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Published: September 20th 2005
The Blue Mountains
View from Echo PointAs great as the public transportation is here, and as many places as it can take you, when traveling with a toddler, a car makes all the difference. So this weekend we rented one and went on a driving adventure.
Our adventure began by a few exciting near death experiences as Les acclimated to driving on the left. Since we live in a busy high-traffic area, there was no nice quiet suburb to practice in. I’ll say this much, it is very hard to mentally make the shift especially in a heavy traffic area where instincts come in to play. I’m sure my gasping that we were about to swerve into the parked cars didn’t help. Finally Les pulled over and told me I had to stop gasping or he’d never be able to concentrate. I agreed and promised to stay silent. He pulled out and promptly drove into a parked car.
Fortunately we only swiped our side mirrors, which bend. Hurrah for bendy side mirrors!
With the driving finally in hand, we took off for Manly. Manly is in the northern suburbs on the spit of land that forms the top part of the Sydney Harbor, or
Three Sisters
Note the walkway between the first and second rock. Port Jackson. If you walked north far enough from Bondi you’d come to the bottom part of the harbor and be able to peer across to Manly.
Manly is a great town. Full of cute boutiques and cafes and beaches and wharfs and outdoor markets. If Bondi is where the action and nightlife and surfers are, Manly is where the yuppies are. We felt right at home. Abby enjoyed Manly because a street merchant blew a didgeridoo at her. A didgeridoo is the long pipe-looking instrument that the Aborigines blow. And when done properly it makes a deep buzzing, strumming noise. Like Cockatoos, Abby believes she can imitate it and so during our walk we occasionally heard ‘whoooo-oooooahhh’ emerging from her stroller.
From Manly you can drive to the actual end of the land which is part of the Sydney National Park. It’s a scrubby, bushy cliff-top park with views of the city that are amazing. That is, if you can stand still. It was so windy that it was nearly impossible to stand, let alone to gaze down the cliff toward the city. But despite the wind, it was a beautiful park with nice trails through the
Kangaroo
A Kangaroo kisses Abby. scrub that popped you out at random on the edges of the massive cliff.
We’d recently purchased a ‘walking tether’ for Abby, which let’s be honest, is really a leash. But it’s a great device because it meant she could walk with us through the trails and I never had to worry that she’d run head long toward the cliff-edge right when a gust of 500mph wind blew down sweeping her over the four foot fence. Her harness kept her right by us and allowed everyone to battle the wind in their own way.
Manly was great and will probably be a frequent day trip for us. But it was nothing compared to our Sunday drive. Sunday took us out to the Blue Mountains!
The Blue Mountains are a range to the west of Sydney that mark out the line between city and the great beyond that is most of Australia. To get to them you take the fantastical sounding “Great Western Highway.” We took it and headed for Katoomba.
In just under two hours we were there and drove to Echo Point which was where, we were told, the best views were. Sure enough, it was a spectacular view peering out from the top of cliffs to the mountains and valley below. Spectacular enough that we just barely beat the string of busses unloading Japanese tourists. Many of the mountains had craggily stone formations and just to the south of Echo Point were the famous Three Sisters - - three towering stone formations that jutted up out of the valley floor. Between sister one and sister two was a suspended walkway.
Now here’s the thing, I am VERY afraid of heights. More than a normal person is. I didn’t used to be. As a child I played about in tree tops and loved high places. But then at age 18, while descending St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, for some unknown reason I had a panic attack and since then . . . .well let’s just say it’s not pretty. But perversely I’m always trying to change back to my childhood ways. So when I saw the suspended walkway between two towers of rock I knew I had to try and walk it.
Before attempting any daring do’s we knew we needed a full stomach. So we had lunch which is only worth mentioning because while we ate from the cliff-top we were surrounded by a flock of Australian Magpies and Cockatoos. It was a very authentic Australian moment.
Then off to the Three Sisters. It was supposed to be a 10 min walk. No big deal. The trail down was pleasant and I was feeling brave. But then it came to an abrupt halt at a big stone arch called The Great Stairway. I couldn’t see the stairway and we soon realized that was because it plummeted immediately down the rock face to the suspended walkway between the sisters. Of course it was entirely inaccessible with Abby and her stroller. So we decided to take turns, Les would go first.
He disappeared down the stairs and Abby and I had a pleasant 10 minute wait in a sun beam talking to some other people. I couldn’t help but notice though that the walkers coming thru the arch looked winded. Really winded. And then Les came up and said with a slight gasp, “It’s steep. You won’t like it.”
Well as soon as I stepped down onto the stairs I knew it was going to be bad. I can’t begin to wonder what was going through some engineers mind when they thought it might be a good idea to carve what is more accurately called a ladder into the side of a cliff so that people could then go walk between two other cliffs.
I tried, I really did. But halfway down people started looking at me funny and I realized I was clinging to the railing with two hands. And not really moving. I could see the walkway, but it was so far down and there was so much air on one side, and a slippery cliff wall on the other. Then someone up ahead dropped their camera over the edge and I froze solid, if a camera could be dropped what else could fall!? I started to feel short of breath and visions of being trapped at the top of St. Paul’s passed through my mind, and so I turned around. So much for that fear being conquered.
From Echo Point we went down the road to Scenic World. It sounds tacky, but actually it’s a very well thought out park that allows you to descend onto the floor of the valley or glide above it all in an eco-friendly way through a variety of trains and gondolas and sky cars. We chose to ride down the cliff wall on a train, walk through the forest, and then ascend via the skyway ride.
They advertise the train as the ‘worlds steepest’ but having been to Switzerland on their funiculars we didn’t think much of it - - until we got in the car. It was immediately weird because the seats forced you to lean back so you looked up at the sky. But there were no seat belts or anything, and it was all open air. There were no walls or doors so we just thought they were really over doing the promo. Well cue the Indian Jones music (and they really did blast it through some speakers on the train) and down we went.
Straight, straight, so unbelievably straight, down. A 52 degree incline to be precise. I screamed the whole way and held on to Abby in a bear hug while simultaneously bracing myself into my seat with my leg so I didn’t hurtle over the heads of the passengers in front of me and down into the valley below. If you don’t believe me, Les caught the whole thing on tape. Or, you can Google, “steepest railway in the world” and you’ll see exactly what shows up, my own personal railway nightmare. It made my little foray down the Giant Staircase seem like a breeze in comparison. I can’t believe it’s legal.
Not knowing what other death trap might await us when we took the skyway back up, we opted for the long walking route through the valley floor. It was fantastic. The whole walk is done on a boardwalk that winds its way through what is really a rain forest. Signs everywhere tell you what sorts of trees you are seeing. They were mostly some variety of the eucalyptus or gum tree. It was cool and sun filtered and just a really great walk. We probably meandered about the valley floor for a good 30 minutes before we saw signs telling us we were close to the skyway.
Thankfully the skyway was a huge, safe, modern gondola that was so big and sturdy that even though we flew through the air at scary heights it felt perfectly safe. And that was Scenic World. The only other ride we didn’t do was the sky glider. It was advertised as another gondola-style car that went straight across a part the valley. Its catch was that it had an “electric floor” that went clear allowing you to look below as if there was no bottom.
Well after freezing on the Giant Stairs and nearly falling out of the World’s Steepest Train, Les and I decided it would be best if I didn’t see what their version of “no floor” meant. And so we headed home.
That would have been it, but Abby got restless and we needed to find a place to stop off the Great Western Highway (still called that though we were now going east). I looked at the map and saw that the Featherdale Wildlife Refuge Park was nearby and so we veered off. When we got there it was 4pm and the park closed at 5, but Les though we should go in anyway. And what a great decision!
The first area we walked through we were stunned to see kangaroos everywhere! Not in cages, but just out and about. Hopping, lying down, basking, and generally just chillin’. It turned out to be one of the best animal parks we’ve ever been to. Sure it wasn’t like we saw kangaroos in the wild, but in the wild they probably wouldn’t come up and kiss Abby like they did, or let us pet them. It was a great, tangible way to get to know the wildlife. We were able to pet koalas, see tasmanian devils, and watch hundreds and hundreds of birds, as well as wombats and wallabies. We also were able to see up close the eight deadliest snakes in the world, all which happen to reside right here. They also had a nice, and by that I mean very thickly glassed, display of the really nasty spiders that are also truly deadly and truly inhabitants of Australia. And of course we saw a croc, some emus and a few dingos. None of which ate our baby.
It was a great find and a wonderful way to cap off a busy but fun weekend.
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Les
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Clarification
I did not "run" or "crash" into a car. I gently bent back the mirror by slightly clipping a parked car, which (though Esther neglected to mention this) was abandoned and up on cinder blocks. No harm, no foul. A piece of advice to anyone wanting to trying driving on the left side of the road - don't bring Esther with you on your first trip unless you are planning on only driving across the outback or the salt flats. Anything with more traffic will cause you to have hearing loss for at least two weeks.