Blonde on a Road Trip

Luckily, neither of us woke up suffering this morning, and we slowly got ourselves sorted for our Blue Mountains adventure.

Sat nav said our destination of Kaloomba was only 1.5 hours away, and we’d been expecting more like 2.5 hours, so this was a pleasant surprise!

Michael began the driving and pulled us into a Bunnings for… you guessed it… a sausage sizzle.

Armed with our breakfast, our destination was now only 30 minutes away.

Side note: Michael uses the klaxon a lot and I did confront him about this. I initially thought it was road rage, as people hardly ever use their car horn in the UK, but he hadn’t learnt to drive in England; he got his licence in Australia. And according to him, using your klaxon in Sydney is just a form of communication. It’s not as “aggressive” as in the UK. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, and it still makes me physically recoil every time he uses it to “communicate”.

We reached Katoomba shortly after 11am, paid for parking in a car park near the visitor centre, and walked towards the Blue Mountain landscape a little further down the road. There were lots of people milling about taking pictures, and two people had sent drones up, which were still not as loud as the cicadas!

It soon became clear what everyone was looking at…

Here was the view to our right…

The size and scale of this place and these sharp cliffs is hard to comprehend. You immediately feel very small and vulnerable and ever so grateful for the handrails and fences keeping you at the top.

The view to the left…

There are many observation points and little walkways to get to different levels for different angles of the Blue Mountains and nearby peaks. Unfortunately one of the paths down by the Three Sisters was closed due to rock fall, which meant that a tricky walk down some narrow stairs was immediately followed by a tricky walk back up some narrow stairs.

Looking down from here, I saw a couple of king’s parrots with their right red heads and green wings!

As you walked around in the heat, the cicadas were deafening and you could even see them at points. Absolutely massive things!

Competing with the cicadas for volume but to little avail was a nearby kookaburra, who I didn’t manage to record laughing, but got a glimpse of before it flew off.

The sun beating down on us at around 30°C, we headed back to the car to drive 5 minutes down the road to look at Katoomba Falls, a waterfall area.

Michael had been here several times, including once with his family when there had been loads of rain and there was a lot more water running down the hills, but today was a relaxing trickle and enough to get your socks wet if you took a wrong step.

A moderate amount of water, and probably not much to write home about… and yet here I am… writing about it… 👀

Anyway, a little further downstream we enjoyed admiring a clutch of little birds that were hopping in and out of the water.

They weren’t making any noise, so I couldn’t use Merlin to identify them, and even if they were, they’d have had to compete with the cicadas, which even a pneumatic drill couldn’t do.

The raging torrent that is the Katoomba Falls becomes the Kedumba River… and the spot downstream with the birds was nice and quiet and free from tourists, only 20 metres down from the falls themselves, which were being photographed to oblivion, despite only delivering a mild trickle at this time of year.

There is a cable car called the Scenic Skyway that crosses from one point to another. We didn’t fancy a go, but admired the brave people who decided to try it! It’s a hell of a long way down!

There were also a bunch of white cockatoos that kept flying around the gorges for no reason. It was very pretty as they appear as bright white specs on the vast abyss below.

When we drove back into Katoomba for some lunch, we saw one up close, perhaps a little confused as it sat on a fried chicken sign…

Perhaps it was a little confused about the assignment…

We got some sushi to takeaway and found a bench in the town to eat it on. There were also now some clouds, providing some welcome reprieve from the hot sun! Apparently if you see the black and red cockatoos take off and start flying, it means it’ll rain soon. But there was no rain forecast and no black and red cockatoos around, so we just enjoyed the humidity for what it was… humidity.

Our journey continued towards Leura Falls, but unfortunately all the access points were closed, so we settled on doing the longer scenic drive over the Blue Mountains and back past them to get back to Sydney. This took us through Blackheath… the name of the hockey club and village that had seen our friendship begin just nine years ago! You can take the hockey players out of Blackheath, but you can’t take the Blackheath out of the hockey players… or something like that.

I felt quite sleepy on this leg of the journey, and I was supposed to be admiring the views – oops! At one point we drove past an area of forest that had been devastated by bush fires in 2019. The higher parts of the trees still looked very dead, but there did look to be new growth further down now. The trouble is, the growth nearer the ground is what catches fire and if not controlled properly can cause further devastation down the road. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!

We stopped at Ziggy’s Café at about 3:40pm for a coffee and Michael bought a homemade rhubarb and pear pie. The guy who works there makes the pies fresh every day and sources his fruit and veg and animal feed from local suppliers. All very wholesome! I wonder where he gets his ice lollies from though…

I took over the driving, scoring a PB on Michael’s car for eco driving. I must say, I did feel a little smug…! We had a nice car journey back, selecting our top three happy, sad and hype songs for the ride home, among some nostalgic tunes from the 90s and early 00s.

We quickly changed clothes when we got to Michael’s, if anything scarred by the leech experience from the previous day, and then headed to his new flat, which he’d just collected the keys for a few nights ago.

The flat itself is lovely, with spacious rooms and lots of light. It is next to Pacific Highway, as is his current flat, but just further towards the city centre. The real bonus here though is the shared roof terrace, where there’s a gas barbecue installed and ample seating. I think Michael’s social life is going to take on a life of itself in no time!

We’d brought some beers and crisps with us and enjoyed them as the sun went down (as usual behind some clouds). We even had time for a lovely video chat with Mum and Dad ft. Tilly, and they finally got to ‘meet’ Michael and thank him for keeping me alive and safe.

Ironically, from up here you can see the Blue Mountains we’d just spent hours driving to and from. But there’s nothing quite like being up close to them like we were, so I think we’ve had the best of both worlds today.

I can’t thank Michael enough for all the great recommendations he’s given me so far. Just one more full day of Sydney to go!

9,006 steps covered.