“This Place Is Fucked But Kind Of Pretty I Guess” Says Man Visiting The Blue Mountains

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A Betoota Heights man has shared his opinion and passed judgement on a popular slice of the nation’s tourism cake this morning, reporting back from the frontier that he’s both impressed and chilled by what he saw.

Craig Fairchild, a geography teacher at Whooton School in Betoota Grove, has his wife’s parents visiting from Scotland this month and their holiday has moved on from the Simpson Desert to Sydney, the largest open-air sewer in the Southern Hemisphere where a rat-like people climb all over one another, writhing in their own filth, to get ahead.

At the headwaters of said sewer lies the majestic Blue Mountains, where Craig and wife Amy joined her parents at a Katoomba Cafe this morning.

This is the latter end of their week in the Blue Mountains. Amy’s parents have been bushwalking and taking part in bushwalking-adjacent activities. Craig arrived on Sunday and so far, feels an unease.

“If you know, you know,” he said.

“It’s a stunningly beautiful place. You know, the, uh, Sisters and the steep train thing. That was mad. But, uh, walking home from dinner last night. There’s some genuine freaks up here. You know, uh, I think Hunter [S] Thompson would label them, uh, ‘High-powered mutants’ and ‘human prototypes too weird for mass production’ and stuff like that,”

Our reporter said he didn’t know and asked for some examples.

“Well, for instance, I found myself in a service station last night at about 10pm buying two Magnums and this dude comes in, wearing boardshorts, thongs, an oil-stained hoodie and a ‘heanie’ or a ‘hat beanie’. He bought 15L of E10, a pair of reading glasses, two packed of red snakes, two cans of Mother and a tube of Quick-Eze. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Craig added.

“There is just something about it. Over on the Apple side too, on Bells Line. It just gives me the creeps man. Maybe it’s a Queensland thing, I dunno. It’s something metaphysical, primal. Feels a bit like the Glasshouse Mountains or the Grampians. It chills my blood just thinking about what goes on up here.”

More to come.