel bar overlooking the ocean to have a drink in.

09

Katooma Falls

Lots of the roads in Oz are like this one

Stunning viewss at Echo Point

The easy way down the mountain

The Three Sisters

This is the Worlds steepest railway

View from Govetts Leap