Tyler Travel: Blue Mountains

Along with booking all the hostels in Sydney, I booked this trip to see the Blue mountains with Coastal Warriors. The blue mountains are so called because they are covered in gum eucalyptus trees and the eucalyptus oil emitted by the leaves creates a blue tinge in the air - this is due to Rayleigh scattering of the shorter light wavelengths....the same as why the sky is blue......ahh ......Physics 😄 - anyway! they really did appear to be shimmering blue, especially as the day got hotter

The meeting place for the trip was 812 George Street.....felt very much like George street in Oxford, only much wider and with trams!

I was very lucky to make the trip - I didn't realise that although Queensland don't follow daylight saving, Sydney (New South Wales), and the rest of the country do and so Sydney clocks are an hour ahead.

I hadn't noticed the night before, but my watch was an hour slow and luckily my phone had updated.

It was a full bus - our first stop was Tunnel view lookout, as there is a train tunnel built through the rock and as we got there you could hear the train

As with a lot of these tours, you get taken to a town where they have a coffee shop or restaurant they have an affiliation with. We were taken to the very nice town of Glenbrook and dropped at 2773 cafe.

I - being the rebel that I am - had a wander off and bought a coffee from another shop where they had these on display

and managed to get a photo of these beautiful birds

Then Lincoln's rock which jutted out over the forest, with a shear drop to oblivion below, which you can't really appreciate in photos

This was once all under the ocean, so the sandstone rock is carved by the waves.

Our bus and our guide Ben with his vegemite hat:

The couple you can see on the right were from Solihull & the guy is from Shirley and went to the same school as Adrian - Lighthall.......small world again

We then had a really fantastic walk to Wentworth falls, under the cliffs, spectacular views

Ben was telling us about a really bad bush fire in 2019 which took out a lot of forest and wildlife, particularly koalas, as they are not the speediest of animals and are now protected due to their dwindling numbers. They now have techniques of 'back burning' in place to try to control the fires, lighting vegetation in such a way that it has to burn against the prevailing wind.

and the same view from 1912:

The water at the falls was very very cold

more pics from 1910 & after the flood in 1912

We sat & had our lunch and then on to Echo point for more nice views and the rocks called The Three Sisters. Legend has it that two aboriginal tribes were fighting over three beautiful women and to stop the fighting the magic man turned them into stone.