Revisiting a treasured holiday favourite [The Mad Nomads]

One week to go before we hit the road again.

After three years of travelling our caravan has been back to Sydney for the first time this festive season.

We have visited several times but now the van has reacquainted itself with its maker and had a thorough overhaul. It was in good nick as it should be.

We spend our time keeping it in tiptop shape inside and out because it’s our home and we love it to bits… “The Snail House” is ready and raring to go and we have had a wonderful invitation.

Our friends Marion and Steve at Nelson Bay are going overseas and they have asked us to house sit.

We thought long and hard for about three seconds before accepting their offer to stay for two weeks on their lovely property with views over Port Stephens. We will look after their garden, especially their mango tree and fish and swim… We are very lucky.

Until this invitation we had no plans but knew something would crop up that would lead us where we are supposed to go.

During the week I accompanied my son Eric on a flying business trip to Perisher Valley, Jindabyne and Canberra.

After the second World War my father and 11 friends, some of them Norwegians, banded together to import a prefabricated Norwegian mountain lodge to build in Perisher Valley NSW.

These huts were part of a program in Norway to get business up and running after the the terrible depredations of war and all of these men and their families could see the potential for one of these lodges on the lonely slopes of Perisher where they skied on their way to Charlottes Pass and the only accommodation available in those days.

Telemark was finished in 1951, reportedly the first completed lodge in the valley. It was part of all our lives and I first went up during the building at the age of four. I can’t even remember learning to ski… It is second nature to me and my children and grandchildren.

The same families are still involved with Telemark and my childhood friends are still part of my life… Now my grandson is working towards being the fourth generation representing the family in the running of the lodges.

My parents ashes and several of their friends who have passed on, are resting on the slopes around the lodges and Eric and I spent an afternoon and night walking and having a cuppa with Harry and Bid on a rock below Telemark one. There are two lodges these days.

When Telemark opened for its first winter in 1951 I was five. The road from Canberra to Jindabyne was narrow dirt and there were houses being trucked into Cooma for the Snowy Scheme. It took a minimum of 8 hours to get to Jindabyne.

Jindabyne was a sleepy little town perched on the other side of a white-railed bridge across the sandy, boulder-strewn bed of the sparkling Snowy River. Today it is a brash, booming modern town on the lake that drowned the original, servicing the ski and fishing industries, approached by a modern highway from Canberra, what a difference!

In the old days the snowline was somewhat lower than now. The waters of the surrounding dams including Eucumbene and Jindabyne have changed the climate. A man called Johnny Abbotsmith would have met us at the snowline. He had been stationed on Herd Island in the Antarctic during the war with a dog team, training soldiers in arctic survival and his dogs were brought back to Smiggin Holes where Johnny used the team to move us into our lodge…at first there were no over snow vehicles… Johnny did supply a more modern service later.

Verity Halvorsen and I, being very small children, were strapped to the luggage on the dog sled and our parents skied up to Perisher.

I remember the night Johnny’s dogs escaped and ran across Mt Piper to eat our meat supplies from the hole in the snow where they were stored… No electricity in those days.

Dad, Harry Leddin and Carl Halvorsen built the first ski lift in the valley…a small affair that climbed the hill in front of the lodge. Johnny Abbotsmith subsequently had a rope tow going up the hill above the lodges and the nutcrackers we used to hold on to the rope used to fall on our heads when we let go because we were so short.

It was wonderful to revisit the memories and back in Sydney we went to see Frozen with two of our granddaughter Enya and Angie and also attended the birthday party of granddaughter Laura and her sister Emily was a fun co-host… We look forward to getting back on the road but will miss the family hugely, however God bless Skype and Facebook… We’ll be in constant touch.

Do you have a special holiday place that you treasure? Why is it important to you?