4WD Road Trip through The Blue Mountains, NEW SOUTH WALES
Airing Date: Jun 30th, 2003
If you take a road trip through the Blue Mountains, you expect all the usual attractions - caves, spectacular landscape and small, friendly towns.
On this road journey you get to see all of that, plus more. Here when the road ends there's a ghost town that's entirely owned by just one family.
But before heading to this spooky town, stop off en-route and check out some spooky caves. Over 250,000 people visit Jenolan Caves every year - not only to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big smoke, but also to check out the beauty of the caves area.
Nine of the 360 Jenolan Caves are on show. A guided 90-minute tour will give you a fascinating insight into the cave's history and limestone formations.
Jenolan Caves also offers overnight accommodation at Caves House. Built in the late 1800s, Caves House, still retains its historic influence and prestigious character. The grand dining room offers delicious meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the Chocolate Pavlova at $12 is a house speciality.
Back on the road, you'll be heading through Kanangra Boyd National Park. This is definitely 4WD territory. The winding dirt roads lead through areas of bushlands, and there are no petrol or food stops along the way, so fuel up before you go. After about three hours of driving, you'll reach the road's dead end - Yerranderie.
Yerranderie wasn't always a dead-end ghost town. In its heyday between 1900 and 1914 it was booming silver mining town with 2000 residents, a school, three churches and even a court house.
Strolling around the ghost town you'll wonder how a bustling town turned into the forgotten place it is today. The outbreak of war saw miners leave the area and although there were a number of attempts to re-open the mines after World War II, it all came to an abrupt halt in the 1950s when the Sydney Water Board flooded the Burragorang Valley for the Warragamba Dam which cut off access between Yerranderie and Camden and turned Yerranderie into a ghost town.
After being passed from one company to the next, the town was finally sold to Valerie Lhuede, who today is slowly restoring all the old buildings. She has recently opened overnight accommodation here called Slippery's Place. Once a place for miners to rest, it's now a cosy retreat for those looking for that eerie experience.
The facts
Guided tours of Jenolan Caves start from $22 per person.
Rooms at Caves House in Jenolan start from $95 per person per night and that includes dinner and breakfast.
Jenolan Caves Resort
Tel: 02 6359 3322
Accommodation at Slippery's Place starts from $44 per person per night for a minimum of three people.
Yerranderie Ghost Town
Tel: 02 4659 6165
Kanangra Boyd National Park
