Blue Mountains National Park

Adventures With Adam
Adventures With Adam
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Editor Pick

The Blue Mountains National Park

  • October 30, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by jaygami1986 from London, United Kingdom
The Blue Mountains National Park

This next review is on my time on The Blue Mountains National Park, located in Sydney Australia. A few friends and I had decided to hire a van and take a tour of the national park, as we had been recommended it by several people we had met along the way. I am usually a fan of national parks; it gives you a chance to take in the scenic view, it gives you a chance to relax and unwind if you have had a busy week, and you even get to see some wildlife. It’s a great experience, which allows you to camp overnight, whilst also have a magnificent driving experience.

History & Park Info:

The park covers 267,954 hectares, which included several mountains and rivers along the trek. The highest point of the park is Mount Werong (1,215 m), and there are some breathtaking views from the top. The area became a national park in 1932, and ever since has become a tourist hotspot for people who like walking and hiking.

How to Get There:

There are several ways to get to the national park; you can either take a car, or a van through the major highways, which leads you into the park entrance. Public transport is also available from many stations across Sydney, all taking you towards the park.

This park is near...
Katoomba (2 km, 5 minutes)
Penrith (9 km, 15 minutes)
Lithgow (20 km, 15 minutes)
Sydney (50 km, 90 minutes)

Fees and Opening Hours:

The park is open from 8:30 am in the morning and closes at 7:00pm daily, the fee to enter the park if you have a car or a van is $7 per day and is operated by a coin machine, so it might be useful to have some change on you at the time.


The Park and Tours Available:

The park has several tours that are available for visitors to take part in and this is truly a great experience as it allows you to get an in depth view of the natural beauty of the park and its surrounding areas. The guides also give you some information about the wildlife you might see there, what plants and trees there area, and some general information about the park, which you may not have thought about. The tours are also a great way to meet like minded people, who you can enjoy the day with.

The main tour has several key features which include a guided bush walk, a night time spotlighting tour which gives you a detailed tour of the park once it’s dark, allowing you to really get a feel for what the park is like during the night time.

There are several other detailed tours, which charge you for the experience, these include a detailed tour of the underground caves present within the national park, The Scenic Railway tour which takes you around the old train tracks within the park, also giving you some insightful historical background about the area. You can also opt to watch a documentary in one of the visitor centres, which gives you a detailed background of the park, which the first settlers were on the grounds and how the parks transformed within the last 250 years.

If you do some research before you go its worthwhile booking a tour with Blue Mountains Tourism, which again offers a wide variety of packages for things to see and do within the park. They also offer some great accommodation if you choose to stay the night in the park.
The website listed below gives you some great info on where you can find a place to stay, thus making you journey more pleasant and memorable.

Great Blue Mountains Drive is a self service driving opportunity which allows travellers and hikers a chance to drive around within the park, I often found this to be more of a family orientated and thus only take it if you’re willing to spend hours and hours of driving.

Mt Experience:

I had a brilliant time when I went to park; there was so much to simply see that we had to cover the park over a period of three days. The tour operators picked us up from or hotel and took as to the entrance of the park. One of the first things that hit us was Jamieson Valley, which was a vantage point and overlooked a magnificent view of the horizon, the sun was glaring down on us, and all we could see was the rich green trees, which looked very moist and rich. You also get to see some rock formation, which really emulates the beauty of the park and its surrounding area.

We carried on with the tour and we came to some very key points such as the nearby rivers which are located towards the bottom, it’s a long walk down, and it’s a great feeling when you finally get to the bottom and see the clear water, which on a sunny day allows you to see you reflection against it.

The next point of stop was Three Sisters rock formation at Katoomba. It’s one of the most iconic parts of the tour and consists of three rock formations with and earthy texture to them, overlooking the surrounding park, which has mass amounts of trees. It was at this point that we got ourselves comfortable and had some lunch, which we had bought with us. It’s important to note that anything you bring with you must be taken back, they done accept littering and it would be a shame to see litter so be considerate.

I could go on about the tour for hours, but I don’t want to make this review to extensive, however if your going to visit the park, its always worth doing some background information on what you want to see etc.

Happy Travels.

From journal Things to See in Sydney

Editor Pick

A Tour Through the Blue Mountains

  • May 17, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Drever from Ayr
A Tour Through the Blue Mountains

We had booked a tour through the Blue Mountains, Hunters Valley and onwards to Port Stevens. The tour company picked us up from our hotel in Sydney at 7:30 am for the first part of the trip and after other pick-ups we were finally on our way to the Blue Mountains. Sydney dropped behind and the countryside opened out before us we climbed into the mountains.

Having come from a stay in the state of Victoria it was like a different world here - lush grass and verdant trees everywhere rather than burnt-out pasture. We stopped for a coffee break Australian style in a clearing among the bush. Kangaroos provided entertainment as we knocked back our refreshment.

We stopped at a vantage point and gazed at one of the most stunning views in Australia: the vast Jamieson Valley, with its towering sandstone escarpments, its blue-tinged carpet of eucalyptus trees and its horizon stretching to infinity. The oil from the Eucalyptus trees produces the blue haze above the mountains. The bush is so dense down there that early explorers only managed to struggle through the Blue Mountains by keeping to the peaks.

We continued on our way to see the magnificent Three Sisters rock formation at Katoomba. The Aboriginal dreamtime legend has it that three sisters, ‘Meehni’, ‘Wimlah’ and Gunnedoo’ lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. These beautiful young women had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry. The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle. As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witch doctor from the Katoomba tribe took it on himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witch doctor himself died in the battle. As only he could reverse the spell to return the women to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.

We had lunch at a lovely country house in Katoomba before visiting Govett’s Leap. Govetts Leap provides a spectacular point to view the Govetts and Grose gorges - the ‘Grand Canyons’ of Australia. The vertical cliffs drop 160 metres, with the floor of the gorge lying over 400 metres below the lookout. In 1846 Travel writer G.C. Mundy wrote of Govetts Leap: "It is certainly one of the grandest freaks of nature I have seen in any country - quite beyond the power of pen or pencil to delineate". Walks signposted from here are: Pulpit Rock, Popes Glen, Horseshoe Falls, Grose Valley Walks.

Unfortunately we did not have time to visit Scenic World. As we were staying rather than making a round trip the plan was to drop us off at our hotel. After booking in we intended taking a trolleybus back and explore Scenic World at our leisure. Unfortunately when we reached our hotel we found the buses were due to stop running for the day so we never did manage to:

* Take a ride on the Skyway with its world first Electro-Sceni Glass Floor.
* Ride the steepest incline Railway in the world down to a lush and hidden valley.
* Stroll along the Walkway through towering Jurassic rainforest.

I somehow feel that we lost out!

From journal In and Around Sydney

Blue Mountains

  • January 31, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Koentje3000 from Hamme, Belgium
Blue Mountains

The main gateway to the Blue Mountains National Park is Katoomba, located 100km west from Sydney and very convenient to reach by train in about 2 hours. You can stay in Katoomba much cheaper than in Sydney.

The tourist information is a half an hour's walk away from the centre. There is a gorgeous viewpoint here, where you can see why the name of the mountains is blue. Due to the eucalyptus trees the park gets a bluish colour.

You can walk into the gorge from the viewpoint, where you will pass nice rock formations and waterfalls. One of the rocks has got three "heads," hence their name, "The Three Sisters".

From journal Summer in Australia's Biggest City

Editor Pick

Walkabout

  • February 13, 2004
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Orl from Dublin, Ireland
Cost: AUD $95 (approximately €60)

My highlight of Australia was a walkabout tour of the Blue Mountains near Sydney. I hasten to add that it would not be everybody’s cup of eucalyptus tea. The walk is quite strenuous and you will get dirty. But if you want an escape from the frenetic pace of Sydney, see more of the Australian bush than you would in a whistle-stop bus tour and gain a real insight into Aboriginal culture, this is a MUST DO.

Evan Yanna Muru, our tour guide of Aboriginal descent, met us at Falconbridge station, which is approximately an hour’s train journey from Sydney’s Central Station. As a former tour guide myself, I am hard to please, but I can honestly say that Evan is one of the best. He is passionate about Darug (the Aboriginal tribe that lived in the Blue Mountains) culture and his knowledge of it is vast and deep.

As I said earlier, it is physically challenging. Most of the 8km walk is off-track and therefore the terrain is rough. You do not need to be super-fit but you do need to be surefooted. However, there are compensations - our group did not encounter one other person all day. Other than our voices and movements, no other noises interfered with the bush soundscape. How many places in the world can you still say that about?

Along our walkabout, I tasted some of this ‘bush tucker‘; the eucalyptus leaves and wild cranberries were more than edible but I declined the aboriginal delicacy that is wood grubs. Some things just are not worth doing in the name of adventure.

We spotted dingoes and kookaburras but luckily we did not encounter any poisonous spiders or snakes. The aborigines had a holistic worldview – that humans, animals and the land are one and the same. Therefore, Evan explained, all things living and non-living were treated with respect. This meant that natural resources remained sustainable. I felt slightly ashamed that the Irish who settled in Australia were among those who condemned this ancient culture as primitive. I winced at the irony that many of the Irish convicts transported to Australia were driven to petty crime because they were dispossessed but went on to drive the Australian natives off their land. The Darug aborigines occupied the Blue Mountains for 50,000 years. Within two years of white settlement (1788), smallpox had killed more than half of this tribe. By 1860 the last of the full-blood Darug people had died.

Unfortunately, the weather was not conducive to swimming in a billabong. Instead, we had our lunch sitting round a campfire in a sandstone cave where we drank eucalyptus tea and ate toasted marshmallows.

In the afternoon, Evan pointed out some of the aboriginal rock art engravings. He really brought the archaeology to life.

I do not want to give the impression that the walkabout is too highbrow – we chatted and joked and finished the day, weary but exhilarated, in the pub.

From journal 'Earth, fire, air and water'

The Blue Mountains

  • March 8, 2003
  • Rated 4 of 5 by clarkie from sydney, Australia
One hour west of Sydney are the stunning Blue Mountains. The road winds up to the top of the mountain range through many tiny little villages and towns. This is a fantastic day trip or even a great place to spend three or four days. There are several historical towns with accommodations ranging from B&Bs to 5-star resort-style hotels.

The grandeur of The Three Sisters is overwhelming. You can take short walks from the top of these three craggy mountain tops and look across the panorama of the range. There are picnic areas there and even in the winter you can picnic in a rock cave--take your hot soup and home made pies--yum! A cable car at Katoomba takes you across the top of the range for more breathtaking views. There is a historical railway that takes you around the mountains and gulleys surrounding Katoomba, the main town. For the more adventurous take a 4-wheel drive and go exploring further inland and find the Jenolean Cave with its amazing cave walks to view the stalactite and stalacmite formations. They even do ghostly night walks. The arduous 3-hour walk is more of a slither and slide tunnelling exercise. Rock climbing and abseiling on the Three Sisters is poplular and, for me, scary. A gentle 60-foot drop abseil is sensational--some of these seem to go forever. You can watch them from the top.

All of the little towns have old pubs with roaring log fires and great traditional food and accommodations. In Australia, because it is winter in June-July, we have mid-year yule tide dinners which are a full six-course turkey feast complete with Santa.

From journal Sydney-my home town

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