Well here we are - Mountains! The Blue Mountains for sure - not the alps, not snow covered and not winter... but the significantly cooler overnight temperatures drew us to this housesit - think 5-6 degrees overnight - vs. 17-18. Yowser! (Technical meteorological term that... similar to OMG - with regard to the snow fall in Tasmania last week at the same time as the rest of Australia was suffering a heat wave just after the hottest November on Australian record.)

We did 95% of our packing yesterday, hit the hay fairly early at 10 pm and the alarm launched (lurched) us out of bed at 5 am. We'd rather get up early and have plenty of time that have to rush on 'Travel Day'.

Potts Point and Kings Cross are quite different at 6 am - the usual denizens are sleeping it off in corners and the tradies and Navy Base workers are streaming in. We travelled upstream and caught a train to Central Station. We use the trip planner feature on the public transport website and it's always good for a laugh along the lines of 'if you get train A then we've allowed you 5 minutes to cover 250 metres in order to catch train B from Central' - maybe for Usain Bolt... Central Station was a cot case 3 years ago and little has changed - though there seems to be a large and lovely modern canopy / new station in the process of being built. Eventually. In any event - pulling our bags behind us and with no escalators in working order, going via elevators and detours it definitely took more than 5 minutes to get from platform 25 to platform 9. Luckily there were loads of empty benches and we sat down in relief to open the thermos and get out the bacon and egg sandwiches -bliss!

It was a lovely train ride up to the mountains - an express so only 2 hours and 20 minutes and so green as a we ascended. And cheap. So cheap. We departed Kings Cross before 6.30 am - so it was off peak pricing - $13 odd dollars to get both of us from home to Mt Victoria - magic. We met our owners and their incredible little dog Clancy and settled right in - almost immediately - and it was about 10 degrees cooler than Sydney. We even tried out the gas fire that evening. Not a lot of call for them in Sydney in summer generally speaking.

Well Tuesday saw us take a walk around Mt Victoria (very small... didn't take long). They were menaced by bush fires at this time last year and then Covid saw shops reduce their hours significantly. Think ghost town in the old West... similar. We are very fortunate to have oodles of space in our current house and garden and made a point of sitting in every available area - under the grape vines, on the balcony, in the fairy grotto - and that was just outside. We bought a pair of frozen lamb rumps up with us and they went on the Weber BBQ on Tuesday evening - yep. We were those neighbours - tormenting everyone, including ourselves and Clancy with the heavenly scent of roasting lamb (pocketed with Rosemary fresh from the garden and cloves of garlic). We put jumpers on (remember... Summer!) and lit the outdoor fire pit for a bit of warmth (and atmosphere). Really getting into this 'summer at altitude' climate.

Having had most of Monday and all of Tuesday to settle in, we got cracking on Wednesday and drove to Govett's Leap lookout, just down the main road from bustling Blackheath. We had a good look around and visited an old theatre that is now an antiques centre with multitudes of sellers in their own little nooks. We saw 3 carat diamond ring from Cartier, Paris and read it's story - apparently it belonged to Frank Sinatra and was a gift for his 40th birthday. Huh. The things you find when you're not looking - interesting little read. We bought some fruit and wine in Blackheath (tiny input into local economy), then headed to the village jewel in the Blue Mountains' crown - Leura. We had lunch at the Leura Gourmet kitchen - a spot we've been going to for around 20 odd years. Still a lovely lunch (not to mention the same menu they've always had - which made choosing very easy and was quite reassuring in a weird way - and the joint was packed). We bought a couple of Madagascan sunhats from The French Shop (a third of the price compared to our village) and, from the sublime to the ridiculous, bought a sweet onyx and silver ring in a thrift shop for a bargain price. We definitely injected quite a bit more into Leura's economy that's for sure. A great day out... one of my new hats came in handy immediately - it was swelteringly warm even though only 25 degrees, just one of those humid days with scorching sunshine.

Thankfully, whilst the first three days of our stay were hot and sunny, the nights were cold - and by Thursday the day was a bit cooler too. As the weekend approached, Mt Vic showed signs of life and we booked online to go to the movies - albeit just 5 minutes stroll down the road. The Mt Vic Flicks are incredible! It's been at least 5 years since we saw a movie in a cinema (home yes, planes yes, cinemas... nope). We saw Misbehaviour, a BBC movie about the 1970 Miss World contest and the nascent Women's Liberation Movement. It starred Keira Knightley among many others and was a fab watch - we even had home made choc tops from the candy bar - finally able to pump some money into Mt Vic's economy.

We started getting quite adventurous by Friday and jumped in the car to go exploring. West! To Lithgow! Neither of us had ever visited Lithgow before and it was pretty good. If we felt like we'd stepped back in time at the picture house... after an hour or so walking up one side of Lithgow's Main Street and down the other... the fear was we'd be stuck there. It's a loooong street. Interesting though. It was obviously a bustling town in its mining hey day. We took the thermos and snacks and after exploring the main drag we headed to the lookout at Hassan's Walls. Named by one of NSW's governors as the sheer drops reminded him of the stone forts he saw during his time in India. We would have to agree. It was an outstanding lookout and we were the only ones there until it was time to go when about 30 tourists arrived at once. We took the road less travelled for the homeward trip, down Brown's Gap Road and dropped in at the Mitchell Reserve lookout before reaching home. Surprisingly tired - perhaps it's the altitude - all of 1000+ metres above sea level. It was such a chilly night, we tested the heating function of the ducted air con and watched a Swedish thriller on Netflix called Quick Sand - binged ourselves silly - quite brilliant.

We were well settled into our Blue Mountains housesit by Saturday and head over heels in love with our new best mate, Clancy. One of the top 3 dogs out of the many we've looked after over the years - such a sweet little man. Today's jaunt was to Hartley Historic Village and an outstanding blacksmith's forge, The Talisman Gallery. Hartley (we discovered) was 'the' place to be for original settlers in the mountains and significantly predated Lithgow. It was the administrative heart of the region and boasts a very posh sandstone courthouse, two churches, a garage, various homes that belonged to old families in the region. And aside from a lady at the visitor centre and the blacksmith himself - we were the only two there. Midweek. Post covid. Cafe shut. Very quiet indeed. Was a wonderful opportunity to poke about, soak up the history and and eat cherry plums from a tree near a granite tor that overlooked the village. We had so much fun at the movies the other day, we ruged up (seriously - a shearling jacket in summer in Sydney) and pottered over too the theatre to see Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Brilliant, thought provoking movie. Lucky to be 10 of us at the 8 pm Saturday screening. We were exceedingly well socially distanced indeed and shared a post-dinner choc top. Funnily enough 2 separate couples wanted hot soup (it was that chilly outside) - but the owner said no - we only do that in the winter months.

When we woke up on Sunday morning we had a bit of a panic as Clancy's owners had said they were leaving Queensland early due to the onset of 5 days of tropical downpours. Aargh! No - don't want to leave this amazing place. Fortunately we clarified pretty quickly that they were going to meander home over the course of a few days, moving inland to avoid the wild weather and flooding in coastal towns. Phew. We cracked on with a round of housework, did some laundry and took the sweetest muttly in the world for a little walk. James did us another lamb roast on the 'Q which was divine. The lamb (x2) made excellent ice packs for the trip up and was just amazing for dinner. We even had fresh zucchini from the garden with dinner - between the hot days we had and the rains, they were growing like wildfire. Lovely to have a garden full of fresh herbs, lettuce, zukes etc - we feel a bit like rabbits at Christmas with the bounty on offer.

I was a bit under the weather on Friday for our first trip to Lithgow - dragging the chain something shocking. We decided to have another look at Lithgow on Monday and took a scenic drive to town. The roads up this way are great - must be reassuring in winter when there's snow around. We had a closer look at a couple of op shops and I found a silver ring for $5 which is my second great jewellery souvenir of this trip. We found a couple of great, almost new shirts for James ($1 each! - made my ring look expensive). We visited a super fish and chip shop run by a friendly Greek couple - worth coming to the mountains just for their fish and chips - $15 ended up lasting us 2 lunches. We took the parcel up to Hassan's lookout (we'd brought our tartare sauce, bread and tomato sauce with us) and feasted. We took another scenic route for the drive home through Hartley Vale - couple of very old pubs out this way - quite the time warp. It was wonderful to be welcomed home by Clancy yipping his hellos when he heard us pull into the driveway.

The highlight of Tuesday was of course having the second half of our fish and chips parcel from Lithgow for lunch. So easily pleased. It was raining, gray and gloomy - so perfect weather for not getting burned to a crisp. The wee dog was quite damp by the time we returned home and a bit 'doggy' - he was due for a bath. That was huge fun for us - not sure about Clancy - and his ears took a while to dry - but we had the heating on and we were all ensconced on sofas by early evening. Good times.

We were starting to feel a bit sad by Wednesday. We packed. We cleaned. We did laundry and packed clean laundry. We pottered. We enjoyed this housesit so much. The final posh was on Thursday morning - sheets, towels, make bed, do bathroom, sweep and mop - the nitty gritty end of the housesitting caper (as much fun as we had, we were definitely looking forward to our Christmas sit in Chinatown - there's a cleaner - woo hoo!)

Once our wonderful owners returned after lunch on Thursday we hoofed it to the railway station (just a short walk down the road) and got the 1.47 pm Bathurst express home. By this stage the news of the Covid outbreak on the northern beaches was, to put it mildly, not good. New cases by the hour - and yet of the train passengers onboard and at Central station only 10% (ish) were wearing masks. Get a grip! We made it home by 4.30 pm - To put it in perspective, not considered that long a trip by Australian standards - some people commute everyday - but to us it's the time it takes to take the train from Brussels to Paris. Yup. We're hurting. Was an amazing pre-Christmas trip and we'd been thinking of a day-trip to the mountains. A 10 day trip was just outstanding.