It's Not a Vacation Without a Trip to a Botanic Garden

Not long after we moved into our new place, my parents came to visit. We had a good time taking them around Australia. I don’t have a lot of pictures because we did a lot of the same things that we’ve done with our other guests. How many pictures of the Opera House does one girl need, anyway? But I did take them on a drive through the Blue Mountains, where we stopped by the Mt Tomah botanic garden, which I had not seen before.

Mt Tomah is part of the Royal Botanical Garden in Sydney, but I actually liked it a lot better than the one in Sydney. Although it’s smaller, it was designed really well, with a lot of really nice views and interesting features when you turned the corner. I think it was as nice as the Botanic Garden we visited in Hobart, which was my favorite in Australia so far.

Mt Tomah and the Blue Mountains

I'm not sure what Dad is doing here.

The Botanic Garden had a lot of interesting plants from other countries as well. I liked how the garden had arranged many textures and colors together to highlight the differences in the plants.

I think these are Australian natives but I'm not sure

How often do you see a black plant?  These are from South Africa.

A South American plant

One of the coolest things in the garden was the carnivorous plant collection. I’ve seen some of these plants in greenhouses before, but here they were arranged in a bog garden, like how they grow in the wild. I didn’t get to see them eat anything, though.

Pitcher plants -- the Femme Fatale of the plant world

Venus flytraps.  Terrifying if you're 5 mm in size.

The Mt Tomah garden was an impromptu stop on a trip between the Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley, and it was a fortuitous stop. The rest of the drive went up along the Wollemi National Park, which really wasn’t very interesting. Eucalyptus forest starts to look all the same after a while, and once we left the Blue Mountains, there weren’t any good views. I doubt we’ll go back to Mt Tomah, because it’s out of the way, but I’m really glad I got the chance to check it out.