2000/02 Australia trip - Blue Mountains |
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Tuesday January 18th /Wednesday 19th
We took off on Tuesday afternoon from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. This was a very casual start, with a chatty desk clerk, no checking of identification, or asking about whether anyone had touched our bags. The clerk was intrigued by our tickets from United for an Ansett flight on an Air New Zealand plane. (Anything to save a buck.) Also, our bags, loaded with cameras, electronics, and a computer went through without a second glance. They used to make you power on the computer to show that it was real and take the lenses off the cameras, so that they could look through them.
The flight to LA is usually quite scenic, going over the Grand Canyon and London Bridge, but all Sandie saw this time was thick clouds. We had three hours to kill in LA, and then we piled onto the 14 hour ANZ flight to Sydney. ANZ provided unusually good food that tasted like it had been cooked rather than heated. They didn’t do so well with the movies as the sound was either in German or both English and German at the same time. Somebody always complained, and then they’d try to fix it and restart and have the same problem. Never actually finished any of the movies.
The flight was uneventful except for some ups and downs as we crossed the Equator. Wednesday Jan 19th had barely started when we crossed the Date Line and suddenly it was Thursday. Just as well that I wasn’t born 3 days earlier or I’d have lost my birthday!
Thursday January 20th
We arrived at 6.45am on a sunny Thursday, rented a white Camry, decided to drive on the left like everyone else, and threaded through the Sydney rush hour traffic looking for the Parramatta Road and the great Western Highway which points northwest towards the Blue Mountains. Driving on the left is no problem, but the controls are also switched around, so signaling a turn usually just results in the windscreen wipers starting up!
Once out of the city we made fast time on the Motorway, and we arrived in the Blue Mountains early enough to eat 
breakfast on the verandah of the Conservation Hut in Wentworth Falls. The verandah overlooked the red cliffs and miles of forest far below us. As usual, we were struck by everything being different: flowers, trees, birds, lizards. It was also in the 90s, rather warmer than Minnesota in January, and too warm for the locals.
The Blue Mountains appear to be blue from a distance because of the eucalyptic haze that comes from the leaves of millions of trees. Close up, the main impression is sheer walls of red rock and a wall-to-wall carpet of blue-green gum trees. They’re not really mountains though: more of a high plateau, surrounded by cliffs that drop thousands of feet to the valleys below. The plateau is mostly long and thin, with just enough space for the Great Western Highway and the electric train, and some touristy towns in the wider spots.