Where to Stay in Blue Mountains, State of New South Wales

What is Blue Mountains known for?

The city occupies the Blue Mountains themselves, riding the Great Dividing Range at the far western fringe of the Greater Sydney area, which is why it reads as mountain country rather than outer suburb. Echo Point leads the list. Katoomba, Lawson, Springwood and Blaxland carry most of the settlement, and the Blue Mountains City Council governs the whole local government area as one city.

What are the main landmarks in Blue Mountains?

Echo Point is the marker. Lookouts do much of the work in a city like this, and the Duke and Duchess of York Lookout carries the other name people ask for. Lilianfels and Leuralla add two more.

St Canice's Catholic Church and the Orphan Rocker complete the short list the city keeps. The Great Dividing Range is the landmark under all of them, since every one of these sits somewhere on the ground the range makes.

What is the history of Blue Mountains?

No single founding date belongs to this city. The City of Blue Mountains is a local government area of New South Wales rather than a town grown from one crossroads, and what it governs is a line of settlements along the Great Dividing Range at the far western fringe of the Greater Sydney area. Four names carry most of it.

Katoomba, Lawson, Springwood and Blaxland grew on their own ground, and the Blue Mountains City Council governs them together as one city. Building followed the view. Echo Point and the Duke and Duchess of York Lookout mark where people stopped to look, and Lilianfels, Leuralla and the Orphan Rocker are among the things that went up in the same country.

St Canice's Catholic Church belongs to the settled side of that story, the part about living on the range rather than looking out from it. The range decided the shape. Settlement followed what the Great Dividing Range allowed, so the city runs as a chain of places rather than a single centre, and the Blue Mountains City Council administers that chain from within New South Wales.

Where is Blue Mountains?

The Great Dividing Range gives the city its ground. The city covers a stretch of that range at the far western fringe of the Greater Sydney area, which puts mountain country and a metropolitan boundary on the same map. Echo Point looks out from it.

Katoomba, Lawson, Springwood and Blaxland spread across that high ground instead of gathering around one centre, which is why New South Wales counts the whole of it as a single local government area.

What is the climate of Blue Mountains?

The Great Dividing Range sets the terms. Height is what separates this city from the Greater Sydney lowlands, and the range Echo Point looks out over also keeps the air here cooler than the country below. This upland still counts as subtropical.

Warmth comes with that, though the mountain setting tempers it, and the seasons read differently in Katoomba than they do at the coastal edge of New South Wales.

How do you get to Blue Mountains?

Most arrivals come up from the Greater Sydney side. The far western fringe of the Greater Sydney area is where the climb onto the Great Dividing Range begins, and the settlements the city gathers are strung along that approach rather than clustered at its end. Katoomba is the usual destination.

Echo Point draws most of the day traffic, while Lawson, Springwood and Blaxland see the ordinary movement of a local government area that people live in as well as visit.