I'm blue dabi dah... (Blue Mountains National Park)

Member Name: EazyDude

Product:	Blue Mountains National Park
Date:	27/11/01 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Only a day, Worth it

Disadvantages: All scened out by the end of day

Oh I'm blue dabi...

Oh hello again, you caught me singing. I know that I've promised some ops on Australia, so here's the next on in the series.

What the heck are the Blue Mountains?
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The Blue Mountains are firstly called so as they actually look blue from Sydney when looking out to the west and inland. They are a "mountain" range that lie between the agricultural west and Sydney itself. These words have been summised from the Official Tourist Bureau, but they do start to put them into perspective. If you want a few more words, that I could just copy into here, but won't. You can obtain these from:

http://www.sydney.visitorsbureau.com.au/page2- 12.html

Why should I go?
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Initially I did think the same slightly. I had heard from some others that it was worth seeing. The views are allegedly not like something you'll ever see again. Being only about an hour away from Sydney, you can easily visit as a day trip by minibus. I believe the travel guides say you can do it by other means ie car rental, but I wouldn't recommend it. A minibus will have a local tour guide to tell you loads you wanted to know, and loads you didn't want to know. They'll also know where to go and do all the driving. Plus you get the company of other people on a bus to enjoy the day.

You can either organised when you get to Sydney, or from here. From here your travel agent should be able to do something if you ask nicely. Otherwise you can easily wait and just contact a tour company such as

www.ozexperience.com

once you are there or just look out for posters, flyers, cards, everything you could imagine. Basically, if you want to decide at the last minute, even the night before, you should be able to book yourself on a minibus. One night's notice would be preferable of course though.

The day
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You can usu
ally, as we did, get collected from your doorstep if you're staying in a youth hostel. If you stay in a proper bed for the night, I'm not sure what the arrangement is, just make sure you finalise it before your day starts.

You start the day mighty early as I remember. It was a scratch before breakfast started to get served at our hostel, so if you plan it right, get some breakfast in you by buying it the day before. Interestingly enough, I recently wrote an op on breakfasts. Coming back to the op in hand, it was about 6.30-6.45AM so I guess it wasn't THAT early, just beware about jetlag if you book this the day after you get there!

You can try and get some shuteye on the bus there, but getting to know the people on the bus is half the day. The latter half of the journey also starts to wake you up as you realise where you are and what you're here for.

The stops
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Whichever tour company you take, you're bound to stop at the same places, be it in a slightly different order.

1 - Govetts Leap

Here we actually got some fantastic views over a canyon, not too dissimilar to the Grand Canyon, which I have been to many moons ago. We also took a little stroll (understatement) across the face of a slope, round the corner, down another face to get a good view of an age old waterfall that's the longest freefall one in Australia. You should therefore take layers of clothing for this leg as the gusts of wind can definitely give you a wind chill factor, but by the time you've done your climbing the way up again, you'll wish you didn't have so much on you.
There are some great opportunities to take some very artistic photos, both with people or just scenic shots. My advice is to take loads of reels of film, and just snap away. On the way down I remember thinking that I'll take that shot on the way up. On the way up one of two things happened (1) Couldn't find the same spot
(2) Too busy climbing, that I missed it.

2 - The Scenic Railway - Kataoomba

Now this isn't quite what it seems. We too thought, oh, that'll be nice to go on. That was until we were told that it was built in 1958 and runs at an angle of 52 degrees to the horizon! This journey takes you down into
a tunnel before stopping at it's final destination. From here you have the choice of walking back up, or catching the train back up. Of course, if you think about it, it makes more sense to walk down to it, then travel back up in the train as they charge for each trip made in the train (Aus$5). At the top there is a cable car that will take you out to the centre of the valley, stop for a bit, then come back again. I opted not to do this, as this is again, extra. Whatever you decide you'll get a good view of the valley. The train ride is not one to be missed though.

Further details

http://www.leisurenet.com.au/skyway/

3 - Echo Point

This is merely a good photo opportunity to get some shots of the famous "Three Sisters". These are three rock formations, which, legend has it that are actually three sisters. If you're around Sydney before you venture into the Blue Mountains, you might see some postcards of this. You can get exactly the same shot here. There is another little rock formation next to these three, which we were told was the wizard who turned the sisters into stone for their own protection. What we couldn't therefore work out was, who turned the wizard to stone? It could have been our guide just talking more than he knew, but I never followed up on this.

4 - Featherdale National Park

This is quite a unique park, which is more like a zoo really. It was supposed to have all the native animals of Australia in it. In fact we were greeted by a man holding a satchel. Odd. Only when we got closer did we find that there was little Joey hiding inside! In the
park we did indeed see animals such as the Kookaburra, Koalas, Kangaroos... wait, enough of the K's... where's the platypus? This place must have had everything in it but the platypus. We were well disappointed. There was another opportunity to see one at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, but it wasn't worth it just for that.

Overall
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What a fantastic day. Again, like my other Oz op I'd recommend doing this trip. It's only a day trip from Sydney and didn't put us too much out of pocket. You won't need that much film but you will layers of clothing. It is quite a tiring day so make sure you have an easy morning planned the next day. There are trips available to take more than one day doing the whole trip into the Blue Mountains, but I'll be honest and say that I was "scenery-saturated" by the end of the day. Check the leaflets though as you may want to do some of the other things available such as horseriding, bushwalking, fourwheel driving. Just some of the things you could do on longer trips. As a bonus on the way back, we did get to drive through the Olympic Park, just to see the place. If you want to see this properly, you'll need at least another day.

But that's... another op. :)

Thanks for reading.

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