After hauling generations of adventurous ski bunnies up the slopes of Mt Perisher for well over half a century, the Mt Perisher Double Chair has been decommissioned and this weekend Perisher is auctioning off some of the original chairs.
Why wouldn't you want a piece of skiing history in your backyard? It wasn't only Perisher's first chairlift, but operating since 1961, the two-seater, fixed-grip chairlift is arguably one of the best-known in the high country.
You could hang it as a swing or sit on it after a heavy frost to bring back memories of those chilblains. Go on, you know you want to.
While some nostalgic skiers have shed the odd tear of the lift's demise, I suspect most can't wait for its replacement, a new high-speed six-seater chair to open next year which will cut the lift time to the top of the mountain from 10 minutes to just over five minutes.
At a mile (yes, it pre-dates our conversion to metric) in length and daring for its time, The Mt Perisher Double Chair wasn't the only new lift that opened new skiing terrain in the early 1960s. Another much longer and much more ambitious lift was opened by rival resort Charlotte Pass in 1963, but sadly it didn't enjoy anywhere near the same longevity.
Ill-conceived, poorly engineered, and plagued by operational issues, the Alpine Way to Charlotte Pass Chairlift which carted brave souls on a torturous 5.5 kilometres from the Alpine Way over the top of the range via Ramshead/Stilwell Restaurant (Top Station) to Charlotte Pass, only lasted two seasons before being abandoned.
One of those who worked for much of the doomed chair's short life was chairlift driver Owen Davis. In fact, Owen was last person to walk out of the Top Station when it closed in 1965.
"I plastered the west-facing windows with plywood," recalls Owen. "I didn't even run the chairlift to get back to Charlotte Pass, I just walked the lift line straight down. It was over."
Despite the chairlift's chequered history, Owen has fond memories of his life in isolation, based in staff quarters at the far-flung Top Station.
"At that time, we were the highest (2057m) continuously living people in Australia," says Owen. "We had no TV or radio, but listened to a lot of opera as the Austrian chef, an opera lover, played it all day, every day. He also made the best apple strudel in the world."
Even if there was TV, Owen probably wouldn't have been able to watch it very often for the power cable often broke, sometimes taking several weeks to fix. "That contributed to how practical it was to operate the chairlift," deadpans Owen. I bet.
"When the lift was running there were many rescues of people stranded on chairs but despite the myths, thankfully no one was ever seriously injured or killed."
The wind was enemy number one. Even on a relatively calm day, according to Owen, "the direction of the lift which traversed one of the windiest slopes on the continent would still make it too dangerous to justify running it".
"The fact that 1964 was one of the biggest snow years on record didn't help things, at times the chairs were completely buried in the snow and had to be dug out." Heck.
During the height of one blizzard which lasted for several weeks, having run out of wood, Owen and his colleagues resorted to cutting the legs off some of the chairs from the restaurant. "We had to burn them - we had no other way to keep warm," says Owen.
"However, when the blizzard cleared it was like magic. When you looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows it felt like you could see a million miles. It was diamond crystal clear, everything stood out sharp."
Today, if you know where to look, there are still tangible reminders of the lift. The bottom station later became Ranger Station and still stands beside the Alpine Way, about six kilometres the Jindabyne side of Thredbo Village. While it's seen better days, it's in much better nick that the rest of the long-abandoned chairlift.
While many of the lift's towers were demolished using labour from the inmates of Cooma jail, Top Station looks like a bomb hit it. And there's a good reason for that. To prevent back-country adventurers camping among its crumbling ruins (deemed a safety threat) and to reduce it visual impact, park authorities called in the military who "blew it up" it in the 1990s.
Thirty years on and those who trek off-track to reach the ruins are greeted by the eerie site of the discarded bullwheels and twisted chunks of concrete.
As for the chairs, they were repurposed in many ways including to a grass skiing slope at Jamberoo Recreation Park on the south coast. The grass skiing has long ceased and now the chairs transport thrill-seekers to the top of the Bobsled Track at Jamberoo Action Park. There's also a chair in The Thredbo Alpine Museum.
Mt. Perisher Double's original chairs will be auctioned at Perisher Valley on Saturday June 8. For those unable to attend the live auction, an online silent auction will take place from Sunday June 9. They won't go cheaply. Each chair has a minimum bid of $1500.
Workers used 'bare hands'
Mt Perisher Double:
- Did You Know? Due to the lack of an access road to the construction site, in 1960 a flying-fox was built to cart building materials from Kosciuszko Road to the chairlift's base station.
- Hard yakka: According to A History of the Early Development of Perisher-Smiggins (Perisher Historical Society, 2018) author John Davis explains the lift was built with little more than "bare hands". Apparently, locals were transfixed by the fitness of the workers who ran up the slope lugging all sorts of loads. It wouldn't happen today.
Alpine Way to Charlotte Pass:
- Faux Record: At the time it opened in 1963, it was incorrectly promoted as the world's longest chairlift. Although it stretched just over 5.5 kilometres in length, it actually comprised two separate systems placed end-to-end with a total of seven stations/platforms, namely the Bottom (on the Alpine Way) Station, Snowline Platform, Bella Vista Platform, Top Station (at the top of the Ramshead Range), Mid Platform (Wrights Creek), Main Range View Platform, and the Terminal Station (Charlotte Pass Chalet) which still exists and is now 'The Cell Block', accommodation for resort staff.
- Crazy Canopies: In a desperate (and ultimately futile) attempt to prevent the chairs from swaying violently in the wind, workers removed their fibreglass canopies and holes drilled in the seats.
- Deep freeze: Following blizzards, many methods including cross-cut saws and gelignite were used to help dig the chairs out of the snow. According to Rick Walkom in Skiing off the Roof (Arlberg Press, 1991) on one occasion, "when the chairlift was started up again, the staff found food supplies that had been in the (buried) chairs for a month were still quite fresh".
WHERE IN CANBERRA?
Rating: Medium
Clue: Close to a cemetery that was once a graveyard
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email sent after 10am, Saturday June 8 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Jordan Gannaway of Holder who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo as a scene near the trailhead for the new 10 kilometres of walks at the Ginninderry Conservation Corridor. "The clue relating to 'Gruner' refers to the lookout in the corridor that frames the vista portrayed in Elioth Gruner's 1937 painting Weetangera, Canberra," reports Jordan who just beat several other readers including Nick Coundouris of Narrabundah, John May of Lyneham, and Maureen Marshall of Nicholls. Special note to Catharina Koopman of Belconnen who claims "along with every woman and her dog, inspired by your article in Panorama on May 18", she stepped out along the new track on Reconciliation Day.
Vanessa Bretell of the nearby Café Stepping Stone at Strathnairn reveals "we've noticed a big increase in customers due to walkers stopping in for a meal before or after exploring the new tracks". Many visitors have flocked to the tracks to check out the two new knock-out bridges which reader Barry Millar states are not swinging (or swing) bridges, rather suspension bridges. "A swing bridge pivots around a point such that, for example, ships can pass," reports Barry, adding, "this is a very common misunderstanding".
SPOTTED
On a recent trip to the high country, regular correspondent Matthew Higgins found emu prints in the snow on Bobs Ridge, just to the south-west of Thredbo. "Though I regularly see emus in the paddocks by the Alpine Way at Wollondibby, at about 1000m elevation, seeing evidence of them on Bob's Ridge, at about 1800m elevation, is significant." Has anyone else spotted evidence of emus at such a high elevation?
- CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
