Australia’s Blue Mountains

The “Three Sisters” Rock Formation (October 1997)

The Great Western Highway left Sydney and headed up through the Blue Mountains. Echo Point laid perhaps an hour and a half from Sydney near the town of Katoomba. This offered excellent views of the Blue Mountains and the “Three Sisters” rock formation (map). Every tourist who travels through the region probably has a variation of this photograph. Although the mountains themselves were not very high, the cliffs were sheer enough to impede early settlers.

We got no further west in Australia, so no, we didn’t get to the Outback. By the way, and I write this only because I’ve been asked this several times, we did not see any Outback Steak Houses over there. We did see Lone Star Texas Steakhouses (or something similar) and a few Chili’s. So it seems that the rugged image of the Australian Outback sells in the USA and the mystique of the old USA Wild West sells in Australia. Go figure…

Articles from the 1997 Eastern Australian Tour Series

• Sydney Skyline
• Along Sydney Harbour
• Australian Brewery Coasters
• Australia’s Blue Mountains
• Jenolan Caves
• Brisbane at Sunset
• Atop Mt. Coot-tha
• Noosa National Park
• Glass House Mountains
• Tweed River & Mt. Warning
• Cape Byron Lighthouse
• An Australian Banana Plantation

Readers may also be interested in my 2018 Australasian Adventures Series.