Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Cliffs, valleys and a mountain town.
An introduction to Katoomba and the Jamison Valley below it, where Scenic World’s rides run between the cliff top and the rainforest.
On this page
Read the valley from the cliff
Katoomba sits on the edge of the escarpment about 100 km west of Sydney. Below it, the Jamison Valley falls away to rainforest, with Katoomba Falls, Orphan Rock and the Three Sisters in view.
A guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice how a railway follows a seam, how a cable crosses a gorge, or how a boardwalk keeps feet off the forest floor.
Rails, cables and boardwalks
The Scenic Railway climbs at up to 52 degrees on its steepest section. The Skyway hangs about 270 metres above the ground, and the Cableway drops some 200 metres to the valley floor.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was built and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who laid a track or strung a cable, or the conditions in which they worked.
A Scenic World chapter
Scenic World shows a particular side of the Blue Mountains: a working mine of the 1880s, turned into a way for visitors to reach the valley floor and see it from above.
Look at the meeting of the two: machinery from an industrial past and a landscape now protected as World Heritage.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with Scenic World’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who run them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
