Wednesday 27th December – The Blue Mountains

The Scenic railway

After another early morning Family facetiming session we were out of the door by 10am, getting a bus to Central station to start our two-hour train journey to Katoomba in the heart of the Blue Mountains.  From there we jumped on a local bus (see? This public transport things easy!) to Scenic World.  I even hate the name of this place…. ‘scenic world’ so I feel ashamed that we went there, but we weren’t the only ones.  In fact, it was rammed with families out trying to keep everyone occupied in the Christmas Holidays.  It was kind of like a day at Alton Towers during the UK summer holidays but the rides were less scary and you didn’t get your photo taken on each one.  We queued for our tickets to be told we couldn’t enter the attraction until 2pm (it was about 1pm then). So then we queued for some food while we waited to be able to queue for the scenic railway -  at 52° incline, the steepest passenger train in the world.  You could even choose to increase the incline of your seat to take the fear factor up another notch (right).

I was happy to see that trees had right of way on the boardwalk

This took us down into the valley, where there were a number of walking trails through the ancient rainforest. We opted to take the longest walk to get away from the crowds.  This took us along the longest elevated boardwalk in Australia. As well as queues, you will be starting to realise that today contained a lot of ‘est’s – longest, highest, steepest, you get the idea.  We also walked to a section of Katoomba Falls.

The view up to the top of Katoomba Falls

A lizard we saw on the walk - it's even still got blood on its neck from its last meal!

Following this, we queued for the scenic cableway – Australia’s biggest cable car! This took us back up to our starting point in ‘Scenic World’.  There we could join the queue for our third scenic ride of the day - the scenic skyway, which is the highest cable car in Australia!  This stretches across a valley and has a glass floor section to really give you a feel of the height you are suspended at!

Australia's biggest cable car! (it's just quite far away in this image)

Australia's highest cable car!

From the east point station of the skyway we decided to leave the confines of Scenic World ™ and do a thirty-minute cliff-top walk to Echo Point, the prime location to view the three sisters from.  The sun had come out by now providing stunning views across the Blue Mountain valley.  The name given to the mountains is due to its blue hue from the 120 different species of eucalyptus trees found there.

Cue stunning landscape photos....

The three sisters on the left and the haze over the Blue Mountains

The three sisters from the closest viewing point

We caught a bus back to Katoomba station easily, but then had to wait 45 mins for the next two-hour train back to the City! So, by the time we reached the flat it was nearly 9pm and we were exhausted.