04/28/10

We booked Blue Mountains Special Tour with OZ Trail tours. We met somewhere near Central today to catch our tour bus for Blue Mountain to visit the Three Sisters. Our guide Steve was very informative and funny. Traveled in a 20 seater bus (full bus) and made our way around to Blue Mountain. Stopped by the Neapean river, a short bushwalk to Wentworth falls and to Leura Village where we stopped for lunch and ate some nice meat pies.  After lunch, we travelled a bit father before arriving in Katoomba. We then hopped onto a cable car to cross the canyon between the Three Sisters and the Katoomba Waterfalls.

The story behind the Three Sisters is actually really interesting. Three sisters fell in love with three men from a neighbouring tribe, but marriage was forbidden by tribal law. Battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder to protect them, but he was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back.

We took the railway up a steep incline to the rainforest where they pointed out different types of gum/eucalyptus trees (ribbon gym, scribbly gum etc) on our walkthrough. We then made our way to Kings tableland. It’s a high point with a beautiful view but apparently there were a number of suicides and wrecked cars when you looked over the cliff at the bottom. It was a little windy but nonetheless a beautiful view from the edge.

We took the cable car over and down then the train back up which pulls you backwards so it feels like you are standing. Sad part of today was that we were unable to see kangaroos even after visiting another national park after Kings Tableland. On our way to the ferry, we drove through the Olympic Park where the driver pointed out several buildings that were used for the 2000 games. The ferry ride home brought us along the Parramatta river where we watch the sun set and had the pleasure of the full moon making its presence known as we sailed under the Harbour Bridge.

We leave for Cairns tomorrow morning.