Day 4 in Sydney: Featherdale Wildlife Reserve, Blue Mountains, Olympic Park, River Tour

We had a HUGE day today! We had booked a trip with a company called Australia Activity Tours before we came and were picked up early this morning for a full 12 hours of fun! Our tour guide's name was Mark, and he was very knowledgeable about everything we did today and has had a lot of different experiences in his life. He drove us around all day, telling us about random things along the way, and he also did a few extra things that weren't originally on the tour itinerary.

Our awesome shuttle bus!

Heading across the bridge to the Blue Mountains!

 The first place we stopped at was the Featherdale Wildlife Reserve. You all probably know by now that I am pretty much obsessed with any type of animal experience, rather under the water or on land. I have always been fascinated by God's creatures and never get tired of those up close encounters! I was really excited about this part of our tour today because we got to feed kangaroos and pet koalas! It was so neat to see these animals like that!

This little guy greeted us as we got off of the bus! A 10 month old Wallaby! So cute!

We bought a few kangaroo cones to get the little kangas to come up to us. You know how any animal is, if you don't have food then there is no reason to come near you or to let you pet them!  

This was a little baby one!

Kanga cones!

They just couldn't get enough of these things!

Obviously they knew where the source of the food was!

I will work at a zoo sometime in my life! I LOVED this! So cute! 

WOMBAT! Doesn't he just look like he just wants to take a little snuggle with you??!? lol... just kidding, these guys were in cages because apparently they bite!

Large crew here :0) 

My favorite part, even though this one was asleep haha! They are so soft and super cute!

She looks like a little stuffed koala bear!

This little momma had a baby kanga in her pouch! 

Wallabies

Penguins!

Albino Kangaroo

"The Dingo ate my baby!!"

Quokko

More Koalas!

Our complimentary koala souvenir! 

This peace sign is just for Patrice because we know how much she loves them. :0) 

Little city we passed through... and look what is sitting on the porch in the building on the left... two LABRADOODLES!!!!!!!!! Yes, Australian labradoodles!!! ahhhhhhhh!!!! They were so cute, one black and one white!!!

Mark then took us to do a little bit of hiking to the Leura Cascades. He took us to the bottom of the cascades and to a few lookout points of Blue Mountains. The waterfalls here aren't extremely huge, definitely nothing like we saw in Yosemite last summer, but they are pretty in their own way. It doesn't rain a lot here in Australia, therefore the waterfalls aren't going to be gushing. It has rained more recently however than normal, so they were pretty full today according to Mark.

Love the light here. :0)

Leura Cascasdes :0)

 We then drove to the town of Katoomba and had lunch. There were tons of little cafes and shops all down this street, so Jacob and I chose to eat here at the Common Grounds Cafe. It was a cute little shop  with super nice people, with an obvious spiritual attitude to them and even a little bit of a "hippie/quaker" look if you can imagine that. We had a really nice meal, I love my cheese and tomato melt and salad. They were both super flavorful and fresh.

After lunch we drove to Scenic World, which is basically a touristy setup to show you the blue mountain area and Katoomba falls. We took a cable car across to get to Scenic World, then the Scenic car down and the science railway up. This was the steepest railway in the world, you pretty much felt like you were looking straight down at some points.

Katoomba Falls

Termite Mounds - Apparently termites hollow out the branches that the aboriginals used for didgeridoos! I guess I always thought they hollowed them out themselves, but this is the natural way I suppose! 

They used to mine coal from these mountains years ago and would use the railway to take the coal up to the top of the mountains.

Three sisters rock formation in the background.

Railway going up.

Yep, I dare say I agree with that statement!

So let me explain the next picture... The three sisters rock formation has an aboriginal story behind it. Basically, the three sisters fell in love with men from another tribe but it was against their spiritual beliefs to marry outside of your tribe. The sisters decided one night to get up and leave their tribe to run away with the men they loved but their father saw them leaving in a dream. He woke up and was so disgusted with their spiritual abandonment that he pointed a magic bone at them and froze them for all eternity as the three sisters rock formation. Of course, this means that of course they had to put naked sculptures representing the whole story in front of Scenic World. I guess the aboriginals didn't wear clothes, which I highly doubt because it is cold here right now! We were a little shocked to say the least!

Mark then drove us to the Flat Rock look out point to get a different view of Blue Mountains and it was extremely windy today! Flat Rock is a huge outcrop of sandstone, which is what the majority of Australia is made of. Scientists would say that Australia used to be under water some "millions" of years ago (I would just say during Noah's flood, so I guess I'm not a true scientist) because sandstone is a sediment rock, which is formed from sediments being compacted and cemented together by water acting as a glue. I know y'all are loving the science, it's just everywhere!! NOW YOU KNOW!!!

And yes, those are cars that apparently drove off the cliff at one point in time or another!

 Our next stop was the Olympic Park, where Mark drove us around to look at the different stadiums. They were all very cool to look at!

Poles with lists of volunteers who helped put on the 2000 Sydney Olympics. 

Train Station 

This is where the flame was lit for the games.

After the Olympic park we then took a river boat ride down to Circular Quay where Jacob and I ate some dinner at a cute chocolate restaurant and then went to the hotel!! It has been a busy but awesome day!!

Dessert! Iced coffee and a cupcake!

Subway :0)

Gangsta'

Walk back to the hotel. :0)

This is written all over the street crossings so people look the right way and don't get hit by a car turning!

Hope you enjoyed the day! Tomorrow should be a little shorter as we are planning on taking it easy and then going to the opera to celebrate our 5th anniversary! Thanks for taking a look! :0)