A self-fulfilling what?!

Meehni, Winlah and Gunnedoo, three sisters from an ancient Aboriginal tribe, feel in love with three brothers from an opposing clan. However, intertribal marriage was forbidden by law, so the brothers were forced to go against tribal rules; they eloped with the sisters. War ensued, until the medicine man of the sisters' tribe decided to turn the sisters to stone, to make sure their precious lives weren't lost in the battle. The sisters' lives were saved, but the medicine man's wasn't, thereby forever capturing the sisters inside their petrified bodies. So goes the legend.

Thus goes the tragic story of the Three Sisters, arguably the most famoust and best known landmark in the Blue Mountains, visited by over three million tourists, each and every year. I saw them Thursday, along with several busloads of camera-wielding Japanese people, and I must say, it's a damn pretty rock formation.

But a rock formation none the less.

Don't get me wrong - I, too, stood there, mouth slightly agape (though, admittedly, more from fatigue than amazement), taking the obligatory pictures. But the thing is, as mentioned, it's a bloody rock formation.

What I'm trying to say is this: A semi-interesting, quasi-mythological backstory does not a world famous landmark make. What, pray tell, makes these three specific rocks more interesting than any of the other rocks throughout this national park.

What makes these random three rocks more alluring than, say, the vertigo-inducing views you catch as you are descending (or, god forbid, ascending!) all 861 leg-breaking, muscle-tearing steps of the Great Staircase? And what makes them more appealing than, say, the incredible farscapes you catch atop the mountains, which give you the impression that you're watching, not a forest, but a vast, leaf-green sea, primal in nature, with waves literally the size of mountains?

My theory is this: each year millions of people from all over the world come to Australia to have a peak (guffaw!) at these three rocks, purely because each year three million people come to Australia from all over the world etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ... This is not a landmark because of its architectural ingenuity, such as the Opera House nearby, or because it contains some of the world's greatest art, such as the Louvre, in faraway Paris. No, this, the Three Sisters, is a landmark simply because it is a landmark - it is a landmark for landmark's sake.

And so, seen in that context (created entirely on the basis of personal opinion only, mind), the Three Sisters, regardless of backstory and number of annual spectators and even prettiness, are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cheers