Into the Blue Mountains

We bid farewell to Sydney yesterday, and headed west for the Blue Mountains. It's a popular weekend getaway--a bit Solvang and a bit Big Bear, and less than an hour from Sydney. How popular? When I asked for directions out of Sydney to the Great Western Highway, the helpful guy at Hertz handed me a card, printed with step-by-step directions from the Hertz office to the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains aren't truly mountains. It's actually a huge limestone plateau, with deep gorges and valleys carved out over the millennia. They're filled with an incredible variety of eucalyptus trees, whose leaves ooze oils into the air, giving it a blue tinge--hence the name. There are lots of townships up here. We chose to stay in Katoomba, which is one of the largest, because we figured it would have more choices of restaurants, etc. It probably does, but last night, Ian spotted a Domino's pizza, and that settled our choices for dinner. It was just as well, because it was really cold. In Sydney, it was easy to forget it's winter. Not so here, where we're several hundred feet higher.

Since it's just a short drive, we arrived at our B&B to check in just before 1, then headed to nearby Scenic World. Touristy? Yes, but with Ian in tow, a better choice than a full-on bushwalk. Basically, Scenic World is in a spot that used to be a coal mine. There's a steep incline railway from the cliff top to the valley floor, as well as a cable car. There's also a cable car suspended across the valley floor, so that you can go from one side to the other, past Katoomba Falls. In the middle, glass panels in the floor let you look straight down. From the top on either side of the gorge, there are stupendous views down the Jamison Valley, with canyons and plateaus as far as you can see. We splashed out for the ticket that included all the rides. Unfortunately, we followed the ticket seller's advice, and did the Skyway first. Just as we got in line for the incline railway, we heard a big clunk. This was followed by frantic radio calls for an electrician. The railway was out of commission for the rest of the day, so it was the cable car to the bottom and back up.

The valley floor is a temperate rainforest, with a huge number of tree varieties. Ian was most impressed with the big vines trailing everywhere. To protect the forest, they've put in a suspended wooden walkway, so that you can enjoy the forest without ever setting foot in it! Storm shelters at frequent intervals attest that rain is common. So far, though, our weather luck is holding. It was chilly and shady at the bottom of the gorge, but overall, another beautiful, sunny day.

Toward the end of the walk, we came across the remnants of the coal mine. It's actually pretty well curated, with a couple of sections of the mine shafts visible, and plaques and an audio-visual commentary explaining what the mines were like. Ian liked the actual mine train cars, complete with real coal, and the replica of the original scenic train. It seems tourism started here even while the coal mine was in operation; bush walkers would come here on weekends, and use the miners' buckets to get to the bottom and back to the top. Eventually, this evolved into an incline railway, which is now (I believe) the steepest in the southern hemisphere. Such a shame it broke.

Today, we have an ambitious itinerary, with railways and caves, and who knows what else. I only hope we can fit it all in!

Ian's Favorite Moments: The cable car ride and the hike in the forest