Blue Mountains

Sydney has a wonderful light rail system and great regional connections. We took advantage of this to ride out to Katoomba to see the Blue Mountains.



They seem to be blue for the same reason that the Blue Ridge Mountains are Blue. Of course, the shapes and constitution are quite different.

The main attraction here are the Three Sisters. The city of Katoomba has Hop-on Hop-off bus service and well maintained viewing platforms for the crowds of people that flock here to see the sights.

We learned that a hotel built here in the 1880's was a mecca for honeymooners. When a new hotel as built that had electricity (even before Sydney did), the old hotel built a coal fired power plant to compete. The coal came from the valley and a very steep railway brought the coal to the town. When the coal was exhausted, the railway was repurposed to be a passenger train and is still in operation. Nowadays, there are also cable cars connecting places for the crowds. We didn't do these. We prefered just seeing the place from the ground.

In the nearby town of Leura we found the Leura Cascades. A section of the cascades is seen below.

At one spot, people stacked cairns in the stream.

But the thing we came for, what most people come for, are the amazing views.