a long weekend at Perisher · Snowy Mountains · September 2026
Day Three
Rain all day, a board game, a dash to the Spider between showers, a shot ski, Sweet Caroline — and then, at half past six, snow.
Perisher · Snowy Mountains · Saturday 5 September 2026
One minute past four. Five of them, hoods up, in the few-second break in the weather.
Saturday was the day the weather did what the forecast had been threatening all week. It rained from first light, hard, and the report at twenty past ten was three words long: heavy rain day. The board came out. At one minute past four the party timed a gap of a few seconds between showers and ran down to the Spider, where there was a band, a saxophone, a shot ski with tequila in it, and a woman called Andrean who sang I Will Wait well enough to be reviewed. At half past six somebody looked out of the window and sent the day’s other three words: it is snowing.
Sixteen minutes past ten and the creek below the lodge is doing something it was not doing on Friday. The deck is wet, the hills have gone, and the only sensible photograph of the morning is of a board game, sent with the caption heavy rain day — time for board games. The log has no record of who won and is not going to ask.
Are being cooked up indoors, said the message at sixteen minutes past four, we timed it when there was a few second break in weather and ran down to the spider pub to sing songs again. Again, because the Spider had them on Friday night too. Five in beanies and hoods at one minute past four is the evidence of the timing; six around a table by the window at a quarter past is the evidence it worked. By ten to five there was a saxophone.
At eleven minutes to six the microphone changed hands, and the caption on the next seven files was the same two words: Sweet Caroline. The photographs have two of the women singing it into one microphone, then the band behind them, then the ski back at the bar for a second sitting at twenty-three past six. What the room did at bah bah bah is on film below.
Everything sent on Saturday, in order. The log has tidied only the line breaks.
The trip was sold, back in August, on the honest line that the snow might not turn up. At twenty-eight minutes past six on Saturday, with the band still going inside, somebody stepped out and photographed the road: white, with footprints in it. And it is snowing :) incredible. The four clips from a quarter to seven are of a room that had just been told. At eighteen minutes past ten one more clip arrived, of a hand held out under a light with snow landing on it, and the caption was the last word of the day: Omg I can’t believe it it’s snowing.
