In 1960 a revolving restaurant opened at Scenic World, Katoomba, in the NSW Blue Mountains. It was the first in Australia and just the second in the entire world. Katoomba had been pipped at the post by Florianturm in Germany, which had opened its doors in 1959.
Who came up with this innovative feature for Mountains’ diners? Well, it was the entrepreneurial Harry Hammon, whose family now own and operate Sydney’s famous BridgeClimb. Harry was born in Katoomba in 1911. He died in 2000 after contributing an enormous amount to tourism in New South Wales, but particularly in his home town.
The Scenic World revolving floor was 50 feet in diameter, and did a full revolution every ten minutes. I was amused to read the memories of journalist Pollyanna Sutton, published in October 1985. After visiting years earlier as a schoolgirl, Pollyanna had informed her family that the floor virtually spun like top!
REVOLVING RESTAURANT – A MEMORY PLAYING TRICKS
I was looking forward to returning to the Blue Mountains, and in particular the Skyways Revolving Restaurant, which I had first visited 13 years before.
That was on the four-yearly school trip, a dubious honour which involved travelling with some 40 classmates and the wrath of God in the form of two aging nuns.
In recounting my first trip to this rotating platform, my family had rolled in stitches as my sister and I had described the blue-clad schoolgirls running, jumping and skidding on and off the large, circular disc cut from the floor. We were delighted with what we thought had been ‘the fastest revolving restaurant in the world, which turned at such a great speed that everyone was nearly sick’.
My return dispelled some of the memories I had of that evening. I timed the moving floor; a pleasant 11 minutes per full rotation, not five minutes as I had said so many times, though by other revolving restaurant standards this is still quite a speed. (Canberra Times, Oct. 28 1985)
Postcard images from the 1960s. (Pinterest)
Four years later, journalist Craig Cormick also shared some amusing memories in The Canberra Times.
I was about eight years old when I first went to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. What I remember most is sitting in the revolving restaurant, eating toast, and looking across the valley towards the Three Sisters. It was one of those occasions that sit snugly in the memory. The carpet was a faded green with kangaroos on it, looking like they’s hopped off old penny coins. The walls had old glossy paintings of Aborigines and desert-scapes, like the ones my grandmother always had over her mantlepiece.
After lunch we rode out over the valley on the scenic skyway, and then descended to the valley on the scenic railway.
I visited Katoomba 20 years later with my own children. The revolving restaurant still has those same carpets and those same wall paintings.
The restaurant has revolved hundreds of thousands of times, ever onwards, like time itself, but little else has changed. (Canberra Times, Jan 29 1989)
These days the floor only revolves by prior arrangement for special functions. I wonder why that is? Perhaps the antics of Pollyanna Sutton and her classmates provides a clue! 😎
Never mind, there is the option of sneakily eating your packed lunch in the SkyTrain cable car, for which we must also thank Harry Hammon.
Source – Pinterest.
To watch an old video of the restaurant as it revolved, CLICK HERE
FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR MORE MEMORIES OF THE REVOLVING RESTAURANT.
