Ever heard of a place called Katoomba? Nor had we, but it is the main town in the Blue Mountains where we headed for a two day trip to the famous national park. Now, I know you are desperate to know why they are called the 'Blue' mountains, so let me tell you right off. It is nothing to do with the colour of the stone or anything at all to do with sale of adult material but mostly because the mountains appear blue due to the refraction of sunlight through the oliy mist produced by all the eucalyptus trees. Not that they are really mountains either but a series of deep gorges and ravines revealing endless stretches of hills clad by eucalyptus trees extending into the (blue) distance.

Katoomba is an easy train ride from Sydney. It struck us at first as small, quiet and slightly odd, the kind of place where you find yourself thinking everyone looks suspiciously related to each other. Maybe it was the pictures of UFOs on the walls of the train station....Our hostel (Katoomba Mountain Lodge) was also plain weird and creepy. It was just like the hotel in the Shining. This was partly due to the decor being of the same era as the film, yuck! We were also the only guests and there were Christmas decorations still up in the dining room. Except actually we found out that isn't that weird for around here. The hotels made up their own fake christmas festivities during their winter (July) to make tourists feel more at home, calling it Yulefest. Presents and all. Odd.

The bushwalking and scenery fortunately made us entirely forget about our hostel. It is breathtaking and on a scale similar to the Grand Canyon. Day 1 we walked from Wentworth Falls (a small town down the train line) along the Charles Darwin Walk (have they heard of him in Katoomba?) to....Wentworth waterfalls. This is actually a series of waterfalls, the largest of which plunges around 400m down a sheer cliff to the gorge below. You can walk down beside it on a vertigo inducing path cut into the cliff edge. Other than the fall there is a forest with cockatoos and parrots at the bottom. We followed the cliff walk in a circuit back to the station taking about 4 hours, passing more waterfalls on the way. It was pretty hot and we got a pretty special photo of Brenda 'relaxing' on a bench at the end.

We spent as much time as possible out of the hostel that night at the Irish pub (they are everywhere). The barman was actually 1/8 Irish through his grannie, but didn't boast about this too much when he saw Brenda's hair.

We survived the night and made a hurried escape in the morning for a bushwalk on the tracks just south of Katoomba taking in such famous sights as the Three Sisters and Echo Point, formations made in the sandstone gorge walls. This included taking the 'Giant Staircase', they weren't joking...900 steep steps which took about 40 minutes to descend. Vertigo for the two of us again! Further along the valley you can drive right to the edge of the gorge. Sadly, the cost of having easy access to these sites is opening them to those who aren't willing to walk to them, encapsulated in 'Scenic World' complete with multi-storey car park on the cliff face. Think Cheddar gorge tackiness. There is a cable car, skyrail or the world's steepest railway. By the time we had tackled all those stairs we have to admit to taking the railway back up! It was actually quite nerve-wracking as passengers sit facing down the gorge looking at the steep drop back down. As the train travels up you are surrounded by the music of Indian Jones.

That was all we had time for in the Mountains so we headed back to Sydney on the train to our nice, safe hostel.

The next day we decided to take a wine tour out to the Hunter Valley. We researched every possible option for this. One did involve a 4am start and as much as we like wine we went for the simple package tour instead. When we arrived at the bus station we were the youngest by at least 35 years. Half the group were retired Brits and some of the rest could barely walk at the start so the bus driver nervously followed them round all day in case the wine proved too much for them. It was a mixed day full of deliberate random detours to man-made Hunter villages to make us spend more money. The first however was the best. It was an old town which was home to Jungle juice (basically port laced with a secret spirit) it was nice but would knock you out pretty quickly. With this though we had a cream tea in order to line our stomachs for the next few stops as we had every intention of drinking the wine! We went to three different vineyards and tried their "cellar door" wines which are made specifically for that vineyard and only sold on site. We both loved the desert wines and a low alcohol sparkling white popular at BBQs.

However by the 8/9th we actually couldn't face finishing the glass and got told off by the bus driver! We stopped for a buffet lunch and were given a glass of white and red wine to try with it and then went on to the third and best vineyard (Mcguigans) where we all sat on a bench with the wine list and had a demo in wine tasting - again it was the desert wines we ended up liking the most but we couldn't take any with us. By the forth stop for beer and wine tasting we were pathetic and went for cheese and chocolate tasting instead which were also good fun.

By the time we got back it was late and we were exhausted (who knew wine tasting was such hard work?). We collapsed into bed ready for another early start to catch our flight to Alice Springs.