Blue Mountains – Eucalyptus trees attract not only koalas

With our last breakfast in the Youth Hostel, we say goodbye to Sydney. It’s a shame because we really enjoyed our time here and could have planned more activities for additional days. But we also want to move on. By the way, we are now on our way back home... because we are heading further west...

Sydney makes it a bit easy for us to leave, as the weather is very overcast and the sun is not visible for a proper farewell... Okay, we take the train to the airport and pick up our rental car for the day. Then we head west. Our final destination is the Blue Mountains located in Blue Mountains National Park. One of the towns is Katoomba, which is noted on our highway sign.

The Blue Mountains are a series of mountain ranges and plateau slopes, mostly covered with vast areas of vegetation.

We start our “Blue Mountain Lookout Tour 2024” in Bullaburra at Lincoln’s Rock. Here, one can gaze into the expanse of the Blue Mountains from a rock ledge. You look over an incredibly broad carpet of green plants, so densely sown that the ground is invisible. Unbelievable! The greenery is only interrupted by rocks that form a higher plateau.

Of course, there are already Asians or rather Chinese at Lincoln’s Rock. New location – old behavior. Holding hands, little feet, and the usual poses that we keep seeing whenever there’s something to photograph. Or, as we have noted, whenever there are changing backgrounds. Primarily, people are photographing themselves. The background is not the focus of the picture. But it doesn't affect us too much... we keep noticing it and it causes us to shake our heads...

And they also like to sit on the rocks above the abyss, while children jump from stone to stone. It’s quite a deep drop here... better not to look too closely.

Why are they called the Blue Mountains, and are they really blue? Our question, which we pondered before the trip, gets answered with a view into the expanse. Yes, the haze that lies over the forests has a bluish shimmer. We also find out the reason: The forests are largely made up of eucalyptus trees. They exude a substance called terpene which, when combined with sunlight, makes the air appear bluish. Well, we have that cleared up...

We continue to check out more lookouts and are greeted with fantastic views of the forests, which have a gigantic spread... Uh, did I mention that already? ;-)

Next to the lookouts “Sublime,” “Queen Victoria,” and several other spots, we look over the green and into the distance. An important point for us was the rock formation of the “Three Sisters” at Echo Point Lookout. Three sandstone pillars form the three sisters. A former sacred site for the Aborigines.

After so much greenery and the flies, the most annoying creatures of today, we make a short detour to Scenic World. Here it’s a bit of a children’s paradise with dinosaurs and so on... Not for us – but we get to see two cockatoos in the wild... (after the encounter with koalas failed despite the many eucalyptus trees...). But we hope for the next few days, then we want to see koalas and kangaroos... For that, we are flying a bit towards them. In the morning we head off to Melbourne by plane...