The Blue Mountains: How to survive the mountain towns
Going to the Blue Mountains is regarded as a nice treat if you are in Sydney, Australia. The nature promises a retreat from the stress of city life: just one-and-a-half-hour train ride from Sydney Central Station, a row of little mountain towns offer themselves as entry points into the pathways and lookout points in the world heritage site that is the Blue Mountains.
The Blue Mountains themselves are not technically mountains, but plateaus between where water has once torn down valleys. Between the mountains there is a light tone of blue in the air which has given the mountains their name - the myth says the blue tint is a result of the amount of eucalyptus oil vapour in the air reflecting the blue frequencies in the light, but apparently it is a result of either what is called Mie Scattering or Rayleigh Scattering, depending on the source. Or alternatively a mix of eucalyptus oil and scattering. Whatever the reason, they are certainly bluer than other mountains, so I’m betting the eucalyptus oil plays some role.
And the mountains are a treat to watch. The lookouts over the valleys offer spectacular vistas of a kind of nature that is just special for Australia, the bushland below is wet and rain forest-like in the winter, with dripping caves and overgrown pathways to wander along.
The first sign that not all is well, though, came when we found the first lookout point fenced in by a metres high picket fence and a steel high-security entry costing $2 dollars. Hardly a retreat from the stress of Sydney life. We had gone to find the Leuralla Toy and Rail-museum, not out of an interest in toys, but to see with our own eyes that their infamous nazi exhibition is for real. However, we found it too expensive and decided to pass, only to realize they had fenced in the cliffs on the other side of the road.
Jack Marx has written what is probably the best travel review of any place in all times about the little town of Leura, and I can’t say we were not warned about what to expect. However, when we went down the side of the fences towards the free lookout point a quick five minutes down the hills, we only for a while thought we had escaped the greed. The next people we meet are three young kids who ask us first for our camera, then for ten dollars, then for five and when they then realize we are not giving them anything - and when we realize they are not joking, but really want both our camera and money - throw rocks at us from the hills and explain that this is their country, not ours.
We did, however, manage to get out of Leura without spending money on more than a bread and a brie for lunch at the local deli. The walks that line the cliffsides of the Blue Mountains are definitively treats, and, refreshingly, no one is there to charge you for anything.
For me, the whole point of getting into nature is to get away from civilization for a little while, depend only on myself and experience something outside boundaries set by others. This idea seems to be quite foreign to the Blue Mountaineers, however. I do appreciate the pathways built through the thick bush, but the whole town of Katoomba (the main tourist town of the Blue Mountains) seems to be founded on the idea of experiencing nature while someone paid handsomely by you holds your hand. Or, alternatively, just shop and eat gourmet food in the vicinity of nature. The local travel industry’s web site wallows in this thinking - to be a nature destination, the focus is curiously strong on things that can be done anywhere else.
Of course, there are limits to how much money there is to be made if people just gawk at some mountains. Katoomba makes Leura seem like a free-for-all with it’s pricing and sheer willing to charge. While our little guest house was quite pleasant, it was also the only place I have been to, world-wide, that actually charged $10 for storing our luggage in the reception after check-out. When we realized that our plan of renting mountain bikes would set us back $75 each for a day, we figured we’d skip that part and go for a trek by foot. The feeling that we were kept in the dark on where to go, however, was just made stronger when we noticed that the amount of guided bus tours offered to us by far outweighted the availability of a simple map of the area.
Maybe Katoomba just isn’t made for stingy cheapskates such as us. The receptionist at the local first-class hotel The Carrington appeared to have picked up on our low-lifeness when she refused to talk to us, and we had to learn that they did not have rooms available from listening in on her phone calls. Then again, the number of hotels with “only one room left” was surprisingly high and statistically quite surprising.
In between all this, we managed to find a eatery for lunch that was not only out to part us from our money. The newly started Common Ground Café on the main road, 5-6 blocks from the train station, served what is probably the most wholesome, tasty, solid and possibly cheapest sandwiches and burgers ever tasted in Australia. Their signature Barramundi Burger and a Ruben sandwich (Silverside meat, sauerkraut and melted cheese between delicious wholemeal bread) with a cup of real South American Yerba Maté tea for two was $20 altogether.
We were somewhat puzzled that all the men in the staff had long, grey beards and that the plenty of women working there wore long dresses and uncut hair. This got an explanation in the folders we picked up at the counter, which explained how they all lived together in religious harmony in an estate in the lowlands. But at this point it was a refreshing change that someone was after our souls rather than our money, and after the meal we were almost willing to trade them in for another serve. The child-spanking and “living together like husband and wife” policies of the group is too much of a hindrance, sadly. It turns out that the exceptionally low cost can be explained by slave labour practices, which may be a put off for some people, too. I guess everything comes with a cost in the Blue Mountains.
As a retreat from stress, the two cities of Katoomba and Leura rather represent an extract of the worst aspects of Sydney life. Here is the main piece of advice about visiting the actual Blue Mountains: Find maps of walks on the Internet, go by car and pass the towns altogether.
However, everywhere you go doesn’t always have to be pleasurable - a bit of resistance can be good, and we came home with an eerie, but intriguing, feeling of having spent the weekend in Transylvania. However, some places are just ruined by their catering to tourism, and both Katoomba and Leura fits so well in that category it is painful to watch.
