Why Guthega is Australia’s most exclusive and egalitarian ski resort
It’s overshadowed by the fame of Perisher and Thredbo – but this little ski resort is a hidden treasure, and money has nothing to do with the exclusivity.
I’ve come back to the mountains, to Guthega, Australia’s most exclusive and most egalitarian ski resort. I’m sitting by the window in the lodge, the old one, the one built by club members in 1960. An overnight front has left the main range dusted with snow, sparkling in the morning sun, a promise of the winter to come.
The main range is part of what makes Guthega exclusive. No other ski resort in Australia has this view. Here, after a day’s skiing, when the day-trippers have returned across the hills to Perisher, you can bask in the sun on the terrace outside the pub and watch the colours shift and blend as the sun sets below the main range. Arrayed before you are Australia’s highest peaks, glowing white above the tree line: Mount Twynam, Mount Townsend and, above them all, Mount Kosciuszko. It’s a wondrous view to behold with tired legs and a cold beer.
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Money has nothing to do with the exclusivity of Guthega. Over in Perisher Valley and across at Thredbo there are private lodges, where a share can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the well-heeled enjoy fully catered holidays costing thousands. Not in Guthega. Here the exclusivity comes from scarcity: there are only nine lodges, all with tightly held memberships. Many of the lodges were built by European migrants who had worked on the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme that opened up Guthega in the 1950s. The workers formed themselves into clubs and built their own huts, the only way most of them could afford to holiday in the ski fields. The same ethos endures here; members come up for work parties in summer to maintain and improve the lodges, and to keep costs down.
It is such an Australian thing, these member-run lodges. They are not just here in Guthega, of course; they are in all the Australian resorts, co-existing with the hotels and private lodges. But here, all the lodges are like that; the only readily available accommodation for paying guests is at the Guthega Inn, with its 10 guest rooms.
It took me a long time to find Guthega. I grew up in a Canberra family that was middle-class by definition but working class in attitude. Skiing was for rich people.
But when I was four, it snowed. Not the occasional flurry that visits the capital every year or two, but a real dump, heavy enough to endure for days. Cold and slippery and malleable, it was made for sliding, perfect for throwing, excellent for snowmen. I was bewitched.
And every winter, while the snow never returned to Canberra – at least, not quite like that – it was always there beckoning in the distance, coating the Brindabellas, the range west of the city. As teenagers, we would go cross-country skiing in these mountains. In my last year of high school, five of us skied into the old chalet at Mount Franklin, established back in the 1930s and the oldest lodge on mainland Australia. It was two storeys, made of wood, possessing an old-world charm. The entire place was heated by a huge cast-iron range salvaged from the prime minister’s lodge when the official residence was modernised. The chalet was heritage-listed, but that offered no protection from the 2003 Canberra bushfires, which burnt it to the ground.
In the late 1980s I skied at Guthega for the first time. Back then it was a primitive place, at the end of a terrible road, dependent on two troublesome T-bars. There were rumours the parks service wanted to close it down; or that the Packers wanted to buy it out and turn it into an enclave for the rich and glamorous.
Today it’s part of the larger Perisher-Blue Cow-Smiggins resort, an easy ski across from Perisher. Anyone can enjoy the views and a beer at the pub. But at night, when Guthega has emptied, you can stand and wonder at the star fields sprayed across the sky. It is high here, above the snowline, the air clear and dry; there is very little light pollution and the Milky Way looks luminous.
Twenty years ago, our family joined the club, and Guthega became part of our annual holidays. One year, in school holidays, it rained so heavily that the snow was washed away and the lifts were closed. There was no wi-fi, no television signal, no mobile reception. The kids were forced to team up with other children and play board games and hide-and-seek and charades. At the end of the week, they declared it the best holiday they’d ever had.
Nowadays, of my family, only my son comes skiing with me. But once a year, as we have done for a dozen years now, a group of seven mates come up here together, all journalists or former journalists. We ski and we laugh, we eat and we drink, and we sit and watch the sun lower itself below Australia’s highest range. It is a magical place.
Former journalist Chris Hammer is the award-winning author of crime thrillers Scrublands, Silver and Trust (Allen & Unwin), and non-fiction books The River and The Coast, about the Australian landscape. He lives in Canberra.
