Japan

The family ski holiday has changed since we had to walk into Mt Buller carrying our provision in disintegrating cardboard boxes to the Belmore Ski Club in the Sixties. For one thing we no longer have to go to Mt Buller. We can go to Niseko, in Japan. Which being full of cashed up Australians (yes, like us I suppose, although personally I have never dropped an empty beer can in the snow) is a little like Mt Buller, except it has snow (so much in fact that this year there was a steady stream of tip trucks removing it from the town) and it's in Japan. So instead of disgusting chips from Cloud Nine at Falls Creek, we enjoyed delicious bowls of ramen. And instead of scraping over icy rocks we were in powder snow above our knees.















So much, in fact, that Annie lost her ski and spent a considerable period of time searching for it, before it came to light.



















But something about it makes me uneasy. It's all so 21st Century. So much money. So much fuel to power the jets (so reasonably priced in a post Global Financial Crisis travel world) to get us there and back. And all too easy. Somehow I do have a certain nostalgia for the hard days at Mt Buller, where men were men, and rode the rope tow up the Bull Run,













and didn't have to buy day tickets for their children, or $600 parkas, or even skis (Dad made ours), and where women (mothers at least) prudently stayed at home.



Then again, Mt Buller was never like this.