Big Poles...

Our day trip to Mt. Buller was finally upon us - one of those things that I never thought I would get around to doing, but after George's persistence (and her schedule of weekend activities), a very early Saturday morning and a hearty breakfast at the Alzburg Inn Resort, we found ourselves at the bottom of Mt. Buller.

In this picture (digitally enhanced), I let you take a sneak peak into how George and I will look in our mid-40s.

Oh, actually, no. That was us on the day, looking remarkably daggy in our rented skiwear [but only because George wouldn't let me wear the ski suit that Ron had lent me...]

The first couple of hours was spent with Xavier, your typically French (swarthy, slimy, take your pick) ski-instructor. It soon became clear that my experiences ten years ago on the Sheffield Ski Slope had not gone to waste, and we were making plans to skip out on the lesson and hit the mountain proper.

Here, George completes yet another snow plough. But we wanted "James Bond" action. (This is completely different to James/Bond action, of which there will be no photos).

And so we zoomed away from Xavier, cutting up old people, running over kid's sledges and sticking poles up those smarmy snowboarders (oh yeah, and falling over a bit too, eh George?). All after a nice hot cup of tea, though (we are English, you know).

The bit that we were the most scared of was the lift to get up to the top of the mountain, and after trying the little 'drag your arms out of the socket' lift thing, we headed down to the main chairlift.

Chairlifts are not easy things to manouever onto (and just as difficult to get off), but the friendly assistants were really helpful. Actually, they were arses who shouted at you, but nobody's perfect, eh?

And so we made it to the top. This also coincided with the first, and only, part of the day where the clouds cleared enough for you to see further than ten feet in front of you. This enabled us to see all of the people that we had not hit simply due to the grace of God. The scenery looked pretty beautiful too.

And this is George. Note the casual, "I am on the top of an icy mountain with two slippery sticks underneath my feet" wave. Or was she waving bye to me as I slowly, inexorably, made my way backwards down the slope, with no ability to stop myself except bend my knees into positions that were never, ever intended?

This was the beginning of my first ever run down a mountain...

And then we we were away, George speeding off...

...followed very closely by me.

[Note, these pictures are a true-to-life reenactment of an actual event, the people you see actually did do these things, but they were not necessarily doing them in these photographs.]

And then we made it, safely, to the bottom where we found that sitting on the snow in our suits was actually rather comfortable. All we needed was a towel, a good book and a bottle of sunscreen, and we could have been up at Cape Tribulation, soaking up the sun.

But we would have missed out on these fantastically picturesque snow-scenes, which made the day all the more worthwhile.

Can you imagine anything more un-Australian?

And so, after four hours of being carried up to the top of mountains and then hurtling back down, the day was finished [this is me, on the bus back to the carpark, looking rather attractive]. Oh, I missed the bit about stumbling onto the blue runs by mistake, getting lost in the mist, having to do some cross-country skiing, falling over and not being able to get back up again. But, as they say, we will save that one for another day...