Katoomba

OK. Australia. Down under. Christmas on the beach. Vast central desert. Hot weather. This is the traditional perception, right? Erm, well, this is what we thought. And even after some chilly evenings in Perth, tropical Cairns had restored our faith! But no, we flew back to New South Wales at a horribly early hour to hire a car and drive to the Blue Mountains. This is a beautiful range of gorges only a few hours from Sydney, but unfortunately the climate is more like one you’d expect in Snowdonia. When we arrived, the temperature was a balmy 2 degrees Celsius, and the clouds promptly started to bombard us with hailstones as soon as we walked down the road from our motel to Echo point, one of the most scenic lookouts in the Blue Mountains. Hmm. Although our motel-lady-owner did say it was meant to be the coldest October in 80 years… but a few days later admitted she’d lived over on the West Coast until last year – so she definitely wasn’t speaking from personal experience!

The strange thing was that she recommended all sorts of walks and local attractions when we arrived too, but again later admitted that she’d never done any of them! This we found this very odd, especially as the motel was great, comfy and on the outskirts of Katoomba, just a few minutes walk away from the Three Sisters and the Giants Stairway. The sisters are three outcrops of rock at the edge of a dramatic cliff which local Aborigine legend claims were three beautiful sisters who were turned to rock by the tribe witch doctor to protect them from the men of a rival tribe. Although you have to wonder what fait could be much worse than being turned to rock for millennia, but hey. On one side of the Sisters a stairway of over 800 steps was cut form the rock, leading to a very dramatic and beautiful descent followed by a stunning walk along the bottom of the cliff-face. You didn’t even have to climb back up again, but could catch a cable car or railway. Anyway, it was a great walk through stunning scenery with a fun trip back up to the top. But our motel lady had never done any of it, even though she was only 5 minutes walk away. Weird!

Anyway, we enjoyed exploring Katoomba and the nearby areas. Dodging hordes of Japanese tourists as they were shepherded from one bus to another. It is a very pretty part of the world! Another UNESCO protected region – I’m loosing track of how many of these we’ve visited on this trip.

We also ventured just out of the mountains to a wildlife park as my Mum wanted to see some kangaroos and koalas. As it happened, the place we went to had a huge advantage over the park where Gary and I had seen koalas in Newcastle – some of the animals were loose! You could wander through enclosures with kangaroos hopping around and give them some food or a stoke. But they were not as strokeable as the koalas. There was one area where you could stroke a little koala while it sat peacefully eating eucalyptus leaves on a tree stump. Their fur is so soft! And they are so amazingly sweet! Fantastic creatures.

Ah well, after four days of scenic freezing we’ve now returned to Sydney, where we’ll stay until leaving Oz. Hopefully without loosing a few toes to frostbite!