Big Blues: Heading to the Mountains in Australia

Govetts Leap Lookout in the Blue Mountains. Taras Vyshnya/ Shutterstock

The train wound into a serpentine gully, the small stations feeling increasingly remote and old-fashioned, as if time and distance were interlinked. Leaving Sydney’s busy Central Station just a couple hours ago made this feel like a commuter trip. The silver double-decker train slipped past the gleaming skyscrapers of the Central Business District, which slowly gave way to the suburbs—leafy blocks of single-family homes, often with a busy pub on the corner.

But then it felt like we’d almost reached the clouds. Ridership thinned as the last of the city workers disembarked, leaving just a fortunate few of us to snake higher and higher into the Blue Mountains. While the windows of the carriage mostly faced out onto forest and rock walls, every so often a vista flashed into view. The horizon dropped away to forever, revealing bluish-green ridge lines as far the eye could see.

Arriving in the Mountains

I was just west of Australia’s largest city to spend a few days in the Blue Mountains, a little more than two hours away by train. Covering roughly 4,000 square miles, this collection of sandstone peaks and valleys stretches to a height of more than 3,500 feet—not nearly as high as the Alps or the Rockies, but still a steep climb from Sydney.