Hey everyone, and welcome to World Heritage Journey.
Today, we're at the Greater Blue Mountains Area, near Sydney, Australia.
So this World Heritage Site is absolutely enormous, over a million hectares in size,
and it's another of Australia's fantastic natural wonders.
As you might know, the continent of Australia separated from the rest of the world
several hundred million years ago, and that means that the plants and animals here are completely
unique.
And this area is a really fantastic example of those.
There's a huge concentration here, and I'm really excited to go exploring.
But you might be looking at the scenery behind me thinking - where are the Mountains?
And why are they called the -Blue- Mountains?
Well, keep watching and we'll find out.
Let's go!
The colossal Greater Blue Mountains area consists of 8 separate national parks in a large area
to the west of Sydney.
They're actually part of a much larger chain of mountains known as the Great Dividing Range,
which runs basically along the entire eastern coast of Australia.
Because a huge area of the World Heritage siteis remote and mostly inaccessible, we
decided to focus our visit on the most famous area: Blue Mountains National Park, centred
around the town of Katoomba.
Although the word "mountains" usually conjures up images of craggy peaks crowned with snow,
Australian mountains are quite a bit more modest.
Rather than "mountains", the area is really a sandstone plateau, about 1100 metres elevation
with long deep gorges and valleys, carved out by rivers and creeks.
It does make for a spectacular sight: the glowing golden sandstone ringed with trees,
the rugged terrain below every lookout, and waterfalls cascading over cliffs.
One of the best-known features is the Three Sisters, a sandstone outcrop right near Katoomba.
Erosion has created three distinct peaks in the sandstone, resembling three figures standing
next to each other.
Not far away is the incredible Wentworth Falls, where a small creek cascades several hundred
metres over the escarpment.
You can even stand out in the stream and watch the water from behind as it disappears into
the valley, which is quite an unusual sight!
The National Park area here is a great example of uniquely Australian flora and fauna.
As usual, we didn't have much luck spotting animals beyond birds and roadkill, but we
did manage to get a fantastic look at heaps of different plants.
As I mentioned, Australian native plants are unlike anywhere else in the world, and getting
amongst them is always a real treat.
Banksia, wattle, stringybark, and of course hundreds of species of eucalypts, or gum trees.
These are what give the area its name: the oils released by eucalypts give the mountains
a blue-ish tinge when seen from a distance.
Elsewhere in the National Park is one of Australia's rarest trees, the Wollemi Pine.
Originally, it was known only from 200 million year old fossils, and it was thought to be
extinct until a small grove of trees was discovered in a remote area of the World Heritage site.
Ironically, although the Wollemi Pine is still critically endangered in the wild, it can
actually be found in gardens and suburban backyards across Australia thanks to a successful
cloning program.
The area is very popular with hikers and day-trippers from Sydney, and we've been hiking in various
parts of the Mountains many times over the years.
However, the Blue Mountains suffered terribly during the bushfire season of 2019/2020.
While choking smoke suffocated Sydney, it's estimated that over 60% of the Greater Blue
Mountains area was burned, including most of Wollemi, Yengo, and Kanangra-Boyd National Parks.
Evidence of the fires is everywhere in the park, sadly.
But hope springs eternal - eucalypts use the fire to spread and regenerate, and we saw
green shoots emerging from the ash in many places.
But that's it from us, thank you so much for watching.
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We'll see you next time.