What's New - Mount Buller

The Sunday Age

Sunday June 8, 2008

Jim Darby

Mount Buller's lift system is a legacy of its quirky history. It had two lift operators from the late 1950s and they battled T-bar for T-bar and chair by chair for supremacy until they merged in 1985. Much of the lift system has been rationalised since, with more efficient aerial lifts replacing surface lifts. But the Bourke Street/Baldy area has had enough towers on it to run a slalom race.

A new $6 million, six-seat, high-speed detachable chairlift goes a long way towards streamlining uphill transport in the area. The new lift runs from the ski school base at Helicopter Flat to Baldy and replaces two lifts, the Blue Bullet 2 quad chair and the Abom triple chair. With the towers of the old lifts gone and just nine towers for the new one, there's significant expansion in skiable terrain.

But it isn't entirely the end for the Abom triple chair. It will be reincarnated in 2009 on the slopes of Selwyn Snowfields in NSW.

Snowmaking expansion and automation is a feature across all resorts; this year $500,000 at Mount Buller achieves automation on Little Buller Spur and additional capacity on Bourke Street. There's also snowmaking in the village.

The resort's proximity to Melbourne ensures steady day visitor traffic. That includes a lot of people who don't want to ski or board but want to do some tobogganing or just play in the snow.

These people pay their resort entry fee, so why aren't they also entitled to more secure snow cover? That argument seems to have won the day and the old resort administration and post office buildings have been removed and the toboggan run upgraded and extended with snowmaking installed to cover it.

At the other end of the village, Buller Ski Lifts has spent $4.5 million on its new, 80-bed staff accommodation complex on Stirling Road. It is part of $30 million spent on building projects that include two chalets called Meribel near Helicopter Flat, and the Timbuktu project on the other side of Bourke Street, with three apartments and a cafe. -- JIM DARBY

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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