A first trip ‘round the world, part 26

After some very emotional goodbyes with fellow passengers leaving the ship or staying to sail on to Sydney, we disembarked from the Gallileo-Gallilei. We had finally made it into Melbourne harbor! 

It felt as if we had spent 50 days at Club Med; our intellect and our bodies were all in terrible shape and we promised ourselves that we would never do that ever again. I had been to Club Med in Kusadasi, Turkey, the year before with my ski-school colleagues, so I knew what I was talking about, yet I managed to return twice once more since, which goes a long way in saying that humans never learn! 

In 1971, Melbourne was Australia’s second largest city with 2.5 million people and today that figure has doubled! 

At no time did I worry about whether there was snow or not at Mt. Buller, or if Alexis, Gérard and Marcel were getting along and doing well. I lived in my bubble, just in the moment, and didn't care about anything else. A weird and unique time in my life! 

 

When we finally gathered our belongings from the ship, we find our wooden crate still intact, with all the skis untouched (we didn’t sell one single pair!) and we finally were met by John Hilton-Wood, our big boss, and managed to stuff everything into his car, that looked like an AMC Hornet station wagon. 

I can’t remember if he had a trailer hitched-on, in which we could have fitted the crate, or how we loaded its cumbersome contents inside his car. He found JP and I quite plump, still well tanned and absolutely not jet-lagged (an appreciable benefit of traveling by sea). 

The ride to Mt. Buller was long, tiring, Hilton-Wood’s driving style making me at times nervous, plus the fact that we were now using the "wrong" side of the road. On the way up he said: “There’s good snow, business is good and on this a busy weekend, the ski school will welcome some extra help!”