The Mountain Is Calling | Beyond The Pass

Hello wonderful people!

Guess what. We’re almost done with Australia’s lopsided public holiday season!

There’s only one public holiday left to go until we take a winter break from taking a government-mandated break every few weeks, and on behalf of everybody working in hospo, can I say this is very good news.

The Easter/Anzac Day period is insane for those of us working on the other side of the counter (or should I say, ‘Beyond The Pass’). Easter, in particular, takes things a bit too far if you ask me. I mean, do we really need 4 public holidays in a row? And before you attack me in the comments (does anyone actually comment on these blogs? Let me know paradoxically in the comments if they don’t), Easter Saturday is 100% a public holiday here in NSW and I’m fed up with arguing a point I barely care about.

But the end is in sight!

The freshly-rebranded ‘King’s Birthday’ (RIP Liz) stands as a last bastion for us nine-to-fivers to book the Friday or the Tuesday off and brag to people who couldn’t care less about how we gamed the system to cop yet another long weekend. Nobody is impressed, least of all your colleagues who will definitely be waiting on your work.

And the King’s Birthday public holiday usually goes by mostly unnoticed by hospo workers. It’s only 1 day, after all. Does this barren public holiday think we can’t handle it after the slog of the Easter long week(end) that lingers, fresh in our memories?

Is the drunken chaos of Anzac Day something that fades within a few weeks, leaving us unprepared and blindsided by the slightly bigger session that awaits come June 12th?

Please.

The King’s Birthday is for one thing and one thing only: the start of ski season. Well, the technical start of ski season. I’ve been to the slopes, years ago, for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend (miss you every day, Liz) and was disappointed to find only grassy hills with terrifying ski lifts (death traps) going up and down them. The winter wonderland I was promised was nowhere to be seen and I’m a bit salty about it to this day.And this might be the only section of hospitality workers who will truly feel a shift in their trade come June 12th: our seasonal brethren in the Australian Alps.

They’ve spent the last, maybe 8 months closer to sea level, working the bars, restaurants and cafes of their hometowns, their permanent locales and generally non-alpine haunts. Who knows, maybe these spring-autumn gigs are their seasonal roles and they consider the slopes their true homes? I suspect that if I ever had the gumption to work a snow season I’d be far too susceptible to the romance of the location to resist going full mountain man, casting off decades of character-forming city dwelling to throw myself in, whole-heartedly, and give myself over to the powdery slopes.

I’d stock my wardrobe with only flannel shirts, thick, cable knit sweaters and beanies and the outside world would be forced to behold the patchiest beard they have ever seen as I try against all odds to exert my feral mountain man aesthetic upon them.

I’d park myself next to any and every log fire I could find and, hot chocolate in-hand, regale a mostly-captive audience with tales of the mountain. They’d nod politely whilst searching for an exit. I’d notice but power through with my, let’s face it, mostly-made up stories.

And after I’m gone, the legend of the mountain man, the storyteller, will live on for generations to come! A wingback chesterfield armchair would sit vacant beside the fireplace in lodges across the Alps, waiting in tribute for the mountain man to return to tell his stories, just as the prophecy foretold!

And the public holiday which announces his return each year will finally have its true king!

I apologise. I seem to have gotten a bit off-track, the romance of the mountain taking me captive through the keyboard, such is the sway it holds over me.

So, we were talking about seasonal hospitality work, right?

The King’s Birthday long weekend marks the beginning of the silly season for the snow. From here on in, consider every weekend a long weekend.

Scores upon scores of city folk descend (or would ascend be more appropriate?) upon the mountains for a taste of an altogether more continental escape. For every weird bloke holding people hostage beside a fireplace, there’s 2 impeccably-dressed pretenders sipping cocktails in the lodge with no intention of strapping on the skis.And here’s the thing, every night is like a weekend.

The guests in all of those ski resorts on the mountain? They’re coming to you. Every time. To your bar, or your restaurant, or your cafe. Because you’re the place that is there.

There are no quiet days. There are no easy shifts. There are only busy kitchens, and busy bars, and lattes upon lattes, every day until September.

And here’s us coastal elites, complaining about Easter and Anzac Day being too damn close together because, for a few weekends a year, there are probably too many patrons for our shifts to be comfortable.

To our alpine counterparts, I salute you. The idea of only having 5 public holiday-level shifts in a month must sound like nirvana to you (the Buddhist concept, not Seattle’s finest). Imagine, a week in between where everybody is poor from backing up for 4 days straight, or losing their rent money in a game of two up, so they have to stay home until payday.

This does not happen on the mountain.

These people are a captive crowd. They’re on vacation, up a mountain in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t driving to the next town over for a quick bite and a bottle of rouge. They probably don’t even realise it’s a Tuesday and they’re already onto the 3rd bottle of claret.

And in its own, special way, doesn’t that make feral mountain folk of us all? Whether behind the bar, or beyond the pass (hey, it’s catching on!), or overseeing your venue, or even patronising these places, we all accept a little part of the mountain into ourselves and begin to operate on its frequency. 

We can’t return to the coast, not now, not until our tribute is served. They wouldn’t understand us down there anyway, for they are not touched by the mountain, as we are.

Oh dear, I feel its sway taking over me again (*Reaches for the clip-on beard*). I’m done for! Save yourselves!