Christopher Rowe

We* left from the Virgin terminal in Perth at 6.00AM and arrived at Melbourne airport at 10.00AM EST. From there, we endured a five hour road trip to Mount Beauty (base of the Great Dividing Range) and stayed the night.

7AM the following morning we all jumped in a coach which took us up the mountain to Falls Creek (a 40 minute drive). Along the way, the coach made one stop and we picked up a chick called Tammy** who works at one of the cafes within Falls Creek. She is a very friendly and adventurous spirited young woman – needless to say this wasn’t to be the only time our paths crossed – the cafe came to be quite a favorite of mine

Three quarters up the top of the mountain (30min in), our coach comes to a sliding stop – it was snowing on the road ahead. It has been many years since the road had seen snow this far down the mountain-side (which is exciting since I had never seen snow in my life and if it was snowing way down here, then there must be tonnes of snow up at the top). Fortunately for us, we managed to chain up our tires and we were on our way again – however it wasn’t long until they closed the road behind us due to the heavy amounts of snow.

We finally arrived at our accommodation – named ‘Lake Side’, located right in the middle of Falls; within distance of two chair lifts. Although with the amount of snow we experienced in the morning, we quite happily skied down the main roads to the lifts.

Until this trip, I had never skied or seen snow in my life. So every aspect of skiing and walking in snow was completely new to me – there was plenty of slipping and falling for sure and yes, I do have plenty of bruises to prove it..

As part of my chair lift pass though I also applied for several group training sessions to nail down the basics – for instance stopping and turning left and right. By the end of day one, I was quite confidently doing ‘Snow Plough’ stops and turns and my skiing odyssey had begun.

That night, me and some mates hit the pub ‘The Man’ and proceeded to warm our selves up with glass after glass of bourbon. It gets a bit blurry after that point,..

Day 2 was wonderful blue skies, a nice change from the snowy day before hand. I awoke at 9AM feeling pretty seedy from the night before and jumped on my skis – in hind sight it probably wasn’t the best thing to do, since i had a pretty rough time walking in a straight line let alone ski without stacking it… Once we got to the top of the chair lift I was feeling a lot better. Skied around for a little while and took a lesson later that same morning. The day was simply magnificent, blue skies, very little breeze and plenty of fresh snow. I took a break late morning; after my class to take some photos with my Finepix Z2.

Its insane walking on fresh snow. One step may drop you 5cm and the following step could drop your foot 30cm. It was during walking conditions like this that i managed to dislocate my left knee. I stepped (went down 5), put pressure on it to take another step and the same foot dropped an additional 30cm. All i heard was the loudest POP of my knee popping out – as a result i fell (Sadly for me on my popped knee ) and the knee popped back into place again – with much pain i might add… I just lied there in the snow for 5 minutes in numbing pain. After some time I eventually got back up and slowly and very courteously limped to the cafe (about 3 min away) and ordered a Hot Chocolate from Tammy and took the rest of the afternoon off.

The beginning of the evening was spent in the spa – that eased the pain of my knee considerably and with a lot of rest by the following morning I had regained 80% movement of my knee – so my limp wasn’t too bad… the pain was still extreme though.

I spent the next morning chatting to the waitress at our lodge, we will call her Mieke (anyone who has seen EuroTrip will understand – Mieke is a hot blonde German chick). At some stage during our completely random conversation Mieke started discussing the drinks menu that she had worked on, and how she wished she knew more about computers and how to apply background photos in MS Word.
Naturally I arose to the challenge and 30 minutes later working with Mieke we re-designed the drinks menu on her laptop. Both Mieke and the manager (we shall call him Heath) were so impressed they both shouted me free drinks that night.. hazzaa!!

It was during that same night, Heath realized that I was quite a bourbon drinker – I had managed to almost empty their bottle of Beam by the end of the third day (1.5ltr bottle), he kindly suggested that I might prefer Cougar (so that I leave some Beam for other guests obviously), I obliged of course – since the first drink was free too — after that, i made it my mission to completely empty their bottle of Cougar before I left the following Tuesday (New 1ltr bottle). By Sunday I had emptied both the Cougar and Mieke poured out the remaining Beam for me too.. In the words of Kevin Spacey – “I Rule!”.

On about the forth night, my mate and work colleague Leon and I hit the Man for some serious drinking… It didn’t take too long (one round in fact) till we started hitting the shots… First was Absinthe (Like EuroTrip, but the Green Fairy has been removed), Glacial Ice, 151 (OMFG!! That was BAD!!!!!!!!!!!), a Jam Donut, Mafia and a couple of others… most of these were 40 to 80% Alcohol… The barmaids were taking score on what we had and were suggesting which shots to have next…The shots were consumed in the first two hours, needless to say we were both incredibly stuffed up after that — There is nothing like a long walk in the snow wearing no more than pants and a shirt to help sober up… That was damn fun!!

By the end of the ski trip I was quite a competent skier (On the green runs at least), quite capable of parallel turns etc and confident with speed and the ever changing conditions of the snow and dodging snow-boarders who were stacking it in front of me… Its definitely a great work out for your legs and arms… I hadn’t pushed myself that hard in a long time..

The last night at Falls was crazy. A couple of mates and I had planned to go to The Man for drinks that night, as it was “Pot Night”. Pot night is happens every Tuesday night. What you do is bring your largest mug or you can buy a 2ltr one, and provided that the mug fits under the beer tap, you can fill it up for $7.00. The record so far goes to Heath who managed a 4ltr mug a couple of years back. We didn’t end up heading for the Man until 12.30AM, since 2 of my mates had found them selves 2 16yo snow-bunnies. We arrived at the Man only to discover that they stopped letting people in at 12.00 :(, and with no bottle-o open, we headed back to the lodge and to re-group with the girls. Both Heath and Mieke go to the Man each night; so the Lodge bar closes usually at 10PM. We all waited until Heath returned at 2.30AM — in a very drunk state too It didn’t take too much convincing at all to get him to re-open the bar for us for 5 minutes, so we could stock up on supplies.. after fumbling with the keys to open the bar we each took turns going through the fridge walking out with half a dozen Johnny Walkers each and Vodka mixes… Heath took a look at the two 16 yo girls — “Aren’t you under age??”. we just replied, “yeah, but is ok, we’re buying it for them” :P, — ha-ha, he was so drunk. At the end we managed to walk out with a couple of hundred bucks of drinks… That lasted us till 6AM

The holiday was INCREDIBLY relaxing… I don’t think any holiday has ever done that for me ever. The lifestyle was fantastic, I really have fallen in love with it… my fondest memory will always be after a day of skiing, fun and spa etc, ending it with a hot-chocolate or coffee whilst sitting on the balcony outside overlooking the mountain range while it snowed… It was just Perfect.

Will definitely be making a commitment to seeing the snow once a year from now on… Next time I think i will give snow boarding a try…

There is definitely going to be a next time!!

*We – Friends from Work and their family and friends
**Yeah – I changed the names for their privacy