A Beautiful Trip to Blue Mountains - Sydney

Blue Mountains as the name suggest ‘something weird’!!! How can the mountains be Blue? This idea motivated me to explore the place called ‘Blue Mountains’. Blue Mountains is a 2 hrs beautiful journey from Sydney. It’s ideally a day trip, which can be covered by Car, Train or by Coach Service.

I travelled trip to Blue Mountains by Train. We left Strathfield station around 9 on Saturday morning and reached Katoomba station around 11 am. From Katoomba station, we took Sydney Explorer Bus Service to explore place called Blue Mountains. Actually the place is Katoomba, where Blue Mountains reside. There is no town or place called Blue Mountains, but they are just mountains which are blue in colourJ. Sydney Explorer Bus, which is a double-decker (two floors) bus. Ofcourse, it is good to sit on the second level of the bus to view beautiful market, places, and mountains while the driver narrates the history and the place worth watching at this place.

It has beautiful deep valleys, flora, fauna, waterfalls, historic shops (one I saw was there since early 1900s), beautiful multi-coloured parrots, and much more.

While the driver was narrating and taking this huge bus J via small streets, we thought to just listen and enjoy the first trip in the bus. We passed Katoomba Fine Art gallery, Skyway station, Scenic World, Katoomba waterfalls, Echo Point – home of Three Sisters and Blue Mountains), Leura Mall (where one can see ancient café shops, silks shops, green tea is famous, shopping cafes and much more) to name a few.

In the second trip, we dropped at Skyway station to catch Skyway trolley to Scenic World. The Skyway trolley was cool. We crossed deep valleys, saw waterfalls and mountains. The place is really beautiful. I just can’t describe it, but could show you some of the photos.

It was lunch time by now, and I was starving. We had nice coffee at the café and good food too.

Then, we continued our trip via Cable Car to reach valley floor. The trip on Cable way (strictly not to be missed), takes you down to the steepest deep valley floor, where you can enjoy this pristine World Heritage along Australia’s longest elevated timber boardwalk. It is the best way to experience the Blue Mountain’s unique environment and beautiful flora and fauna.

The Cable Car takes you through 300 metre journey above ancient ravines (deep steep valley) and dazzling waterfalls towards Three Sisters rock. Its worth to go through this small stroll about 15 minutes to enjoy the real nature of bush and how it’s been conserved to keep it free from any pollution whatsoever. The Cable Car is constructed by a Swiss company. No doubt, it’s a real piece of Engineering!!!!

We continued our journey, after coming back up to Scenic World through Cable Car to board the bus to Echo Point – home of the Three Sisters. And also the place where one can see a.k.a Blue Mountains. So what is the secret of Three Sisters?

Three Sisters is name of 3 tall mountains of height 922, 918 and 906 meters respectively. That is around 3000 feet above sea level!!!

It is discovered that Aboriginals first inhabited in Blue Mountains as far back as twenty – six thousand years and some estimates date back to forty thousand years back.

So in those time, it’s said, that there were three sisters, named 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo' lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.

These beautiful young ladies 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 witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon 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 witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.
Really cool story. Is it true!!! Well, I don’t know, but believe so J
Then, it was around late afternoon, and time to say good bye to this beautiful town Katoomba.
Hey, but what is the secret of Blue Mountains? Ok, I know, I will tell you.
Its bit technical, so please wear to technical cap J
The blue colour on the mountains is caused because of Eucalyptus trees emitting oil vapour into the atmosphere which along with fine dust particles and droplets of water vapour, scatter the blue light (blue light is short wave-length, dig your physics books) more than any other colour in the spectrum.

So all in all it was a worth a trip and very exciting too…

Some of the links might come useful, if planning a trip to Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains - Australia
Blue Mountains - Visitor Information