Day 30: 20231023 Monday, October 23, 2023: Blue Mountains National Park
Breakfast was baklava courtesy of the Kebab place. When we complimented him on the quality and taste of the kebabs, he gave us some baklava to go as a gift. These were delicious, of course.
There are so many view points into the Blue Mountains that it’s hard to pick and choose which to see and do. We drove a short distance to the Gordon Falls lookout. This one still required walking down about 50 steps to get to the viewing area, but Janet managed it fine, along with all the others we saw today with the exception of the Siloam Pool track which Ben wanted to do.
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This one was 1.5km loop which started with a steep descent into a side canyon. There was probably a 300’ elevation drop to the Siloam Pool, which passed under one cute water fall and then continued to the Lyrebird Dell track, leading to a smaller cascade and pool, which then looped back to the start where Janet was waiting in the Gordon Falls Overlook park picnic area. We had perfect weather today with clear sky, a light breeze and temperatures in the upper 60’s to lower 70’s. We then drove to Katoomba Falls a did a quick hike to see the Katoomba Cascades, which immediately put the Siloam Pool to shame, and saved Janet a few hundred vertical steps and 1.5km hiking.
We normally Zoom our kids on Sundays, but being on the other side of the international date line, we had to run back to the apartment to zoom the kids today at 11am, which is 5pm Pacific Time on Sunday back home. The Wifi is doing pretty well at the Falls Mountain retreat. Not only were we able to Zoom effectively, but we have also been able to get our computers and phones to sync with our iCloud accounts finally. The ship’s wifi must have been throttling such access because we were never able to get all our devices to sync over iCloud.
Lunch was back in Wentworth Falls, but none of the Pizza places was open, so we ordered from The Falls Take Away, a place that only does take out orders. They do make burgers, fish and chips, rotisserie chicken (which is Chook in Aussie), and other items. We got a quarter chicken and fries combo, burger and fries combo, and then drove back to the apartment where we could have a cold beer with lunch. The food was good, but a little unusual. The burger was huge, with a soft and juicy patty. It was bigger than a Whopper. It had fresh lettuce and tomatoes, but also had a slice of pickled beet, and grilled onions, as well as some BBQ sauce. The chicken was moist and flavorful, and surprisingly, there was bread stuffing inside the rotisserie bird. The fries weren’t quite as fresh as we had at the Kebab place, but they were still good and plentiful.
After lunch, we returned to the Katoomba Falls reserve. It is nice to find free public parking here, unlike at the 3 Sisters/Echo Point view point. As we approached the parking area, we saw a huge flock of Sulfur Crested Cockatoos around a tour group. We parked quickly and saw that the guide was feeding the Cockatoos from a bag of sunflower seeds, and there were several dozen Cockatoos happy to be on the receiving end. The birds seem quite comfortable around people for the most part, even though when we have seen them elsewhere in the park, they have generally be reserved and kept their distance.
We did hike out to the Katoomba Falls viewing site, which was very nicely done with board walks and lookout points providing views not only of the falls, but also of the 3 Sisters at one end, and Orphan Rock on the other end. Interestingly, there are hand rails on the top of Orphan Rock, but it sits disconnected completely from the canyon rim by at least 50’. There may have been a suspension bridge connecting it to the canyon rim at some point in the past.
There was another loop trail originating from the Katoomba Falls viewing site, but we only did the first part of it which dropped about 200’ down to a the base of a waterfall called Witches Leap. We ran into some kids coming the other way who said we should really turn around and go back the way we came because the other end of the trail is much steeper and harder. So we followed their advice and retreated the way we came.
There was one more view point in the area called Sublime Point, which happened to be on the way back to the apartment. This one was not too hard to get to and leads to another spectacular view point with a circular hand rail just inches inside a dizzying drop of hundreds if not a thousand feet straight down into the canyon. This is definitely not the place for acrophobics. Interestingly, we encountered a couple dressed in their wedding finery getting their wedding photos done at the site. They had come out from Sydney for the photos.
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We had planned on having pizza for dinner, but both of the pizza places in Wentworth Falls are closed all day Mondays, so we returned to the Canton Place restaurant which was open. This time Janet had Thai green curry chicken and Ben had a Singapore rice noodle and chicken soup in a spicy coconut and cilantro broth. Both were generous and tasty. We finished the day well fed.
Tomorrow we leave the Blue Mountains behind and travel northeast to the Hunter Valley region, which is wine country. We will be skirting around the suburbs of Sydney to get there, and will probably hit the Costco again.
