A first trip ‘round the world, part 16

Now that we had successfully crossed the equator, and the weather was getting really bad, taking us away from the deck and its open air, down to the bar and its drinks, the snow was finally deep enough at Mt. Buller to get the ski season well underway.

Both Alexis and Gérard were officiating and giving ski lessons. In addition to teaching classes, Gérard was responsible, two days a week, to oversee the training of the young Victoria Ski Association racers, which was the other regional alpine ski team competing mostly against their New South Wales counterparts. 

Gérard remembers it perfectly well: “This great little team was a dozen strong, both girls and boys, highly motivated whatever the conditions, and always eager to train, like the rest of the recreational skiers who did not think twice before donning a garbage bag to keep themselves dry when needed against the rain and the almost constant high humidity ... ” 

Australia being a country of immigrants, it was not uncommon to meet Europeans who loved to escape Melbourne and drive to the Australian “Snowy Mountains” to compare them to the Alps they knew so well. 

This is how in the early days of his stay at Mt Buller, that Gérard met a certain Ernesto, from Hungarian extraction, who had passed through Lanslebourg, Gérard’s home town, as he worked there for 3 years in construction, at a place very close to his home ... 

Everyone can understand the joy this encounter brought to him, and that he’ll remember it forever because Ernesto also spoke very good French...

A bit like, two of my friends, Jean Barbier from Grenoble and Joël Gros from Vail, both ski instructors in nearby Falls Creek and Mt. Buffalo, that met their wives Paulette and Jane who respectively came from France and England, having just like Ernesto, opted to immigrate to Australia