Journey to the Blue Mountains

  Katoomba, Australia
Thursday, July 6, 2006

Lovely day. We left all but one bag at the Hilton and had quick walk to Central Station to grab the early train to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Really annoying train ride with an abusive mom repeatedly threatening and cajoling her out of control kids. "I'll tell you one more time to shut up or I'm goin' to whoop you." Or "Stop it! Don't you know how to behave?"

Kellen loved the ride, though-fascinated by the fact that the train had an upstairs and went through tunnels. We got to Katoomba around 11, just in time to walk the blocks to the Kuranda Guesthouse, a place with kitchshy appeal-old building with overstuffed rooms-think lace doilies covering Kleenex boxes. It's a place that a non-anal grandma might have-the linen tablecloths were either antique or stained by the guests. But the effect is not off-putting; rather, it's a comfortable, non-assuming place, very homey in a dreamy sort of bookish way.

We took off down the road 'til we found a takeout chip shop run by some lot of Arabic descent. The chips were fried up by the owner's son-he looked no older than 14-then another guy came in and shuffled through the cash register, taking cash out and then grilling his son about the amounts-there was some sort of problem being kept quiet, but the guy whizzed out in a haze of cigarette smoke.

We walked down to Echo Point and saw the Three Sisters, which, considering how the wind whipped us and froze us into three popsicles, we were glad to leave. We did decide to take the path along the canyon, however, and I'm so glad we did! The walk was an adventure for Kellen and he loved playing Explorer. The trees blocked the wind and the only hazards were the mud and the steep ravine that you'd fall into if you tried to avoid messing your pants.

About forty-five minutes later, we arrived at Scenic World and rode the "world's steepest railcar" down into the valley. It's a very short ride-blink, and it's over-but still fun if you can ignore the busloads of tourists. And, as we discovered throughout our trip, we have the remarkable ability to arrive at a spot exactly when busloads of middle-teen-or old age folks are scrambling to get to the bathroom, restaurant, or attraction-always whatever we were bent on seeing. But the folks at Scenic World have this tourist thing under control and the lines went quickly. One of the best things about standing in line, anyway, is talking with the folks ahead and behind you. In this situation: about 75 rowdy high-schools of the very, very loud sort---thus, American. Behind: an amused trio of graduate students-a Brit, a Norwegian and an Aussie. We never got to talk about what they were studying because the entire time we were engaged in enjoying the spectacle in front of us. I kept trying to guess the state---thought some po-dunk town in Tennessee but turned out they hailed from....Fresno...Ah, country folk.

We finally were pushed into the Skyrail---think a toaster-shaped box with windows that people are pushed into and, standing, of course, lined up like sardines. When we got to the top which was another quick trip, we went over to another sky carriage, which allows you to go over the valley and enjoy spectacular views of the waterfalls. Although touristy, I've got to admit that Skyrail was heaps of fun since we had a kid with us. I probably would have preferred bush walks around the area, but with a three year old, it was out of the question.

We walked back to the B&B, and on the way we stopped at a chocolate shop, where Erik had hot chocolate that he made by melting homemade chocolate over a tea candle and mixing the molten result with steamed milk. I chose a dessert made on site and Kellen had the gelato. Ah, heaven. Aussies know how to do dessert right when they try. The problem, we found, is that not every place tried. Almost every restaurant had exactly the same dessert list: mud cake (which is dry), ice cream, and sticky toffee cake. I'm not sure who was in charge of making these desserts, but they must have been distributed by the same inept bakers-every one we tasted had the appeal of sand. The same, I'm afraid, applied to the restaurants. We had dinner in town, but to be honest, it was unimpressive. The town of Katoomba was tired, graffiti marring the place considerably. Having heard it was a tourist place, I was surprised by the run down feeling. You get the sense of a town slowly creeping toward indifference. Of course, one street showed signs of life-but mostly it looks like everybody took the day off and decided not to come back.