For a dreamy white getaway
You know it’s wintertime in Victoria when the slopes come alive with skiing, snowboarding, tobogganing, snow walks, sled dog tours and more
For a town with a population of just 242 mountain folks, it sure felt crowded at Mount uller, Australia. We are sed to seeing more people t a traffic signal in India. et, between July and eptember, while the rest f the world sweats in ummer or drowns in ain, it is winter in this art of Australia. In this ed Earth country with soaring temperatures and the wild outback, it’s hard to imagine a realm of snow.
Like thousands of adventure enthusiasts, we drove up via the charming towns of Mansfield and Yea (yea, there’s a place called that; it also has a funky public convenience sprayed with ‘toilart’). At base camp Mirimbah, travellers pick up wheel chains (snowchains fitted over tyres) to drive through the snow (mandatory for overnight visitors) and hire ski and snowboard equipment. As we drove further, flecks of white on the eucalyptus trees soon gave way to a blanket of snow that draped the alpine vegetation. Switching to the free shuttle service at the parking lot, we proceeded to the festive Village Square Plaza.
Shuffling up the frozen steps past the clock tower, large crowds in colourful ski jackets thronged the plaza with restaurants, shops and free Wi-Fi. It was a short walk to the hotel near the Bourke Street ski run; one could literally ski-in and ski-out. A stuffed bear and moose graced the lobby, alongside ski memorabilia and a chair made of skis. The friendly manager Harry, a local legend of sorts, welcomed us warmly. We feasted on rib-eye steak and Tasmanian seafood at the plush restaurant and set off to conquer Buller.
A quick change into hired snow gear and we found ourselves on a ski lift for a ‘Discover’ lesson at the Ski & Snowboard School at the Northside Discover Centre. The only thing we managed to discover was how bad we were at skiing, as we grudgingly eyed the rest of humanity zip down the slopes with ease and screech to a halt in a spray of snow, metres away from us. Our dreadful attempt at building a snowman made things worse, so we shamelessly posed with someone else’s hard work.
We weren’t the first rookies on the mountain. Mt Buller’s spectacular scenery and abundant flora and fauna had first attracted aboriginal tribes eons ago. They brought young men to the peaks as part of initiation rituals and rites of passage. In traditional ceremonies, they roamed the mountain ranges they called Marnong (literally ‘hand’ in the Taungurong language) and told them stories about creation and Dreamtime tracks across the land. Explorers Hamilton Hume and Captain William Hovell were the first Europeans to record a sighting of the peak on a 16-week adventure in 1824. Two years later, surveyor Thomas Livingstone Mitchell identified and named it after Charles Buller, an official in the Colonial Office in London.
Soon, gold miners, timber merchants and bushrangers headed up the mountain while cattle traders used them as grazing grounds. In 1913, Frank Klingsporn widened the track for the movement of cattle, which opened the way for summer tourism, horse riders and hikers. The old bridle track is still used for mountain biking. After early forays by a ski club and the introduction of the towrope in 1949, tourism in Australia’s first Alpine village snowballed. Today, it gets more than three lakh visitors in winter and 1,30,000 in summer.
The Summit Road loop took us to our hotel as we walked across to the Shakey Knees ski run to Northside Express Chairlift for a scenic chairlift ride. Around us, nearly 300 hectares of skiing terrain spread out as the 1805m-high peak towered above. After endless rounds of tobogganing at the park, we donned our outsized snowshoes and clomped around the countryside for a snow walk.
Mt Buller is simply a mountain of activities. Take a ‘Snowplay in a Day’ tour or go on a ‘Gnome Roam’, a familyfriendly walk in search of Mt Buller gnomes strewn across the village. In between, catch a movie at Australia’s highest cinema Alpine Central, drop by at the National Alpine Museum on the evolution of skiing in the region, take a scenic helicopter flight over Mt Buller and Mt Stirling nearby and pamper yourself at the only spa in town. The region is also an excellent mountain biking destination with the 40km cross-country Australian Alpine Epic trail, the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.
However, we were off to Cornhill Road for the ultimate thrill of a 16-dog sled ride with Siberian Huskies. Volunteers briefed us on how to brake and turn the sled. After our Mountain View Run Tour, we got to pet our team and play with the pups. Of all the things, the words of Frank Zappa’s song kept ringing in my head ‘Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow.’