I first encountered snow when I was seven years old and a boy in my class brought in a cool-box full of the stuff from his holiday for show-and-tell. It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen in a classroom.
But that was it for the next 20 years. This is not too uncommon an experience in Australia – my father has never seen it, I don’t think his father ever did either, and my North Queensland-born partner has yet to lay eyes on it.
And though there are plenty of other things I have never seen or done, snow was one thing where I felt I was really missing out.
As I grew up, there were those endless Christmas cards of snow-covered mountain tops as we lay under fans in the cool of the living room, smothering aloe vera on our sunburn. Almost every Disney movie had snow in it; the American books I devoured as a pre-teen told of snow days when you got to skip school. Snow seemed, for want of a less cheesy term, magic.
I came close to seeing snow out in the wild, once in Derry in Northern Ireland and once in Tasmania – but each time it was a near miss.
Then today, at last, my chance finally came.
This week large swathes of Australia are experiencing an unusually cold snap, even for winter, and despite what some old grumps on social media might say from their heated bedrooms, it is cold. It is cold in Sydney. It is cold in country towns. It is even cold in Queensland. And with the cold, snow has come!
Blackheath, just a two-hour train ride from central Sydney, gets a couple of falls a year but overnight on Thursday about 15cm was dumped on the town. As soon as my editor heard I had never seen snow – off I was sent to Blackheath.
I got the train, and even before there was any sign of snow, the magic of it was working in my carriage.
More and more people with small children piled on at each stop, rugged up and making the trip just for the snow.
As the first patches appeared out of the train windows I was worried about potential disappointment. What if it was like almost any time you meet someone famous or who you have admired from afar for years? What if the snow was boring, a bit full of itself, and just overall quite underwhelming?
It looked dirty and sparse from where I was sitting. Then it started getting thicker and thicker. Rubbish bins, backyards, entire houses, were all coated in lovely, glistening snow.
“Am I dreaming?” a five year old boy asked as we both pressed our noses against the windows.
Finally, we were in Blackheath. I carefully stepped from the train on to the platform, hovering my boot, procured from the office emergency supply in case we have to cover bushfires, above the snow.
Then I put it down and was shocked when it went straight through the snow and I found myself almost ankle deep in it. For some reason I thought I would walk over the top of it, not sink into it. I kicked it around a bit, marvelling at the softness with all the other children, some of whom had already made snow balls for me to dodge as I walked on to the street.
I finally picked a spot and bent down and touched it – like fluffy ice! As also ordered by my editor, I tasted the snow. It could have done with a little flavouring.
I loved the snow. I jumped in it, I oohed and aahed out loud at every corner I turned around, feeling like I was finally occupying the world I read about in so many books of my childhood. I tried to build a snowman but my hands went numb almost immediately and my effort was pathetic.
The whole town was out to see the snow. A teenager in a cafe excitedly told me she could not sleep the night before because she kept checking out her window to see if it was snowing yet.
An elderly woman and I wooped as a man skiied past us, poles and all, as we walked up what was usually road on the hill. Young boys gathered in various parks throwing snow balls at each other, and were still there an hour and a half later when I walked past again. Small children, rugged up so much they could barely move their arms, squealed and repeatedly fell over.
Maybe it’s not so special once you get used to the stuff. But today, in Blackheath, New South Wales, it really was magic.
