Wednesday 7^th January

We had a very lazy morning and then caught the bus into town with Pen and had lunch, sitting outside, at an Italian restaurant. Our plan was to visit the art gallery and museum but it was closed until 11^th so we had a coffee and came home.

In the evening we drove over the river and had dinner with John and Pen at a Mediterranean restaurant in Richmond. We drove past various imposing government buildings but Canberra doesn’t have a central area as such and not much in the way to see apart from shops.

Tuesday 6^th January

Today we wanted to visit the Jenolan Caves en route to seeing John and Pen in Canberra so we rang up at 9am and booked a couple of cave tours: the Imperial at 11.45 and the River Cave at 1.15pm. The Imperial trip was the easiest with only a couple of hundred steps and lasted an hour whilst the River Cave was the most strenuous they offer, lasting two hours and with over 1200 steps and two vertical ladders.

Both the caves were well worth visiting with some wonderful formations, chambers and underground rivers, and were sympathetically lit. Formations included some very large shawl formations and a couple of fine stalagmites called the Minaret and Cleopatra's needle. The whole cave so far explored covers five levels of cave systems and a couple of underground rivers with some huge caverns.

We grabbed a sandwich that we ate on the way back to the carpark and then set off for the three hour plus drive to Canberra. The terrain varied from the rocky escarpments with more gently sloping, forest covered hills to very English looking farmland and pastures. We arrived shortly after 7pm and had a lovely evening with John and Pen.

Monday 5^th January

Today started out very cloudy but we decided to go to the Scenic world which incorporates the steepest funicular railway in the world, a cable-car ride, a gondola ride and some walking in the valley bottom through the rainforest. It is quite near where we are staying and has free parking, which was a bonus. We arrived at 9.30am so we got very good value for money with an early bird ticket- $30 each for the day - with unlimited rides. We took the railway down into the valley bottom and it was indeed a ‘cliffhanger’ experience; we loved it as we went down almost vertically. We did a couple of the longer board walks and returned to the top by the cable car. There were some interesting exhibits around from the old coal mine that used to work in this area as well as information on the various trees. After a cup of tea we went down again by cable car through the cloud

and did a bit more walking on the valley floor before returning up the railway. We liked it so much we went up and down again before walking over to the Scenic skyway (gondola with a glass floor). Unfortunately the ride was mostly still in cloud so we decided to come back later and go again if it cleared.

We had some excellent soup for lunch in Katoomba and then drove to Wentworth Falls and walked down to a lookout and then to another lookout over the Falls, which were high but didn’t have much volume of water despite the rain last night. We then drove to Sublime Point lookout and walked down (and up again) for some great views.

The skies had cleared so we decided to drive back to Scenic World and try and catch the gondola again. We were successful and had some great views across the valleys and the Katoomba falls on the last trip of the day!

In the evening we walked uphill along the main street of Katoomba looking for someplace to eat. Unfortunately where we fancied was full so we dithered around for a while and then tried a bar and brasserie that didn’t look too promising from outside but was much better upstairs! We ended up having one of the best meals we’ve had – sliced seared kangaroo with a mango salsa followed by backstrap of lamb (melt in your mouth tender) with wilted spinach, roasted crunchy chick peas, mushrooms and spring onions as a side salad – delicious.

Sunday 4^th January

After breakfast Gary drove us to the car hire place and we picked up a car for the next ten days. We drove to Katoomba and stopped to have a bite of lunch in Leura. We settled into our B&B and then drove to Echo Point (wonderful views)

where we did a short walk to a lookout

and then another short walk to Leura Falls and Cascades.

The humidity was increasing all the time and when we got back we sat on the verandah for a cup of tea/wine while we enjoyed a great tropical thunderstorm and torrential rain. The thunder and lightening lasted well over an hour and knocked the power out for a time. Once the rain eased we drove a short way into town and had a very good Thai meal.

Saturday 3^rd January

Today was hot and humid so we decided the best place to be was on the water. We caught the ferry to Sydney Olympic village which took us up the river for about an hour. We stayed on the ferry and came all the way back again, marvelling at how much waterfront there is to Sydney!

We then walked through the Botanic Gardens to the Art Gallery of NSW where we wandered through some interesting oriental exhibitions as well as sculpture and painting by Western artists in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Having had a cup of tea and a cheese jaffle (toasted sandwich) we then walked to catch the bus. Unfortunately we discovered that the bus we wanted to catch takes a different route back so we ended up walking to the Central Rail Station which was a lot further than we had intended. We only had twenty minutes to get showered and changed before David and Tania picked us up to go for a drink. We had made contact with them yesterday as they were on the Ningaloo Reef boat trip and had suggested we meet up in Sydney. We spent a pleasant couple of hours in their company before they dropped us off at the Glebe Street Diner and went off to a prior engagement. Gary and Julie joined us for dinner and we had a lovely evening together.