A Great Place to Settle: Katoomba/Sydney, Day 2

At 7:30, we were up and on the phone, trying to cancel our excursion for today to the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. We were hoping to spend more time in the city, but the woman told us she would charge us whether we went or not, so we decided to go. Not to spoil the ending, but I am absolutely thrilled that we went on the day trip. I learned so much about Australia and got so much perspective on its history. Wonderful! Our guide, Jim, was terrific. As we drove out to the mountains, he told us about the history of Sydney and how hard life was for people who started the city. There was very little farmland, so they refer to the early days of the city as “The Starvation Years.” On the way, we took a detour through Sydney Olympic Park, which was fun to see. Today it is a public facility that anyone can come use. I love the Olympics, and this was my first trip to an Olympic park, which was nice.

At 9:05 (almost an hour into our trip), Jim told us that we had reached the center of Sydney. I didn’t mention it yesterday, but this city is absolutely huge. It just goes on and on and on. One thing they have a ton of in Australia is room to spread out. Jim also told us that there are only 2 roads through the Blue Mountains – not because they haven’t built more, but because the land is so rugged and forbidding that to this day, they have only found 2 ways to go through the mountains. Parts of the Blue Mountains still remain unexplored. This is a place that is 2 hours from the center of the biggest city in the country, indeed one of the great cities of the world, and it is not fully mapped, even with our helicopters and GPS technology. This, everyone, is a mind-boggling country. I can’t believe they have made a go of it here, but they certainly have.

It makes life hard when you are just waiting for the rain to come, and the wait can be a long one.

We arrived in the Blue Mountains a little after 10:00. They are called the Blue Mountains because they are covered with eucalyptus trees, which throw off eucalyptus oil and turn the light blue around them. Eucalyptus forest is native Australian forest, and it can grow in dry soil where nothing else can grow. I was surprised to learn that there are over 700 different kinds of eucalyptus in Australia.

We descended into the Blue Mountains National Park and came to a place called Euroka Crater, which is a volcanic crater that has more fertile soil than most of the park. As we pulled into the parking lot, Gretchen and I saw them outside the window: kangaroos! Wild kangaroos, 5 of them, resting in the shade by a little creek. We all rolled out of the van and went over to where they were; they didn’t hop away, because while they are wild, they are used to people. Jim told us that kangaroos are the predominant native herbivore in Australia – they don’t have deer, goats, cows, or horses; all of these were introduced by Europeans. There are more than 40 kinds of kangaroos in Australia, including the Eastern Grey ones we were looking at, the red kangaroo of the Outback, rat kangaroos that live on islands, tree kangaroos that live around Cairns (yes, in trees!), and wallabies in the mountains.

Jim also told us why kangaroos hop. Australia, I think I have mentioned, is a rough place to live. Jim told us about a place in the western part of New South Wales that just got rain in April for the first time in 10 years. As you might imagine given this information, energy conservation is job one for Australian animals. Hopping, as it turns out, uses only 30% as much energy as running like a deer. So in addition to being adorable, it is also economical. Jim told us that essentially all native Australian mammals are marsupials, which is also a survival technique. If conditions are good, the embryo spends 28 days in the womb, is born, and crawls to the mother’s pouch, where it stays for 9 more months before coming out. If there is a drought, though, or if there is no food, and the mother knows she can’t make milk, she can hold the embryo in her womb for an indefinite time until conditions improve. Amazing survivalists! Take that, Bear Grylls.

We left Euroka and continued our journey into the mountains. Jim told us that although the mountains are only 24 miles wide, it took 23 years to find a route across them because the valleys are like a maze (hence their name, “the blue labyrinth”). The first road through the mountains was a 55 mile-long road along a ridge that was handbuilt by 30 convicts in just 8 months – quite a feat. In return for building the road, they were given their freedom. Well worth it, because on the other side of the Blue Mountains there is arable land, and Sydney needed food.

Our next stop was Echo Point, which has a beautiful view of the Jamison Valley of the Blue Mountains, and which is one of the most important landmarks in Australia because it is the site of the Three Sisters, a rock formation that has significance in the Aboriginal culture. The view was nothing short of spectacular, with the distant mountains a deep blue and the closer ones green, covered with eucalyptus. The only thing that spoiled it even a little bit was the aggressive Australian houseflies. I had read about these too before I came here, but nothing prepares you. They fly right into your face, making a beeline (or flyline? hahaha) for your eyes and nose. If you let them, they will crawl all over you. Everyone at Echo Point was fanning the air in front of their faces to get rid of the flies.

After Echo Point, we got back into the bus and drove a short way to a trailhead. Jim led us down over 1000 steps into a temperate rainforest portion of the Blue Mountains. He told us that of the 80 tour companies that come up here from Sydney, only 3 walk down into the valley. Another excellent call by our travel guide, which recommended this company. Jim told us that there are rainforests all along the east coast of Australia, not just the tropical rainforest we saw in Kuranda. He reminded us too that all of the water in Australia comes from rain; there are no snow-capped mountain ranges or glaciers here. It makes life hard when you are just waiting for the rain to come, and as we learned earlier, the wait can be a long one.

We visited a place called Witches Leap, the site of a little waterfall, where Jim told us an Aboriginal legend about a wizard who gave his life so his tribe could have water. The rock formations of the waterfall very clearly form a face, which the Aborigines say is this wizard watching everyone. It is easy to see why the Aboriginal people feel such a connection to the land, because all of their stories give the land life.

We continued down some very questionable steps until we came to Katoomba Waterfall. Jim told us that the word “Katoomba” means “the place where water falls down and shines,” because at dawn the sunlight hits the falls to make a rainbow. It is also funny that the Europeans felt the need to call it “Katoomba Waterfall” because “Katoomba” means “waterfall.” Oh, Europeans! As we stood there, we were serenaded by lyre birds, which are terrific mimics and have hundreds of different songs. We were there right in mating season, so it was quite a cacophony.

We reached the bottom of the valley and rather than walk back up, we took the Scenic Railway. This railway was once used to bring coal up from the bottom of the valley, so it was not designed for passengers even though it is used for this purpose today. The railway is on a 52-degree incline and the cars are open air, with only a cage above you to keep you from falling out. It goes up at rather alarming speed, at one point going through a pitch-black crevasse. What I am telling you is that it was awesome.

By now it was after 2:00, so we headed to a village called Leura to grab some lunch. We ate on the grass and just as we finished, the storm clouds started rolling in. We all herded back on the bus and drove toward our next stop. The rain came down in huge raindrops. It truly was chubby rain. Next came the hail. Jim told us about a hailstorm in 1999 in Sydney that lasted only 20 minutes, but thanks to the baseball-sized hailstones, caused over $500,000,000 in damage. Welcome to Australia!

We came to Govett’s Leap, a spot with a good view of the Grose Valley on the other side of the Blue Mountains. While we were here, we saw lightning over the mountains and the chubby rain came back. Jim told us that last year, there was a bush fire here that made it inaccessible for months. The eucalyptus forest burns regularly to replenish the soil. Jim told us that eucalyptus trees, like kangaroos, are great survivors. When fire happens, their bark actually expands to shield the tree from the heat. Inside eucalyptus trees there are dormant shoots that pop out after the other branches have been burnt off to keep the tree alive. Amazing!

We headed back to Sydney in the rain. At one point I saw a sign announcing that we’d entered the city limits, and then right after that was a sign saying that Sydney airport was 62 km away (30 miles or so). This place is immense! We got back into Sydney around 6:00 and Jim dropped us off at our hotel. We ran up to the hospitality suite for free dinner (delicious, of course), and then changed into our swimsuits to go to the spa. The spa is on the 23rd floor of the building and has a terrific view of the city, which was made even more spectacular by the lightning storm going on outside. We turned in for an early night because we’d been out so late the night before and because we had a full day of activities planned for Thursday.