Whilst in Port Macquarie we popped into the Koala hospital. The hospital has a few permanent inmates which you get to see but most are kept hidden so that they can be rehabilitated and released back into the wild without getting too accustomed to humans. The permanent inmates can't be released for various reasons, including blindness (a common bacterial infection) and loss of claws (bush fire injuries). They are quite sedentary creatures that move little and sleep 18 hours a day so adapt well to living at the hospital.

After driving through Gloucester and Stroud, no we had not popped home for a few days, we reached Singleton. The scenery en-route was quite relaxing, with rolling hills and green fields, which is more than could be said for the road. In places the attempted repair of hundreds of potholes had left little of the original road and resulted in a bumpy drive. I wondered at what point they would say enough is enough let’s relay the road.

We drove on to Penrith on the outskirts of Sydney and hit traffic. The most we had seen for the last 6 weeks. We didn’t go any closer to Sydney, having visited there on our last trip, but turned inland and headed for the nearby Blue Mountains.

They like to tell you that they are called Blue Mountains because of the fine bluey mist of oil exuded by the huge swaths of Eucalypt trees, that give a dense canopy across the mountain range. Of course, scientists tell you this is rubbish and it is bluey because blue wavelengths are reflected back, as they are from all distant objects. Spoil sports. But whatever you want to believe the mist filled valleys do have a beautiful slate blue hue.

The whole range consists of sandstone over softer clay and coal seams laid down 250 million years ago in a massive basin. 90 to 35 million years ago the basin was uplifted to form a plateau which rivers have cut into leaving deep gorges with beautiful waterfalls.

We had been looking forward to driving up one of the roads leading into the area. The guide books all extol the scenic and quaint old worldly charm of villages sitting on two of the ridges, of the Blue Mountain range, with splendid views into valleys and gorges. Our dream was shattered when we found that in reality we were driving on a dual carriageway which could compete with the A1 in rush hour. The so called scenic villages were cut and divided by the highway and the adjacent railway line.

Disappointed, we left the highway and entered a rather up market village called Leura and were pleased to see it had managed to keep itself intact, to the side of the highway. I bet they had breathed a sigh of relief when the route of the road was decided. We couldn’t find any campsites (obviously not the thing for an up market village) so we showed them and drove out to a radio mast and camped wild. Radio masts are always a good bet for a remote area on a quiet no through road. With no public lights, anywhere near us it was scarily pitch dark but we did have a great display of the stars of the Southern Hemisphere.

Next day we visited a couple of the lookouts across the valley and stretched our legs on a walk along one of the ridges. Afterwards we popped into Leura village and had tea in a café cum teapot museum, home to the world’s largest private collection of teawares, including more than 5,500 teapots from all over the world and spanning five centuries. It was very quaint.

This was followed by a visit to Everglades, an Art Deco house and European influenced modernist landscape garden. Both were designed in the 1930’s by Danish born Paul Sorensen for Belgium born Henri Van De Velde, who stayed in Australia after his diplomat father returned home. The house was sleek and stylishly simplistic with a lot of windows making it lovely and light. The bathrooms were a little more Hollywood lavish in style. The 13 acres garden with its grotto, terraces, winding paths and stunning lookouts had a rather homely feel to it. We rather fancied a tea but as we have found with many cafes the hour of closing is puzzlingly often 2.30 or 3.00 so once again we had to withdrew to Syd for afternoon tea.

We returned to the radio mast for another night wild camping.

Next day we headed to the adjacent less salubrious village of Kaatomba to visit Scenic World. It is for all intents and purposes a theme park, but only has 3 rides and a boardwalk path through the forest in the valley floor. It has been done very well with hardly any disturbance of the environment. In fact, from the other side of the valley we couldn’t even see it.

The rides are a skyway, cable car and train. The skyway consists of a glass floored cable car that glides, suspended 270 metres high, between cliff tops over the rainforest canopy. The cable car descends gracefully 510 metres into the valley. But best of all, although you wouldn’t think it from my face in the photos, the 52-degree incline ride on the steepest passenger railway in the world. The train descends, at speed (believe me it felt really fast), 310 metres through a cliff-side tunnel, emerging into rainforest at the valley floor. We went on this three times. After a walk on the boardwalk around the forest on the valley floor we left and headed to another village for a final lookout across the mountains before heading to Jenolan caves.

You actually drive through a cave as you approach the site. The caves were first documented in 1838 but new caves were discovered and still are being discovered, so it is actually a massive complex of many caves some of which you can visit. We chose the so called Orient cave and went on an hour and a half guided tour. While we waited, we walked along the nearby river and Peter saved me (my hero) from treading on a snake that was crossing the path. It turned out to be an eastern brown snake which is venomous and of a disagreeable temperament. In fact, it is considered the world's second most venomous land snake, aargh close shave!

The orient cave was rather awesome and we kept wondering how they found them and even more amazingly how they explored them with only candles. They are full of the most amazing speleothems, better known to us less knowledgeable ones, as stalactites, stalagmites and my favourite helictites. These are ones that change their direction of growth from the vertical, at one or more stages, so look cute and curly. Technically they are believed to be the result of capillary forces, acting on tiny water droplets, often strong enough at this scale to defy gravity, so Wikipedia says.

With no campsites around we stayed in the car park for the night and headed to Canberra the next morning. We had some veggies to cook but as it was late we settled for beans and soup, and a beer in the hotel bar. The hotel was a bit Swiss like but was rather dated and tatty and somewhat eerie. I would not have been surprised to see the Adams family wandering around.

Leaving the area, we drove to Canberra.