Blue Mountains National Park

In the Blue Mountains there are numerous walking trails of varying degrees of difficulty leading to the main features of interest and viewpoints, as well as cycle tracks and bridle paths.

Cliff Drive follows the cliff tops round Katoomba and Leura, with spectacular views and many picnic spots.

Walking trails along the cliff tops and into Jamison valley runs through rain forest and heathland. There are facilities for riding, driving (four-wheel-drive vehicles), cycling and walking.

The Explorers' Tree, west of Katoomba, commemorates Gregory Blaxland, Henry Lawson and William Wentworth, who were the first to travel through the mountains. There are many lookouts with views of the Wentworth Falls, which plunge down 300 m into Jamison valley.

This section extends from south of Katoomba to the Wom-beyan Caves (Mittagong) and from Lake Burragorang (Warragamba Reservoir) to the Great Dividing Range. It merges into Kanangra Boyd National Park and has not been over-developed for tourism.

Facilities include a picnic area (in southern part of park) and a well-equipped visitor centre.

Katoomba (pop. 13,070) is a highly developed tourist center in the Blue Mountains which draws some three million visitors every year. Along with the smaller neighboring towns of Wentworth and Leura, Katoomba rapidly developed in the second half of the 19th C from a coal-mining town into a popular holiday resort, easily accessible by rail from Sydney. Centrally situated in Blue Mountains National Park, it is well equipped with galleries, boutiques and good restaurants.

80 km from the town, on the southwestern edge of the Blue Mountains, are Australia's best known caves, the Jenolan Caves.

The house in Springwood occupied by the painter Norman Lindsay from 1912 to 1969 is now a museum, with a collection of the artist's works.

The grounds of the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum includes the etching studio, garden sculptures, a painting studio and formal gardens.

Situated on the north side of the Great Western Highway, this section of Blue Mountains National Park extends from Springwood to Mount Victoria, with magnificent panoramic views and attractive picnic areas. The entrance is in Blackheath, opposite the railway station.

Scenic World offers travelers the chance to experience the forests of the Blue Mountains through rides on the steepest railway in the world and on the only horizontal cable car in Australia. Travelers can also take in a documentary at the Scenic Theatre.

The scenic railway runs down into Jamison valley, with an average gradient of 45 degrees.

The descent will take passengers through a cliff side tunnel into an ancient rainforest.

The Scenic Skyway is a cableway which runs horizontally across the mountain gorge above Cooks Crossing, with impressive views of Katoomba Falls, Orphan Rock and Jamison valley. The cableway was constructed about 1880 for the transport of miners and of coal.

Extending on the south side of the Great Western Highway from Glenbrook to the Wentworth Falls (Katoomba), this section of the park takes in the low hills which rise out of the Cumberland Plains to the west of Sydney.

From Katoomba the highway continues to Lithgow (40km) by way of Medlow Bath, Blackheath, Mount Victoria and Hartley, an important stopover for travelers in early colonial days which preserves a number of old buildings of around 1830-40 (Hartley Historic Site). From Lithgow the return to Sydney (150km) can be on Bells Line of Road by way of Bell and the old settlements of Richmond and Windsor.

Near Mount Victoria (Historical museum at station), on Mount York, is a monument to Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth.

Close to Katoomba is the best-known tourist sight in the Blue Mountains, the striking rock formations known as the Three Sisters, which are floodlit at night. Legend has it that they are three sisters who were bewitched and turned to stone.