“G’day mate, how ya goin?” one of my coworkers called to me from the other end of the locker room as I struggled to hang up my sodden uniform, soaked from the 7 degree Celsius rain that had fallen in place of the expected snow. (That’s 45 degrees for all you Farenheit people, aka pretty much just Americans, as I soon found out.) I was an American in Perisher, Australia that is, and I was teaching skiing during my 2016 summer break.
Most of my relatives back home, upon hearing that I was going to teach skiing in Australia, immediately came to the conclusion that I would be teaching water skiing. When I gently corrected them that I would in fact be teaching snow skiing, their expressions became very bemused. “Is there even snow in Australia?” they would ask.
And let me tell you, there most certainly is snow in Australia. It’s pretty elusive snow, only showing up once you crest all the rock covered hills and get right up to the base of the mountains, but it’s there nonetheless. Perisher, the largest ski resort in the southern hemisphere, boasts the most reliable snow in Australia, which is probably what makes it the most popular ski resort down under.
People come from all corners of the world to experience the light, sandy Persisher snow. Torrents of vacationers from Sydney frequented our ski schools, and every once in a while we’d get someone who had made the 4,000 kilometer trek from Perth on the opposite side of Australia. Instructors circulated from ski resorts in the northern hemisphere to Perisher, taking advantage of the opposite seasons of Canada, Europe and Japan to create perpetual winters for themselves. I became friends with people from Scotland, England, South Korea, Wales, and Taiwan, and together we all shared the unique experiences of Australia. Breathing the eucalyptus infused air of the locker rooms, sampling the distinctive ski school lunches of meat pies, sausage rolls and vegemite sandwiches, and marveling over a lost kangaroo casually hopping across the lower section of a ski run were some of our daily adventures.
We also learned plenty of Aussie lingo while skiing there. Breakfast is “breaky,” when you’re excited for something you’re “keen,” and everyone says “hey” as a sort of affirmation after their sentences. “Aw your hands are a bit cold without your mittens, hey,” was a sentence I said to too many four and five-year-old skiers to count.
Besides teaching kids the importance of not taking their mittens off in the snow, and teaching kids day after day how to make a pizza shape with their skis, I also tried to teach them a few life lessons here and there. For one, it doesn’t matter if someone makes rude faces and sticks out their tongue at us. That doesn’t need to lessen our fun! For another, it really doesn’t matter who gets to the bottom of the run first. It’s not a competition! (Unless, of course, you’re ski racing; in that case, carry on.)
The point, though, is that whether we are kids, adults, native Australians, or foreigners, we are all on the mountain for the same reason-- to have fun in the snow. For me and my fellow instructors from all over the world, our love of skiing brought us all together. We shared our cultures just like we shared our love of snow sports. The feel of the wind rushing past my face, the exhilaration of carving fiercely down the mountainside, the majesty of the horizon at the top of a run: this is why I ski. And this is why I teach skiing-- because when a kid gets that euphoric, heart-soaring feeling when they bomb down a run, whooping with joy the whole way down, you know you’ve opened up a whole new world for them-- a world in which they can go anywhere, even Australia.
