Our day trip to the Blue Mountains started out with one of my favorite things - the Australian wildlife. Well, not so much "wildlife", as a local zoo, but still. We were greeted as soon as we got off the bus with a game keeper and a baby wallaby. So. Cute.
The wombat is my new favorite animal, he's just a big wobbly fuzzball.
There were a lot of birds there, too. I can't remember what the first one is (an emu?) but the second one is an Ibis. I've always wondered what they look like.
And then came the koalas! Still sleeping, and I still didn't get to hold one.
David absolutely fell in love with the kangaroos. "I told them we'd take this one, and for them to ship it back to Singapore..." he said, "...he's coming on Tuesday." Good to know. Millie will be thrilled.
An albino peacock!
And an albino Wallaroo! He looked like a big giant rat, but because he bounced instead of scuttled, it sort of made up for it.
Next stop was a boomerang lesson, where David won the Best Boomerang Throw of the Day award.
Our next stop was to view The Three Sisters rock formation in the Blue Mountains, where first we were greeted by an aboriginal playing the diggerydoo.
For background, here is the Three Sisters legend:
The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo' lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.
These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry.
The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle.
As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.
(The Three Sisters are the rock formation in the bottom left, in case you were wondering what to look for:)
Nearby was an "artists representation" of the legend. Somehow, my imagination didn't quite picture this:
I mean, the "sisters" look positively gleeful, like they're having a water balloon fight, not facing imminent death. And yes. I'll say it. The nakedness is a bit distracting. Especially the witch doctor to appears to be casting a Spiderman web.
To cleanse your mental palate, there were beautiful parrots stationed nearby.
We headed on a railcar down into the valley...
Where I learned that eucalyptus trees shed their bark every year, like snakes!
Our last stop was to see a pretty waterfall...
...and a view to remind why they were called the "Blue" Mountains.
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And thus ends our whirlwind trip of SE Australia. G'day and good on ya!
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