How to have a European-inspired snowcation in Australia. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
How to have a European-inspired snowcation in Australia. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
Good news, you needn’t travel 18,000km to the French Alps for a magical snowcation. It’s as easy as finding a real-life snow dome in Australia, writes Catherine Best
On an alpine clearing amid stands of skeleton snow gums, three disco-ball domes hunch in the snow.
Tramp past quickly and you might miss them, their hexagonal shells a mirror reflection of heaven and earth. A huddle of timber shacks bows to a teepee, pulled into a tasselled elfin hat, and a campfire emits a festive glow.
A huddle of timber shacks bows to a teepee, pulled into a tasselled elfin hat, and a campfire emits a festive glow. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
If Santa had a Southern Hemisphere hangout on his Christmas-in-July dash, this would be it. Alpine Nature Experience is a winter wonderland created by Jean-Francois Rupp, a Franco-Australian expat intent on bringing a touch of the European alps to Victoria’s High Country.
If you baulk at the idea of shunning New Zealand’s slopes for an Aussie snow holiday, Rupp’s magical ‘Snowshoe to Fondue’ dinner and overnight experience is incentive to lure you across the ditch.
The experience begins at Wire Plain, on a mountain ridge near Mount Hotham, Australia’s highest alpine ski resort (1750m), about four and a half hours’ drive north-east of Melbourne.
We meet on the edge of the toboggan car park – 10 overnight sleepers and two dinner guests – before Rupp leads us up through the snow gum forest to a hidden alpine village. The 450m walk is normally a snowshoe adventure, but the ground cover is patchy so hiking boots suffice (in the next week a cold blast will dump 34cm of fresh snow).
Alpine Nature Experience is a winter wonderland created by Jean-Francois Rupp. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
We arrive at camp in time for sunset, nursing glasses of gluhwein (mulled wine) as the clouds draw a puce curtain over the Dargo Valley. I’ve brought my kids along, it’s the first time they’ve seen snow, and they’re giddy with excitement. They hurl snowballs and build a snowman as my husband and I prop on sheepskin benches around the campfire.
Soon we’re summoned inside the teepee – adorned with cowhide and warmed by a wood-fire heater. Rupp has a surprise – the hero of tonight’s three-course dinner, a traditional French fondue, will be prepared by the guests.
We get to work, grating hunks of Emmental (Swiss) and gruyere cheese, my daughter wide-eyed as a pyramid of shavings is swept into a pot with an entire bottle of white wine. The only other addition is garlic (“the French keep it simple and use good ingredients,” Rupp says). The guests do their bit, chopping up sourdough baguettes into chewy nuggets that will scrape molten strings of gooey goodness from the bottom of the pan.
Guests can enjoy a traditional French fondue prepared by themselves. Photo / Catherine Best
Our overnight companions are a Japanese mum and her two teenage daughters and a Victorian couple celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. There’s also a birthday boy and his partner who are joining us just for dinner. The meal concludes with chocolate lava cake and a shot of Genepi, a warming herbal digestive made from a high-altitude aromatic plant.
When we retire to our room, a semi-transparent Hypedome on a raised platform with stargazing cut-outs and fairy lights, the fire is roaring and it’s warm and cosy inside.
The semi-transparent Hypedome sits on a raised platform with stargazing cut-outs and fairy lights. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
We have a double bed with joined sleeping bags, rated to -10C degrees, while our kids sleep in a clever semi-slide-out trundle, their legs tucked snug under the end of our bed. The eco-village also contains a chilly hut with a composting toilet and wash basin, and a rustic open-air bar.
“The idea was to offer a snow experience that didn’t involve skiing,” explains Rupp, who was born in Annecy, at the foot of the French Alps, and fell in love with Hotham after marrying an Australian woman and agreeing “to come and check out your hills”.
“The whole original concept was to take everything I love from the mountains – the food, the scenery, the people, the history – and package that into a lovely dinner and overnight snow experience.”
The snow domes are semi-transparent with stargazing cut-outs. Photo / Fabio Oliveira
Comfort and sustainability are cornerstones of our stay. The village is handmade from reclaimed timber and uses harvested rainwater; waste is composted and recycled, and solar keeps the lights on.
In addition to being carbon-positive through credit offsets; the business plants five trees per booking through Greenspark, and donates a share of sales to environmental not-for-profit organisations through 1% for the planet.
In the morning, it feels like we’re on top of the world. The skies have cleared, framing a panorama of alpine peaks and valleys shedding goatees of mist.
We’ve opted for an outdoor wood-fired hot tub soak (no kids allowed) and bliss out in water heated to a luxuriant 40C. It’s all very European.
On our last day on the mountain, we join Jake Greaves at Howling Husky Sled Dog Tours and go hurtling through the countryside behind a chain of nine boisterous huskies. They’re not reindeers, and today it’s a cart not a sled, but the ride completes our Euro snow-stay experience.
The experience includes a wood-fired hot tub soak at 40C. Photo / Toshi Pander
CHECKLIST
MOUNT HOTHAM, AUSTRALIA
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Melbourne non-stop with Qantas, Air NZ and Jetstar. Alpine Nature Experience is just east of Mount Hotham, north-east of Melbourne.
