They say you can’t take it with you – money, that is – so this winter I decided to put a dent in the retirement coffers and take the grandkids skiing. Four of them, from a tentative 11-year-old to a fearless four-year-old with zero concept of danger and an arm just out of a cast. Sure, the whole snow experience might give my credit card a touch of altitude sickness, but at this time of my life I’m choosing to invest in memories over inheritance. I’ll remind myself of that when the credit card statement arrives.
It was a chance, too, to test out my ski legs at my old stomping ground at Perisher, in the mountains of Kosciuszko national park.
This is where family ski trips all began for me. A first taste of skiing etched deeply in memory and immortalised in glitchy home movies. The place we built our first stately snowman; where my dad battled to master a snowplough and lost; where we teenaged idiots hurtled down black runs we had no business being on; and where as motley uni students we jumped maniacally to the thrums of the Angels at the Jindabyne hotel. It was where we took our own kids skiing too.
That history makes it the perfect place to make new snow introductions, reacquaint ourselves with muscles we haven’t met up with for a while and to start a whole new bank of memories.
For a while, Grandude and I considered tackling this initiation on our own but the ratio of adults to beginners was out of whack, so we enlisted their parents to balance the scales. And really, they were up for the fun too.
At the lodge
From the outset, we prioritised ease. That meant choosing on-snow accommodation right in Perisher Valley. With a mere 200-metre scoot to the lifts, Corroboree Lodge is pricier than staying off-mountain but I’m here for the luxury of convenience: no daily kid-wrangling on the ski tube or buses, plus breakfast and dinner included.
It is warm and welcoming, cosy and convivial, everything you could hope for in a family ski holiday. The kind of place to pad around in socks, with a fire-lit bar, various lounges to kick back in, and where the kids can roam safely.
After a tour of the lodge, the 11-year-old is seriously impressed.
“I could get used to this,” she announces.
Oh, dear. I feel a twang straight in the hip pocket. Or maybe it’s a tug at the heart strings.
Dinner is staggered: the kids eat first while the adults relax. It’s a joy to learn there’s a no-screen rule in the dining room. How wonderfully old-school.
It’s not long before the kids are outside making a snowman (a sad and misshapen mound barely 30cm tall but that’s beside the point) and making friends, in the delightfully easy way children do. Later that might include watching movies, testing flexibility over Twister or making cubby houses from whatever’s available in the lounge.
The youngest zips down during adults’ dinner with excited updates on how many new friends she’s made in the last 15 minutes. She greets one at breakfast with a massive hug at the “pancake store”.
When the ever-hungry nine-year-old sees the breakfast spread and realises he can have anything he want, he declares ecstatically: “This is going to be the best day of my life!”
It’s certainly going to be a memorable one.
Hitting the slopes
We collect our massive haul of hire gear the afternoon before our first planned ski day to give the kids an early taste of being on skis. When I don my sunny-day headband and glasses in preparation, the 11-year-old exclaims:“You look sick, Marsie! You look like you could sell drugs in that.”
I don’t know whether to be flattered or horrified. It turns out, her father calls my sunglasses “speed dealers”.
After an initial flurry of mayhem, the kids are soon finding their ski legs. We push and pull and cajole them to clamber up the vaguest of slopes to trial some tiny glides while we offer tips on leaning forward and bending knees and explain why they don’t need stocks yet. They bounce back up effortlessly when they fall, a skill I wish I still had.
Next morning it’s chaos – braiding hair, checking who’s been to the toilet, matching kids to gloves and goggles, handing out mountain passes and getting four sets of legs into heavy ski boots and on skis. It’s like herding cats. Super-hyped cats.
A three-hour lesson is a great introduction to some basics and a chance for the adults to do a few runs unencumbered. When I hear the squeals of glee coming from my daughter as she whooshes along behind me on her first run, I realise it’s not just the little ones having fun. She’s like a child again, actually calling out “weeeeeee”, her face lit in a grin all the way down.
The 11-year-old is soon up on her first chairlift and T-bar, managing slow runs and gentle turns. The nine-year-old is all about heading down the middle, turns be damned, which is not always wise. The six-year-old is learning quickly and the wild four-year-old hoots down with glee, arms spread wide and giving a little jump as she goes. Spaghetti-like, she’s not the least perturbed when one ski turns inwards and completely backwards, though my own body clenches involuntarily. She refuses to do up either her ski jacket or her pants on the first day, though eventually succumbs when the snow sets in.
This skiing business isn’t a cheap pursuit, especially with a tribe of kids, but it’s also a bit like magic – a kind of wintry glue that binds a family across the years and generations.
We don’t go as long or as hard as we used to, but with the weather gods on our side we tick off a snowy wishlist: a bluebird day to start proceedings, soft tumbling snow on another, an overnight dump enabling a redemptive fine-looking snowman, successful chairlift rides, no injuries and four elated children hungry for more.
Logistics
The Skitube operates between Bullocks Flat and Perisher. Several companies provide private transfers between Jindabyne and Perisher or you can catch the local government-operated bus service.
