Today we went on a Wonderbus tour of the Blue Mountains, which we’d seen from the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Blue Mountains get their name from the fact that when they are viewed from a distance, the heat haze rising off the gums trees makes the mountains look blue. It was a couple of hours drive out to the first view point, which we can’t remember the name of, but which offered fantastic views of the Blue Mountains. Next we went to Katoomba. We had a very nice bush walk down 900 or so steps, past several waterfalls including Witches Leap (which looks like a Witch’s face, if you squint a bit). Our guide showed us where spiders might live, how the Aboriginals got the different colours for their paints from the rocks, told us about the trees and how some of them regenerate after fire, and demonstrated “Coo-ee” to us (if you’re lost, shout Coo-ee until someone answers you). At the bottom of the walk we rode the Katoomba Scenic Railway, the steepest incline railway in world at 52 degrees at its maximum. We were lucky enough to sit at the front and as it is towed backwards up the cliff, we had a great, if slightly scary, view. Back on the bus we headed for the Tree Sisters rock formation and enjoyed the view. Then it was all aboard again for a trip to the Tizzana winery, where we had several helpings of very nice wine. We bought a bottle of White Port to drink later; apparently all Port is white until grape skins are added. After the winery we headed to Featherdale Wildlife Park to get up close and personal with some of Australia’s native animals. We didn’t have a huge amount of time there, but we still managed to take plenty of photos. And we managed to collect most of the animal stamps (our guide told us we had to collect at least 5 otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed back on the bus). The park was great fun. We saw ducks, turtles and many types of birds including Galahs (“yer flamin’ Galah!”), Cockatoos, Pelicans, Owls, Emu’s, Penguins, Eagles and Ibis’, which weren’t supposed to be there but came for the food being fed to the other birds. We also saw kangaroos, wallaby’s, a wombat, Cassowary, Goanna, Flying Foxes, Dingos, Echidna and Andrea’s favourite, the Koala Bears. After tearing Andrea away from the Koala Bears, we drove to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Stadium. We saw the poles engraved with the names of the volunteers who helped out during the games; our names weren’t on there but we did see the names of some of our close family members. From the Olympic Park we caught the river cat back to Sydney. This is a jet boat passenger ferry with quite phenomenal acceleration. We certainly cleared any cobwebs we might have had by standing at the front of the boat; there was quite a breeze! The boat went under the Harbour Bridge into Circular Quay, offering us another great view of the city. Once back on dry land we headed for a restaurant called Wok-On-Inn, a small little place near the Visitor Centre where you choose the type of meat or seafood (or vegetarian option), the type of noodles (thin, medium or fat) and the type of sauce (Thai, Malaysian or Chinese). We got take out and bought some small tubs of ice cream and eat in our hotel room – very nice!