Blue Mountains to Bathurst

---

Lap of Bathurst

The following day we decided to head off into the Blue Mountains. We had read about a small town called Katoomba which was supposedly a good base to see some of the best views of the mountains. We arrived in Katoomba about 1pm and booked onto our campsite for just a night. It had predicted thunderstorms on the weather forecast so at least we had an idea of what to expect. It was only when we were making some lunch that we heard on the radio that England were through to the cricket final against Australia and they were playing in Melbourne in a couple of days time. It was then that we thought how great it would be to try and get tickets. It would mean though that we would have on hell of a road trip the next day and we would have to cut our stay in the Blue Mountains but we would at least try! That afternoon we decided to go for a walk. Just across from our park was the start of the track that led to the Scenic Railway and Skyline. We didn’t realise that if we had kept going further down the road we could have got the train down the mountain but instead we ended up walking down hundreds of steps to reach the bottom. The views of Katoomba Falls and the Blue Mountains were beautiful though, we were just thankful that we didn’t have to climb back up again. We walked for about 3 hours taking in all the stunning scenery and also the coal mining section at the bottom of the mountain which gave a brief history on what happened there in the 1800’s along the railways and mines. We caught the skylift back up the mountain just in time before the storms arrived! We got in our campervan and went into town to try to find an internet café so we could purchase our cricket tickets. We eventually found one in an old second hand book shop. YEAH! We managed to get our tickets at the MCG so we were really happy! Unfortunately though the electric for the entire town went down when Stu was transferring some pics so we were left in complete darkness. We could not even pay as the chaps till did not open. We had to go around asking people for change so he would let us go. Katoomba seems to be a place where the FREAKS come out! We were quite scared at the sight of some of the people we encountered that afternoon and so were quite relieved to know we were leaving the next day. The rain and thunder did not stop for at least 3 hours and our camp site was out of power for much of the evening. That evening was extremely cold. Just as we were settling down for the night we were engulfed by a cloud so thick that we could not see the campervan the other side of the park. We slept in this cloud so as you can imagine our feet were extremely numb by the time that the morning arrived. It took a good few hours just to thaw out. We had an early night as we had a long drive the next day.

We set off from Katoomba at about 8.15am. Stu had really wanted to go to Bathurst and had talked about it for several weeks. It took just over an hour to get there. For anyone who isn’t big into their motorcycling Bathurst plays host to the Aussie Touring Car Championships and its premier event, the Bathurst 1000 every year and it is one of the Worlds most popular tracks. We read that it was possible to drive around the track as it is in fact a part of the National Highway. Stu was very excited when we drove up to the start line and he drove all around the track while Kerry took some video footage. On completing the lap Kerry went to check her video but accidentally deleted it - this meant, to the delight of Stu, we had to go around it one more time!
The rest of the day was spent driving to Melbourne. We eventually, 10 hours later and 960 km on the clock, arrived at our Big 4 campsite. We were slightly shattered when we arrived as the drive was extremely boring! YAWN!

---