2000/02 Australia trip - Zig Zag and Mt Tomah |
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Saturday January 22nd
We thought we’d give our bodies a rest and drove across the “Causeway”, a narrow piece of plateau that carries road and railway to the northern part of the Blue Mountains.
Our first stop was the Zig Zag Railway, a restoration of an old 1860s line. They built tunnels and viaducts to bring the railway up the cliff onto the plateau,. It was an engineering wonder in its day, built like a big “Z”: on the cliff face, with the trains reversing direction twice.
There were only four of us as passengers, so we had personal treatment. We rode the diesel railcar, stopping to watch the steam engine crossing the viaducts on its way up the cliff. At the other end, they took us on a tour of the engine shed and repair depot and the signalbox, and then we rode back on the steam engine. All very well choreographed.
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Zig - Zag Railway (8.07) |  |
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We were headed for a quiet afternoon at the Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens, but we passed a sign for Mount Wilson, so took a side trip to see what was there. We found the “Cathedral of Ferns”, a forest of giant ferns, some of them tree size. This wasn’t easy to photograph as all you can see is your current personal fern. There were also some waterfalls which we decided to save for later.
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Cathedral of Ferns (0.46) |
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The Tomah Gardens are the cool weather branch of the Sydney gardens we’d visited 5 years ago. The gardens had collections of weird and beautiful plants from all over the world, including a giant redwood from the USA. They had a few specimens of the Wollemi Pine tree, thought to be extinct until someone found a stand in a remote part of the Blue Mountains. The specimens were behind high barbed wire
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Mount Tomah (1.06) |  |
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From Tomah, we followed the road around to Kurrajong where there was supposed to be an opal store. Sure enough there was, and to my relief, it looked to be closed, boarded up, and dead. However, as soon as Sandie got out and looked in the window, out popped the owner from the house next door and opened the shop for us. He had a museum of rough opal, none of which he would sell, but he also had some very nice (5 figures nice!) fire opal. Sandie settled for a similarly coloured stone with some rock matrix surrounding it, which is almost as pretty and much cheaper. She got her money’s worth: it always takes at least an hour of talk to sell Sandie a stone.
On the way back we stopped off to see those waterfalls at Mount Wilson. It was now almost dark, and the trail was supposed to be “easy, a few steps”. Few is a much bigger number in Oz and it was a steep hike down into the canyon. The river ran under a curtain of ferns and it was so dark down there I had to use a flash to take pictures. We’ll have to see the pictures to decide how pretty the falls were! |
Mount Wilson's waterfalls (2.34) |
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We drove back to Blackheath in the dark, and looked around for somewhere for my birthday dinner. About the only place still open was the Ivanhoe pub which had a great menu, but was only serving soup and toasted sandwiches.