Hi Guys!!

Thursday morning - the big day climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge begun by unfortunately having to lug all our stuff into storage as we were having to change rooms - How annoying!!

Once that was out of the way we caught the bus to Circular Quay, where we sat and ate some sarnies to stop our bellies rumbling whilst climbing the bridge, and then set off to the bridge climb centre. We checked in, breathalised, and met our climb instructor, Chrissy. We got kitted up in our funky suits and got all our safety gear on, had some quick training and then headed off to start the climb. We first had to cross the catwalks, these had grill floors and you could see 50m straight down between your feet. No going back now!! We made our way to the eastern pylon, where we climbed ladders up to the eastern arch. We followed the eastern arch all the way to the summit, taking in the brilliant (sunny) views and getting all the info from our instructor via radio headsets. When we reached the summit, we had our photos taken and plenty of time to take it all in. Here we had to make our way across the centre walkway of the bridge, 164m above sea level, to the western arch. We made our decent down the western arch, having to decend between 2 train tracks, before making it back to the catwalks, which took us back to safety - we survived - yee haaaaaa!! The entire experience took about 3 and a half hours and was well worth the money!!

Friday! Leaving the hostel at 6:30am we had a half hour trek to our pick up point for our Blue Mountains tour. We soon boarded the bus, met our tour guide Geoff, and were on our way. Our fisrt stop was Featherdale Wildlife Park, we were pleasently suprised by the park as we had already seen many of Australia's animals, but both enjoyed this. Especially as Emma got to stroke a koala, wallabies and a wombat! We got back on the bus where Emma's superior knowledge won us a mini koala!!

We headed to a park for morning tea and to learn to throw a boomerang! We both managed to get the boomerang to come back - Emma on her first go - a natural Aussie.

We reboarded the bus and headed across the Nepean river and into the Blue Mountains national park, a 1 million hectre forest, filled with eucalyptus trees. We stopped at Sublime point, from here we viewed the three sisters, mount solataire and out across the Jamieson valley. On the way back to the bus, Geoff showed us some native plants, including tea tree and the red devil tree.

We headed off to Wentworth Falls golf club, where we had a gourmet lunch, and desert! Plus a couple of scooners.

We took a drive through Katoomba and on to Scenic world. We took a cable car down to the floor of the temperate rainforest, where we went on a 20 minute boardwalk, and made our way to the steepest railway in the world, scenic railway. From here we had brilliant views of rock formations - the three sisters and the orphan. We quickly jumped into the front seats to get the best views as the train goes backwards, almost vertical up the mountain - cool!! Lee had his photo taken with what he thought was the 3 sisters before we moved on.

We drove to Leura, a small mountain town, 900m above sea level, where we had time to explore the town and look across the vally to the town of Katoomba.

We drove back through the olympic 2000 village, to catch a sea cat back to Circular Quay. We had some brilliant views of the city as we came back into the harbour under the bridge.

We had a great day, but it's now time to head to a beach to chill, so we are off to Bondi!

Love to you all,

Lee and Emma

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