After a trip to Perth with his mum, Ollie still had a couple of days of the holidays left to spend with his dad. I figured we should check out some snow up in the mountains. No skiing or snowboarding, just some fun with toboggans, snowmen and snowballs.
After a shopping trip to buy some new snow gear for Ollie the day before, we set off in the van on a cold and icy Friday morning. We took Boboyan Road down through Tharwa and Namagi National Park. This route is mostly dirt road to Adaminaby, but saves 60km and around 25 minutes. It also kept us off the Monaro Highway during snow season, which is worth it to avoid the crazy drivers this time of year seems to attract.
As we drove further up the Snowy Mountain Hwy there was more and more snow on the hills and roadside around us. Ollie was super-psyched to see any snow at all, and was getting very excited as we got closer to Mt Selwyn. We arrived and found a park towards the back of the carpark. There were a lot of people already there and heaps more arriving as we got into the snow gear next to the van. It was cold, but the sun was shining brightly.
It was basically chaos at the entry point with very little useful signage to help out. Most of the ticketing kiosks were down, but we managed to work out how to get our swipe cards and then set out to where we could see some toboggans going down a slope on one side of the resort. We swiped in, grabbed a toboggan each and then jumped on a slow moving escalator that was taking everyone to the top of the hill.
Ollie’s first run down the hill showed he didn’t really understand how to slow or steer, but he made to the bottom in one piece. We’d ended up near the tree line where a few family were playing with the less icy and packed snow underneath the tree cover. Ollie immediately took off and starting building a small snowman. He quickly found out that Australian snow isn’t quite like the snow in cartoons.
The snowman building quickly devolved into a snowball fight that lasted at least an hour, during which I was careful to show Ollie what snow is good to eat and which snow to avoid. After many, many snowballs, we took our toboggans up the hill (walking this time) and set off on another run down the hill. Sadly, this was our final trip down the hill before Ollie wanted to go back to playing snowball fights and snow angels.
After another snowball fight I convinced Ollie that we should head back to the resort and grab some lunch. It was mad in the main hall with hundreds of families all milling around getting food and changing into gear. We jumped at the back of a massive line for food, but Ollie immediately suggested that he wander around the hall and try and find some seats for us. He found a couple of spare seats at a nearby table and asked politely if he could sit with them. Then I waited in line for 40 minutes to get some chips, nuggets and a burger. I was one of the lucky ones though – the line was twice as long when we walked past.
After lunch we went back to the treeline to have another long snowball fight. The sun was out, so the snow was turning to slush which made for much better snowball packing. Ollie and I ended up in t-shirts while we were running around.
At around 2pm, after 4 hours at the snow and at least 7000 snowballs thrown, we headed back to the van and went home. We saw a couple of brumbies on the way home, with Ollie asking the deep question ‘But why did they run away from their owners?’. We took the long way home, stopping in Cooma for a book of mazes as we had forgotten to bring the Nintendo Switch.
All up, it was a long day be definitely worth it. Ollie called it the ‘best day ever’, so I’m taking that as a win.
Comments are closed.