Focus of the day was exploration of Australian nature, so we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park (http://www.featherdale.com.au/) and the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountain National Park (http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/parkHome.aspx?id=N0004), near Katoomba.
The wildlife park had almost all the animals one associates with Australia -- koalas, kangaroos, echidna, wombats, dingos, lots of interesting birds, including emus and cassowaries.
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| up close and personal with a koala |
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| Yoda model? |
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| Echidna on the move |
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| more koala |
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| and the Tasmanian Devil |
We kept on going to the Blue Mountain National Park that contains the rock formation the Three Sisters -- the myth involves three sisters being turned to rock to protect them from the usual evil. Beautiful landscape, and the accompanying World Heritage site set-up is using some cool technology to bring home the beauty of the landscape in very impressive ways, including a great use of one of the big Microsoft tablet tables.
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| large screens displaying pictures |
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| Microsoft table with interactive maps |
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| the Three Sisters |
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| steepest train in the world before take off |
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| fern trees |
Next to the Three Sisters used to be a coal mine, and my hunch is that the tourist attraction of the steepest train in the world came out of the mine running dry-- but we did take this train and had the opportunity to walk through some rain forest at the bottom of the gorge, with very cool fern trees. I could hear some strange sounding birds and bugs, so it felt very much like a different world.
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