Sure, she’s still in her PJs, and she’s doing her best impression of a contortionist by hanging upside down out her bedroom window, but yes, Sarah my 11-year-old daughter really is touching the snow out her bedroom window. And she wants everyone to know about it.

For our annual family trip to the snow this year, we decided to avoid battling the morning conga line of traffic winding up the mountain from Jindabyne, and instead bunk down at a ski lodge in Smiggin Holes (or just Smiggins).

Now, when you hear the words ‘ski lodge’, it often conjures up images of group accommodation complete with bunk beds and share kitchens, but Numbananga Lodge is different. Very different.

Underutilised for decades, this circa-1960s temporary national park staff quarters has just been transformed into a slick three-bedroom self-contained ski lodge, and what’s more, it’s all ours. Well, for one weekend anyway.

Giving tired buildings on their estate a new lease of life isn’t a new initiative for parks authorities, for over the last decade the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has flung open the doors of dozens of its properties for holiday lettings, with several, including the idiosyncratic Myer House near Tathra, having previously featured on these pages.

However, none are as spectacularly situated, or as conveniently located as this free-standing two-storey lodge, where nestled amongst a snow gum woodland near the southern boundary of Smiggins resort, every window (double-glazed, of course) commands an equally captivating view.

If you pull up a pew at the rustic wooden dining table you’ll overlook the partially frozen Pipers Creek as it attempts to flow through a myriad of snow drifts; and while brewing a coffee in the kitchen, you can watch skiers negotiate the lower slopes of the resort. For me though, the pièce de résistance is the tastefully renovated bathroom from where, while indulging in a piping hot shower, you can reach out the window and touch the icicles hanging from the eaves. Really!

The weather gods must have been smiling on us for our arrival coincided with a half-metre dump of fresh snow, and in the morning the girls are especially enamoured with the giant pile of white stuff heaped on the BBQ.

“It looks like a giant marshmallow”, laughs Emily, Sarah’s seven-year-old sister as she gulps down her second hot chocolate for breakfast.

Regular readers of these pages will be all too aware that your Akubra-clad columnist revels in reading books in landscapes where they’re set (recently branded ‘in-situ reading’ by fellow scribe Robert Macfarlane), so I’m more than a little delighted to find a generous pile of titles highlighting the pioneering days of skiing in the Australian alps, spread across the coffee table.

So, while Mrs Yowie and the girls ski out the door for a much-anticipated day in the powder, (or in little Emily’s case, possibly some involuntary face planting), resplendent in my Ugg boots and tracky-dacks, I settle into the couch and pluck the first book from the top of the pile. It’s one of my all-time favourites - Klaus Hueneke’s classic Huts of the High Country (ANU Press, 1982).

The first page I open details the adventures of Robbie Kilpinen, a well-known ski tourer who went in search of Grey Mare Hut (in backcountry, about 20km north of Smiggins) in 1964.

“He knew the area better than the sole of his skis but could not find the hut,” writes Hueneke. “It was not until his stock went down the chimney that he realised the hut was completely buried and that he had to dig for the door.”

Heck, and to think we were impressed by the comparatively modest mound of snow piled up against our windows after last night’s storm.

It’s no secret that snow falls were much heavier mid-last century and a flick through Matthew Higgins’ Bold Horizon: High-country Place, People and Story (Rosenberg, 2018) reveals photos and accounts of just how much harder it was to access the ski fields when these falls were also more widespread and vehicles less reliable than today.

Take for example Bert Bennett, who extensively traversed the alps over six decades in the mid-1900s. According to Higgins, “During his ski tours to the Bogong High Plains in the 1940s, before the days of widespread private car ownership, and with wartime petrol rationing to contend with as well, Bert would often catch a train to the nearest station, then either a local mail car or taxi service, and sometimes then packhorses before the walk or ski tour actually commenced.”

In Highway to Heaven: a history of Perisher and the ski resorts along the Kosciuszko road (Peter Southwell-Keely, Perisher Historical Society, 2013) there’s a photo of a one-horse open sleigh transporting skiers past Smiggins in 1961, the preferred means of transport prior to 1953, when the first over-snow transport operated to Perisher Valley. According to Southwell-Keely, “It [the first over-snow vehicle] was greeted by the inhabitants with cheers and celebrations.” I bet it was.

I can’t wait to show the girls the photo, both of whom grumbled about having to haul their bags from the comfort of our heated car, all of 100 metres to the lodge during last night’s blizzard. Thankfully I don’t have to wait long for, just as I bump the heater up another notch, the girls pop back for lunch. That’s another advantage of staying on-snow, instead of forking-out for over-priced fast food at resort kiosks, you can indulge in home-cooked fare. Today it’s goulash (thanks Mrs Yowie for getting up early and slaving over the stove) in which unfortunately, according to Sarah at least, Daddy added “a handful” too much paprika.

However, the unwanted sting to lunch pales into insignificance compared to the tucker endured by a group of back country adventurers who skied from Canberra (or the Brindabellas at least) to Thredbo in 1963.
In Skis on the Brindabellas (Tabletop Press, 1994) Matthew Higgins highlights a group of four daring YMCA Ski Club members, including Robin Miller who documented the trip in an article called ‘Winter Overland – Franklin to Chalet’ published in the 1964 issue of Ski Australia.

To make the going easier, in the previous summer, the group left food drops hidden in various places along their planned route. Worried wayward bushwalkers might would fleece their supplies, they left signs on the metal drums warning of their critical contents. However, the potential theft of their supplies should have been the least of their worry, for “ravenous” on reaching their first drum near Oldfields Hut, they were dismayed to find it “reeking of white spirit”.

It turns out that the foursome had stashed a bottle of fuel for their two primus in each drum, which in the course of the autumn, had partly evaporated through the cork, penetrating all the sealed bags containing most of their food. Eek!

“It would be out of the question, we felt, to throw the tainted food away; we simply had to adjust to the new additive,” wrote Miller. “We soon grew accustomed to the occasional spirited belch during the day, reminding us of the tiger in our tanks.”

The afternoon is spent vicariously exploring more and more of the alps through the words of adventurous authors, only breaking occasionally for another cuppa or to stick my noggin out the window just to remind me how cold it is.

With the mercury hovering around minus 5, I’m surprised to discover in the hot-off-the-press “A History of the Early Development of Perisher-Smiggins (John Davis, Perisher Historical Society, 2018) that there was once a heated outdoor pool at Smiggins which “was completely buried under snow for the heavy winter of ‘64” and which in summer, even though small “was found large enough to fit Tony Sponar’s (yes, of the chalet fame) sailing boat”.

However, it seems that a backcountry skier’s sense of ingenuity will always outdo a downhill skier’s sense of extravagance. According to Hueneke, the aforementioned Robbie Kilpinen once concocted a rudimentary sauna at Grey Mare Hut, “crudely constructed from a modified 44-gallon drum with an iron wheel welded into the top to hold the steaming rocks.” Impressive.

Enthralled by the antics of Australia’s early ski pioneers, time gets away and it’s only when the lengthening icicles hanging off roof turn a blood red hue that I realise the sun is setting.

Soon the girls bound up the stairs and tales of the day’s thrills and spills fill the lodge. “I only fell over twice, and even skied all the way to Perisher,” boasts little Emily, her chest proudly puffed out, but so exhausted she can hardly keep her eyes open. After even more goulash (this time tempered with a generous dose of sour cream) with curtains wide open, and enchanted by the twinkling lights of the resort below and the Milky Way above, Sarah joins her in the land of nod.

Back in my book nook and sampling a butterscotch schnapps, Mrs Yowie gently reminds me that I “didn’t leave the lodge all day”.

There aren’t many places where you’d sacrifice a day playing in fresh powder to enjoy the comfort of your surroundings, but Numbananga is one of those.

Numbananga Lodge: Three-bedroom, self-contained lodge at Smiggin Holes. Ideal for families. Located 2km from Perisher, Smiggins is a 210km drive from Canberra. If the lodge is snow-bound, you may need to park at Bullocks Flat and catch the ski tube. Park entrance fees apply. Ph: 13000 PARKS (13000 72757) or www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/numbananga

Did You Know? Snow bunnies are often intrigued as to the unusual name of Smiggin Holes. In Highway to Heaven, Peter Southwell-Keely explains “conventional wisdom has it that James Spencer used to run his cattle in the area during the 1840 and put salt licks for them where Smiggins now is. Supposedly, when the cattle came to lick the salt they dug up the ground, creating a muddy, indented area which Spencer’s Scottish head stockman called ‘‘the smiggin holes’’ after a Scottish word meaning licking or trampling.” More: www.perisherhistory.org.au

Tim’s Tip: Numbananga Lodge will also make an ideal base for exploring Kosciuszko National Park in summer.

Contact Tim: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick. You can see a selection of past columns online.

Clue: Locals pine for this old railway
Degree of difficulty: Medium - Hard

Congratulations to Roanna Gardiner of Isabella Plains who was the first reader to correctly identify last week’s photo, above, as a mural outside the Rhythm (hence the clue of ‘a beat by another name’) Sports store in Cooma. It was an easy win for Gardiner who just before looking at the paper “parked right in front of the mural while returning our hired snowshoes”.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday August 18, 2018, will win a double pass to Dendy - The Home of Quality Cinema.