Blue Mountains & Dinner in Darling Harbour

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Day two of Jo’s visit started with an early morning wake up and walk down to Sydney Central station to catch the 7am train. To mark the accomplishment of getting up so early we celebrated with cheese & ham and almond croissants, and settled in for the two hour train journey to Katoomba station.

Upon arrival we suddenly felt under dressed as it was a little chilly, so wrapped up in all our layers and jumped aboard the explorer bus. We quickly became acquainted with our driver Scott who was a joyful fountain of knowledge informing us that the bus actually came from from Scotland originally, as well as demonstrating his appreciation for foreign languages by greeting everyone in there native tongue.

We soon arrived at our first stop, the Scenic Skyway which transported us across the Jamison valley to the scenic centre with views of the Katomba cascades - we learned that it takes approximately 6 days for the water to make its way to Sydney from the Blue Mountains. It also turns out the name comes from the blue haze you see as you look across, although we didn’t see it!

Next we faced a near vertical railway decent through a pitch black tunnel to the forest floor. This was a bit of daunting journey as we watched the prior group go down and it certainly looked steep, it might even be the steepest railway track in the world.

To get to the Scenic Cableway we walked through the forest along the boardwalk, taking in the lush green vegetation whilst dodging the mozzies in the process! The journey up in the Cableway provided great views of the Three Sisters rock formation, Dave (apparently the name of the smallest rock at the end) and the Island which the lift attendant informed us was the original tourist attraction in the region, with trials that allowed you to climb it until it was deemed unstable, as the geologists said it could collapse anytime (well in the next thousand years!). We also discovered they attempted to build a roller-coaster at the centre, only to have it deemed unsafe before it was opened to the public as the regulatory failed to notify them that they changed the standards whilst they were building it. Only the centres employees got to ride the coaster after signing a disclaimer before they tore most of it down as it would have been too expensive to re-engineer it to meet the revised standards.

After a quick pose with some Aboriginal bronze statues, we climbed back aboard the bus for some further cheerful commentary from Scott during the journey to the Honeymoon Lookout. From there we walked along the muddy paths back on ourselves to Echo Point, with fantastic views across the valley, as well as encountering plenty of wildlife and arguing couples along the way!

From Echo Point where we had even better views of the three sisters we jumped back aboard to bus to the Leura Cascades. We then walked along the pathway for what felt like hours to Gordon Falls which were a little less spectacular than expected, so we decided we’d had enough of being at one with nature and we jumped back aboard the bus to Leura and our point of departure back to Sydney. As we had a little time before the next train we had a quick walk round the town, grabbing a tasty sausage roll to eat on the journey back.

After a quick wash and change we headed down to Darling Harbour for dinner at Nicks Seafood restaurant. We all tried a variety of fish, with the recent tour of the fish market encouraging us to be more adventurous in our choices.

Part way through the meal we were joined by Gary (Will’s friend's brother) and continued to have a few drinks at the bars around the harbour with Gary before heading home to pack for embarking on our adventure to Queensland.

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