Katoomba was a quaint little mountain town up about 2hrs inland from Sydney. I didn't realize that Austraila was so flat. But it is. These mountains were just a few thousand feet up, but still very pretty. And Katoomba (sorry no pics) still had the feel of a mountain town up in Colorado or something.

The population was something on the order of 30-40K and, I'll just note, that the only place in town that would let me hook up my laptop was a used bookstore and I still had the cable draping across the aisle w/ my computer sitting on a pile of books. I couldn't belive that anywhere was worse than NZ, but Oz seemed to be, as a town that size in NZ would have been a metropolis... Ok -- enough about that...

We were blessed (in many ways) with Mark (a.k.a "Dow"), who, aside from being a wonderful human being, concertina player, was a professional tour guide. He took us around to some scenic spots, most of which involved large, scenic drop-offs into a deep canyon. Not unlike what you see out in the western deserts in America.

The Sydney and Blue Mountain Irish players had arranged a little get-together sort of like we do in California. It started off at a local hotel-pub and then moved on to one of the local's houses. Die-di-diddle-ty, dum-ta-dee-dididdley.... It was nice to get to hear so many of the Oz folks play in one place.

And if we hadn't had enough Irish music at the house in Jervis Bay, up in Katoomba, well, there was the regular Sunday Session in Sydney to top it all off.

I have to say that Syndey definitely rivals San Francisco in a lot of ways, but mostly in terms of my own personal "if I had to live in a big city" scale. Culturally, climate (when SF isn't foggy) -- just the way the place feels. But definitely more of an "emerald-city" factor. I don't know if that's what the marketing folks came up with, but that's how I think of it.....