3rd to 9th January 2000 (Week 1)

After visiting our favorite City of Sydney, we headed out to the Blue Mountains. The first 2 days still mainly rainy weather. We started exploring the Blue Mountains in Lawson were we walked along a beautiful forest track passed several streams and 4 Waterfalls. Next we started out on the circuit Walk in Katoomba. This walk led us down along the Katoomba Falls, along the base of the Valley and finally with over 900 steps up the Giant Stairs to the 3 Sisters. The poor light in the rainy conditions proved difficult for our digital camera.

The next day we started out to explore the Valley of the Waters at Wentworth. A Number of different walks lead us first through a pretty steep descent (Valley of Waters) to some magnificent Waterfalls. Following the National pass we crossed along the mountain walls to the Wentworth Falls and from there along the Undercliff and Overcliff walks back to our car. A beautiful scenery with breath taking views.

The following day we explored the Grand Canyon starting from Evans Lookout. A beautiful walk down into the canyon featuring a beautiful cool climate rainforest. The visit to the Blue Mountains was concluded with a ride on the Zig Zag railway. The railway was built in 1866 to connect the hinterland to Sydney. At that time it was not easy to cross steep passages. So it was decided to build the tracks in the form of a "Z". The locomotive had to be rearanged to the front again as the train traveled each leg of the Z to the turning point. The first train travelled from Lithgow to Sydney in 1869. As more modern railway technology became available, a new series of tunnels were built which were steeper and are still in use today.

We travelled further northwards along the Garden of Stone and Wollemi Nationalparks. Both featuring similar attractions as the Blue Mountains. Our next destination was the Warrumbungle Nationalpark. This Nationalpark offers a beautiful landscape around several mountains created approximately 23 million years ago by volcanic activity. The so far most strenuous walk took over the distance of 18 km's with several climbs onto different mountains up to around 1000 meters. The walk took us 7 hours to complete and was pretty challenging.

The next day we took it a bit easier and visited the biggest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere, the Australia Telescope (CSIRO).6 antennas are located near Narrabri which allow to form an antenna of the size of 6 km length. The Antennas can be moved along a a railway track in order to adjust for different measurements and experiments. More detailed information can be obtained by visiting their website listed above. As the last stop for this week we crossed through the Mt. Kaputar Nationalpark, which is located around a mountain range as well created during a period of volcanic activity.