As the night rolled in
over the Blue Mountains and the sky turns from deep blue to pitch black, what
would become of this small mountain town?
As the cold night air fills the streets we headed to one of the local
pubs, it was here when I noticed something rather strange about this place.
(Sorry no photos on this post)
A night out in Katoomba
Returning from Echo Point we first headed to our youth
hostel. We initially had some issues
with our booking but the very nice lady who owned the hostel (who also owned a
little bakery in town) made a few phone calls and got us booked into a room in
another hostel just down the road called The Flying Fox.
The hostel seemed to have been converted from an old
Victorian house with very high ceilings and tall doorways. The best part of the Flying Fox was the
lounge which contained large comfortable sofas, a big wooden table and a very
well stoked log fire. The floor in front
of the fire was covered by a brilliant large red and gold rug that matched the
colour of the large sofas in the room. The
fireplace consisted of a medium size metal wood burner sitting in a rustic
brick archway. Considering the outside
temperature was plummeting and the other rooms in the hostel weren’t very well
heated because of the high ceilings, this lounge was the perfect place to be.
Sharing wisdom
It is in social areas in hostels like this where you may
catch the travel bug. I remember sitting
in this very comfortable room listening to the travel stories from an American
university lecturer who was over here on work.
He told me that there were stages in life.
- Between the age of 20 and 30 you should be travelling and experiencing life and the world.
- Between the age of 30 and 40 is when you should be settling down with a better half and starting a family.
- And between 40 and 50 is when you should be at the top of your career, whatever field of work you have been doing before by this age you should be at the top of the ladder.
But this of course this isn't relevant to everyone, it is just one man's opinion.
The pubs
After this we headed to a pub across the road. It was an old style English pub with lead
windows and a dark wooden bar area.
Towards the back was a stage where a local folk band were
performing. The pub was pretty full with
everyone sat down around small circular tables.
Everybody had turned their chairs to face the band towards the
back. I guess this is what passes for a
entertaining night out here in the mountains.
The music was quite good though and I loved the rural feel
of the pub. It is exactly what you’d
expect from the pub in a small town high up in some mountains. After a while many more locals began cramming
themselves into the pub. It seemed this
pub was part of a local bar crawl. It was at this point I started to notice something very peculiar.
The generation game
Whilst looking around the bar people
watching I got a strange sense of Déjà vu, and then it hit me. I noticed a lot of the locals here looked very
similar. Basically I first noticed
somebody had a distinct shape of nose, keeping that nose in mind I would look
around a spot several other people nearby with the exact same nose (not literally). The same was true with other prominent
features, such as people with matching ears, or eyes etc. It was more than just a coincidence; these
people had obviously inherited these distinctive features from the same person
several generations ago.
I have never seen anything quite like this before, it was
almost surreal. I grew up near a large
and very diverse city (Manchester) but I’m guessing something like this is not
uncommon in more rural towns. Here there
are less people coming and going and therefore less variety in the old gene pool.
(I am not trying to be rude and say Katoomba is full of
inbreds, it is just the resemblance between so many people was just uncanny.)
The pub we were in was getting very busy so we moved to
another bar round the corner. There was
a fancy dress party here but I couldn’t spot a theme. The bar was just a sea of typical fancy dress
outfits you could buy from a cheap shop.
Here I continued to play my new game of “spot who has the same
grandparents”. This was fun for a while
but again this place started to become rowdy with locals. I couldn’t help but feel like a bit like an
outsider here so we finished our last drinks and headed back to the
hostel.
I guess most travellers who
visit the Blue Mountains stay for the trekking and sights but don’t go out to
the bars at night. Tomorrow was the day
we were going to do the trekking and I was very much looking forward to it.
