Up and have some terrible hotel coffee

Showered and pack the car

Drive to reception and we’ve apparently missed breakfast ???? but they put lots of love into two cappuccinos for us

Dave takes the wheel and we pop down the road to History Hill Museum and Underground Mine

It’s A$10 per person and well worth it for all the antiquities and memorabilia from the Gold Rush period

Unfortunately, the owner has been stolen from by visitors a few times so there’s lots of signage about that

So many things to see, even a whole room with large boulders of different minerals collected in the area

We go through and out takes us down the road we drove up and you get to the entrance of the previous mine here

Very well preserved and even has the historic drilling equipment in here too

You can go all the way through and walk back the same way …but you can also go through to the end and climb about 20 ladders to get out up the top of the hill!

Highly recommend this tourist attraction ????????

In the car and start our journey back to Katoomba

We spot two Monitor Lizards, two deer and too many sheep, cows and horses to count

Have a little stop at Lithgow’s KFC for some lunch

Of course, as we have our break, the thunderstorm has broken too – get soaked on our way back to the car and the last hour ride is some incredible rainfall

But then also stops as quickly as it started – summer Down Under is something else!

Dave drives us down the Blue Mountains which have some hefty, tight turns

Fog sets in just as we enter Katoomba too

Finally, we make it to Scenic World – about 45 minutes late for our booked entry but they’re kind enough to let us in anyways

It’s pouring with rain and visibility is poor but we go to the yellow route first, or Skyway

This is a horizontal cable car that takes you either side of the Jamison Valley

Reaching the other side, we see there’s a little walking route where you can reach Echo Point and get a view of The Three Sisters

The Three Sisters are an eroded landmark of three pillars together – unfortunately, we could only see from the viewpoint what they would have looked like as the fog was extreme

Anyhoo! Back our walk – and we’re sodden by now ???? – takes us about 30 mins and we get the Scenic Skywalk back and onto the next attraction of Scenic World: the steepest railway in the world – Scenic Railway

It’s decent is 52° vertical!

This takes you down to the floor of the valley where you’d be able to do walks around for most of the day but the weather made this quite a challenge

Wonder round their new exhibition of Dinosaur Valley to reach Scenic Cableway – makes a nice little circle of our route round the park

Note: you don’t have to buy a ticket to go around the valley – this is just to use their attractions/rides, you should be able to get to each area yourself by a car if you tried hard enough!

This cable car takes us straight past another clear landmark: Orphan Rock (such a sad name!)

Head out to the carpark to get out some our wet clothes before getting on the road

Little stop at Macca’s to do a proper change and then driving for another couple hours keeping an eye out for koalas crossing the roads

We make it to Wollongong – this is just South of Sydney and is on the coast

Get to our motel, Flinders, to check in and freshen up before getting out some dinner

Dave spots a heron in the carpark as well as flocks of giant bats that seem to be heading to the trees just behind our motel!

The cloud is also confused by the weather as you can partially see the sun setting one way and dark dinginess another way

Down the road and through this little town’s mall and get caught in another little rainfall

Kneading Ruby is warm and welcoming – rammed and full of life, we sit briefly at the bar waiting for our table

We’re seated and get to ordering!

Pork Sausage pizza and a Margarita as well as a tirimasu to share ????

Wonder back and hopefully we can get a decent night’s sleep tonight!