A pattern is quickly emerging with my night routine. Feel tired, go to bed at 8pm, wake up wide awake at 3am for 2 hours before falling back to sleep for another 2 hours. Usually, this would wind me up no end, but I find myself making use of my Spotify account in the lounge looking over the Sydney skyline in the dead of night, which is as beautiful as you can imagine. If this is jet lag, it hasn’t been awful. I’ve still been sleeping for over 8 hours a night, despite it being broken. I think the jet lag and the flight time from the UK to Aus is so hyped up to be the absolute worst, but it is just what you make of it. The fight truly did not feel that long, and the way I looked at it, after months of stress and working, it’s quite nice to have some disconnected hours just reading/watching films/drinking/eating. In terms of the jet lag, it’s important to force yourself onto Aus time no matter how tired you are. Then, it’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be.
We woke up early again, and got ready to go on our pre-booked excursion to the Blue Mountains, a must do if you’re in Sydney or it’s surrounding areas. We got picked up shortly before 8am by Steve, our tour guide and a seriously funny dude. We were joined by a group of 15 others, ranging from Americans, Canadians, Australians, Germans. There’s something pretty cool about being thrown together on a little shuttle bus with a group of people from all over the world, all with different stories to tell and outlooks to share.
We all journeyed for about 45 minutes before arriving at Featherdale nature reserve, our first stop on the tour. I was amazed to walk through the entrance to find myself in an open space surrounded by Wallabys hopping around. They were more than happy to be fed and stoked by us, and made great selfie companions.
As if that wasn’t peak excitement, walking through to the next area took us to the Koala bears, who were all just hanging about in the trees, pretty content with life.
Kangaroos roamed around freely, enjoying food and selfies as much as the Wallabys did, bringing us to Ari’s awkward of the day : when a little toddler collides into you in the nature reserve and you shout and jump out of your skin (much to the alarm of the toddler and said toddlers dad) before laughing and exclaiming “oh god, sorry, I thought it was a kangaroo” (Dad then proceeds to scowl and snatch the toddler up off the floor, striding off). Whoops!
The reserve was filled with penguins, wombats, Tasmanian devils, emus, the list goes on. If you’re in the area and you find the idea of a normal zoo problematic, I couldn’t recommend featherdale enough. The animals either roam freely or are in sizeable enclosures, and as far as nature centres go, this is probably as close to the wild you’ll get.
After a couple of hours at the reserve, we continued on our journey up to the blue mountains, stopping at various creeks and lookouts on the way for a good view over the national park - and by god we got some.
After a quick stop for lunch (the best stone fired pizza in a brilliant restaurant called the garage in ...) we continued our drive through the mountains to the infamous 3 sisters look out. Supposedly 3 sisters were turned to stone many moons ago, and people have been trying to resurrect them ever since, astonishingly enough with no luck. Old wives tales aside, it was a pretty good spot.
We then arrived at our main destination - scenic world. By name by nature and all that. We rode a cable car across the Forrest and the valleys below, before riding the steepest railway in the world down to the depths of the rainforest, and hearing back up after a little explore.
The natural beauty of this country truly hits you when you see these places first hand It’s hit me again as I write this flying over to Ayers Rock, and I see nothing but desert for miles and miles from the plane window. This extraordinary country has truly struck the ideal balance, with a beautiful blend of cosmopolitan city life with undisturbed nature at its finest on its doorstep.
On our journey back to the city, we stopped off at a beautiful waterfall, more lookouts, and even the Australian Olympic stadium, which is a pretty impressive piece of architecture, before completing the last part of our journey by ferry through the harbour.
This day was brilliant because we saw and did so much in just a day, and did a lot of bucket list ticking. We were all pretty tired as it was a fairly full on day, so we cooked dinner in the apartment and had a chilled evening over a bottle of wine before retiring to bed.
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