Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury River

Sydney was still bursting with visitors after New Year, so Helen (recently arrived from the UK) and I hired a car and headed away from the crowds up to the Blue Mountains. The weather was initially dreadful - heavy rain and a thick layer of crowd hanging over Katoomba - but improved the following day. We spent a lovely morning horseriding in the Megalong Valley, and then did a long and rather strenuous walk in the afternoon along a nearby canyon, following the path of a creek which was fast-flowing and clear after so much heavy rain.

The following day we headed east out of the mountains down to the Hawkesbury area, and stumbled upon a small village called Wiseman's Ferry. We stayed at the Inn there, got chatting to the locals (some of whom were quite eccentric!) and were invited to spend a morning on a boat on the river. We even did some waterskiing, and it turned out that one of our new found friends used to be the Australian bare-foot waterskiing champion... so he was quite good at it.

On the way back to Sydney, we stopped off at Penrith Lakes, the venue for the rowing events at the 2000 Olympics. Obviously we had to take a silly self-timer picture of us on the winners podium!