On our second full day in Sydney, we went off for a day trip to the Blue Mountains. You would have heard of the Blue Mountains and the three sisters if you’ve ever been to Sydney- it is one of the more popular day trips leaving from Sydney, the second is probably trips to the Hunter Valley for wine tasting, which we did not end up doing. What is the blue mountains you say? Wikipedia says this:

Consisting mainly of a sandstone plateau, the area is dissected by gorges up to 760 metres deep. The highest point of the range is 1,190 metres above sea level. A large part of the Blue Mountains is incorporated into the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage Site, consisting of seven national park areas and a conservation reserve. The Blue Mountains area includes the local government areas of the City of Blue Mountains, the City of Hawkesbury, the City of Lithgow and Oberon.

Capische?

This was part of the package that was put together by the lovely people at VisitNSW. It was something that I was really looking forwards to, as the last time we were in Sydney I did not visit the Blue Mountains. So something new, which was really good. It costs about AU70 for a day; it seemed like ours were the cheapest in the market as other places were selling it for circa AU100.

The price might have somethind to do with the fact that the cost for the Scenic Railway and cable car was not inclusive – something that was a bone of contention with half the passengers there who did not expect to pay extra during their ‘tour’. Quite a few of the passangers chose not to fork out the extra AU28 for the Scenic World ‘attraction’; and spent their time waiting for the rest of us for nearly a whole hour.

Anyway, back to the tour. We were picked up from our hotel around 8am on Monday morn, and I must admit I was very, very hungry as we had not have breakfast before. On the itinerary it say that we were going to stop for tea and snacks, so I thought I was going to be fed naturally . It was another GLORIOUS day in Sydney – temperatures later that day willl rise up to 35 degrees in the city. There is glorious, and there is just plain too freaking hot…and today was one of the too-freaking-hot day. The coach was jam-packed by the time we got on (they do pickups all the way from Bondi as well) and we were stuck at the fold-down seats of what was the back of the van . It was boiling, although the little van/people carrier/bus thingy tried its best and the aircond was at full blast, although that was still not enough.

Our driver cum tour guide was very knowledgeable, having grown up around the greater Blue Mountains area and lived in Sydney all his life. Our first stop was a quick 5 min photostop at the Sydney Olympic Park, the main site of Sydney’s Olympic games in 2000. Unfortunately it was closed to visitors and traffic as AC/DC was playing that very night. However we managed to snap a quick picture of what was open to traffic….

The ANZ Stadium, part of the Olympic Park development

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Our second stop was by a river. Literally by a river. In the middle of nowhere. In our itinerary, it was stated that we would be served light refreshments. I was hoping for a spread of breakfast related stuff like danishes ect…what we got were juice poured from large industrial sized bottles, some trail mix and jumbo packed biscuit assortments. Ha. My own fault really, the last time I went for a day-tour in Melbourne, the guide brought us fresh coffee and pastries baked by his wife and fresh fruits. So I stuffed my face with raisins…the whole objective of that stop was not to show us anything at all, but rather, to get people to pay up. Which was really odd, you would think that you would get passangers to pay up when they board your bus, rather than make a special stop in the middle of nowhere. Seeing that mine was already paid for courtesy of VisitNSW, we just sat there stuffing our faces with trail mix for 30 mins. Very odd, and a waste of time in my opinion.

The rest of the day after that is abit of a blur, we stopped three or four times for a variety of views of the famed three sisters. The view is usually obstructed by the mist that apparently emates from the eucalyptus tree – however, it was such a glorious day that our tour guide declared we had the best view possible. And we did – I’ve seen numerous pictures of people visiting the Blue Mountains to be greeted by a virtually non-existant view of the famed Three Sisters. As you can see, we had marvellous views…

Bacon braving the ledge.

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We were told that there was a magnificient waterfall waiting for us at the end of the trail. I was expecting something that I could dip my toes in to cool down – and was sorely dissapointed when it was a waterfall far, far away and not of the magnitute that I was expecting! Still, a pretty sight

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Tourguide drama time – there’s a ledge that is invisible to everyone else and apparently he does this on e-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e trip to impress the punters i.e. tourists. Sigh. I feel like a tourist on a short leash – reminding me again why I don’t usually go on tours.

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Bacon chilling on the lovely bench when we stopped at the tiny village of Leura for lunch .
After lunch, we headed for the highlight of the day, the Scenic Railway Discovery centre. This brings us down to the valleys and deep in the rainforest that forms the base of the Blue Mountains. As mentioned earlier, there were some disgruntled customers that were annoyed that they have to fork out extra after paying AU70 for the trip. So the group was practically split up, with half the people on the tour choosing to stay on top, hanging about near the toilets. That’s right. The tour guide requested that those choosing not to pay the AU28 stay by the toilets whilst we have a wander about in the rainforest for about 40 minutes.

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We hopped on the Scenic Cableway to travel deep down to the rainforest, and it was absolutely breathtaking. If there was a moment where I went ‘wow’, it was on the Cableway. Ignore all the other walks that we’ve been doing throughout the day, this was most definately the best views. It wasn’t proper scary, but quite relaxing. It only took about 2 mins which is a shame, I would have loved to stay on much longer.

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Bacon struggling to snap a picture of my super sweaty face on the way down the cableway – he IS scared of heights, so I’m real proud that he came along for this!

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The railway from bottom-up

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Once we were down in the rainforest (which, to be honest, was not that enthralling for me as I did come from the land of Rainforests) our guide took us for a wander around the 2.8km walkway towards the Scenic Railway that will bring us up to the top again. The views were lovely, as expected, and it helped that being so deep in the jungle it was slighly cooler. Man, those people who chose to wait by the toilets were definately missing out big time. Halfway though the trek in the jungle I decided that I was really sick of the three sisters. Yes I was. We’ve spent all day just viewing the three sisters from different vantage points, it would have been lovely if there were something else – even the walk itself was more interesting than the variety of ways you can view the three sisters from.

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Bacon loves being deep inside the rainforest

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My favourite picture of the three sisters taken deep inside the valley. Nice.

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It is very nice, and we were very lucky that we were there on one of the best days in the year, blessed by the spotless skies and lovely sunshine.

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We reached the end of our trek at last, and hopped on the Scenic Railway. The part where you board the train in a sun-lounger position should give it away – thank god we were warned by Lee the night before that it was going to be an almost completely vertical ascent on a 90 degree rockface for the initial 2/3 of the ride and VERY SCARY. Not only were we vertically shooting up a rock surface, the surface of the rocks were so close in front of us that you could touch the surface if you just reached out from your vertical ascent seat. The Indiana Jones song also kinda gave it away in my opinion..heehee. Very exciting – even though I did close my eyes for nearly the whole ride. Obviously no pictures, I was more concerned at not losing a sandal!

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I would call this the vertical railway rather than the scenic railway – there was nothing scenic about the fact that it runs like a roller coaster with the obligatory stomach dips!

After all the thrills in the rainforest, our lovely guide took us kangaroo hunting. No, not literally, but he wanted to point out some wild kangaroos for us. Me & bacon were not that bothered, seeing that we saw loads of wild kangaroos during our last trip to Philip Island in Victoria. Poor guy drove round and round and could not find a roo to save his life. We spent more than 30 mins on the wild kangaroo chase to come back with nothing – shame, I’m sure we would have found a better use of time than driving around kangaroo hunting.

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Failing to spot a kangaroo, our tour guide then took us to what was purported to be an aboriginal carving of a kangaroo on a rock surface on the ground. The only problem with showing us that is that he do not actually believe it to be real, rather, he believe that someone must’ve carved this fairly recently. Ha. So another pointless side trip! SO TIRING.

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We ended the day by going on the River Ferry sailing from Homebush Bay to arrive in style under the Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House to disembark at Circular Quay. As we boarded the ferry, there were loads of oddly dressed passengers disembarking – of course, they were the AC/DC fans heading to the Olympic Park for the concert! The river ferry journey took about 30 mins, and it was so stuffy in the cabin that it felt like a sauna. It was much better once I stepped outside on the deck, but the sun was still shining down mercilessly on us, it felt that I’ve gone two shades darker in that 30 minutes.

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It was immensely tiring, but for some stupid reason we decided that we would reaccquaint ourselves with the city and take the 30 min walk towards our hotel instead of the 5 min.train ride. Sounded like a good idea at that time….yep, stupid. So off home we headed….and not really considering where would we go for dinner. After 5 minutes I was parched and super tired, needing to stop for a slurpee. But as bacon tend to do, we got disctracted by the amber liquid again. Actually, we got distracted by the steak.

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The Customs House bar at the heart of Sydney’s financial centre holds a steak promotion on Mondays & Tuesdays for their Black Angus sirloins, a bargin AU10 for a 250g prime piece of steak. We decided that we were going to go for the steak, and I got my favourite Bees Kneez whilst bacon got some sort of Cooper’s beer again. Ahh….yummmm.

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Done rare, just the way God intended cows to be eaten.

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I heart bees kneez.

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After dinner, we walked home slowly, better now that we had been fed and watered. I was ever so glad to have got home, even the harsh bright lights in our room fail to annoy me. We took a shower, and collapsed into bed, with a cold litre of diet coke by my side. It had been a very, very long day. Do I think a trip to the Blue Mountains is worth it? Probably, if you drive yourself there and take a few days to explore the lovely little towns. A day trip is good if you are a tourist-in-a-hurry, but definately not enjoyable if like me, you like to take your time to explore and really get to know the area well. All we seem to do is travel from one vantage point to another, ticking things off our itinerary, which included the stupid stop by a river in the middle of nowhere. It might be due to the sweltering weather, but I was so tired by our second ‘vantage point’. It would also be better if the prices would be all-inclusive, I understand why people wouldn’t want to fork out an extra AU28 for the rides, and if that is the highlight of the trip anyway, to NOT include it seemed slightly cheeky and it caused all that drama that kinda put a damper on the whole trip by the group waiting by the toilet. Saying all that, I would definately recommend a longer trip if you are visiting the Blue Mountains, I think there is so much more to be explored in the Blue Mountains that we had only scratched the surface with our whistlestop tour.

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