June 5th, 2007 Blue Mountains Journal Entry

Today we woke up early and hopped on a country train a block from the hostel. The train took us through a 2 hour ride out to the “Blue Mountains”. It was a nice ride through the outskirts of Sydney and into the mountains. When we arrived at the Blue mountains, we took a “hop on-hop off” bus tour that took you through these two cute towns and different sites to lookout throughout the mountains. It was very much a “touristy” town, but really nice and quiet. It reminded me of Asheville, NC. We took the bus to one of the major stops and here we did three things. We took the Skyway across this huge valley to the other side. We took the steepest railway supposedly in the world down the mountain, and we took a Cableway to ride back up the mountain. Let me say we put a lot of trust into these trips!! We got to walk through different trails to waterfalls, through a rainforest, and more. The views were absolutely spectacular! They claim that this valley is larger and older than our Grand Canyon. The most unique thing about the mountains is the picture you see called the “Three Sisters”. These structures in the mountains date way back to an ancient story with the Aboriginal people. Its about three daughters that wanted to marry outside the tribe and their father decided to turn them into stone because of this. I’m sure there is a lot more to it but that’s what we can remember!!


After visiting the mountains for about 5 hours, we took the train ride home and enjoyed our last night in Sydney. We head off to Ayers Rock, a holy rock of the Aborginal people in the morning and then up to Darwin on June 8th.