(For more information, see www.scenicworld.com.au )

Scenic World is a multi-faceted attraction built around the Jamison Valley rainforest. As this rainforest dates from the Jurassic era, it's the nearest thing we have to a genuine Jurassic Park. It doesn't have live dinosaurs (or at least I didn't see any), but that's about all it lacks.

For a start, it has the Katoomba Scenic Railway. This is the steepest incline railway in the world. 1476 feet long, with a top to bottom drop of 820 feet. At it steepest, the incline is 52 degrees, equal to a gradient of 1.27 : 1 . To describe this as a remarkable ride is to serve rough justice on the word 'remarkable'. It is, quite literally, like nothing else on Earth. If you want to see what this railway ride looks like, I've taken an excellent photo from the Scenic World souvenir CD. It's such a large photo that I have had to stash it on a separate page, where I have also included the standard Scenic Railway joke. (Sorry about all the nested pages within pages, but it's called 'structure' and without it this site, and my brain, would soon fall apart.)

I loved the sign near the Railway: "Do not leave valuables, infants or cameras on the seat besides you...". I savoured the fine distinction here - valuables or infants - and I couldn't help feeling that the infants would feel entitled to top billing.

At the base of the Scenic Railway is the start of the boardwalk (1.2 miles in total) which leads through the genuine Jurassic rainforest. To walk through this, with the sunlight streaming down through the dense canopy, is an experience that lies beyond words and photographs. Stunning, beautiful, overwhelming... all of this and more.

After the intensely pleasant (and fragrant) stroll through Jurassic Park, I took a ride on the Scenic Skyway, an enclosed horizontal cable car ride offering stunning views over the rest of Scenic World, Katoomba and the Blue Mountains. This was a relatively new Scenic World attraction. It's one that they are very proud of, and they should be. It is very impressively sleek, smooth  and futuristic. It also almost alive, postively purring with gentle electronic whirrings and the deliciously buoyant harmonics of controlled high tension. I remember thinking that it was the next best thing to a magic carpet ride over the Mountains.

Near the entrance to the Visitor Centre I spotted these three young nymphs frolicking in the fountain. These were, of course, the Three Sisters, named after the nearby rock formation at Echo Point. Or the rock formation was named after them... I'm not sure which.

The Visitors Centre was undergoing some re-buiding and expansion work, and the original plan had been to take these three young ladies away for scrap. In the end, wiser heads had prevailed and so the Ladies had been granted a reprieve. However, it has to be said that time and climate had not been kind to these young maidens. Take a look at the lower photo.

Now there's a girl who just isn't using enough moisturiser...

I would like to extend special thanks to Peter Hughes, who at the time of this visit was the Scenic World Promotions & Events Manager. He made both Peter Rodgers and myself feel very welcome, and could not have done more to make our visit wholly enjoyable.

Note to people in similar positions to Peter Hughes: see how much free and favourable publicity Scenic World has obtained, just by taking good care of me? Doesn't this give you some ideas, bearing in mind that well over 200,000 people have read these travel pages?