Actually, our first stop today was a little way out of Katoomba, but we’re still in the Blue Mountains, never fear!

Our first stop was a place called Govett’s Leap (not named because Govett jumped off it – William Romaine Govett was a surveyor), and the Bridal Veil Falls.  First up, a pic of all four of us at the lookout:

It was quite windy and cold up there – I was very glad for my long pants and jumper.  Now have some of the view:

And some of Dad’s reaction (profanity ahead!):

 

I also took a video, in an attempt to translate the sheer scale of it:

 

A bit of a zoom into part of the view, and you can see some more of the blue haze that gives the mountains their name:

There was a walking track leading off from the lookout, and we took off down it.  After a few minutes, we came upon a little side-track, obviously not official, just leading a few feet to a stunning (if slightly terrifying) view off the bare cliff-edge.

Dad went to check it out first (because his life insurance is worth more than ours):

The drop made your legs and stomach feel funny when you approached the edge:

It’s not a coincidence that everyone in the photo here is leaning back (and I’m behind them):

But the view was stunning:

Remember that wind I mentioned?  Once we got below the tree line, we were much more sheltered, and even started to get a little warm.  But we could still hear the wind above us, and see the trees shaking:

 

Pretty crazy, huh?

I took a nice pic of Mum and Dad as they walked ahead of me and Jonno:

Some of the plants were flowering:

As we were walking down into the valley, we stumbled across a giant, abandoned anthill.  I took a photo with Dad, for scale:

I also took a picture of the mountainside in front of us – a wall of green with pale eucalyptus trees streaking through it:

Mum and Jonno hurried on ahead, but Dad and I lingered, listening to the birdsong and hoping we could spot one:

 

Our patience was eventually rewarded when we saw a New Holland Honeyeater feeding:

 

Moving on, we passed this little rock overhang:

Okay, overhangs aren’t exactly unusual, but this one was so flat and thin it caught my eye.  Like a frisbee balancing on a ledge.

Some of the cliffs looked ‘hairy’ with vegetation:

When I zoomed in one this one, I found a stair from another walk that descends to the valley floor:

The view, from a slightly different perspective:

At this point, we’d reached the source of the Bridal Veil Falls:

Yeah, the stream just…goes off the cliff.  I know that’s what a waterfall is – water that goes over a drop – but it was somehow strange to see, all the same.  I took some video for the sound of the waterfall (and the wind – you couldn’t escape the sound of the wind):

 

I also took a picture of a tiny trickle that fed into the stream:

Then we turned back, for the much-harder trek back up the mountain.  We spotted a Grey Shrike-Thrush on the way:

 

Looking at the mountainside, I was struck by the unusual formations of the rocks and cliffs:

The colour is quite striking as well.

It was a hot, tiring walk back to the lookout – I took off my jumper on the way, then put it on again as soon as we went back into the wind.

I was listening for birdsong in this one:

 

As you can see, Jonno decided to help out.

For some actual birdsong:

 

This is looking back towards the Bridal Veil Falls:

You can see how it got its name – it’s really just a very thin sheet of water, looking almost like lace.

There were some picnic/barbeque areas around the lookout, but they had to be sheltered from the wind, like so:

They reminded me of kilns or ovens more than anything, but they did provide good shelter from the ever-present wind.  Then it was off to Evans Lookout, for some more spectacular views:

In the first picture, you can see the glimmer of a river winding through the valley, so I zoomed in a little:

There was a small family of magpies hopping around, and I got a picture of one of the adults in a tree, looking deeply disapproving of something:

‘Damn humans on my lawn.’

Jonno and I also spotted an Eastern Spinebill, but I didn’t manage to get any kind of good video of it – you basically have to pause this as soon as it starts to get a glimpse of it:

 

Mum, walking down to another part of the lookout:

See the tree bending in the wind?

Looking directly down from this lookout, we spotted some raised, jagged ridges of rock:

But I know you guys are really here for the view:

The other side was just more of the valley we saw from the first lookout, so I’m being courteous to your bandwidth by not including redundant pictures (at least, not this time).  Instead have a video of a cloud’s shadow travelling across the land:

 

Then we turned back for the cottage, but we took the scenic route, pulling over other lookouts along the way – the first being Cahill’s Lookout.  Not quite sure how to pronounce that, but if we thought we’d experienced wind before, we were wrong!

First up, the Boar’s Head lookout:

A little zoom on the rock that gave the place its name:

At least, we’re assuming that’s where the name came from.  Though I suppose someone could have found a boar’s head up here, for all we know.

The trees were also pretty wild, with a lot of dead in twisted shapes, presumably sculpted by the wind:

There was also a little path to another lookout:

This one was actually a little worrying, because the wind was so strong you half-expected to be blown over the fence at any moment!  I kept getting a funny feeling in my stomach whenever I let go of the railing to take a picture, because this is what the wind was like:

 

Yes, that’s my family, actually leaning back onto the wind and letting it support their weight.  You can imagine how freaky it was.  But now, the view:

A close-up of that bit of rock just sticking out, like a knife’s edge:

The rather dizzying look down:

Dad at the Boar’s Head lookout, across from me (well, me and Jonno, but I was the one taking the picture):

A strange little column of rock jutting up from the cliff, close to the walkway:

Another lookout, which was really just a cleared parking space off the road:

We had to stand on top of some little barrier posts to get a really good view.  Jonno demonstrates:

No defence!

Then we went to the most famous of Katoomba’s attractions – Echo Point and the Three Sisters!

We weren’t the only ones going there, though.  There were a lot of other tourists, all crowding to the edge to take photos.  It was a few minutes before we could get a good view, but I noticed this little sign in the meanwhile:

I have no idea what happened to make them put this sign up, but I bet it was spectacular.

And then, finally, the Three Sisters:

On the second photo, you might notice there seem to be people on one of the Sisters.  We were surprised to discover that there was a walkway down there, as this photo demonstrates:

The walkway itself was littered with metal sculptures of animals:

Mum, petting the silver bluetongue:

There were also a bunch of cicadas:

The walkway itself had a pretty steep drop-off:

Don’t worry – you can glimpse the edge of the stone barrier that was in place in the first photo.  There was no risk of us falling off (and the wind wasn’t quite as wild once you got below the tree line, so you didn’t worry about being snatched into the void).

Jonno noticed that a tree was curved at the bottom, so I took a picture of it:

It’s the really pale one in the background – if you follow it down, you’ll notice it curves right before the usual brown bark comes back.  There was no explanation for it either – it doesn’t seem there was anything special done to make it grow like that, it just decided to be a rebel.

This tree seemed like it was trying desperately to hold onto the cliff even it eroded away beneath them:

And this tree looked like it had been reduced to standing on one leg:

Not sure what this was for:

A barrier to try to stop erosion?  The world’s tiniest dam?

There was a little detour to a place called Spooner’s Lookout, and we went down it out of curiosity.  Prepare for more photos of the Blue Mountains!

Then it was time to walk down to the Sisters, through the helpfully distinct archway:

See that nice, smooth path up there?  After about five feet it turned into this:

Because we hate our legs and want to punish them, we descended.  And it wasn’t that much of a hike, anyway – it was only a few minutes before we came upon this:

Yes, that is a little bridge out to the first Sister, and yes, when the wind picked up it made you feel like you were taking your life into your hands when you crossed it.

Nice view, though:

(Photo courtesy of Jonno – he was running around with a huge fancy camera, so expect more of his shots to come!)

Also, you see those funny shapes up on that cliff?

Those are houses.  Which are presumably ridiculously expensive and probably can’t hang their washing outside for fear of it being blown away.

The side of the cliff:

All this was gawked at from what basically amounted to a notch in the rock – check the unsettlingly-large overhang:

Unsettling because while you’re under it, you can’t stop wondering if it’s going to just tip over and squash you.

Dad and Jonno taking photos and looking very important:

Back up at Echo Point, I was intrigued by a landmark called ‘Ruined Castle’:

It’s not actually a castle, just the eroded remnants of a ridge.  But you can see why they called it that.

There was also a fire-spotter’s tower on a ridge nearby:

It was time for lunch now, so we went back to the Station Road Bar we were at last night, to try some more of their fabulous pizzas!  Except we parked much farther away, basically on the opposite side of town (Mum is usually good with geography, but in this case she somehow thought a landmark was much, much closer to the bar than it actually was), so we checked out the various shops on the way there.  A sign above one of them amused me:

I never knew you had to register to sell milk.

We ordered some pretty crazy pizzas for lunch, with the intention of taking home the leftovers to eat for dinner.  We ordered a gourmet chicken pizza, a gourmet kangaroo pizza, and a saltwater crocodile pizza.  Yes, you read that correctly – we ate saltwater crocodile.  We basically ordered it just to see what it would be like, and we were all surprised by how tasty it was – surprisingly mild.  The kangaroo was very beefy, but also very spicy, so I wimped out and let Jonno have most of it.

We stopped to look at some street art on the way back to the car:

We had a short break in the afternoon – I had a nap.  When I woke up, we all went to a chocolate shop just up the road and had some gorgeous hot chocolate.  They brought us milk, in a fancy cup that had a candle in the bottom, and you dropped in chocolate buttons to melt, so it could just as chocolate-y as you wanted it to be.

Then we went back to Echo Point, because apparently the Three Sisters get lit up at night and we wanted to see some of that.

Of course, when we arrived, it wasn’t dark quite yet:

Getting there, though.  So, we drove a little way up the road, to a place that promised good views of Katoomba Falls:

That little wispy thing is the waterfall – the wind was scattering a lot of the water.  This is how strong it still was:

 

Have a close-up, courtesy of Jonno:

There was a walk nearby, too long for us to do properly, but we decided we’d turn back when it started getting dark.  We spotted a few birds along the way, as well.  Listen to some of them:

 

This a Grey Fantail, enjoyed with Jonno’s scientific commentary:

 

Jonno was watching my attempts to film these little, darting birds, and this is him expressing how hard it is to catch them on camera:

 

Mum spotted a little plant growing on a tree above us:

Another glimpse of the falls:

New fern leaves grow in bronze, and gradually become green.  This one was pretty spectacular:

This is a King Parrot – either a juvenile, or a female:

 

And of course, because I would never deprive you of Jonno’s commentary (seriously, his commentary is the highlight of these videos):

 

Now have a picture, just to round it off:

A jutting cliff, heavy with plants:

Jonno, taking advantage of said cliff to look dramatic:

He’s being Super Photography Man.

And have another look at the falls:

And the Three Sisters, off in the distance:

The wind was so strong, you can actually see the waterfall moving with it:

 

And around here, I spotted a male King Parrot:

All the cliffs around us were gorgeous, with wonderful colours and striping:

This was where we turned back, and on our return journey, we spotted another lyrebird:

 

Kinda hard to see in the dark, but it was still amazing to see.  It’s a very iconic animal, and we saw so many of them.

By the time we reached the entrance to the walk, the sun was already setting:

We back to Echo Point, which was very dark and spooky-looking at this point:

But the Three Sisters were all lit up:

I took some pictures of the still-glowing horizon before we left:

The wind was still going, which made it very chilly, so we all hurried back to the cottage.  We watched a movie and ate our leftover pizza (plus some chocolate we’d bought from the shop for dessert).

The wind stayed pretty much constant throughout the night, sprinkled with a little rain, which made things very cold – fortunately, the cottage beds came with electric blankets, and I was quite grateful to huddle down with mine.  It always feels strangely good to be warm in cold weather – some kind of smug superiority, perhaps?

And so ended the second day in Katoomba.