As you can probably tell from the picture, Dean finally found a barber yesterday. Still the most expensive haircut of his life at £13, but worth every penny in this heat.

We made our way to Katoomba today - gateway to the Blue Mountains, who get their name from the blue haze caused by evaporating eucalyptus oils. Sadly, we didn't see any koalas - must be too cold for them this far south, although during the heatwave it hit 46 degrees Celsius here! We've had an eye on the forecast all week and chose today as the temperature was supposed to dip to the low 20s.

Katoomba is a 2hr train ride from Sydney's Central station and we got a ticket that includes all day use of the hop-on-hop-off Explorer bus. We also took a few cable cars and an excellent incline railway (the steepest in the world at 52 degrees and more like a roller coaster).

The bus took us to several points where we could take a short walk for beautiful views of the many waterfalls and the Three Sisters rock formation. The last stop was in the neighbouring town of Leura, where we had afternoon tea with some delicious scones.

We didn't quite trust the forecast, so dressed for slightly warmer weather. This proved our undoing when we got back to Sydney where it was about 20 degrees colder than yesterday and a light drizzle.

Despite feeling a bit chilly, we walked up George St and into Chinatown to see the Chinese New Year procession of floats, dancers and, of course, dragons running around the feet of other dragon costume wearers on stilts.