We left Sydney on Thursday morning, having collected the hire car, & drove to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, Paul coping superbly with the automatic transmission car (Kate wimped out & needed a practice!). The Blue Mts can be seen lying some 100km west on the horizon from Sydney (a good view from the top of the harbour bridge but only us Bridge Climbers would know that!!). There really is a blue haze lying over the gorges and precipitous cliffs – caused by the effect of the light on the dust particles in the air and the Eucalyptus trees. Katoomba, considering its situation in the National park, is a surprisingly rough and ready place; looks a bit like it should be in the Forest of Dean and the main bar of the type that you haven’t seen at home for 30 years, before the advent of our café culture. We stayed in a lovely hostel in the town; it has been a guest house since the 1930s and still retains a lot of the features. It had a pleasant verandah to sit on and watch the parakeets flying among the trees and a good roaring fire in the common room when the evening grew chilly. We spent a day and a half exploring the area on foot, taking some fab photos of the rainforest (which has a species of pine growing in it that has been around since the dinosaurs) and the rocky cliffs towering above. We descended into the rainforest, almost deafened by the cacophony of bird calls (a task some evening to consult a book to put a name to them!) and our nasal passages refreshed by the regular whiff of eucalyptus. We had an easy scramble to the top of a rocky outcrop, appropriately named Ruined Castle, which gave us amazing views of the bush spread out beneath us. Hard to believe you are so close to Oz’s largest city.
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