Blue Mtns and Aussie Animals

Day 15   Wednesday, March 27, 2019   Sydney

Those are the Three Sisters in the Blue Mts, west of Sydney. We took a cable car and funicular down down down to the valley to my left to see the rain forest. On the drive up there, we stopped at Featherdale Wildlife Park and saw/interacted with many native Australian animals and birds. That's a toy koala clipped to my cap.

The morning was a bit hectic, because when we entered "7 York St." into the Uber for our destination, it turned out to be 7 York St. in Glebe, not Sydney. They were equidistant from where we were, but in opposite directions. Luckily by the time the Uber got to us, we knew our mistake, but the Uber driver is not allowed to just take us to the correct address. We, not he, needs to cancel the first trip and enter the second trip, and hope it's the same driver who gets the assignment (since we were sitting in his car already and running out of time).

Luckily, he DID get the 2nd assignment, so off we went and ended up getting to our spot only two minutes late. Our guide, Max, was energetic and funny, and made our day's excursion extra fun. Janet was again a real trooper today with a packed schedule, because she continued to be under the weather.

On the freeway heading west, we saw several hot-shot cyclists riding on the shoulder, looking like they were training.

 The Wildlife Park was great, with lots of open spaces, lots of animals you could feed, and a vast number of Australian animals. We bought a little cup of marsupial food, and Janet is keeping the wallabies healthy!

 Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree (Eucalyptus tree), merry merry king of the bush is he.

A cassawary, a flightless bird which is vegetarian, but can rip apart attackers with those claws and beak.  We'd never heard of them, but just six days later we saw a news report that in Florida, a pet cassawary killed its 75-yr-old owner, clawing him to death after he fell. They are the 3rd-tallest and 2nd-heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu. They have a reputation for being dangerous to people and domestic animals, with about 200 documented human attacks and several deaths.

Oh those wallabies are hungry.

There were several koalas, one to a tree and one tree to an enclosure. They are territorial. Their diet is 100% gum leaves, at least in the wild.

He looks like he's waving to us, but he's probably asleep, knowing that koalas sleep 20 hours a day.

A wombat. Janet thought they were so cute and probably hungry, so...

...she reached in to feed him. He turned around and went after the food in her hand, and his bite was rough and a bit startling to her. Only THEN did she see the sign NOT to feed them! LOL

 A red panda, nocturnal and solitary. It is closest to weasel, raccoon, and skunk, but not to the giant panda.

 Blue penguins, which we would later see in the wild near Melbourne and then Oaramu, NZ.

An emu, the national bird on the Australian coat of arms. 

 A quoll, the Aboriginal name for this nocturnal marsupial.

A shingleback lizard. 

 

 Eeuu, this snake was eating a mouse!

 A perentie monitor, the world's 3rd largest lizard. It can get up to 8 ft long weighing 44 lbs.

"Where's Captain Hook?"

I want to watch the staff brush his teeth.

 Another mammal we'd never heard of - echidnas. They eat ants and termites, but are not related to our anteaters. They and the platypus are the only mammals that lay eggs, which prompted Max, our tour guide, to say they can make their own custard. Har har

Here you can see its face, which it uses to burrow into ant hills and uses his long sticky tongue to get them. We saw one of these in the wild on our Great Ocean Road tour out of Melbourne.

We eventually reached the foothills of the Blue Mts, and up up up we went. Max told the story about how early in the 19th century, the government spread the word that the mountains were impassable as a way to deter convicts from thinking they could escape to the west. Many attempts were made to find a pass, but, as Max said, no one bothered to ask the Aborigines who had passed over them for 40,000 yrs. Finally, in 1813, Wm Wentworth and two others found a passage and became heroes.

 We were almost to our destination, when we stopped in Leura for lunch. Our ticket included lunch, but Max didn't believe it and had to phone the main office to get confirmation.

Leura had a pleasant main street.

 Then we reached our scenic destination, highlighted by The Three Sisters formation. Max told a lengthy Aboriginal legend about it -  three sisters, Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo, lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. They fell in love with three men from the neighboring tribe, but marriage was forbidden by tribal law. The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters. A major tribal battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder to protect them, but he was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back.

 In another direction at the vantage point was this cliff and Jamison Valley. It was down there we would visit next - called Scenic World.

We could see the blue tint out there that gives the mountains their name. The range takes on a blue tinge when viewed from a distance, caused by the scattering of air particles from the forest, which reflect only certain light wavelengths that impart blue. 

 We took this "Scenic Skyway" cable car across to Scenic World, 510 feet high. We passed in front of the Katoomba Falls.

 In the cable car way high up!

 Close views of the steep cliffs.

We went right past these falls, but my photo didn't come out, so I stole this one.

Pinnacle Rock, which people are no longer allowed to climb.

Once across to the other side, we took this "Scenic Railway" down a steep rail line to the Jamison Valley floor. 

It was so steep going down, a 52° incline, that you can't even see the people in front of us (who were below us) as we traveled between two rock cliffs.

 This is the bottom station, and you can see The Three Sisters off in the distance, "way up there".

 This is an old coal mine (from 1872), now propped up to keep it from all eroding away and falling in.

There is Pinnacle Rock from below.

 

 

 Solid with ferns, large and small. A true rain forest. Poor Janet was doing all this walking and not feeling good.

 An old coal miner's cabin.

Wow, such a massive termite mound. Where are the echidnas?

From the valley floor, after taking the 1.5-mile walk, we returned to the top via a steep "Scenic Cableway". Then our bus headed back toward Sydney, but we diverted to the 2000 Olympic Park area to get dropped off at Wentworth Point. There, we boarded a ferry at the Olympic Park Wharf, on the Parramatta River, which is pretty much the same as the far-west Sydney Harbor.

 LOL, these three young things sat across from us on the ferry boat, and they were each face-down in their cell phones. So, I pulled out my camera and said "Smile". Instantly, they took this pose

 They asked for my camera to return the favor, and here is their shot.

 The river soon was more like the harbor, as we headed east to Circular Quay.

Rivendell School, opened in 1893 as a free convalescent hospital. 

We passed by a rowing club, and this team was training.

You can see the downtown skyscrapers in the distance.

 Larger bay-side estates as we got closer to downtown.

 We have passed under Harbour Bridge and are about to dock at Circular Quay.

 This was the closest we had been to the Opera House, and could see the thousands of tourists there.

Such wide steps, and so many admirers were out on this nice day. A few of us stayed on the ferry because it was going to go back under the Harbour Bridge and down into Darling Harbor. Our Airbnb was on the far side of Darling Harbor, so it was closer for us.

 Luna Park, which I took a picture of at night when our ship departed two weeks earlier.

 

Skyscrapers, one under construction, on the other side of the peninsula from Circular Quay. We are entering Darling Harbor.

A paddle boat! Are we suddenly in Cincinnati? Or New Orleans?

 On the Pyrmont side of the harbor (where our Airbnb was), and the next day I toured the National Maritime Museum, including the James Craig schooner.

 What a modern downtown, and the Sydney Tower Eye.

Another ship at the Maritime Museum which I toured the next day.

Janet and I took an Uber back to the Airbnb. She was really feeling lousy, and went straight to bed. I wandered back to the area where we'd eaten the night before, and chose a Chinese restaurant. I was the only person there! Turned out it was primarily a take-out place, so when I asked for a napkin, they handed me a Kleenex box! lol. They never asked whether I wanted anything to drink, and after the food was served, I finally had to ask for some water. But the food was good.

When I returned to the room, Janet was sound asleep. I stayed up quite a while uploading and editing photos. No excursion the next morning, so we could relax and sleep in.