Kangaroos, Koalas and The Blue Mountains

December 29 Blue Mountains and strange animals

Another early morning pick up by Suanne Adelman, our favorite tour guide, for this day’s trip out to the country side. This time she brings Lawrence, her husband along for the ride. He and Mike settle into the back seats while the girls drive and navigate. The trip west takes us past the Olympic Stadium and other parts of the grounds left over from the 2000 Olympic Games.

As the highway climbs up from sea level in Sydney to the Blue Mountain ridges at about 3,000 feet, the land becomes more lush and green. The Blue Mountains get their name from the bluish hue in the air that is caused by a vapor that rises off the eucalyptus trees that cover the rocky hills.

Suanne’s plan today is to get out ahead of the hoards of Indian (dot not feather) and Japanese tourists who jammed up her tour the day before. The plan works. She drops us at the gondola for the visitor’s center and we go aboard with no wait time at all.  

The glass bottomed gondola travels on a cable out over a 300 feet deep canyon with a waterfall that drops down the rocky face of the sheer cliff. At the far side, we board another gondola that drops straight down to the floor of the canyon. A short walk takes us to an old coal mine that was the reason for a tunnel in the cliff that opens up a narrow gap from the canyon floor to the top of the ridge. We board a tram that is hoisted by cable almost vertically up the canyon through the gap cut for the original coal cars.  The view has been spectacular from the transverse over the canyon, then down into the valley and then back up through the gap.

At the visitors center we visit the statues that depict the aboriginal legend of the three sisters. The legend is that the sisters were turned into stone and their father spent eternity trying to get them back to life. Three stone pillars along the canyon wall are supposed to be the personification of the sisters.     

After the visit to the well organized visitor center, Suanne took us to us to a spot she learned about from other tour guides. It was a terrific view of the mountain ridges and valleys with no guard rails and no gift shop. Just a slab of flat sandstone overlooking a wild rain forest was our perch. It was amazing.

Australia has animals like no other place on earth. Featherstone is a place that showcases many of them for visitors like us. We see birds, lizards and mammals that only exist in Australia. This small, privately owned operation has a large collection of well cared for animals that are out in the open, where possible, so visitors can interact with them. Susan has been looking forward to this all week. She gets to touch and feed Kangaroos and Koalas. She has accomplished her mission in Australia.