Australian Adventures: Katoomba (The Blue Mountains) and St. Kilda

Katoomba (Blue Mountains)

This was the hardest place to leave. There was so much adventure to be had (outdoor adventures: hiking and exploring!) and everything was absolutely beautiful. Even the smaller trails were breathtaking! We went on 3 different hikes in Katoomba (There were so many choices... we missed out on caves because they had a cost while the other trails were no cost). Plus, our hostel in Katoomba was by far the best hostel we stayed at! The lobby area was big and good for drinks, card games, and hanging out during down times. The kitchen was big with lots of space to cook amid other people. The washrooms separated boys and girls (always a perk) and were never overly occupied. AND most importantly, the rooms were huge! They had more than enough room to spread out our clothes, they had little individual lamps for reading, and lockers (big ones) for each bed.

These 3 pictures are from our first hike -  the 3 sisters hike. This hike was super close to where we were staying. The cliffs were unbelievable and it was so pretty! We knew that we had to see the 3 sisters because it

is what most people come to Katoomba to see!


On the 3 Sisters hike, there are 900 stairs, although we just walked down them, it was still a lot of work! Pretty hard on the knees (I'm an old lady and I have terrible knees). The stairs were really steep and were slightly eroded... it was kinda scary making our way down them! And it took a while too!

In the background are the 3 sisters. There is a legend that these sisters from an australian aboriginal tribe were turned to stone to protect them because they fell in love with men from another tribe. We got a few pictures of them but the cliffs and valley were difficult to see because there was a lot of fog during the day!

These next pictures are from our second day of hiking... the best hike ever. This was one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been for sure. It was a short bus ride from Katoomba where we were staying (it was called Blackheath) and it was a Grand Canyon... but the hike was a trek through rainforest! It was an amazing hike too, through caves, over rocks and water, past waterfalls... AMAZING!

This is one of the waterfalls that we saw along our hike. We met this guy (Russ) on the bus to the Grand Canyon and since he was going to the same place, he joined us for our adventure. We set up his tripod to get this shot of all 3 of us! I love waterfalls, so naturally this is one of my favorite pictures!

Toward the end of the hike when we got closer to the beautiful lookout of the Canyon we had to walk up stairs for what seemed like 2 hours!!! It was very tiring. This is me resting and Nikki dying in between flights of stairs. So much work! But absolutely worth it because of the view that we were about to see...

This view! Absolutely breathtaking! This was one of those moments that you couldn't help but just sit and stare. We were here for such a long time wondering if we actually were there. We also took a gazillion pictures because we absolutely wanted to capture what we were seeing.

After our beautiful rainforest walk and breathtaking view of the canyon, we decided to call it a day. We walked back to where we were dropped off by the bus (which was really weird because the city bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere!) and we couldn't figure out whether the bus would be returning. We asked a gentleman at one of the houses  on the street and he said that he was pretty sure we had missed the buses for the day. So this is us lost and stranded. We asked someone to call us a cab from here, and as our cab pulled up, we saw the bus drive by...

This was our third and final hike during our stay in the blue mountains. It was a bit of a rough day because of the evenings events preceding this hike but we still were blown away by the waterfalls and views! We asked the receptionist which hike she recommended that wasn't strenuous because we couldn't handle a lot of work and i'm really glad we went because I'm a big fan of waterfalls and this hike had many. 

In the background of this picture is the "Bridal veil falls"... a waterfall down the mountain. It usually spreads out to look like a bridal veil (hence the name..) but because the water level is so low, the waterfall wasn't very plentiful (we got this information from a nice man that was at this lookout who seemed to know a lot about the area!).

Super sad to leave Katoomba, because there was still so much that we could have seen!

St. Kilda (Melbourne)

After Katoomba, our final stop after a long overnight train ride was St.Kilda (its in Melbourne, just a different part). Because we were flying out of Melbourne, we had to go back but we wanted to see something different and we heard St.Kilda was a big tourist attraction. It was really cold, wet, and rainy when we went though. There was one thing that we definitely wanted to see and that was penguins on the pier! An at least we saw those. Then after our 2 nights in St.Kilda, we caught our airbus at 6am to the airport for our long journey home!

I took a shot of this pastry shop on Acland St. because I wanted to show everyone the kind of stores that are EVERYWHERE. Its so hard to say no when you pass by delicious baked goods everywhere you go! Here we had a piece of chocolate cake (which looked a lot better than it tasted!)

On our first night in St.Kilda, we went out to the beach onto the pier to see the "little penguins" that we had heard hang out on the pier. If you looked into the rocks alongside the pier, you could see these little guys hanging out and making high pitched noises. They were so cute!! We got to see a couple of them close up too. They must be used to people peeking at them!

On the day before we left, we wanted to have a relaxed day or organizing our bags for the plane and hanging out BUT we wanted to get a picture of one of the iconic images from St. Kilda, which is the big clown face at the entrance of Luna Park. So on this day, we left the hostel only because we wanted a picture of the clown and this is what we found. Obviously the clown face was under construction, and it was raining, and my umbrella broke. This is what this picture is encapsulating. So we took this shot then went right back to our hostel (after laughing our faces off for a bit about our bad luck).

And then we were 3 weeks later, and ready to board our plane back to Canada. Australia was an amazing adventure and definitely a place that I'm going to go back to. We managed to cover a lot of ground in 3 weeks (3 states, 6 or 7 cities) but there's a lot more of Australia that I would LOVE to see like the great barrier reef and some of the outback!