Australian Snowy Mountains Fiction Followed Fact: My 1 Skiing Day

I’ve only skied one day in my life, and that was in Australia. I don’t think I even knew there was skiing in Australia until I went there, and maybe not even until the weekend was suggested. I’d flown into Darwin, and travelled east to Townsville before heading down to Sydney, but the Snowy Mountains was the farthest south I went.

It was suggested by others on the trip, as most of the domestic ones I went on in and after university were. But all my creative writing is mine: I revisited the area just over twenty years later through fantasy rambling by mostly Google Maps and Wikipedia; along with memories of my travels in Werewolf of Oz.

In 1989 we stayed in Jindabyne, while the Werewolf of Oz highlights included characters from the Perishers cartoon strip in the Perisher Valley, berry poetry in Berridale and a pigeon cooing story from Western Australia re-emerging in Cooma, linking back to the start of the rambling storyline.

Jindabyne Skiing, Snowy Mountains

Getting kitted out:

It was the end of the season there, and the ski lifts etc weren’t working, so it was a case of hiking around and up the hills/mountains:

And then skiing/falling down, reminiscent of Eddie ‘the Eagle’:

 

We also had to walk across a river at the end of the day; I led the way, knowing a shower wasn’t far away!:

Australia and Peru Qualify for World Cup 2018

After recent blog posts here featured photos from my travels to Australia and Peru, they became the last two qualifiers for World Cup 2018 this week. It is Peru’s first qualification since 1982. Here’s some more photos from Oz and Paddington’s home:

Oztory, Australia-History 1989: Setting for Werewolf of Oz 2012 

Air guitar on a Sunday afternoon:

Inadvertent Motley Crue impersonation, white-water rafting in Snowy Mountains:

Beach weekend north of Sydney (one featured in yesterday’s blog):

Snowy Mountains, note the Aussie green and gold socks, early evidence of chameleonising!:

Peru, 1994 Huaraz Lake in Andes Mountains

I stopped in Huaraz, Peru on the way down from the Ecuador border to Lima, and hiked to a nearby lake, after getting a bus to near it as I remember it: