Date: Sunday, 3 October 2010

From: Johanna

Home from Baw Baw

Four months in the snow passed quickly and I am back on the flat land and looking for a tan. We had a good season this year with snow most of the time and sometimes when we didn't want it!
Tuesday nights were movie nights. In Morwell, about an hour away. Scotish Mike would drive the bus so he and some of the other international ski instructors could also do some grocery shopping. I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about Inception so joined them one night. Snow was forecast, down to 1000 metres. The resort was at 1500m so there was a possibility of an interesting return journey, but we went anyway.
On the return journey we encountered snow on the West Tyer's River Bridge at about 750m, and while we marvelled at the beautiful sight ahead, we also knew that we would need to fit the snow chains to the bus. Most of us sat in the back of the bus to give some weight to the drive wheels ploughing through the 20cm of snow. A 4X4 overtook us, so we followed in their tracks for a while. But they took the inside of the steepest corner, and we shouldn't have followed them there. The bus stopped and started sliding backwards. Mike held his cool and managed to turn the bus so it was facing downhill and reasonably out of the way. We shouldered the shopping, locked the bus and set off to walk the last 2kms.
I had thought that we would all stick together. You know, help each other and make sure that we were all safe. But the guys were having none of that and struck off on their own. And you know what I'm like when I think people are not doing the right thing! The race was on!
We were lucky that there was almost a full moon so we had a bit of light. Walking in the tyre tracks was just as hard as wading through the 20cm of snow. You just had to keep moving. It was COLD and windy and it was still snowing. But moving kept me warm and I passed each of the others in turn to be the first to the carpark at the top. Those ski instructors thought they were fit - they hadn't met a feral before!
Liverpool Mike and his girlfriend Jo struggled under the weight of their cheap softdrinks. So they buried most of them under one of the signs, hoping to get back to them the next day. You had to be up early to beat the Road Crew, so there was nothing to find the next day. It took a while before each side of the story reached the other party, and Mike and Jo had nearly half of their missing 'pop' returned eventually.

ps. If you did send Red Cross packages, they were pilfered along the way.