NSW's accidental secret: the quirky Blue Mountains town you drove past

It's madness!" declares Victoria and Albert Guesthouse co-owner Shane McLucas. It's not clear whether he's referring to his historic boutique hotel, with its bold wallpaper designs, taxidermy displays and rambunctious parties, or the village of Mount Victoria in general. Either way he's not wrong.

This uppermost Blue Mountains village isn't Katoomba with its crowds and icons, or Leura with its upmarket charm. Established in 1868 as a cool-climate escape for Sydney's wealthy, who arrived by train to stay in mansions and grand guesthouses, it's a heritage-listed village in the mountains. It also leans firmly into the unexpected, peculiar and downright left of centre.

Mount Victoria is having a moment right now because the closure of the Great Western Highway linking the Blue Mountains with the NSW Central West - due to damage to a convict-built bridge - means fewer cars are rushing through. You, too, could detour via the Bells Line of Road ... or stop to make Mount Victoria your getaway destination. Here's why you should.

Mount Victoria has an eccentric side. It's where taxidermy sits next to teacups and nothing is quite what you expect.

Kara Cooper's Mount Vic and Me is a case in point. The shop reflects Kara - colourful and unashamedly outspoken. It's part vintage trove, part political satire and part craft studio (wonky-shaped pillows and all). Socks featuring former prime ministers sit beside T-shirts with feminist slogans ("Difficult woman", "Woman of a certain rage"), handmade toys and upcycled fashion.

Next door, Robyn Austin splits her time and skills between taxidermy (ethically sourced native animals) and lead-light creation. Peer into the shop windows and you're bound to see a kookaburra or possum highlighted in a kaleidoscope of light from a stained-glass window she's restoring for a local heritage hotel.

"It is a quirky place," Robyn says. "It is." The former chef sums up the community: "I once hired this French kitchen hand who just rocked up with his beautiful French accent wanting work. He was living in a cave down in the bush, and every now and then he'd get a ride home with me with his free pizza, and off he'd stroll into the bush."

That's Mount Victoria in a nutshell.

Across the road in Mount Victoria Memorial Park, it's hard to ignore the strange grey concrete structures dotted throughout the site. Intriguingly, the park was a small zoo from the 1930s to late '40s and the structures contained native animals and curiosities.

No cookie-cutter "nice" hotels here. From the outside, Victoria and Albert Guesthouse brings old-world charm and a sense of stepping back in time. Inside? Theatrics are everywhere you look, with peacock feather wallpaper, dramatic colours, and events and parties that hark back to the outrageous days of Mark Foy at the Hydro Majestic down at Medlow Bath circa 1914. There's a collection of 15th-century books and a taxidermy collection in the salon at the V&A. Among the wall art is an original photo of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic in 1912, captured by the photographer on the rescue vessel RMS Carpathia. And there are chandeliers everywhere, including the toilets.

Hotel Etico, Australia's first not-for-profit social enterprise hotel, pairs a good stay, fine food and regular live music gigs with the meaningful mission of training and employing people with disability. Elsewhere, luxury heritage guesthouses and uber-luxe off-grid bush retreats offer slower, quieter alternatives where silence is part of the experience.

If rowdy dinners and live music gigs aren't your thing, minutes from the village centre, Mount York Lookout delivers one of the most expansive views in the Blue Mountains overlooking Hartley Valley, where explorers Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson were the first Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains in 1813.

At Mount Vic Flicks, you can catch an indie film in a tiny cinema where choc tops are hand-dipped and soup is homemade. Even the local museum, open from 12pm to 3pm on Saturdays, is no boring collection of tat. Housed at the rear of one of the country's prettiest railway stations, it's small and delightfully idiosyncratic. Inside is a wildly eclectic mix of convict relics, taxidermy and oddities from across the region's history.

If you want to know more about Australia's first holiday resort village, Sue Collins leads walking tours around the village, starting with the arrival of the "Iron Horse" in 1868, when the steam train on the Western Line would soon open access to NSW. Come nightfall, shiver in ghoulish delight with Paranormal Pete on a ghost hunt at the museum as he tunes into the phantom whispers of each building.

The thing is, Mount Victoria has reinvented itself before. In the early 1900s, it was a thriving stopover town where travellers broke their journey across the mountains. Over time, bypasses and changing travel patterns saw that traffic dwindle, and the village had to reinvent itself to attract visitors. Today, the highway disruption offers a new opportunity to stop rather than rush past and make Mount Victoria your destination.

The writer travelled at her own expense