February 6 - The Foggy Blue Mountains and a Glimpse of Sydney

Tuesday the 6th I woke up in Sydney.  I missed the sail in but I’ll have another shot at it on the 21st.  It was a cloudy, rainy day so I’m consoling myself with the fact that it wouldn’t have been as spectacular as it could have been.  I have to say we were docked in a great place, right across from the Opera House and practically under the famous bridge.  The Australian Customs people are a little strange.  Despite the fact that we haven’t been anywhere but Australia in the last few days, once again we all had to have a face-to-face and everyone had to get off the ship before anyone could get back on.  These were what I saw from the stern of the ship.

I had booked a trip to the Blue Mountains, outside of Sydney. Around 8:45 we boarded our bus and we were off for an hour and a half ride.   One thing that was interesting was that the first several miles of our journey was through a tunnel.  There’s a tunnel system running under Sydney and its immediate surroundings that makes Boston’s “Big Dig” look puny.  The ride was pretty boring and I dozed off for a while.  The only really interesting thing I saw while awake were a couple of trees filled with cockatoos, but they didn’t compare to the other day in Melbourne.

Eventually we arrived at the mountains and a place called Scenic World near the top.  These are part of that Great Dividing Range I wrote about the other day.  Our guide told us that they don’t have “real” mountains here because they aren’t tall enough, but they call these big hills mountains anyway.  Well, needless to say the cloudiness in Sydney was full-on fog and mist here. Visibility was pretty limited. (That’s an understatement.)

A little about the place.  This area was a big mining area back around the time of the Gold Rush and later for coal.  As the guide pointed out the ones who really made money were the people who came to sell things prospectors and then miners needed.  Those folks happened to be Chinese and many of them stayed in the area.  The mountains here are made of shale and sandstone and they are covered with lush vegetation, some of it semi-tropical.    They form  an important part of Sydney's water supply. Because it was a misty, moisty day everything smelled very fresh.  

Our driver got our tickets and we went into the park.  There are four ways to get around:  walking on some trails up and down the mountain,  a narrow-gauge railway which was used to haul ore out back in the day, a cable car to go up and down, and a glass-floored cable car that travels between two “peaks.”

I took the railway to the bottom and it was quite a ride.  At one point it has a 52° drop!  Let me tell you it was as exhilarating as a rollercoaster and much worse on my knees  because there was no seat belt and you just slid into the seat in front of you.  At the bottom I walked along a trail where we could see old air vents from the mining days and walled off entrances to mine shafts.  I know I couldn’t possibly be a miner because the tunnels were so small.  Along the way there were bronze sculptures of a miner and horse that would have been used to haul the ore up before the railway was built.  Once back at the top I decided that my stomach probably couldn’t take standing on a clear glass floor on a car going over a deep gorge.  Besides, I told myself, it was too foggy to see anything.

My friend Lynn and me just before we did the heart-stopping ride to the bottom

The bronze miner was actually holding me up because I was still rocking from my voyage across the Tasman Sea

When we left Scenic World we went to an old hotel, the Mountain Heritage Inn, in Katoomba.  (I just love these aboriginal names.)  The inn reminded me of old inns at some of our national parks with lots of timbered ceilings and creaky floors.  We had a nice lunch there before proceeding to our next stop, an Australian animal park called Ferncastle.

I generally don’t like seeing animals in zoos because it makes me sad.  However, some of these creatures would be very hard to spot in the wild.  They had lots of koalas, which are endangered, many kangaroos hopping around, a wombat who was snoozing away inside of a log and was very difficult to see, and an echidna which looked like a big porcupine.  Of course, there were all kinds of birds.  I saw kookaburras, which make a really screechy noise, and come in a variety of colors.  There were emus and spoonbills and  all sorts of parrots in lots of colors. There was one parrot who was bright pink and sat on a limb near the enclosure fence saying ”scratch me.”  I gave him a tummy scratch.  In the same enclosure was a big cockatoo who kept saying “Hello You.”  There was a reptile building.  I’ll let you guess who didn’t go in there.  Just a little trivia here -  Australia has at least 40 varieties of poisonous snakes, 10 of which are on the world’s most deadly list.  Our guide assured us that they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.  I don’t plan to find out if that’s true.

A tree-kangaroo.  Who knew some of them hang out in trees?

A small kangaroo whose species I couldn't tell you.  They really do hop along on two legs, very fast I might add, and their tail helps them balance

Some blue penguins

Mr. Echidna

A spangled kookaburra. Hard to see but he has beautiful blue feathers

The pink parrot who wanted a tummy scratch and got one

Just look at the colors on this parrot

A special word about koalas.  A group of koalas is sometimes called a "colony."  I think that's a misnomer.  They really should be called a cuddly cuteness.  I couldn't resist taking a ton of pictures of them and here they are so I'll remember them always.

Munching on eucalyptus which are poisonous to most other creatures

Just hanging out

Naptime

One last picture of total cuteness

After a good visit to Featherdale it was time to get back to the ship.  The drive back was quite interesting.  The place in Sydney where we docked is called the Rocks.  It was the place where the first convicts who were transported here were camped.  It’s so named because it was just a very rocky place and was evidently a very harsh environment.  Many of the convicts died and in the early part of the 19th century the place had become so dangerous that the government burned all the buildings down.  A new community was built and many of the houses there are from that era of the 1840’s and later.  Many have wrought iron balconies and from the outside look like pretty simple two-story houses.  However, most have been completely redone and since they border the harbor on the seaside,  most have another two or three stories not visible from the street.  They are among the priciest real estate in Sydney.  The surrounding streets have lots of cafés and quirky shops and galleries.  I plan to try to visit the area on my next time in Sydney in two weeks.

Back on the ship. My suitcase that I had shipped was waiting for me in my cabin.  I got cleaned up and went to the solo travelers' get together and there was my friend Helga.  It was so nice to see her after close to a year.  We had dinner together to catch up and then went to the show and the club afterwards.  No dancing tonight though.  We’re back to big time rocking and rolling again.  I think it’s doubtful that we’ll be able to go ashore tomorrow. We’re due back in Bateman’s Bay (we were just there yesterday) and I’m supposed to go to a vineyard.  

Well, that’s it for now.  I’m alive and well and having a blast.  More later.