Blue Mountains 2

Fri 23
Last night we went to see the Three Sisters in the dark. These are some famous pointy rocks that form part of an aboriginal story. A father of three girls was the head of his tribe, another tribe was coming to attack them, so in order to protect his girls he turned them to stone; unfortunately the father was killed and noone else knew how to turn the girls back and so they are still rocks. They are lit up and look quite spectacular.
In the morning we went to visit 'Scenic World', this is a company that bought up the site of an old coal mine. When the mine was still in use people used to pay the miners to use their coal truck which pulled the coal up a 45 degree (average) slope to the top of the cliff on a railway track; this company bought up the mine area when it closed and updated the the railway carriages to transport people in a little more safety and comfort. The ride down is a little scary; the average slope is 45 degrees but it doesn't start out that steep and then you seem to drop over a vertical edge; the carriages are held by a single wire and even at the bottom you are still on a wooden, rickety platform still about 20ft above the fern forest below. In the valley a boardwalk has been built through the bush so that the numbers of people who visit do not damage the area, it also means that instead of walking at ground level you are walking up in the leafy area and it all looks so different from that height. We were lucky enough to spot a couple of Lyre birds scratching in the undergrowth below the boardwalk. At the end of the walk we went back up the cliff in a cable car which gave fantastic views across the valley below.

We then drove on a bit to the North West and stopped in the town of Blackheath. Here there is access to the North part of the Blue Mountains National Park and though it looks very similar to the Southern part the cliffs seem to have a different 'glow' in the sunshine! We took a small walk around the cliff top and then went to find a motel (we needed to find accomodation early as this weekend is Anzac weekend), we found one on the edge of town and unloaded our gear before driving the 50km to the Jenolan Caves. Fabulous limestone caves, the one we went through was the first in the world to ever be lit by electric light just a year after the electric light was invented. It also still has a working long life light bulb that was installed in 1953! Afterwards our guide told us that if we went down to the lake it was about the right time (5:30pm and light fading fast) to see a platypus (if we were lucky). Celso spotted the beak of one and we all saw lots of splashing but it disappeared under a rock and then up a drainage tunnel and we didn't get another glimpse. Now I really, really want to see one - we decided to return another day to try and get another look.
Sat 24
Tristan was given his longed for lie in (he's a real teenager now!) and we didn't leave the motel until after 11am. We made our way to Lithgow and then after a brief stop for directions and a map we made our way out to the Glowworm Tunnel. This involved a 30km drive along a graded dirt road through first gum trees, then harvested pine forest, then protected pine and then protected virgin bush to a part of an abandoned railway track that has been saved and now serves as a walking track. We decided to do a 3hr round trip that followed the railway through a tunnel now inhabited by glowworms (hence the name) and then down and round the edge of the mountain, returning back to near the tunnel via an old coach track. We had been told that we were likely to see Koalas out here but we didn't spot one. Probably they were out there but we just didn't spot them, in fact we saw very few signs of life at all. A male Lyre bird, a tiny skink, a blue tongued skink, some butterflies and, right near the end of our walk as the sky clouded over and it started to get quite dark, some black cockatoos and other birds.
As we returned to the car the skies opened and the rain pelted down. It meant that our drive back was less dusty but a little more hazardous on the dirt road as it makes the surface very slippy. We spotted 5 or 6 kangaroos on our journey; so different from seeing them in captivity because they were bounding along; so graceful, so easy.
We had a pub supper and then rented a video 'District 9' - violent but so original, about refugee aliens told in a documentary style, worth a watch.
Sun 25th (Anzac day)
Held up briefly by the marching veterans, we made our way to Oberon and found a motel, did laundry, wrote emails and then went back to Jenolan Caves. We went and toured a cave and then went to sit out by the platypus lake. Wrong day... too many people here making too much noise, so much for public holidays, we didn't see a thing in the 90 mins we waited about. Our only view of wildlife today was the sad sight of a dead Kangaroo and a dead Wombat on the road.