This is my tenth Highlight; we have arrived in the beautiful town of Leura, full of quirky shops, white blossom trees, pretty houses and cafes. Here we stayed for two nights.
We were now in the Blue Mountains, with majestic views of cliffs and rainforest canopy.
At the lookouts – Echo Lookout and Sublime Point – I couldn’t help imagining how it must have been for the indigenous people of these mountains before British settlement of Australia. How beautiful to be sitting by a campfire or participating in a corroboree on one of these lookouts and to know all that you see is your land and all part of Dreamtime.
Today we may find ingenious use of the region at Scenic World which enables visitors to fully explore the mountains above and below with The Skyway (cable car) and the Scenic Cableway (the train), plus walkways and lookouts. Visitors may view the spectacular Katoomba Falls and the Three Sisters by gliding past on the cable-car; gaze from the highest lookout: and plunge to the floor of the ravine, then walk through the lush rainforest.
New South Wales
The ride on the cable-car with views of the Three Sisters and the Katoomba Falls was awe-inspiring.
The plunge to the canyon floor on the train proved just as thrilling!
Later we walked along to the highest point of the Katoomba Falls.
Our first destination upon leaving Leura the next day was the historic gold-mining town of Sofala. We journeyed over the Victoria Pass down through a wide panorama of pastoral land, thickly forested hills, gentle green undulating slopes in the foreground interspersed with homesteads and farms.
We arrived in Sofala: I was fascinated by this little town: it is Australia’s oldest gold-mining town, and as far as possible it is kept in a state close to how it would have been in the 1800s. We had coffee in the Rustic Cafe.
The town represented Living History. Full of atmosphere, it felt as if time had stood still. With rusty tin roofs and vehicles and historic gold-miners’ cottages, it almost seemed like a filmset. As we wandered through, I found myself imagining the hope and excitement and frenzy of those gold miners, who lived lives of poverty but dreamt of the wealth that may await them as they panned for gold in the river.
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