Blue Mountains
The Three Sisters
Did you know The Three Sisters are 922, 918 & 906 metres tall, respectively. That's over 3000 feet above sea level!
The Legend:
The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, "Meehni", "Wimlah" and Gunnedoo" lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.
These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry.
The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle.
As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.
It is an area of breathtaking views, rugged tablelands, sheer cliffs, deep, inaccessible valleys and swamps teeming with life. The unique plants and animals that live in this outstanding natural place relate an extraordinary story of Australia's antiquity, its diversity of life and its superlative beauty. This is the story of the evolution of Australia's unique eucalypt vegetation and its associated communities, plants and animals.
The Greater Blue Mountains Area consists of 1.03 million hectares of mostly forested landscape on a sandstone plateau 60 to 180 kilometres inland from central Sydney, New South Wales. The property includes vast expanses of wilderness and is equivalent in area to almost one third of Belgium, or twice the size of Brunei.
The property, which includes eight protected areas in two blocks separated by a transportation and urban development corridor, is made up of seven outstanding national parks as well as the famous Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve. These are the Blue Mountains, Wollemi, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks.
The area does not contain mountains in the conventional sense but is described as a deeply incised sandstone plateau rising from less than 100 metres above sea level to 1 300 metres at the highest point. There are basalt outcrops on the higher ridges. This plateau is thought to have enabled the survival of a rich diversity of plant and animal life by providing a refuge from climatic changes during recent geological history. It is particularly noted for its wide and balanced representation of eucalypt habitats from wet and dry sclerophyll, mallee heathlands, as well as localised swamps, wetlands, and grassland. Ninety-one species of eucalypts (thirteen percent of the global total) occur in the Greater Blue Mountains Area. Twelve of these are believed to occur only in the Sydney sandstone region.
The property has been described as a natural laboratory for studying the evolution of the eucalypts. The largest area of high diversity of eucalypts on the continent is located in south-east Australia. The Greater Blue Mountains Area includes much of this eucalypt diversity.
As well as supporting such a significant proportion of the world's eucalypt species, the property provides examples of the range of structural adaptations of the eucalypts to Australian environments. These vary from tall forests at the margins of rainforest in the deep valleys, through open forests and woodlands, to shrublands of stunted mallees on the exposed tablelands.
In addition to its outstanding eucalypts, the Greater Blue Mountains Area also contains ancient, relict species of global significance. The most famous of these is the recently-discovered Wollemi pine, a "living fossil" dating back to the age of the dinosaurs. Thought to have been extinct for millions of years, the few surviving trees of this ancient species are known only from three small populations located in remote, inaccessible gorges within the nominated property. The Wollemi pine is one of the World's rarest species.
More than 400 different kinds of animals live within the rugged gorges and tablelands of the Greater Blue Mountains Area. These include threatened or rare species of conservation significance, such as the spotted-tailed quoll, the koala, the yellow-bellied glider and the long-nosed potoroo as well as rare reptiles including the green & golden bell frog and the Blue Mountains water skink.
