When we asked our Australian friends where we should go during our visit, pretty much all of them suggested Katoomba and the Blue Mountains – although a few of them said that if we were visiting New Zealand later that would make the Blue Mountains look like nothing. If that’s true we’re really looking forward to our time in New Zealand, because the Blue Mountains were wonderful!
We took the train from Canberra back to Sydney Central, where we changed to the Blue Mountains Train for the two and a quarter hour ride to Katoomba. All the trains were on time and we reached Katoomba station just before 7pm.
When not with friends or relatives on this trip we’ve been staying almost exclusively in AirBnBs. For Katoomba there were no suitable AirBnBs available, so we decided to stay at the Carrington Hotel, right in the downtown core. The Carrington is claimed to be the only “19th century grand resort hotel still operating in New South Wales and possibly Australia.” It’s certainly an impressive building, with a long and complicated history.
We booked a “traditional” room, which meant that our bathroom wasn’t an ensuite, but rather a separate room at the end of the hall. It was still a private room, that opened only to our key, but we had to go down the hall to get there. We suspect that the baths were originally not private, with men’s on one side of the hall and women’s on the other.
After checking into the hotel we had a very nice dinner at Rustico, a wood-fired pizza restaurant beside the train station that Karen’s cousin Liz had recommended. And a fine recommendation it was, for two travel-weary pizza lovers.
Rooms at the Carrington include a continental breakfast buffet in the main dining room, so that’s how each of our days started.
For our first day we’d decided to walk to the Echo Point lookout, which is supposed to have spectacular views, and then enquire at the information point to pick a hike. As we got closer to the lookout we started walking into fog, which didn’t bode well for the views.
And indeed there was fog filling the entire valley that Echo Point overlooks and we could only just see the Three Sisters. However, the guide at the information point said that the fog would almost certainly lift shortly, and recommended the Dardanelles Pass loop as a challenging but rewarding four hour hike.
Our route took us past some beautifully-eroded rocks.
Echo Point is at the top of a cliff and the Dardanelle’s Pass is most of the way down. You get from one to the other via the aptly-named Giant Stairway.
Giant Stairway just keeps on going, for a total of 998 steps.
Eventually we got to the bottom and were deep in a beautiful temperate rain forest that was reminiscent of the forests around Vancouver – except that the vegetation was completely different. Other than ferns that is: ferns are ancient and everywhere.
The tracks were clear and well-signed, which was good as there was no mobile reception once we started heading down the stairs.
There were some lovely small falls at the bottom of Fern Gully.
Of course, what goes down must come up, so, up the stairs in Fern Gully we went.
Parts of the path went underneath edges of the cliffs.
The climb was hard, but at the top we were rewarded with some lovely clear views of the valley.
The tracks are under constant maintenance. These stonemasons were rehabilitating one of the lookouts along the Prince Henry Cliff walk.
After four hours of hard hiking we arrived back where we started, at the Three Sisters. And now the air was crystal clear and we could see forever.
So here we are – compare the tired and sweaty “after” photo with the “before” from earlier in the day.
We had lunch at The Milkbar at the Lookout (OK but not recommended, so no link) then hopped a bus back to the Carrington where we showered and relaxed for the afternoon. In the evening we went to the Old City Bank Bistro, which is owned by the Carrington and is right next door. Definitely recommended!
The next morning we decided to tackle the western end of Prince Henry Cliff walk from Echo Point to Katoomba Falls.
This was mostly along the top of the cliff, but had its own ups and downs along the way.
Where the path crossed waterways it was made up of beautifully-carved stepping stones.
If you look really closely at this photo you can see a building near the centre on the cliff top, a suspended cable car just to its right, and the bottom end of a funicular railway at the lower left. These are part of Scenic World, which has offered “the world’s steepest passenger train” since 1945. We decided to give it a miss.
There were some more really cool rocks along the walk.
Our route crossed the Katoomba Cascades.
This is the cable car from Scenic World.
When we got to the end of the Prince Henry Cliff walk we decided to tag on the Round walking track. This gave us a lovely view of Katoomba Falls on our way down towards the valley floor.
Here’s a wider view from a bit farther down the track, showing Katoomba Falls at left and the Three Sisters at right. The Scenic World cable car is a blue dot near the top, about a third of the way from left.
The Round walking track goes part-way down to the valley floor, then back up again. Here is Karen on the climb back up, with Witches Leap falls in the background.
From Prince Henry picnic area we walked back through the residential streets towards the hotel. Along the way we passed some lovely roadside flowers.
On the way back we stopped for a late lunch at 8 Things, a restaurant with the conceit that there only eight things on the menu. We both had the Singapore Laksa, a soup with rice noodles, prawns, boiled eggs, fish cake, tofu puff, bean sprouts & coriander. It was excellent.
That evening we went out for a somewhat fancy dinner at the Avalon’s Friday Supper Club, which featured an excellent four piece jazz band (whose name we didn’t write down, unfortunately). Also definitely recommended.
On our last day in Katoomba we decided to venture a bit farther afield and caught a bus out to Wentworth Falls so we could walk the Wentworth Falls track. This is the view from the lookout at the start of the track, with the usual random tourists in the way.
Our first view of the falls.
Part of the route to the falls is called the undercliff track, for obvious reasons.
A view from slightly closer to the falls. See the rainbow at the bottom right?
OK, we’ll zoom in on that for you.
Just past the falls there’s a view directly down the cliffside to the bottom of the first cascade. See the people there? That was our destination.
The views from the cliff walkways were spectacular.
Of course, you can’t get down without walking the steps,and so we did.
Some of the stairs are still original from the first trail construction in 1918. “Local communities were in competition to provide the ‘most spectacular’ round trip walking routes to attract tourists to their town.”
But this was our reward at the bottom. Karen for scale, as we didn’t have a banana handy.
The view from the bottom was lovely. We were tired and sweaty, but nowhere near as tired and sweaty as we’d be on the way up; we stopped for some water, fruit and biscuits to fortify ourselves before returning.
And then up we went.
When we got back to the falls, we decided to take a short detour along the Weeping Rock circuit, which included this small waterfall…
… and a bunch more stairs.
We walked from the lookout back to the Wentworth Falls train station, where we hopped the next train back to Katoomba. Along the way we went under this interesting bent tree, and of course Karen had to take a picture.
We also had to stop briefly in one of the parks along the way to let this Highland Copperhead cross the sidewalk. Don’t worry, we didn’t get close; this photo is zoomed way in.
For dinner we went to the Basil Nut Restaurant for a very good southeast Asian fusion meal. Then we headed back to the hotel where we had a craft beer in the extremely comfortable hotel lounge.
