Blue Mountain Fun

I caught the train up to the Katoomba in the Blue Mountains on Monday morning (after a stop to find an opticians to mend my glasses). The train journey is a very leisurely 2 hours (the bus only takes 40mins!), but it is nice to watch the changing scenery from inner city Sydney to typical Australian suburbia and then out into the national park and some fabulous views. Even through the suburbia the views were surprisingly pretty, it was only as I neared Katoomba that I realised that everything is green! I've not seen proper green since leaving the UK, nothing quite compares to the sight of vegetation that is watered by rain and not a sprinkler system. It instantly lifted my spirits and actually made me laugh out loud (the couple of opposite me held on tightly to their bags at this point...)

I was met at the train station by my WWOOF-ing host who explained that I was required to work for 3.5 hours either starting at 7:30am, 9am or 6pm, there are 2 other WWOOFers here and we swop the shifts between us. The work is mainly cleaning in the attached guest house or mucking out the horses and very easy!

The best part of my stay here is the amazing bush walks and horse treks I've been on. The area is heavily forested with temperate rain forest. The forest is so thick in places that humans have never walked into some gorges. As you can imagine this means there is some really interesting wildlife - including my favourite the black cockatoo and the lyre bird (which drags its tail around the forest making you think that someone is following you - not so much fun until you realise what it is!). I've spent each day doing 3-4 hour bush hiking or horse treks (some of the land is too steep for horses so we left them and proceeded on foot).

My favourite place so far has been the trip down to Wentworth falls, the path starts on a lovely level board walk along the small cascades (where all teh Japanese tourists and the tour groups stop for photos and picnic breaks. If you carry on past these the path gets gradually steeper until you reach a drop of 600m with stone steps cut into the cliff, at the bottom of these is an amazing view up the falls. Carrying on further along a path cut in the tree you reach a small metal 'rope' type ladder - it took a lot of persuading but eventually I plucked up the courage to climb down this for a further 300m. The view at the bottom was amazing. We ( a fellow WWOOFer and me) were met by a glorious rock pool surrounded by rainforest vegetation and birds - with 300m of water fall cascading into the pool (think ''herbal essence'' advert but better. After stripping off for a swim we followed a rather difficult path along the bottom of the cliff to climb up a waterfall with natural steps at the other side.

On another day we pony treked along a pass that was origionally built to ferry coal from the mine up the mountain. teh path wove around the base of the cliff going past many waterfalls and small water holes as well as past the eneterance ot long abandoned coal mines. After 2 hours of riding we reached the bottom of hte ruined castle hill and left the horses by a watering hole. It then took 1 hour to scramble up the rock face of the hill to the top of the hill to be rewarede with the most amazing views. The views however were spoilt by a huge bushfire headin in our direction. The wind was not very strong and the temperatures were quite cool so we weren't really worried but I rang hte mountain hut for advice as to which way the fire was travelling and whether we needed to get off the mountain asap! Apparently the fire was coming right for us but was under control and not travelling very fast - however we were advised to leave the bush and head back for town. What followed was a very nervewracking bottom slide down the rock face and a quick trot along the track back to town. The fires reached were we were this morning 3 days after we left in such a hurry!! (The fires were part of a national park back burnign sceme to keep the amount of fuel down by intentionally lighting fires on low risk days to stop a large fire coming through on a hig risk day). Still this provided a little more excitement tha I would normally like!

Other paths have been equally spectacular (and adventurous).

The town of Katoomba itself is a rather cute 1920's town with a rather hippy Bohemian feel to it. Possibly one of my favourite places in Australia that I've visited so far. As for the place I'm staying, the attached guest house is really nice and friendly and I've spent the evenings sat outside around the fire toasting dough ball (a recipe given to me by a fellow traveller) and drinking mulled wine... :) I will stay here until next Wednesday when I will maybe go to the Hunter Valley for two nights before going back to Sydney.