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How amazing is that?
No wonder the explorers over a hundred years ago couldnt cross this region. Hello again everyone sorry for the lack of updates since leaving Sydney but over the next few blogs you will see that I have been extremely busy sightseeing and now over the next week I will attempt to catch up on all my blogs!
Penrith
So from leaving Sydney I headed west towards Penrith to meet up with Emily who was staying with some family. Once I arrived there Lou and Jean who Emily was staying with sorted us out with a tent and a whole other lot of camping stuff so that we could camp out once we got to the Blue Mountains the next day. Unfortunately when we woke up the following day it was raining heavily and neither of us fell like camping out in the mountains in pouring rain for our first night so we decided to spend the day looking around Penrith in the shopping centre. By the afternoon it had cleared up so we headed of to see the Olympic lakes that were used for all the boat and rowing races for the Sydney Olympics, These lakes were huge and once we had finished walking the whole way around them we found
out that I was 8 kms, no wonder we felt so tired by the end but it was surrounded by lovely scenery! Also around this area was a huge manmade white water rafting rapids that were also used in the Olympics. This was quite a sight as I have never seen manmade rapids before and it was a good laugh watching all the canoe’s and rafts taking it in turns to run the rapids. I couldn’t stop laughing when we watched one of the rafts completely overturn and dispose of about 8 young children into the water who finished the remainder of the rapids individually and half drowned.
Apparently these rapids are one of only a few Olympics events that are still making money after the Olympics finished here and I can see why as I was so tempted to hire out a canoe and give it a go, but I was to much of a wimp as it was to cold!!!!
Penrith was a really lovely small city, it was only an hour out from Sydney which still made it one of Sydney’s suburbs but you only needed to travel 10 mins outside of Penrith and there was lovely
scenery all around, including of course the blue mountains in the distance!
Lou and Jean were great and really made me fell so welcome there, Lou used to teach photography so spent one of the evening showing me some of the finer concepts of taking a picture which I found really interesting and useful. Jean on the other hand made Emily and I a lovely roast dinner which I had been craving for over 6 months!!! I can’t tell you how good it felt to finally taste a roast dinner again
Blue Mountains
So after having our last night on a comfortable soft bed we headed of to the blue mountains where for the next month we planned to travel up the east coast camping and sleeping rough at various places until we reach Brisbane.
The place that we stayed at in the Blue Mountains was called Katoomba and was right on the top of a mountain ridge over looking the huge expansive valleys below. Once we had set the tent up we had a walk to echo point which it one of the best looks out over the Blue Mountains. The views were spectacular which hundreds of
The Viewing point at Blackheath
This was an amazing view, that valley is massive! kilometers of trees, valleys and ridges all encapsulated by this blue haze from the eucalyptus trees, hence the name the Blue Mountains. From this look out you could also see the famous rock formation known as the three sisters, which consisted of 3 massive mounds of rocks to the left of echo point. It was amazing to stand here and look out over the vast area and to see no signs of human life for as far as the eye could see!
It was so cold and windy here as a cold front had moved in and some of the southern parts of NSW there were receiving snow and we were getting the tail end of it, also due to the altitude we were at as well didn’t make things warmer either. So we decided instead of just standing around we would walk to the three sisters and then down cliff face and into the forest below. Once out of the wind and walking it soon got a lot warmer. We followed a number of walks that took us though some really nice forests that looked remarkable similar to England, past a waterfall and on to an old coal mine
that was still being used upto a bout 50 years ago. We decided against climbing all the way back the stairs to the top and opted instead to catch the old coal train up the rock face to the top. This was a really rapid train ride that frequently inclined more that 45degrees and is said to be the steepest hill train in the world.
The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around other viewing points and looking at the cascade waterfalls in Katoomba. By the time the sun went down it went from cold to bloody freezing in a matter of minutes so Emily and I decided to head into town and found a café with an open fire were we then sat and enjoyed a hot chocolate and warmed up. Unfortunately everything in Katoomba closes up real early so we headed back to our tent and were in our sleeping bags by 9pm!!!!
Well what I thought would be a lovely long sleep in a warm sleeping bag turned out to be a horrible, windy, cold and uncomfortably sleep. I slept fully clothed with my warmest jumper on and hood up with another sleeping bag over the
top of us and it was STILL cold. We didn’t have blow up mattress, all we had as a small foam mat to sleep on that didn’t seem to soften the floor what so ever and I was so happy finally when the sun came up and we could get in the car and warm up, ha ha, well this is traveling its all part of the experience and I can laugh about it now!!
The following morning we headed to another part of the Blue Mountains national park in the Blackheath area to give us another view of the breathtaking place. As you will see from the pictures we saw some absolutely terrific views and another waterfall at Govetts leap (another view point). This area had recently suffered a forest fire and we were amazed at how the vegetation had grown back so fast since then. This place looked just like how I had imagined Australia to look, very dry with weird looking trees everywhere. I can’t explain how amazing and truly stunning this place looks, you could stare out into this national park for hours without getting bored.
We also visited another place called Wentworth falls which
yet again was another stunning view but this time with the biggest waterfall I have ever seen, it was massive and if we had the time I would have walked around the whole area but we needed to get on to our next place. Every place we went in the Blue Mountains just kept getting more and more beautiful I have taken so many pictures but unfortunately they will never do it justice as it is a place that has to be seen to really appreciate it. Although I would strongly recommend against camping there in the winter though!!!
That afternoon we headed back to Sydney and then on up north along the coast to Port Steven’s which happens to be dolphin capital of Australia and also happens to have the largest moving sand dunes in the southern hemisphere. But I will write that up my next blog.
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matt
non-member comment
nice to see some blogs....breaht taking pictures