The Carrington Katoomba – selfish, arrogant, unneighbourly
From our personal experience, we would NOT describe The Carrington Hotel as being a good neighbour in Katoomba where we live.
On Saturday late morning 26th October 2024, from where we live in The Gully Catchment of Katoomba, we were dozing at home as not feeling particularly well.
Suddenly, we then get this pounding deep bass sound reverberating from somewhere not far away. It was so loud that it became impossible to sleep through. Where was it coming from?
Ours is a quiet residential neighbourhood set in the oldest heritage precinct of the Blue Mountains. Our street dates to the 1870s, even before The Carrington Hotel of 1883 up on the hill.
So we get up and dress to investigate the noisy racket. We shortly find the source just three short streets away. We reproduce a sample below, but the volume is ten times louder that what the AMR software on our iPhone has captured. Most of the band playing sounds out of tune.
And we discover some beer fest going on!
It’s that bloody Carrington Hotel again, thumping its amplified festival music from what is supposed to be its large car park rooftop on nearby Parke Street on the top of the hill in our township of Katoomba.
We had previously raised our concerns about a similar car park festival episode directly with one of The Carrington’s joint owners on a previous occasion back in February 2024, when some other concert started up on top of the same car park playing loud amplified music (multiple large stage speakers pointing in direction of our home) so audible as to be heard down into The Gully, half a kilometre away.
On this occasion, 26th October, it was some blood brass band amplified up at full volume, again! WTF!
Yet there are residential homes just across Parke Street, just metres away from the stage where the band is playing, like ours about 300 metres away from the now fabricated temporary stage.
This is what we heard and saw on the car park second storey upon our investigation after having just woken up…
This is just not fair! A festival with loud amplified music set up juxtaposed to residential homes? It’s so selfish and arrogant and it’s not right. It’s hardly respecting the rights of immediate locals like us to our quiet enjoyment. It’s a noise impost.
And it’s also so unnecessary that this particularly large accommodation hotel with options of utilising its multiple internal entertainment spaces and on such an extensive site, should resort to re-purposing its purpose built guest car park into a festival venue and so cause annoyance to locals immediately across the street (Parke Street) and on to adjoining quiet back streets like ours within earshot.
We say this because The Carrington Hotel has ready onsite access also to a similarly sized level grassed area at the front of the hotel site just off retail Katoomba Street. The Carrington has long used this level open lawned space for various festivals and events. It’s a perfect location in the retail heart of Katoomba!
The Lady Luck Festival has been run for the past 14 years using both this marquee for dancing plus the inside of the Carrington’s sizeable ballroom.
So, then why move the Carrington’s marquee from here in town to the rear car park opposite residences?
Today, unable to sleep and feeling a bit crook, we approached the entrance to the car park festival and briefly expressed our concerns to some bloke in a pixie hat and joker costume about the loud amplified noise and that we lived just a few streets away. The bloke happened to be one of The Carrington’s joint owners in disguise. He promptly got agitated with one’s comments and then immediately ordered me to leave his property, as in “bugger off”!
The Carrington’s nasty pixie (left). Note the body language.
As a Katoomba resident where we live since 2001, we provide some instructional background.
A few years back, Blue Mountains Council granted The Carrington Hotel development approval to double the size of its car park off Parke Street on its very large site. The approval was to build a second storey car park above the existing car park so as to double off-street parking capacity for its in-house guests. This followed substantial renovations of many rooms which so increased the hotel’s accommodation capacity.
We have no problem about The Carrington Hotel’s enlarged car park being used as a car park for its staying guests. The investment into restoring, upgrading and diversifying the Carrington continues to wonderfully appreciated for Katoomba. As long locals we know of no other tourism establishment that has done so this this extent. This is a credit to its joint owners.
The car park concrete structure is about the size of a narrow-elongated basketball court and further dominates the hotel’s 4 storey high-rise landscape on top of the hill in uptown Katoomba.
This festival is the Carrington’s own Oktoberfest on 26th October since 2023. We were away at the time that year.
But why a decision for a remote miniature Oktoberfest festival in Katoomba outside Sydney, when there has long been a huge one in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens annually every October attracting thousands? It’s held on the very same day on the 26th!
So why the hell would tourists in Sydney not conveniently head close by to the real big deal in Sydney, to instead choose a 4-hour return train ride to The Carrington car park in Katoomba for a half-pint to bad music? No chance!
Sydney’s ‘Oktoberfest in the Gardens’ 26th October
A big double storey concrete car park is one thing, but then we discover they’re starting to use it for ticketed music festivals and even lease it out to independent festival organisers. So they’re profiting from festivals despite never having had such Council approval to do so. We would have objected had the development application plans included converting the car park into a venue for external festival hire.
This is the car park in question showing its driveway entrance off Parke Street. The brass band is playing behind the car park gates on a stage behind the calico screen inside the temporary marquee.
The following aerial view of this precinct in Katoomba (Google Maps) shows the relevant juxtaposition of The Carrington hotel with its car park used as a band stage (shown in red), plus the remaining section of the car park for audience seating and outdoors drinking of German beers in large jugs.
It also shows the proximity of the residential housing and also the similar sized garden lawn (yellow rectangle) situated within the Carrington grounds off Katoomba Street.
The Carrington Hotel and its juxtaposition
Same problem, different camera angle. Who approved a car park for festival hire?
So why doesn’t the Carrington simply return to using the Council-approved outdoor entertainment space it had purposely re-developed on its flat lawned area right in the retail heart of Katoomba, rather than pissing off local residents to the west of the hotel.
Some big business people presume they can do what they want and bugger everyone else? Perhaps the owners would benefit more by investing quality time researching negotiation pathways with local Council to mitigate the costs of returning to utilising the grassed area for events as before and the Carrington’s similarly sized large ballroom. But diversifying into illegally using the hotel’s guest car park to hock for event leasing to external festival organisers for a pittance return?
Indeed the event is promoted as “free admission” as per the banner outside (see below). So what its the point of this event? The musicians would not be performing for free. Only the beer it seems, is for sale. So the whole thing appears to be a loss making exercise. Is this for the indulgence of the pixie who just likes getting dress down and drinking beer? Or is he just wanting to piss off the neighbours?
The event banner reads “Free Admission”
Of course, while the car park has been leased out, many of The Carrington’s in-house guests will be denied the brochured off-street parking, so be relegated to use Council’s on street paid parking, costing over $100 per day. We suggest this pet project to annoy locals is a false economy. So as Katoomba long-time locals, we wont be frequenting The Carrington any time soon. The actions of The Carrington are so unneighbourly.
The big concern we have is that this illegal use of the car park repurposed for festivals, risks setting a precedent for drunken crowds and on a more frequent basis. The toilets are not convenient to the car park. The only toilets are well inside the hotel itself, passed reception, passed the bar if you now where to find them. So what is preventing drunken party goers after downing a full German beer jug or three, desperate for a leak, taking advance of the adjacent brick walls of the adjoining Blue Mountains Cultural Centre and the front fences of local homes to urinate into the wee hours. There are no toilets in the car park. Is the car park a licensed venue to serve alcohol? We’ve not heard.
What is to come if this is allowed to snowball into a more regular Carrington Hotel Booze Fest, fuelled by incoming bus loads of yobbos on bucks nights.
Surely, no Katoomba local here wants this problem. The festival lease brain-snap for a re-purposing of the car park needs to stopped in it tracks before it morphs out of control!
As if Katoomba doesn’t already have enough booze outlets!
Where is local Blue Mountains Council in all this?
References:
[1] ‘Katoomba now Australia’s booze capital‘, 2021-02-21, ‘Mountains Drums’ blog, Nature Trail website, ^https://naturetrail.com.au/blog-post/katoomba-now-australias-booze-capital/
[2] ‘Oktoberfest in the Gardens‘, Botanic Gardens of Sydney, ^https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/whats-on/oktoberfest-gardens, Australia’s biggest and best Oktoberfest celebration returns to Sydney in 2024, Abstract: “Inspired by a love of the traditional Bavarian festival and great beer. Oktoberfest in the Gardens Sydney features two massive beer halls, authentic German food stalls, roving performers, sideshow alley, silent disco and an eclectic mix of entertainment and competitions across multiple stages throughout the afternoon and evening. Taste your way across Europe with a large selection of imported German beer, cider, wine and a range of other beverages.”
[3] ‘Oktoberfest‘, The Carrington Hotel, ^https://thecarrington.com.au/whats-on/oktoberfest/
[4] ‘Lady Luck Festival‘, The Carrington Hotel website, ^https://thecarrington.com.au/whats-on/ladyluck/
Tags: Carrington Hotel, Carrington Hotel Booze Fest, Carrington Katoomba Oktoberfest, noise complaint, The Gully in Katoomba
