Lure of lofty Leura

A WILD colonial adventure distracts Jeanti St Clair from her bushwalking endeavours on a weekend away to the villages of Leura and Katoomba in NSW's Blue Mountains.

Glorious setting ... Peppers Fairmont Resort is a handy and pcituresque base from which to explore the Blue Mountains.

THE sun's rays shimmer across the car bonnet. It is only 8am and the day is unseasonably hot.

Escaping Sydney's burst of heat to the elevated and cooler climes of the village of Leura and its neighbour Katoomba in the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains seems a smart move.

I had promised our hosts at Peppers Fairmont Resort to give the Leura Golf Course, a challenging par 69, a look over on this quick skip to the Blue Mountains. So it seemed sensible to give my 'golf-virgin' travel buddy a lesson in how to hit a golf ball. Not that I could claim any expertise. It had been years since I had swung a golf club.

Yet the idea of a Sunday morning round of golf on a course with magnificent views across the Jamison Valley did appeal, especially since I would be driving an electric buggy like a movie studio executive.

We duck into a nearby driving range to teach the golf virgin a thing or two. One $10 bucket of balls later, she is hitting the balls better than I am and she declares a "new enthusiasm for golf".

Leura and Katoomba are less than two hours from central Sydney making these Blue Mountains villages ideal for weekend getaways.

You can leave the car in town and take the train from Sydney. CityRail offers a Blue Mountains ExplorerLink travel package that includes return CityRail travel and a ticket on one of the two shuttle bus services.

The shuttle services let you jump on and off at all the main tourist locations in Katoomba and Leura. It is a handy way to see all the main lookout points and to get to the Three Sisters, many of the main hotels and resorts, and to Scenic World, home of the famous Scenic Skyway and Scenic Railway.

But the Golf Virgin and I decide to drive up via the less-than-scenic Great Western Highway, which snakes its way up the dreary lower Blue Mountains. A roadside sign leads us briefly to one of the many weekend markets that operate in school and churchyards. I am hoping to add to my stash of homemade marmalades but alas nothing – although the $3 punnets of fresh strawberries look delicious and the covers band is cooking up a storm with an old Janis Joplin tune.

Our plan for this weekend in the mountains includes some bushwalking around the famed Three Sisters and into the Jamison Valley after our Sunday round of golf (but how plans can unravel).

After a quick lunch of dips and bread, including a delicious beetroot relish, at Katoomba's art deco Café Niagara, we head down to the busy lookout at Echo Point to survey the Blue Mountains most famous natural attraction, the Three Sisters.

According to the Aboriginal Dreamtime legend, three beautiful sisters of the Katoomba tribe fell in love with three brothers from the neighbouring Nepean tribe. But alas, it was a forbidden love so the brothers decided to kidnap the three sisters. To protect the girls, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe turned the sisters to stone. But when the witchdoctor was killed in the raid, the sisters were trapped in their stony form and are now forever condemned to live beneath the gaze of thousands of tourists.

Perhaps it is the sheer number of these tourists at Echo Point that drive us indoors to sip a cooling ale at the adjacent Three Sisters Plaza and – I'm sorry – but I am distracted by the chance to play dress-ups at Old Time Colonial Photos. The Golf Virgin is easily persuaded by the silliness of squeezing into corsets, garters and feather boas for a novelty sepia-toned photograph of us as a couple of bar girls from the Wild West. Yes, we are amused.

By the time we change back into our blue jeans, the dusty crimson fingers of the setting sun are dancing across the back of Jamison Valley and it is time to check into our digs for the night.

Peppers Fairmont Resort on the outskirts of Leura is a short five minute drive from Echo Point but it feels as though it is a world away. Wedged between the blue-green edge of Jamison Valley and the front and back nine holes of Leura Golf Course, the Fairmont's strong point is its beautiful setting. All the resort's 210 rooms have valley or garden views.

There is no shortage of 'things to do' around the resort with tennis and squash courts, gym, pool and the complex's spa and hydro facilities. Fairmont guests have complimentary use of mountain bikes. There are numerous bushwalks nearby to stretch your legs on. A kids club runs during school holidays.

Despite a major refurbishment of its rooms and suites in 2004, the Fairmont's corridors seem a little worn around the edges. Yet our deluxe room is spacious with an enormous bed and equally enormous pillows. The small extras – such as the fluffy white bathrobes and complimentary bottle of wine – are welcome after our afternoon as wild colonial girls. We sit back and contentedly sipped our pre-dinner vino while watching the sun set across the valley.

We slip downstairs to dinner at the resort's a la carte restaurant. Eucalypt, which won Best Regional Restaurant at the Australian Hotel Awards this year, only opened its doors in 2005 and a welcome addition it is to the culinary life of the mountains. Its head chef, Frenchman Ludo Poyer, comes with a European pedigree and has worked with Michelin chefs, including Gordon Ramsay and Emille Young.

I am too enthralled by my trio of entrees to notice how the Peking duck spring roll with a Java peppercorn sauce is faring with the golf virgin. A melt-in-the-mouth leg confit is the star attraction on the 'assiette of white rabbit' trio of entrees, partnered with a petit and nutty rabbit rack in tempura and a rabbit roulade.

For main course, the roast Atlantic salmon comes topped with a crisp skin and braised baby cos. Pearl-sized droplets of varicoloured vegetables grace a delicious beetroot and hazelnut sauce.

We also select Poyer's signature dish of oven roasted venison rack. The venison's wild flavour is matched well by an unusual 'ravioli' of richly flavoured slices of celeriac and Jerusalem artichoke purée, and the slight bitterness of a Brussels Sprout salad.

It seems disrespectful not to squeeze dessert into our full bellies after such a suite of flavours – and so follows an orange and ginger crème brulee, and a mango roulade. All good preparation for our morning jaunt on the golf course and planned bushwalk.

However, our bushwalking plans turn to dust as hot gusty winds blow through the mountains. South-west of Sydney, these winds are fanning the first bushfires of the season. These winds also make our trip around the back nine of Leura golf course quite a hilarious venture involving an out-of-control golf cart, six lost golf balls and a dive-bombing magpie that takes serious umbrage to my baseball cap.

We skip an offer to quench our thirst at the Clubhouse, which retains its 'retro RSL' feel, for the rustic Mod Oz atmosphere of the Leura Gourmet Café & Deli in Leura Mall. Just enough time for a café latte before heading back to the Big Smoke.

The writer was a guest of Peppers Fairmont Resort and Leura Golf Course.