The Blue Mountains

We wanted to get some idea of the vastness of this country, so we took a trip to the Blue Mountains. Apparently it took many years from founding the colony in Sydney, for Europeans to find a route through this mountain range.


Since the mountains are only some 3000 ft high. This seems strange, at least until you see the depth and steepness of the valleys that form the range. The Blue Mountains are of course yet another World Heritage site, and contain 52 different species of unique mammals and 1/3 of all the birds in Australia.



The size of the park is vast. It is equal in area to half the size of Belgium. When you look out from an overlook, the far side of the park is well beyond the horizon.

One road exists along one of the main ridgelines, and towns and houses have been built on the narrow ridge. These towns have shops.





The aboriginal people have been around for 60,000 years. This rock carving of a kangaroo, which sits just behind somebodies house, is supposed to be 7000 years old. That's older than Stonehenge! We were lucky to have a clear day, so the views were fantastic.




In the foothills we saw grey kangaroos, cockatoos and various other birds. We returned to Sydney from the Olympic park which is quite a long way outside town by one of the regular ferries.