Blue Mountains

Friday we spent a good part of the day in the Blue Mountains. This is an area about 2 hours NW of Sydney. We jumped on a train in Sydney and made the trip out. It was worth the travel as the area was really spectacular. In some ways, the trees resemble what you might see in West Virginia or western Carolina, but what added to it was huge cliffs of sedimentary rock that surrounded the basin. I've attached a couple of photos.

One of the highlights was that we were able to travel on a skyway cable car across the valley of the mountains. When we approached the area to get on the cable car, we were kind of nervous. It was really windy and as we saw the cable car approach, it was really swaying back and forth and you could hear some of the people in it scream out a little as the car made its approach into the station. We went for it anyway. It was an impressive ride as we were easily several hundred feet in the air, travelling across the valley.

Once on the other side, we got on the world's steepest railway. It was a short, but extremely steep ride part way down the mountain. At one point, I know the incline was at 52 degrees. The rail cars were similar to the type that are used in coal mines as this used to be a heavy coal mining area in Australia. After completing the railway, we took another cable car back up the mountain. Again, with great views in all directions.

We continued exploring the mountain area as there are a lot of great lookout spots that have been developed over the past 100 years. We could catch a bus that would go from stop to stop and take you to the various points of interest. We took in the major lookout points, did some short "bush walks" throughout the day. At one point, Andrew and I went down a bad trail. It wasn't really much of a trail and after going down it some I decided to turn around. We then found the right trail and made our way back to Judy, Zach and Pat.




We took the train back to Sydney which was an experience in itself. We first had 4 kids sitting across from us who were really loud and immature. I think the youngest girl had eyes for Zach and was trying her hardest to get his attention. She was probably 9 or 10 and the other 3 with her were 15-18 years old. Zach didn't pay her much attention though. After they got off, another girl got on and proceeded to make a very loud cellphone call to one of her friends explaining how another friend just found out she was pregnant but the apparent father denied it was him. She exited and another teenage girl got on who was a total depressive. She curled up in a ball and stared out the window with this blank expression. I think I must be getting old, but its really sad to see how many kids in western society are so lost in their lives.

Anyway, we made it back safely and had a late dinner. Andrew crashed before they served the food and we carried him to the taxi and back to our hotel room for the night. Really long day, but felt like we really saw a different part of Australia. Definately worth the effort!