Wheelchair-bound holidaymaker John Roberts is putting facilities for disabled travellers to the test on a month-long trip – and you can follow his progress exclusively in Travel Weekly.
Here he tells us about his visit to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.
We placed all our trust in David and his team at Freedom Australia. They were aware that we wanted a trip to the Blue Mountains, but all of the available tours were by coach and not wheelchair friendly. They checked other options, and found that taxis or specialist private tours would be possible, but expensive.
The team knew that the public train from Sydney Central Station to Katoomba was accessible, and that Blue Mountains Trolley Tours ran a wheelchair friendly service from there – and that the overall cost would be reasonable.
We agreed to investigate this further because I wanted to double check. The trolley bus company in Katoomba confirmed by email that the express service has a wheelchair lift, so we decided to give it a try.
The rail station confirmed that the journey time would be two hours and that the train was accessible to wheelchairs, so next morning we got a taxi to Central and bought two return tickets.
Platform staff armed with a ramp boarded me with no problem, but I still had to negotiate a corridor between two carriages. Wth a bit of thought we managed to get the wheelchair into position to enable a transfer to a seat.
We eventually arrived in Katoomba. Lifts took us to street level with no problems. We found the trolley tour office and were directed to the bus, where we met Bill, a great guy. He opened a door to reveal a wheelchair lift. Amazing!
It was so difficult in Sydney, but out here in the mountains, where you might expect a problem, it was simple. In all we had a great day.
We saw the three sisters, then took the trolley to Scenic World to ride its skyway and cableway. The scenic railway was not accessible, but the rainforest boardwalk had easy access and was not steep
We returned happy that we had achieved our goal – it just took a bit of effort and team work. Thanks to David and his team at Freedom Australia, and Bill and the team at Blue Mountains Trolley Tours.
- Catch up with John’s trip on our interactive map:travelweekly.co.uk/travelchallenge