The Blue Mountains - Sydney

We were nearly down as far South as Sydney and one of the most impressive natural attractions around this area is the Blue Mountains. For more than a century the Blue Mountains have been luring locals fromSydney up from the city with promises of a cooler climate, mixed in with the fantastic scenery, fabulous bushwalks and more gorges and gum trees that you think are possible. It is quite often hazy up the mountains and the slate-coloured haze that gives the mountains their name comes from a fine mist of oil exuded by eucalyptus trees.

As usual with all the mountains ranges in Australia you drive up to the top of the hills before walking around. We had assumed that there would only be a small mountain village up here but it turned out that there was a small city up the mountains to deal with the amount of tourists around.

The foothills begin 65km inland from Sydney rising to a 1100m-high sandstone plateau riddled with valleys eroded into the stone over thousands of years. In 1813, Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson were the first Europeans to traverse the mountains. Today’s Great Western Hwy follows their route through the laid-back towns of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth Falls. Katoomba (where we stayed) is the main city up here.

The area covers such a massive amount of land that there are 3 National Parks up here, we decided to go to the main one which has the main attractions. As mentioned earlier, you start from the top so as soon as we arrived we were greeted with stunning views across the valley and we then started to take a walk down the mountain to explore it further.


















































Throughout our walk we came across many fantastic waterfalls and had the chance to catch some more great views from within the forest. We even came across a waterfall called Witches Leap which is an old fashioned Scottish term for a waterfall.