Katoomba YHA

The budget youth-hostel accommodations in Australia and New Zealand are called "backpackers." They offer a variety of types of room, and we stayed in one in Sydney about 4 months ago en route to SE Asia. We paid something like $35 each for rickety bunk-bed spaces in a shared dorm. To their credit, the other occupants were quite respectful of sleeping hours, but it still wasn't a very comfortable accommodation for us. For some reason the entire atmosphere of the place felt tense and unhappy to me.

So, we were pleasantly surprised by the YHA in Katoomba. They also offer 4-share, 8-share, and 12-share dorm rooms, but have private rooms as well for a higher price (which is what we did). It's in a beautiful old building on the edge of town in Katoomba. Here's a shot of the outside.

It's run very much like a hostel. They give you clean linens when you check in, which you put on your bed, and strip again to put in the laundry when you leave. They also have a full kitchen and a large lounge area with sofas, and bean-bag chairs on a stage (which is occasionally used for musical performances). Here's Jen in the kitchen:

We really loved it. Because our next contact was a little late in getting back to us, we ended up staying here a few days, and the kitchen was always clean and orderly.

What we liked the most, however, was the people. There were early 20-something Germans and French (as there are everywhere here), but also elderly couples and families with children, including some on vacation from other parts of Australia. The atmosphere here is friendly and relaxed. Everyone says hello to each other and no one seems hurried, stressed, or unhappy.

The other thing that surprised us was the culinary feats of the other guests. We were expecting a youth hostel kitchen to have a lot of people making pasta, oatmeal, frozen pizzas, and other easy-to-prepare meals. Boy were we wrong. People were making steaks with mushroom sauce, breading and frying fresh fish fillets, baking cakes and creating elaborate salads. There was a friendly group from China who made a huge stack of green-onion pancakes and offered us some. Almost everyone had a bottle of wine with their meals. All this excellent cooking meant that we found some choice items in the "free shelf" of the refrigerator, which we were most appreciative of.

The only problem with the YHA is that it's too popular. Finally our next contact in Australia (whose name was Wendy) said she'd pick us up in Katoomba to drive us out to her country place. Unfortunately we hadn't booked enough nights, so they put us on the waiting list for rooms. We occupied ourselves for the day wandering around town, and relaxing in the common lounge talking to people (both of us), playing poker (Jen), and reading a book about topology (Dave). By evening it was fairly clear that we weren't going to get a room. Jen was hoping that if we just stayed in the lounge until they did their rounds at midnight, they wouldn't kick us out in the rainy night. Dave was somewhat uncomfortable about this plan, so we tried to negotiate with the staff for explicit permission to stay. We offered to pay a dorm rate to stay in the lounge all night--or to pitch our tent in their backyard. They politely but firmly told us that we were welcome to stay until 10pm, but then we had to go.

SO, at 10pm we put on our headlamps and rain jackets and hiked 40 minutes out of town to freedom-camp at a spot we'd seen earlier near the trailhead of the 6-foot track. It turned out to be a lot of fun (and free!). In the morning we packed back up and hiked back into town to be picked up by Wendy.

All in all, we had a great time at the Katoomba YHA. (And, since I'm writing this several weeks after the fact, I can also report that we've stayed in other YHA's here in New Zealand that were also quite nice. I'm in one now, in fact! But you'll have to wait for those updates...)