Wildlife Park and Blue Mountains

Friday evening I flew out to visit the ever generous Sonia who invited me to spend the weekend with her in Sydney, yes I am in the land filled with loud mouthed Australians - fortunately Sonia and the wonderful scenery compensates for that and I am having a lovely time :)

Yesterday we picked up our rental car and started driving towards the blue mountains, expecting the cars GPS to pick up signal and tell us where we were going... but no, of course it didn't work throughout the entire trip - what a waste of $12!!! It was an hour or so to the Featherdale Wildlife Park where we stopped in on the way to the Blue Mountains. The animals there were so cool! Really different to all the ones we get in New Zealand - except for the farmyard animals which I'm not entirely sure how they could call wild, (Sheep? Wild? Really?) but never mind that. I got to touch and feed a Koala and Kangaroo, (one of the Kangaroos even started biting onto my leg?!?! I have absolutely no clue why) so now I can really say I have been to Australia.

It liked the cone more than the grass inside :)

Ouch?! Trying to do a Poppy and bite for no reason!!!

I love how they sit so precariously facing the trunk

Plus there were all the amazing reptiles that we don't get - I'm really glad we don't! I wouldn't really want to come across some of the huge lizards or long snakes in my garden at home.

After our venture around the park for a while and picking up a coffee for on the way, we set off again for the last part of our journey to the anticipated Blue Mountains. Why are they called blue you may ask? Not because they have lots of blueberries growing on them, nor are they the home of smurfs or founded by one Mr Blue. No, it is in fact because of an optical phenomenon called Rayleigh Scattering. This is where the small particles of dust and water vapour and in this case the Eucalyptus Tree oils reflects and scatters the light (predominantly blue light) and so give us the impression that the mountains are blue! Who knew?! Well now you do! Physics lesson over :) 

Once we arrived we went right on to exploring Scenic World which has the most beautiful views I have ever seen in Aussie... which isn't really saying that much because it is one of the only views I have seen apart from the city - which is actually quite lovely as well with all the lights and happy people. Sonia was very tolerant and yet again faced her fear of heights, just for me! We went on the Skyway, the super steep train and the Cableway down to the bottom of the mountain. They all gave awesome views of the seemingly never ending Blue Mountain area - it did end, but apparently the Park is half the size of Switzerland, 11x Hong Kong but only half as big as the largest cattle ranch in Australia - that is insane!!! When you look out across it all it was really different to New Zealand mountains, you can see a lot further because the mountains are all flat as though someone chopped the tip off and left the rest. And also it is a lot less vibrant green, I guess because of the blue tinge but also lots of the trees have a bit of red to them which is not like the evergreens we have back home. It is amazing to see how different God created everything... I saw that in both the mountains and also the wildlife park in the diversity of all the animals there. 

"So God created great sea creatures and every living things that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird - each producing offspring of the same kind" "'Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind - livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.' And that is what happened." - Genesis 1:21, 24

Going across on the Skyway we were over 200 metres above the ground with a glass bottom to the cableway :O it was so cool!!!

Across the other side was really really windy and we started to walk around to echo point where there are the iconic 'Three sisters' (really they are just rocks), I am sure that if I had dropped by phone I would never have seen it again because it would have flown away - and that would mean no photos! Que Terrible! In fact my opal card (for the public transport service) did fly away out of my pocket... gone with the wind. We also walked back around, battling the wind and saw the waterfall which was also really nice. 

Once back across on the original side we took the cable car down the mountainside and walked along the longest boardwalk in the world, commenting much of the time on how a "50 minute" walk took only half that time at the most... we puzzled over how it could take anyone that long and came to the conclusion that some people must amble and stop frequently to look at every single sign on the way, hahaha :D

Next up was the train. This was AWESOME! So cool in fact that we rode it again, just because we could! It is the steepest train in the world at 52 degrees, which when the seats changed became an even steeper angle of 64!!!

See the angle of the train?!

The old version -
Thank goodness we didn't have to ride this!!!

Our super steep train track

After we finished up we made our way back home and went for a walk around the Sydney Harbour and saw the iconic bridge and opera house all nicely lit up in front of us. A tiring day as my body was still adjusting (fortunately it is only 2 hours difference so it just means I am effectively staying up till 1am instead of 11pm) but it was lovely to see some of the Sydney that I had never even heard of before and of course the things I had!