Frank's Place | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Trip 2002

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Day 11:	Saturday, 14 September 2002
New Thing:	-
Weather:	A touch of morning fog, clearing to clear and lovely, mid 60s
Money Spent:	$81.60 AUS	$45.00 USD

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8:33am	No alarm -- it's a Saturday. Instead, I got a rude awakening with a flash thingy going off in my face. Grrr...
8:35am	It has been decried today shall be the Blue Mountain day, to include Three Sisters. It seems the Bald One reached that decision with the expressed interest of a newly arrived American (great, now I've got to deal with two of your kind) to do something, and traveling on a train and bus all day is clearly something. Of course, that pushes out the Chatswood trip until tomorrow, which I suspect will also encompass a wander about Darling Harbour and trying to get a conceptually cool photo at sunset of... well, the sunset. Stay tuned for that, I suppose.
9:54am	Other American arrives, and we gather our things. The Boy is rude enough not to do introductions, but given he's never done that remembering back as far as first girl interest (Joy, circa 1990), I've come to expect nothing less from him.
10:02am	We purchase our tickets for the Blue Mountain jaunt, to include both the train (return trip, of course), and a local bus shuttle thing once we arrive in Katoomba. We take the escalator to platform 2 on level 2. (It should have been platform 1, but there is again track work this weekend.)
10:27am	It's apparent that despite the vague promise of the sign, no train will be traveling the other direction. Applying some sloth-like logic, the Boy figures out that, given the line is "City Circle", either direction, they'll land at Sydney Central station, and from there, they'd grab a train to the best transfer point. With that notion in mind, the very next train, an arrival of only a few minutes, is boarded.
10:32am	We arrive at Sydney Central, alight to the main corridor, and head up to platform 18 to wait for the next train. It departs in 16 minutes, it seems.
10:49am	That's actually 17 minutes, but close enough. We are now in motion to Penrith station, I believe it is.
11:41am	We arrive at Penrith. It avails itself a photo opportunity, although it's apparent, in retrospect, that the boy's ability to take photos today is not at its prime. (This casts a nasty shadow on the quality of the balance of photos today, I fear.) I remain cautiously optimistic as we wait for the connecting train, and the boy holds the camera. I suppose I could ask the other American to tend to photos today...
11:54am	The train arrives to platform 3 for us to board, and we're under way. Advertised arrival time is 12:58pm.
12:57pm	It seems the minute that we lost leaving from Sydney Central is returned to us. Call it Karma, paying it forward, whatever. We're back at a neutral time quotient, me and CityRail, that is.
1:03pm	We all wander to what we suspect to be the bus departure point. Here's a shocker - the boy asks one of the bus drivers. The driver says the ticket isn't for his shuttle service, and looks generally confused. Probably because the boy talks like a 'Mer-can.
1:18pm	We secure answers at the Information station. They convert our ticket into a bus pass (for the correct line), quickly help us map out a route considering we're arriving "late" (apparently people make the 2½ hour journey from Sydney and still arrive in the morning - ludicrous!), and point us to the bus.
1:25pm	The bus arrives at Stop 1 (of 27 total on the line). We board up, and head to Stop 11 - Scenicworld.
1:44pm	We alight to the Scenicworld building (web site), and head down to wait for the car that will take us down to the valley floor.
1:53pm	Still waiting. Figured may as well fire off the first picture of the Blue Mountains area. And took a snap of the mechanical room for making the gondola travel up and down the side of the mountain.
1:59pm	The gondola arrives, and we board and begin the descent (some 545 meters, or 1,771 foot) to the bottom of the valley. It's a steep one, eh.
2:02pm	We near the end of the gondola trip. From the perspective, it's a little tough to sense, but it's a 50-degree drop, y'know, a little bit more than for every one foot (or meter) you travel forward, you drop one foot (or meter) down. Kinda steep.
2:04pm	We start the short walk to where the Scenic Railway will take us back up. The boy's photographic skills have sunk to an all-day low... hopefully, there is indeed no where to go but to improve. (Or else...!) Yes, I realize it's a forest with less than ideal lighting, but still...
2:13pm	There is a break in the trees, and you can look up the side of the valley to the top of the gorge.
2:16pm	One of Tubby's high-quality photos of the mountains in the distance.
2:18pm	At one point, there was a shale mine at the bottom in the late 1880s, but when the cable broke, numerous cars were strewn across the valley floor. A few were retrieved and sold for things like cattle water troughs, but for a time, you could see them scattered and rusting along the trail. Someone opted to put in a display to give you a notion of what mining is (duh!). Note, the "Danger Keep Out" sign likely didn't exist then... sure mining is dangerous, but if miners kept out, very little work would have gotten done.
2:19pm	If three girls from a family can get on the horse's back and pretend to be getting him to gallop, I can do the same. This statue is here for some reason or another, but we didn't bother to stop and read the plaque.
2:21pm	The Three Sisters. There's a legend surrounding how this came to be. Something about a father who warned his daughters not to wander off while he was out working (mining, I wonder?). The evil troll or whatever, dad thought, was coming to get his daughters and secret them off into whatever peril trolls are known to inflict. Dad, possessing the magic thing-a-ma-jig, turned his daughters to stone to protect them. Then dad lost the magic thing-a-ma-jig, forever dooming them to their rocky fate. Right...
2:23pm	Another view of the distant mountains, not quite as poorly done (which isn't so say it's "well" done, of course).
2:28pm	We arrive at the station for the Scenic Railway, and read up on it... note, the camera was held at a normal horizontal - the sign is mounted to match the slope of the mountain-side. The track are kinda sloped, too.
2:29pm	The train arrives, also kinda sloped -- which is to be expected.
2:32pm	We get in. The seats at this point are mounted at 45-degree angles, sort of like a "V" shape, and you put your rear end in the middle of the V. As soon as we start, the slope gets really steep -- remember, we're holding the camera level. Then it gets even more slanted, then evens out, but just a hair.
2:34pm	We're at the top. A quarter mile (half a kilometer) in order two minutes. Granted, that's not the speed of light (or even sound) but considering there's something pulling you up a steep mountain, that's pretty good.
2:40pm	While waiting for the scenic skyway trip across the valley floor, I bumped into some tourist-friendly parrots. His friend popped by a moment later, rather up close and personal, like.
2:43pm	The parrot thrill worn off, we loaded up in the gondola for the skyway trip.
2:46pm	We departed. Along the way, we also had a nice view of the distant fires in the distance (bush fires, they were called -- from the sound of it, the equivalent of a forest fire in the U.S. The worst bush fire here last year lasted for 23 days and took firefighters and volunteers from all over Australia to come in and help battle the fire.)
2:47pm	If you could see any people, yes, they'd look like ants. We're 200 meters (650 feet) from the valley floor at this point. You can also see the Three Sisters from here also, just at a different (and all naturally-lit) angle.
2:49pm	Yes, the waterfalls appear to be quite tame. It's not because it's September, either -- remember, the seasons are just the opposite, so they're coming out of winter now. New South Wales (this state of Australia) is in a 98% drought state (so, only 2% of the state has the water it should to not be considered at drought conditions). Normally, this is apparently much more than just a trickle.
3:24pm	We're waiting for the bus, due to arrive around 3:45pm. Time to note subtle differences in the yield signs, for example.
3:50pm	The shuttle bus arrives, and we load up... ready to be headed back toward food and the train. (While the trip itself wasn't overly exhaustive, note that the other American joining us had just arrived in Sydney this morning at 6:30am after the 13 hour flight in... a bit sleepy, that one was.)
3:58pm	From the bus, we get a pretty good view of Jamison Valley, even if the picture can't prove that fact.
4:02pm	Another fun sign. Our roads are slippery when icy; here, they're apparently slippery when frosty.
4:11pm	I've had conversations like this... apparently roadways have this problem as well.
4:15pm	The first of several pictures of Leura Golf Course and Club... but none are overly wonderful, so beyond this, I won't subject you to further horrifying examples at Tubby's hand.
4:24pm	I guess this wasn't money well spent... despite the sign, we went down the road anyway. Go figure.
4:28pm	This I don't get. But the boy was amused that the tourist information and help center's phone number ended in 4 2222.
4:43pm	We arrived back at Stop 1, and got off the bus, and headed right for the cafe like place across the street.
4:50pm	I left with lunch and $9.10 (AUS, $ 5.02) lighter, but now with a burger (they put veggies on it, yeech), fries and a Dr. Pepper. Tubby had something similar, of course... not an original thought in his body.
4:57pm	Of course, this is adorable. Chips [french fries] were wrapped up in two large sheets of paper (a half meter by a full meter, or 20 inches by 40 inches). Man, if McDonalds had to put their chips [fries] in something like this, they'd kill the paper industry.
5:13pm	Mindful of the gap, I boarded the train...
5:26pm	... which didn't depart until now. But at least it was sitting. For what would be a two hour trip back to Sydney, leaving Katoomba behind. (However, if you're interested in Katoomba real estate opportunities, I'd invite you to check out Century 21's site at http://www.century21.com.au/katoomba).
7:23pm	We arrived at Sydney Central, and switched from platform 13 to 17 to ride the three stations to Circular Quay.
7:48pm	Back in the room. Yes, we've been up less than 12 hours, and I'm pooped. Maybe it's riding back and forth on trains for nearly five hours, or the additional time in a shuttle bus (another hour). Maybe it was something I ate... dunno.
9:22pm	Being a dedicated keeper of the pages, I managed to complete the update for the day. I'm going to go grab one of Tubby's pillows while he's flossing or whatever it is he's doing, and get cozy. With any luck, no one will be snapping my picture at some ungodly hour tomorrow morning. Ta-ta.

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