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The Blue Mountains- Australia

By Cheryl
As Mike mentioned in his post, connecting with friends was the main reason we visited Australia.  We were able to split up our few days in Sydney with a weekend visit to their family's country home in the Blue Mountains.  Two hours by car away from Sydney, these majestic mountains are an outdoor enthusiast's dream.

In the Southern Hemisphere again together....over a decade later


For us, it was simply a great place to reconnect with friends, enjoy beautiful scenery and eat good food.

What a view!

The kids had fun comparing accents

Our friends' place had the most amazing gardens - truly amazing.

A gardener's dream come true - decades of work

The kids' highlights were: 1)playing with other kids and 2) feeding the wild king parrots.

These colorful birds visited daily

Couldn't feed the cockatoos but they were fun to watch


Blue Mountain panorama

We went for a lovely cliff top walk and marvelled at the steep drop offs!  Apparently,  the Blue Mountains are very popular for canyoneering.

Blue Mountains...named for the blueish hue caused by eucalyptus oil


Like most foreigners traveling to Australia, seeing a wild kangaroo was high on our bucketlist.  I was lucky enough to see plenty of them when I visited Australia in 2005 and was excited for the rest of the family to see these animals up close.  We knew our chances were slimmer in the Sydney region as compared to other areas in the country but the Blue Mountains are home to many kangaroos and we were hoping to get lucky.  Unfortunately, despite driving on a bit of a detour back to Sydney, these jumping marsupials did not come out to show themselves to us.  We had hoped to visit the zoo to at least see them in captivity but due to poor air quality resulting from the bush fires and daytime highs of 37 degrees, we didn't make it to the zoo either...


The only kangaroo we saw in Australia!


Comments

  1. EvaNovember 18, 2019 at 6:11 AM

    Great family pics! Glad you enjoyed your short time in Oz.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CherylNovember 19, 2019 at 12:37 AM

      Short but sweet. Eve says hi!!

      Delete
    2. UnknownNovember 19, 2019 at 1:36 AM

      Hi Eva, it was a pleasure having this beautiful family over and have a memorable time. Their visit was too short!

      Delete
    3. EvaNovember 20, 2019 at 8:17 AM

      Hi Eve! Hope all is well! Although the visit was short, looks like you guys enjoyed some great quality time together. All the best, Eva.

      Delete

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