Thursday 24,April
The day began with a two hour train ride out to Katoomba. Katoomba is a scenic quaint town located in the blue mountains of Australia. To meet our tour guide, we took a London style double Decker school bus.  Our tour guide Jamie was a ranger and has lived in the Blue Mountains all of his life.  He was knowledgeable about the Blue Mountains.  We lucked out on the weather, being inland, the Blue Mountains are a bit chiller than Sydney is.  However, for our trip to the Blue Mountains, temperatures were in the mid 60's to low 70's, sunny, and accompanied by a slight breeze.

The Blue Mountains are not a mountain range.  They were actually created over time.  They were once at sea level, but were slowly eroded over time due to erosion via a river and various other factors.  At the top of the plateau, the canopy was minimal, but in the valley/gorge, the canopy coverage increases from about 20% coverage, to roughly 80%+ coverage.  The Blue Mountains get their name from the light being refracted through the eucalyptus tree oil, which shows up as a blue color.  On our walk down through the valley, we encountered cockatoos during our hike to the waterfalls.  The lyerbirds were briefly mentioned, however, were never seen.  The lyerbird is similar to a peacock, and is also a large factor for erosion in the Blue Mountain area.  One lyerbird is capable of moving 63 tons/bird/hector/year.  They are generally found in a cool or warm temperature rain forest.

I did notice while visiting Katoomba that houses did have rain water collection systems.  One unique thing that we did because of the tour guide that we had was eat raw sarsaparilla.  The word of the day was Skippy, which is another name for a kangaroo.  A girl that I was talking to at the YHA happened to use this word in passing when I told her my travel plans for the month that we would spend in Australia.  Before leaving Sydney, me and a couple of friends that I made while visiting Australia actually had the opportunity to eat kangaroo.  I found the meat to be quite good and if I had to describe it, it probably tasted close to steak.  The difference being that a normal cow steak is normally cooked a bit more whereas kangaroo meat is actually eaten rare.  Even with this difference, the meat was excellent, and it was well worth the cost.

Cheers mates,

Mark Smith