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Perched at roughly a thousand metres above sea level on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, Katoomba is the principal town of the Blue Mountains and the point from which most visitors first encounter one of New South Wales's most dramatic landscapes. The sandstone escarpments, eucalypt forests, and deep river valleys that surround it are not backdrop but the whole point, and the town has organised itself accordingly for well over a century, ever since the railway from Sydney made the mountains accessible to day-trippers and weekend escapees in the late nineteenth century.

The view from Echo Point, a short walk from the town centre, is the one that defines the Blue Mountains in the popular imagination: the three sandstone columns known as the Three Sisters rising from the Jamison Valley, with the forested plateau stretching south and west to the horizon. The geology here is ancient, the rock formations carved by millions of years of erosion, and the blue haze that gives the range its name is real, produced by fine droplets of eucalyptus oil dispersed into the air by the surrounding forest. It is a phenomenon specific to this part of Australia and one that no photograph quite captures accurately.