Blue Mountains Escapade

Back on the morning of the 8^th I landed in Sydney with my friend Richie, a fellow American who lived down the hall from me at Ormond College.  We had a couple days to kill before our other friends arrived for our road trip to Brisbane so we decided to spend the night at the Blue Mountains.  We caught the train out of the city and arrived in Katoomba a little after 3 PM.  We lugged our bags to the cheapest hostel—Katoomba Mountain Lodge or something like that—got a couple beds, and walked up the street until we reached the Echo Point information centre.

After admiring the view from the outlook we entered the information centre.  It was about 4:30 PM so we had a few hours of daylight left to explore the area and the girl behind the desk gave us a map and highlighted a trail and we were on our way.  The trail first took us down a series of steps around a cliff then leveled off for a few km. 

We reached the base of the Katoomba Falls and a little area amid the subtropical rainforest with a few picnic tables called “Katoomba Falls Viewing Area.”  You could only catch a small glimpse of the waterfall through the dense foliage and I was supremely disappointed.  Richie warned me not to have expectations.  We continued up the trail and soon came across a path leading towards the Falls.  We kept getting better and better views and my faith in the Blue Mountains Par Service was restored.  Then we reached a spur that said “Under Falls Trail – 10 min” and promptly took it.

It was incredible.  If you’re ever going to visit the Katoomba Falls I seriously recommend doing it at around 6 PM.  You’ll miss out on the tram ride across the cliffs, but you’re lucky like us there will be no one there.  We had the Falls to ourselves so we could get really close up to them.  It was a pretty magical experience to be alone with something so powerful and impressive in nature.

The top of the Falls, up close.

My friend Richie at the bottom, for scale.

They had two tiers and we were out on the middle level rock platform with the Falls pounding down behind us and then dropping off below us, in front of beautiful views of the blue Mountains.  Amazing.

Where the Under Falls trail took us.

View from the platform.

It was getting pretty late, though, so we hiked out, walked back along the roads, and stopped at the grocery store to buy the supplies for our feast of sausages and salad.