After last nights torrential rain and thunderstorms, this morning was blue sky and sunny which was good as we had planned to visit Scenic World. Scenic World is a section of the World heritage Blue Mountains National Park where there are 4 different ways of enjoying the Blue Mountains Scenery, a glass floored aerial tramway across a gorge – the highest cable car in Australia, a rainforest boardwalk – the longest in the Southern hemisphere, a cable way (what we call a cable car) the largest in Australia and a railway that has the steepest incline in the world at 52 degrees, they are obviously proud of their statistics! This is all organised around what was originally a mine in the Blue Mountains. We arrived at about 9am and was given our map of the site and a recommended route. Normally you would be able to take the cable car to the valley and then follow one of the boardwalk paths to the railway and then take this back to the top before crossing the gorge on the aerial tramway. Unfortunately due to last nights storms the section of the boardwalk between the cable car and railway was closed meaning that you had to take the cable car back up to then be able to ride the railway down to a different part of the valley and then again have to ride that back up. Anyway, we decided that we would do ‘the loop’ albeit having to ride the cable car and railway down and up and started with the glass floored aerial tramway. We checked how much of the floor was actually glass before committing Chris to the ride, luckily it is only the central section that is glass and there are solid floors either side of the glass section, so we boarded for our ride across the gorge 270 metres above the valley floor. The tramway provides spectacular views down the valley and across Blue Mountains range and forest on one side and a top down view of the two stage drop of the Katoomba falls from the other side, It only takes about 7 minutes to make the journey across and once we had reached the other side we walked around to the Katoomba Cascades which is a small waterfall before the Katoomba creek reaches the start of the main falls. After a few pictures we then walked in the opposite direction to the first of many viewpoint across the Mountain ranges and forest. As the Sun gets hotter and the temperature rises you can start to see the blue haze across some areas of the forest. Most of the forest is Eucalypt tress and the sun evaporates Eucalypt oil from the tree leaves which creates a blue hazy mist which is how the region acquired its name. Once we had admired the views for a while we then took the tramway back across the gorge so that we could then take the cable car to the valley floor.The cable car ride is another thrill, as it starts off fairly close to the mountain floor before dropping over the edge and heading for the valley floor. As it moves over the mountain edge there were lots of gasps from those onboard, again it was a very smooth ride down affording fantastic views. Although a section of the boardwalk was closed preventing access to the railway we were able to take a small circular route through the forest, in some places the smell of the Eucalypt is very strong. In this area of the valley floor they have found dinosaur bones and as a result they have installed a number of animatronic dinosaur models that move and roar as you walk past them and a number of sites now contain replica footprints and bones which help keep the younger generation entertained as we all walk around the boardwalks. Being on the valley floor amongst all of the tall vegetation reaching for the sky and a glimpse of sunshine in oder to grow is quite amazing. The Blue Gum trees and Turpentine tress grow ram rod straight. The Blue Gums can grow .5 metres a year. Some of the Turpentine trees have been felled by past storms and flash floods, but the wood is so hard that it can take over a hundred years for them to start rotting down. You can understand why they were prized by the British for repairing or replacing their ships masts. Once we had completed the walk it was time to take the cable car back to the top to connect to the railway.The railway descends the mountain to the valley floor through a natural rock tunnel and a 52 degree incline down the face of the mountain. It actually follows the original route of the mine railway. As you’re sat in the train descending you are pretty much facing directly down the incline. In our train this is made slightly easier as our seats are ‘laid back’ , however in the visitor centre you can see pictures of when this was an actual mine railway and the miners and mine visitors rode down in open wooden carts! Once we had reached the bottom we crossed to the other side and waited for the train ride back up. When you take the train back up you are in the same type of seat facing forwards i.e. down, so in fact you ride up backwards looking at the valley floor receding from view. Once back at the top it was starting to get busier and it was obvious a number of holiday coach parties had arrived so we decided to stop for a well earned ice cream break whilst we decided what we would do next. We decided that as Chris had survived the aerial tramway twice, we would do it again, but this time with the idea of then taking the longer walk to two of the main lookouts of the other side of the gorge called the 3 Sisters and Echo Point. So again, we took the skyway, still preferring to stand on the solid floor as opposed to the glass floor, to the other side. The walk to Echo Point, 3 Sisters and the many other lookouts along the way was fairly straight forward, although there were many puddles which were obviously a result of last nights rain. They say the walk should only take 30 minutes but by the time we had stopped at various places to either catch our breath as we’re at 1000 Metres altitude or to just admire the views it probably took us nearer 50 minutes to make it to the 3 sisters Visitor Centre. This area is obviously one of the main coach drop off areas for those not wanting to do the cliff walk as it was very busy. We walked around taking in the different views, in particular that of the 3 sisters rock formations and then found a bench in the shade where we could sit and have our picnic lunch whilst taking in the scenery around us. The wind had started to pick up and the clouds are started to gather over the mountains so it looked like the weather forecast of early evening thunderstorms was going to be correct. Once we had finished our lunch we had a nice rest just admiring the views and then made our way back along the cliff path back to the skyway. Along the way we had decided that we had pretty much visited everything we could within Scenic world but we would ride the incline railway one more time for ‘fun’. So we took the tramway back across and with this being Chris’ 4th time on the tramway he was quite relaxed. Once across, we walked to the railway and took the ride down and back up, backwards. By the time we had done this we were fairly tired with the heat and humidity, so we drove back to the milking shed and got there by about 4 pm. Around 6 pm the sky opened and the thunder and lightening started, although not with the same ferocity as last night. The weather forecast was correct. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.
