From Featherdale we drove straight up to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters. It was a beautiful trip, but I've got to admit to struggling a bit to stay awake for all of it. Mike and Giana had asked me to sit in the middle (because they both wanted to sit next to me - hard to argue with ;) ) and at one point they had both fallen asleep, leaning against me. I could feel the effects of essentially having been up since 1am, so it was a bit of a battle.
It was COMPLETELY worth it once we arrived though! I hadn't been completely certain, but once I actually saw the Three Sisters again, I knew that I'd been there with my parents back in 1991 - quite funny to be back after such a long time :)
Ian, the kids and I walked down the steeeeeep steps to the first sister. It's possible to walk all the way down to the valley using these steps, but I'm really glad we didn't! The steps down were a challange because of my bad leg (which doesn't allow my foot to bend enough to walk down stairs properly - I basically have to 'jump' for every second step, which doesn't feel altogether safe on steps as steep as these), and the steps up were a bit of a challenge because I'm obviously not as fit as I would like to be ;) I was huffing and puffing big time by the time we'd made it back up to Anne again.
... Who, at this time, was able to tell us about the death of Bin Laden! She had wanted to post a photo of us to Facebook and had seen status upon status upon status mentioning his death. She couldn't get online to a reputable news site though to confirm, so ended up calling her mother. Yup - no hoax. So I'm pretty sure I'll always remember exactly where I was "when I heard".
I'm fascinated by the erosion of the sandstone under this tree! Giana didn't really dare stand under it for my photo, and I can't say I blame her!
From the Three Sisters we drove over to Scenic World for a better view of the valley. We took the railway down - and I do mean DOWN! It descended 206 meters in just 415 meters with an incline of 52 degrees in places! I WISH I could have gotten a photo of it, but by the time I realized that it was photo-worthy, I needed both hands to hold on to Giana and myself! It was a super-fun trip though! Made even more fun by the tour-guide playing the theme music from "Indiana Jones" as we drove ;)
From the bottom of the Railway, we walked across part of the valley to take the Cableway back up and ended the day by going on the Skyway across the valley and back again - fantastic view, and yet again a gorgeous waterfall :)
After a brief tour around Katoomba to see Anne's old haunts (she used to live there), we started the journey back to Sydney. I'd been a bit worried about the trip home, because when the trip out was such a struggle, how on earth would I be able to manage on the trip home, when it was dark outside? Fortunately that turned out to not be a problem at all, as Anne put on a CD of Christian children songs by Colin Buchanan and we ended up singing along to that all the way home. Most of the songs were Bible verses, so I already knew the lyrics, and thanks to them being children songs, the music wasn't too difficult either, so I had no problems singing along, despite it being the first time I'd heard the CD.
Actually, this turned out to be the creation of one of my favourite memories from Australia :-)
Once home Anne cooked a delicious dinner for us, but none of us lingered over it - we were all too tired! I'd been up for 19 hours at this stage. 9pm saw us all in bed and (mostly) fast asleep.
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