On Day 4 in Sydney our tour bus headed up the Great Western Highway to the the Blue Mountains. Our destination was a town called Katoomba. As we climbed up into the hills we got some nice views of the coastal plains west of Sydney from the bus.
Our first stop in the Blue Mountains was the village of Leura, which provided a pleasant introduction to the area.
From Leura it was just a short ride to Scenic World in Katoomba, where we hopped aboard a Scenic Cableway gondola for a ride to the floor of Jamison Valley.
On the floor of the Jamison Valley we found a lush, dense temperate rain forest, which we could observe from a walkway constructed above the ground so as to preserve the forest floor from damage by thousands of human feet tramping over it, and saving the humans themselves from having to stumble over rocks and tree roots or blunder into hanging vines.
From the valley floor we also had stunning views of the geological features of the area, including the towering cliffs of Katoomba with their spectacular rock formations.
After completing our stroll along the Scenic Walkway, we jumped on the Scenic Railway for the ride back up to the clifftops. It was a pretty exciting ride. The Katoomba Scenic Railway claims to be the steepest funicular railway in the world and I don’t find that hard to believe. It was better than an amusement park roller coaster.
The Scenic Railway ride ended our stay in Katoomba, but our tour day wasn’t over yet. We still had the Featherdale Wildlife Refuge west of Sydney to visit. But on the way there, we had to witness a spectacle that was all too familiar to Aussies, and would become even more so in subsequent years: a bush fire.
