Day Trip to the Blue Mountains

On Monday 24 January, Matthew's co-worker Gordon took us, their other co-worker Pavel and his girlfriend Natasha, to the Blue Mountains.

The Greater Blue Mountains Area is more than 1 million hectares of bushland, which received UNESCO World Heritage Listing in 2000. The eucalytpus oil in the air from all the trees creates a blue haze in the air, hence the name. They are not technically mountains, but sandstone plateaux with more than 100 species of eucalypts growing in the gorges.

We started off in Glenbrook at the Blue Mountains National Park, where we went to the Euroka campground, to try to spot kangaroos, who usually hang out in the grass there. Unfortunately, the roos were not around at that time. We walked down the track (trail) to the Napean River, and back up again, which was rough in the heat and humidity. However, hearing the bellbirds and the whipbirds made it worthwhile.

Bellbirds have a cool song where they simply "ping," then other ones nearby will "ping" and you get this chorus of rings around you. Here's a random video on YouTube. Matthew and I call the whipbirds "laser birds" because their song sounds like a laser warming up, then firing - here's a link to an excellent recording from Birdsaustralia.com.au.

After Glenbrook, we drove to the town of Katoomba, where we stopped for lunch before heading to Echo Point, which overlooks the Jamison Valley and the Three Sisters.

The Three Sisters is a sandstone rock formation shaped by erosion; they are about 900m/3000ft tall. Next, we drove over to another lookout to see Wentworth Falls.

From the Jamison Lookout, we hiked over to Wentworth Falls, walked over the top of the falls and down a little bit around the far side of the falls. Don't worry - at the top, a fence along the trail keeps you well back from the edge of the falls!

We spotted several baby goannas sunning themselves on the sandstone on the side of the track.

Afterwards, Gordon drove us back to the train station, and we caught the train back home. What a great day!

Here's a link to the rest of our photos from the day and here's a short video I took showing a panorama of the Blue Mountains at Echo Point. (May want to turn your volume down, there's some wind noise on the video.)