I went to the mountains to learn how to ski. I found something much better

In this series, My Happy Place, our writers reflect on the holiday destinations in Australia and around the world that they cherish the most.

Streaming along a highway aboard a motorbike, senses sharp as a blade.

Bunkered at night in my house by the coast, a storm on the bay, the concussion of waves exploding in the darkness.

I came late to the high snowy country, where I found my most special place.

Sometimes on frosty winter mornings, in the far distance from our farm, the hump of Mount William in the Grampians shone blinding white. It launched a longing to know what snow looked like up close; what it felt like.

An introduction to winter slopes, years later, was not promising.

A girlfriend who became my wife, Fiona, persuaded me to rent skis and boots for a day at Falls Creek.

I was captivated from the moment we rode the chairlift from the carpark.

All around gaily clad lunatics hurtled down snow-robed slopes.

Fiona helped me click into skis and we shuffled to a T-bar. It seemed simple enough.

Horrified at the gradient, collapsing as I tried to follow instructions to adopt something called a snow-plough, my first descent was accomplished mostly by sliding on my bum.

Attempting a nonchalant attitude at the bottom, I suggested Fiona return to the T-bar and enjoy a run while I spent a bit of time “getting my ski legs”, though I had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

As I stood on those shaking legs, not daring to move, my partner, distinctive in a bright red ski jacket, disappeared into cloud.

I knew she could ski – why, her parents owned a ski lodge at Thredbo when she was younger. I didn’t know she’d been a slalom and giant slalom racer, however.

Some minutes later, this goddess in a red ski jacket burst at impossible speed from the cloud, leapt from a snow bank, soared 100 metres, landed perfectly and slid to an elegant swooping stop, showering me with snow.

Altogether unmanned, I clumped to the learner slope, there to spend the day crashing into other learners and once, memorably, putting a leg either side of a steel stanchion supporting the toddlers’ Poma lift. At speed.

By the end of the day, I was unaccountably hooked on this snow business, if slightly crippled.

We bought skis and boots at a discount joint and returned to the mountains each time we had the funds to cover the ruinous cost of a day’s lift tickets.

I learnt the agony of fitting chains to the wheels of our car during snowstorms.

And yet, I was in love: mountain ash and snow gums nodded with the weight of snow as we drove high into the hills, Mount Bogong over ou