Helen and Randall on the road

Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, only 2 hours on the train from Sydney, is a somewhat peculiar place. I imagine that in season when it is buzzing with hikers and tourists it is probably a quaint and slightly bohemian mountain town, but when we arrived and walked down the main street it rather reminded me of Karlskoga. For non ex-Transcom people for whom this means nothing, imagine Twin Peaks without all the fun and interesting stuff.

Still, it’s the starting point for some amazing Blue Mountains hikes and home to the ‘Three Sisters’, some spectacular rock stacks:

The information place was pretty good so we managed to get a hike in along the Prince Henry Cliff Pathway to the Leura Cascades before repairing to Aldi for supplies and our hostel for dinner. The hostel only increased the Twin Peaks ambiance…dark, 1970s retro decor (not the stylish kind of retro), mysteriously opening doors, and swirling mist past the windows….ooOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!

The next morning after making our sandwiches and having breakfast with the Catalan student staying in the hostel we headed out for a long walk, down to the Three Sisters, on the way to which we saw:

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently funny about expired avian life, however after that there was only one way the conversation could go…

We made it down the Giant Stairway,

to the Leura Forest then along the ‘Federal Path’ at the bottom of the valley…

..as far as the ‘Touristy Bit’ where after looking at the fantastic views, the information about the old mining communities, and the old funicular railway that was used by the mine but opened for curious visitors at weekends:

we took ‘The World’s Steepest Funicular Railway’

back up to the visitor’s centre on the cliff path, where we ate our sandwiches while watching coachloads of Japanese tourists photographing each other doing culturally insensitive things with the bronze sculptures of Aborigine tribespeople.