Blue Mountains - Day One

We were sitting around this morning thinking about how best we could use this day, with having Adrienne home for a long weekend. We decided to pack a bag and head towards the Blue Mountains, which is about 120 km away and a 2-hour drive. So from the moment of deciding, we were on the road within 40-minutes, heading up the motorway, with a vague idea of where were going.

Once in the Blue Mountains, we booked a room in Blackheath, unpacked our bags and drove to Lithgow for a ride on the Zig Zag railway. One of Jarvis' favorite things is Thomas the Tank Engine, so thought it apt that a trip on a steam train would go down well with the wee man. Jarvis was delighted and wide eyed for the whole 90-minutes that it took to go from the top to the bottom of the valley. Just look at the picture of jarvis with his jaw dropping, as the steam train pulled up to the platform. He spent most of the time looking out of the window at the steam train up ahead. He didn't warn us though, when we went into a long tunnel, with all the windows down, to emerge in a smoke filled train carriage (see pic)

In the evening we drove a few kilometers down the road to a look-out over the Grose Valley. This was the first time we have been blown away by the scenery in Australia -it dawned on us, what an immense country this is.

We then had dinner in a local pub and took a slow walk home. I stopped off in a local gas station, which had a small supermarket attached, hoping to find a decent magazine to read. Sadly they only had a rack full of adult mags, and when I asked the woman at the counter if they had any decent magazines that cater for men, she informed me that the 'Mountain Men' only read the sort of magazines they had on the shelf, and none of those city poofter mags!

House Dad.