You haven’t truly been to the Blue Mountains unless you’ve viewed the spectacular landscape sights from a cable car at Scenic World. Or ridden in Scenic World’s steep rainforest railway; descending from the top of a rocky mountainside down a slow drop to the bottom of thick lush rainforest.
The Blue Mountains are a short two-hour drive from the city of Sydney, and well worth the day trip. Famous for the rock formations known as The Three Sisters, the Blue Mountains are also a great place to go for fresh air, relaxation, and especially winter festivals. The arty, crafty villages will charm your thermal socks off, and are all close to each other atop the mountain area making a village-hopping drive-by very easy.
You’ll find Scenic World well signposted with lots of parking. Scenic World is mainly a divine walking track looping through forest with a ‘choose your own adventure’ option on which path you take. Everyone will start off at the check-in. Take the steep railway to the bottom of the rainforest, and then pick a path to walk around the lush raised walking tracks through tall trees and flowing creeks. There’s a cable car to take from one side of the rocks, over the rainforest to the other, in super close view of the tumbling waterfall and three sisters.
The best way to experience Scenic World is with a guided tour. My tour guide was Murray, who grew up in the Blue Mountains, and whose grandfather was an original Scenic World railway engineer driver. Murray tells interesting stories of the land’s history of the great coal mining days, points out the tools & machinery left behind so camouflaged I wouldn’t spot it, and describe interesting facts about the fauna and flora which you will walk through. A tour guide is also brilliant because instead of iphone-googling for answers to all your hundreds of questions that pop to mind like ‘how can you tell how many billion years old that dicksonia Antarctica fern really is?’ Murray will tell you – count the rings. Murray even holds the talk on Carnivorous plants. Kids love it. I’ve seen Little Shop of Horrors - think I would too!