Bushwalking in the Blue Mountains
Sydney also. Over dinner the owner told us his daughter was married to an American actor, Tom Cruise's double. He showed us a photograph of his daughter and her husband with Tom Cruise.
"What a fairytale...marrying a Hollywood movie star," I commented. "I bet they hang out with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman a lot, especially since Nicole is Australian too," "Yeah, my daughter is enjoying the lifestyle" he smiled proudly.
Our last day we had the owner cook us a real breakfast, then we took off to do some sightseeing. The Three Sisters, a famous rock formation, was a must see. Legend has it the Three Sisters were actual women who were being pursued by tribal men who wanted to take them by force. A witch doctor turned the women into stone to protect them from the warriors, but then got killed and therefore was unable to turn them back into humans. The rocks are in Jamison Valley, with Eucalyptus as far as you can see. I had never seen a larger area of undeveloped land in my life. It looked unreal, like a painting.
We then walked down the Great Staircase. Nearly 1,000 steps winding back and forth along the wall of the canyon, leading down to the bottom. My legs were shaking by the time we reached the end. A lot of people were on the trail. Most of the trail was stairs, so there wasn't much passing room, which meant people behind tailgated. I wanted to take my time and soak up the scenery, but felt rushed. One young guy came up behind me and said to his friend, "I guess we need to be patient now." And laughed. I stopped, turned around and said, "Go right ahead and pass me." An hour bush walk along the valley floor, during which we heard many different birds. The foliage was dense, but the trail well cleared. At one point, we passed a five hundred-year-old Turpentine tree. Hiking through the Eucalyptus forest was much different to the familiar pine and redwood tree forests in the U.S. And rather than seeing blue jays and robins, the trees were filled with cockatoos, mynah birds and ravens. There are two types of mynah birds in Australia, Australian one and Indian ones. The Indian mynah birds are found in abundance in the city and have become quite a problem, threatening the existence of native
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