Smiggins Caravan Park

Smiggins Hole 1956

I was sixteen at the time and a keen skier. The two caravans in the photo were those of my parents and school friend Barry Lofts' family. The vans were parked in the public park adjacent to the Smiggin Holes Cafe. For the next two weeks we skied our hearts out. We were able to do this unofficially of course, for about three years before a ranger type person told my dad it was not on! Imagine trying to do that  in 2011.

I recall the first ski tow I experienced here at Smiggins. It was a rope tow operated by the mountain tourist pioneer, Johnny Abbottsmith who at the time operated the Smiggins Cafe. The tow consisted of an endless rope that ran around pulleys at each end, driven by a temperamental motor cycle engine. 

The idea was for the skier to take hold of the moving rope and hold tight as the rope pulled its load to the top of the hill. During particularly cold weather gloves sometimes froze to the rope during the upward journey and it took some very smart handiwork to slip the hand from the glove before it reached the return pulley and then retrieve the empty glove as it began its downward journey.
Whilst it was not the first ski tow in the mountains, it was my first ski tow, and affordable at five shillings for the day. The others were too expensive for the likes of us. Skiing was just catching on having been made popular by migrants who worked on the snowy scheme. many of these people were of European extraction and were excellent skiers and I suspect were the nucleus of the early Australian ski instructors. 

As our skill level improved and we progressed from stem turn, to parallel christie and began cross country skiing, we at the same progressed to the poma lift and T bars and eventually the chairlift at Perisher. Those were the days ......