Blue Mountains

We said goodbye to Trephon and Nikki on Dec 13 and made our way down to the Blue Mountains via the Putty Road and Bells Line of Road. It was a very picturesque drive with some kinda quirky stops and beautiful vistas. These roads are pretty famous for their curves, a favourite of Sydney bikers but pretty dangerous at higher speeds.

Weird Tin Man halfway down the Putty Road

Gutted fuel bowser halfway down the Putty Road

Lookout on the Bells Line of Road

Wildflowers on Bells Line of Road

Sandstone cliffs and dirt track off Bells Line of Road

We baggsed our spot in the caravan park in Katoomba and went to check out the 3 Sisters, which is Katoomba's main attraction (with parking that cost $3.80 per hour!) the information centre was here, where we picked up a map of the tracks.

3 Sisters

We decided to do an easy walk along the scarp and out along Narrow Neck towards Ruined Castle. This was all on a driveable dirt road (to a locked gate, our goal). Taking the option of every side track we stopped many times and it took around twice the time heading out! This was well worth it with some great views across the valley.

View across the valley, ruined castle in the middle.

Narrow neck

View to the West on a side track

Kitty and the scarp

The BEST find of the walk!

"Lawrie, don't go there!" - Kitty

The reason why - 100m straight drop

 Tuesday was our first real down day, we woke up to fog and rain and decided to try and sort out a Brazillian Visa in town, forgetting the passport was probably a good sign to stop, the website failed when we tried to submit the forms! Very Frustrating! We spent some time catching up on errands and uploading photos!

Wednesday we headed to Jenolan Caves, the bus was late so we called up & they said that the bus was coming, Lawrie was a little over it at this point and we jumped the trolley to town - just as the bus passed us. We made it, just...little tense time!

Waiting for the bus...

Heading into the caves, the road passes straight through this hill.

Kitty at the entrance to the main cave

Looking back out - entrance to Lucas cave on the right.

Our first cave tour was into the Lucas Cave, which is the largest show cave here. It has a very large roof fall area, but it's been stable for a fair time now, given the size of the calcite formations! You can still tell exactly where each piece fell from and which joints controlled it! Total size from memory was in order of footy field in size.

At the start of the Lucas system

Interesting colours and formation

Broken Column - Roof fall area (flat as still!)

Rhino head - Roof fall area

Column and flowstone over a stalagmite 

Veils

The different colours come from dissolved iron oxide when the water came through.

After the Lucas Cave we had lunch and then went on the Orient Cave tour, which is one of the prettiest caves in the system

Very clear calcite formation

Helictites 

Very famous veils

Stalagmites and small helictites

Flowstone below column

Orient cave - wow!

Bottom of Orient cave - down to the pool!

Orient cave

Interesting fresh (in cave terms) helicties and stalamites

We caught the bus back to Katoomba and had dinner with some German guys we met at the campsite. We packed up the next morning and made our way into Sydney (for Adrian's buck's party) and Magenta Shores (for Michelle's hen's). More next time....