The Beautiful Blue Mountains
- Kelly McKenna
- Aug 6, 2017
- 3 min read
After the most incredible two months living and working in Sydney, we had planned a six week adventure and the first stop on our journey took us to the stunning World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park.
We once again realised that backpackers may be onto something when we properly struggled to get our suitcases onto the bus into town (although we still haven’t replaced them six months down the line!) After a bit of faffing and lots of disapproving looks from the other passengers we hauled our suitcases onto the bus and then after carrying them down four flights of stairs and catching a train we finally made it to Central Station where in typical “how not to travel” fashion, we’d missed our train by 3 minutes and had to wait an hour for the next one.
The Blue Mountains are just a two hour train ride from Sydney and I think Rich had planned to use that time to have a little nap. I however had a different idea and nattered away at him, nudging him every so often to point out things out of the window. We arrived at Katoomba station and it was baking hot. The climate feels quite different to Sydney, even though it really isn’t that far away, and it was much drier and less humid than what we’d been used to. After dragging our cases for ten minutes we arrived at No. 14 Hostel and self-checked in.
Even though we’d both stayed in hostels in our early twenties, we were pretty reluctant to do too much of it on this trip, but we were very pleasantly surprised by our accommodation. Mr Sociable had deliberately booked a hostel that was reviewed as being a bit quieter and it did not disappoint, but there were great shared spaces for those who wanted to interact with other humans… We booked a private room although we had agreed to a shared bathroom to save money, so we were very happy to find that we had our own toilet and shower.
After a brief afternoon trip into Katoomba town for a quick bite to eat and a bit of food shopping, we packed up a picnic and headed out to watch the sunset. After getting completely lost and walking an extra 30 minutes more than we needed to, we made it to Echo Point which is home of the most famous rock formation in the area – The Three Sisters.
There are several tourist trails that spiral off from Echo Point, so after walking along the majority of them we settled at Spooners Lookout to eat our sunset picnic. It was all very romantic, until all of a sudden the heavens opened and we had to run back to the tourist hub for shelter. The rain was spectacular and the storm managed to give us one of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen, our photos really don’t do it justice.
The next day we headed out to Scenic World which is kind of a theme park built into the mountains. It has three main attractions – The Skyway, Cableway and Railway, which is the “Steepest Incline Railway In The World.” Our first stop was the Scenic Skyway which suspends you 270m in the air over the valley with the option of a glass bottomed floor for those who are daring enough. I’m glad I gave it a go, but I was utterly terrified as my biggest fear is falling.
After disembarking on the other side of the valley we walked back about 90 minutes through the forest and jumped on the railway back to the top. Doing the Scenic Railway in reverse gave us a good idea of what to expect on the way back down and I’d recommend that to anyone who is apprehensive about riding it. After a quick lunch at the café, it was time to ride the railway back down the bottom and I’m pretty sure I squeezed all of the blood out of Richard’s thighs as I clung on to him for dear life. We walked on the Scenic Walkway for about an hour before taking a much more pleasant ride in the Scenic Cableway back to the top of the mountain.
On our last two days in New South Wales, the weather was definitely not on our side and after two months of temperatures not dropping much below 25 degrees, we experienced a “low” of 16 degrees and I am fairly ashamed to say I genuinely put on a jumper and jeans and crawled back into bed! We had a lovely third day exploring Katoomba, eating and drinking far too much and on our final day we spent the morning avoiding the torrential rain (and Rich did some handyman work on our cases to give them a bit of extra life). In the afternoon we headed out possibly the most unprepared anyone has ever been to the sensational Wentworth Falls. After a few false starts and at one point getting genuinely stuck in the mud, we ended up walking around the falls for about 90 minutes and were treated to some incredible views. Afterwards we took the 2km Charles Darwin Walk where we saw a parrot, lots of little lizards and the biggest lizard we’d since we arrived in Australia chilling out on a rock, and then headed back to Katoomba for our final night at the hostel.
With that, it was time for our next incredible adventure to begin. The last line of my journal entry for our time in the Blue Mountains reads as follows: “I am very excited about Bali, but scared I might get rabies/malaria or dengue fever!”
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