Australian ski lift directory

Details of nearly 500 ski lifts and passenger ropeways that have operated in Australia

Contents

Click on the main headings to go to that section.
A few notable lifts have short profiles. Readers are welcome to submit profiles of other lifts

1. Introduction
      1.1 Latest ski lift news (Older news stories are in Section 23)
      1.2 Background information for this web page
      1.3 Ski lift records, oddities and FAQs (New section added 28/09/2019.)
      1.3.1 Most recent ski lifts
      1.3.2 Oldest ski lifts
      1.3.3 Highest and lowest
      1.3.4 Longest and shortest
      1.3.5 Furthest north, south, east and west
      1.3.6 Fastest and slowest
      1.3.7 Other questions
      1.4 Ski lift names
      1.5 Planned resorts that were never built
      1.6 Abandoned ski resorts and club fields. New section added 20/7/2020
      1.7 Lift tickets

2. Types of ski lifts
      2.1 Aerial lifts: Chairlifts, Chondolas, Gondolas, Aerial trams
      2.2 Surface lifts with an elevated cable: T-bars, J-bars, Platters, Poma-lifts
      2.3 Surface lifts with a lower cable: Nutcracker tows, Handle tows, Rope tows, Carpets
3.  Ski lift Manufacturers (Section entirely rewritten May 2019.)
    3.1 Australia and New Zealand: McCallum, Australasian Ropeways, Gam, Hamilton
      3.2 Foreign: Doppelmayr-Garaventa, Leitner-Poma, other companies, defunct companies

4. Australian Capital Territory . . Corin Forest, Mt Franklin, Mt Ginini
5. Ben Lomond
6. Charlotte Pass
7. Falls Creek
      - Alpine Chair Lift
      - International Poma
      - Proposed expansion: lifts at Mt McKay, Rocky Knolls & Damsite
8. Mt Baw Baw
9. Mt Buffalo
10. Mt Buller
      - Summit Access - Howqua Poma
      - Blue Bullets 1 & 2. Coming soon.
11. Mt Hotham
      - Playground chairlift
      - Blue Ribbon nutcracker

12. Mt Mawson
13. New South Wales: backcountry areas outside resorts
14. Perisher area (including Smiggin Holes, Guthega and Blue Cow)
15. Selwyn Snow Resort
16. Tasmania: proposed ski resorts and proposed gondolas
17. Thredbo
      - Crackenback nutcracker
18. Victoria: backcountry areas outside resorts
19. Other passenger ropeways (non snow)
      - Brisbane Expo ‘88. Cornered chairlift & handle tow
20. Proposed ski developments outside snow fields
21. Cross country ski resorts (no lifts)
22. Links
23. Older news stories

© David Sisson 2007 - 2023

1. Introduction

1.1 Recent Ski lift news

16 January 2023. A Sunkid covered carpet has appeared on the Falls Creek toboggan run at Windy Corner. It appears to be part of a programme to keep tobogganists away from ski slopes other potentially dangerous places.

December 2022. Over the month the last work on the Jindera Private Chairlift near Albury was completed, it is a hobby project of the owner of a fabrication and engineering business. The lift has six towers, is 400 metres long and has a 70 metre vertical rise. It is the first Australian designed and manufactured chairlift in 51 years and is claimed to be ‘the first privately owned, designed and constructed quad chairlift in the world’.

31 May 2022. Thredbo has finished building a new Easy Rider T-bar on Merritts Spur to replace the 1968 T-bar of the same name. The lift was made by Doppelmayr and has a length of 275 metres and a vertical of 65 metres. It has a nominal capacity of 1019 passengers per hour with a rather high top speed of 2.5 metres per second. This follows on from the 2020 Merritts Gondola, so after decades of announcing unfunded projects they were never going to build, it appears Thredbo actually has a genuine programme to replace their antique lifts with a new Snowgums chairlift scheduled to be built in the summer of 2023 - 2024. Reputedly it will be a detachable 6-pack, but after 25 years of lift announcements from Thredbo that never eventuated, don’t be too confident about it until construction begins.

23 September 2021. More old lifts. After working on this page for 14 years I expected that all older lifts would have been discovered. However information on more lifts is still being uncovered. Recent discoveries are a 1950s rope tow on Mt Buller that ran from the Skating Rink to Horse Hill and a probable 1960s tow near Diamantina Hut at Mt Hotham. So if you have even fragmentary information on lifts that aren’t listed on this page or know more about lifts where the entry is incomplete, please send it to australianmountains (at) gmail.com Thanks.

August 2021. It seems that every few years Thredbo announces that they like the idea of replacing their elderly lifts, but (with the exception of the 2020 Merritts Gondola), they have always been careful to avoid spending money or committing to an actual date. However while it is not in any media release yet, it appears there is an actual commitment to replace the 1988 vintage Easy Rider Doppelmayr T-bar with another T-bar from the same manufacturer before the start of the 2022 season.

The next lift on the list appears to be Snowgums double chair which will hopefully be replaced with a detachable 6-pack in 2023 or 2024, followed by Gunbarrel (the lift with chairs that detach from the cable a little too easily), then Cruiser and then the Kosi Express Chondola. But based on many years of reading their media releases and magazine articles, I suggest we shouldn’t expect anything more than the new T-bar in the near future. So not quite the announcement of a date for a new chairlift we were hoping for, but at least it’s something.

23 July 2021. After 47 years operating ski lifts on Ben Lomond, the Williams family has sold the lift network to a group headed by Stewart Hosken and Ben Mock. The new owners plan to improve the water supply and implement a three stage snow making plan which will cover Summit, Village Home Trail, Big Ben and Fannies using Technoalpin equipment runing at significantly higher pressure than the snow guns currently operating on the mountain.

The realcommercial site reported that the resort was sold on 17 May by Castran which has a ski real estate division, along with marketing Melbourne property developments.

18 May 2021. Charlotte Pass have confirmed that their new Guthries Chairlift will be a double. While it might be brand new, it is most likely that it will be second hand although they are not letting us know its provenance just yet. Brief media release.

8 March 2021. Selwyn have been a bit vague about the extent to which their lifts were damaged in January 2020 when wildfires destroyed most of the buildings at the resort. However they quickly announced that although they would be closed for the 2020 season, they would be rebuilding. In November 2020 the resort issued information that the New Chum double chairlift which dates from 1988 would be renovated using Doppelmayr components with new chairs, a new motor, plus improved loading and unloading facilities.

In March 2021 they announced that Powerline Poma-lift will be replaced by an extension of the Township triple chair (which was moved from its original location at Mt Buller in 2009) and three new Sunkid carpets will be installed, two in a new beginners area and a 150 metre carpet at the toboggan park. As yet there has been no public information on which other lifts will be reopened, although there is plenty of speculation. Link to the media release detailing aspects of the rebuild including a 40 year lease, new buildings, extended snowmaking, etc.

11 May 2021 UPDATE. Selwyn has released further information. They plan to be open for Queens Birthday Weekend 2022 with the large new ‘Selwyn Centre’ housing all guest facilities and services in the one building. Facilities such as food, drink and ski hire will be ‘significantly improved’ over the former setup. Snowmaking and grooming will be extended from the pre fire arrangements and most significantly to this website, the 2022 season will ‘see the completed full upgrade of the New Chum Chairlift and the re-opening of 100% of the resort's skiable terrain.’ However they are still not providing information on precisely which lifts will operate. Let’s hope that the old lifts will be restored and that Home Run, the last cornered poma-lift in Australia outside Falls Creek is preserved so newer skiers can experience it.

4 March 2021. There’s still nothing new on the chairlifts being built at Mt Perisher, Corin Forest and Charlotte Pass, the rather unlikely plan for a gondola at Werribee Zoo in Melbourne or the rebuilding of Selwyn after the fires. So in the absence of any solid news, here is a brief history of the plans for expansion of Falls Creek lifts into the Mt McKay area at the the turn of the century. It can be found after the table of Falls Creek lifts.

4 November 2020. The Victorian government has announced a proposal for a 1.6 km gondola at Werribee Zoo on the outskirts of Melbourne as part of an $84 million upgrade of the zoo.

Whether this is just a vague political commitment that is unlikely to be implemented or a properly funded project announced after consultation with a lift manufacturer is unknown. However it’s worth remembering that a $100 million expansion and upgrade of Werribee Zoo together with a new theme park area backed by Village Roadshow was announced by the state government in 2008, but that idea was abandoned within a few months.

On the positive side, gondolas are a feature of many larger zoos, so there is a chance this proposal might actually be built. Updates will be added when or if more detail is announced.

UPDATE January 2022. No further news, so it looks like the Werribee Zoo gondola announcement was unfunded wishful thinking by politicians rather than an a solid commitment to the project, although there is a state election due this year, so they may be saving an announcement until then.

On 11 April 2022 the project was announced yet again. No new information was given, but hopefully this indicates that the project is getting closer to being properly funded rather than just being a publicity stunt.

Older lift related news stories are in section 23 at the end of this web page. © David Sisson 2007 - 2023.

1.2 Background to this web page

This article lists all of the nearly 500 ski lifts and passenger ropeways that have operated in Australia, section 19 covers several dozen lifts away from the snowfields. It also includes brief summaries of the companies that made the lifts and the different types of lifts in an Australian context. The lists are arranged by location and the dates cited are the ski seasons a lift operated (or if a lift didn't run in poor snow seasons, the years it was available to operate). Also included are a few planned lifts that were announced by lift operators but which were never built.

Lift companies. Lifts at most ski resorts began with individuals and clubs taking the initiative. This meant that at all resorts except Thredbo, Mt Mawson and Charlotte Pass (which only ever had one lift operator), skiers initially had to choose which lifts they would buy tickets for. In the 1950's there were four different groups running lifts at each of Buller, Falls Creek and in the Perisher area. The early 1960's saw most of the small operators close down or sell out, but Baw Baw only gained a single lift company in 1981 and Buller's lifts only came under a single company 1985. The four adjoining ski areas in the greater Perisher region were finally united in 1995. The last resort with two lift companies was Ben Lomond, where Alpine Enterprises and Tasmanian Ski Lifts competed with each other until 2001.

Ski lifts outside resorts. Generally the clubs that operate lifts on Mt St Bernard, the Bogong High Plains and until 2016, Cabramurra have only permitted members and their guests to use the lifts as their liability insurance doesn't cover outsiders. But if you know someone or can spin a convincing story, you may be able to hitch a ride.

Older ski areas without lifts. In Victoria Mt Donna Buang was Australia's only true ski resort before the Second World War. Donna had four ski lodges, cafes, a ski hire, day shelters, six cleared ski runs and a large ski jump, but it never had ski lifts. Likewise both the Feathertop Bungalow and Mt St Bernard Hospice were popular commercial ski lodges before they were burnt in the 1939 fires, but no lifts were built at either location until the 1950s when a couple were installed on St Bernard. In NSW the Hotel Kosciusko at Diggers Creek was a popular pre war ski destination, but no lifts were built there until one was built in about 1950 when the heyday of the area was already over and most skiers were heading further up the road to Perisher and Charlotte Pass. The present day cross country ski resorts have never had lifts either except for Corin Forest near Canberra and Lake Mountain near Melbourne which both have a couple of short carpets.

Resort logos. The latest ski resort logos were initially used as headers for the sections on each resort, but there has been a surprising level of interest in older ones. So older resort logos have been added, although some are still missing from the early days. Please email any other historic logos you may come across, even if the quality or resolution isn’t great.

Lift lengths. Where information on the length of a lift has been found in several different sources, it sometimes differs by 5 or 10 percent. This may be due to the difference between the actual length of the path on the ground and the distance on a map which does not take the vertical into account. If research has turned up two slightly different lengths, the official length as stated by the lift operator has been cited. Of course several lifts have been lengthened or shortened during their lifetimes and those lifts have the differing distances explained in the notes field of the tables.

Express lifts. ‘Express’ is a marketing term for lifts that run faster than usual. While T-bars, platters and fixed grip chairlifts usually operate at speeds under 2½ metres per second, other types of lift where the grip detaches from the tow rope when loading such as Poma-lifts, nutcrackers and detachable chairlifts can run at double that speed. Of course, not all lift companies run their detachable grip lifts at 5 metres per second all of the time.

Many hundreds of industrial ropeways used to transport materials have operated in Australia. While they are not covered here, it’s worth noting that the most common were funicular tramways and cable haulages operating on railway tracks. The majority were used in timber harvesting in the first half of the 20th century, but others were used in the construction and maintenance of other projects such as the penstocks of hydro-electric schemes.

Industrial aerial ropeways were less common, although in the 1920s and 30s some were used to move logs to timber tramways such as the High Lead near Powelltown in Victoria. An aerial ropeway was built near Melbourne in 1920 to transport cement from Healesville railway station to the site of the Maroondah Dam and a 5.2 km ropeway built by Doppelmayr at Kandos in NSW in 2000 was used to transport limestone to a cement plant until 2012. In Tasmania a ropeway from Hercules to Rosebery still exists, although in line with the ups and downs of the West Coast mining industry, it is not operational at the moment.

Urban cable tramways are also passenger ropeways. Melbourne had the biggest network in the world, it lasted from 1885 to 1940. There were also a few lines in Sydney, but commuter transport is well beyond the scope of this webpage.

Sources. This web page began in 2007 as a small personal project out of frustration at less than accurate reports relating to ski lifts in books, magazines and websites and I didn't bother to cite sources. However it's grown into a bit of a monster with close to 500 lifts and 300,000 page views, so in hindsight I wish I'd footnoted it. However I've been careful to only list lifts that have been reported in reliable histories (resort histories are noted at the end of each section) or which appear in contemporary publications such as magazines and brochures. The only exception is some lifts in the NSW backcountry section where I've had to rely on personal reports from reliable sources. If researchers want to know the source of any information on this page, please email me and I should be able to respond within a few days.

Copyright. This web page and its contents are copyright, so please don't reproduce it without permission. If you use small parts of it in compiling web pages, articles or books, I'd be grateful for an acknowledgement of my work by name and a link to this web page. Thanks.

Finally, this sort of research takes a lot of time and it will probably always be a work in progress. In particular, details of early lifts at Perisher and backcountry lifts in NSW are a little shaky and the Mt Buffalo section needs more information. If you notice any errors, omissions or you have extra information, please email: australianmountains (at) gmail.com © David Sisson 2007 - 2023.

1.3 Ski lift records, oddities and FAQs

Section added 28 September to 18 October 2019.

In response to a number of requests and looking at search engine queries that led to this page, here is a quick run down of frequently asked questions about ski lifts in Australia.

1.3.1 Most recent ski lifts.

Arranged by year and then in descending order of cost and glamour:

2025 (planned)
- Mt Perisher 6-pack chairlift, a Doppelmayr that will replace the Mt P Double and Triple chairs
- Guthries double chairlift at Charlotte Pass to replace Guthries Poma. Unconfirmed reports say it will be fixed grip and only 400 metres long. For comparison, the current 1963 vintage Guthries Poma lift is 580 metres long. There is a small chance that it will incorporate parts from the old Mt Baw Baw double chairlift that the Blyton Group have had in storage at Cooma aerodrome for many years.
- Corin Forest on the outskirts of Canberra have announced that they will build a chairlift.

2023

Selwyn. The resort has been frustratingly vague about lifts in their post bushfire rebuild. They have announced there will be three new carpets (one will be on a toboggan slope) and that some lifts have been refurbished, but they are (politely) not answering questions about possible new chairlifts, T-bars or Poma-lifts.

2022
Jindera Chairlift a privately operated quad on a property near Albury. First mostly Australian made chairlift in 40 yrs, but uses some Dopp parts
Easy Rider T-bar at Thredbo. A new T-bar that replaces the original 1968 T-bar.

2021
No new lifts, but several lifts delayed. Blame covid.
2020
- Merritts gondola at Thredbo. It replaced Merritts double chair.
2019
- Bourke St Express, a Doppelmayr detachable six-pack chairlift at Mt Buller.
- Leichhardt, a Doppelmayr fixed grip quad chairlift at Perisher.
- Canyon, a Sunkid ‘comfort star’ hybrid platter / handle tow at Mt Buller.
2018
- Eagle, a Leitner-Poma detachable quad chairlift at Falls Creek. (No connection with Arthurs Seat Eagle, a 2016 Doppelmayr gondola in Victoria)
- Frosti Frog and Ski School. Two Team Service carpets at Mt Baw Baw.
- Ski School, a Team Service carpet at Corin Forest in the A.C.T.
- Village and Burton Riglet. Two Team Service carpets at Lake Mountain, a cross country ski resort in Victoria.

1.3.2 Oldest ski lifts.

First ski lift in Victoria (and Australia). A rope tow built from old railway lines was installed at Mt Buffalo in 1937.
First ski lift in N.S.W. A J-bar made from wooden beams was erected at Charlotte Pass in 1938.
First ski lift in Tasmania. A nutcracker on the Golden Stairs at Mt Mawson in 1958. Work began on two tows at Mt Rufus in the late 1940s, but they
were never completed. There is an unreliable reference from circa 1958 to a lift at Ben Lomond but it was probably confused with Mt Mawson
First ski lift in the A.C.T. The Brumby nutcracker tow first ran on Mt Franklin in 1957.

Oldest operating lift in Australia. The oldest operational ski lift is a nutcracker tow at Mt St Bernard in Victoria. It first ran at Mt Buller in 1953 before
moving to St Bernard in 1955 where it has run ever since. Note: St Bernard is a private club field and the public cannot use either of their lifts
First chairlift in Australia. Bob Hymans built the single seat Alpine Chair Lift at Falls Creek in 1957.
Oldest operating chairlift in Australia. With the 2023 closure of the Mt Perisher Double that first ran in 1961, the oldest operational chairlift is at Perth Showgrounds. It is a McCallum double chairlift that first operated in either 1971 or 1972. The oldest chairlift operating at a ski resort is Perishers Pretty Valley double chair which opened in 1978.

1.3.3 Highest and lowest

Highest ski lift in Australia. The highest ski lift was the Northcote Tow on the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains which initially climbed to about
2053 m. After experiments in 1953 ski season, the top was moved 50 metres horizontally & slightly downhill before formally opening in 1954 Highest operational surface lift in Australia. Australia’s highest operating surface lift is Karel’s T-bar at Thredbo with a top station at 2037 metres.
Highest planned ski lift. The Mt Perisher 6-pack chairlift is due to open in 2025 and will climb to 2042 metres.
Lowest ski lift in Australia. The former chairlift at Mt Baw Baw went down to circa 1190 metres. It was used to access the resort when the road was
closed by snow and for skiing when the snow was deep enough at that altitude.
Lowest operating ski lifts. The three lowest ski lifts are at Mt Mawson in southern Tasmania with Mawson tow having a base at about 1215 metres. . A carpet at Corin Forest in the ACT appears to be at around 1230 metres, but it is possible that it is slightly lower than the Mt Mawson tows
Lowest chairlifts in Australia. There have been plenty of tourist chairlifts that operated close to sea level, but the only one that actually went right
  down to a beach was the former chairlift at Portsea Back Beach in Victoria, although the Granite Island chairlift near Victor Harbour in
  South Australia went close to a beach.

1.3.4 Longest and shortest

Longest operating ski lift in Australia. The longest ski lift currently in use is the Kosciusko Express chondola (combined chairlift / gondola) at Thredbo. It is 1860 metres long.
Longest surface lift in Australia was the Tyrol T-bar at Mt Buller which was 1610 metres long before it was shortened.
Longest carpets were the two 160 metre carpets that ran at Mt Buller in 2010 and 2011. They were installed to provide access to slopes that became unlifted after the Burnt Hut triple chairlift was destroyed by lightning and were in turn replaced by the new Bonza quad chairlift in 2012.
Longest chairlifts. The two chairlifts that briefly linked Thredbo Valley and Charlotte Pass in 1964 and 1965 were 4757 and 3323 metres long.
Longest gondolas are the two that operate from near Cairns to Kuranda in Queensland. They have a combined length of 7500 metres.
Shortest ski lift. Several carpets are only 25 metres long. The shortest conventional ski lift is probably Perisher’s 145 metre long Tom Thumb J-bar.
Shortest chairlift was the 160 metre Valley chairlift at Mt Buffalo which last ran in 2006. The shortest operating chairlift is probably New Chum at Selwyn.

1.3.5 Furthest north, south, east and west

North. The northernmost ski lifts were the tows formerly on Mt Franklin in the A.C.T., the most northerly ski lifts running today are the carpets at Corin Forest. For six months at Expo ‘88 in Brisbane, a handle tow served a ski slope with artificial snow in the Swiss Pavilion.

South. The most southerly ski lifts in Australia are the three nutcracker tows at Mt Mawson in southern Tasmania.

East. The Corin Forest carpets are also further east than any other ski lift in the country,

West. Tank Hill platter at Mt Baw Baw is the westernmost operating ski lift, although the former Baw Baw chairlift was further west.
Adelaide’s Mt Thebarton had the world’s first indoor ski slope on artificial snow where a carpet lift operated from 1987 to 2005.

1.3.6 Fastest and slowest

This is a rather subjective question because it depends on how fast lift companies choose to run a lift on a particular day. But there is a definite record for the fastest lift in Australia and it may also have been the fastest ski lift in the world.

Ski lifts where the grip on the carrier detaches from the moving haul rope, such as Poma-lifts, nutcrackers and detachable chairlifts, can usually run at 4 to 5 metres a second (14 to 18 kmh). The fastest chairlift in the country is probably the 5.1 m/s (18.4 kmh), Eagle chairlift built at Falls Creek in 2018 by Leitner Poma. The few surviving Poma-lifts are the fastest surface lifts in Australia, although some have been slowed down to make it easier for snow boarders to use them.

However the former double ended Summit Access / Howqua Poma-lift operated by Orange Lifts at Mt Buller was often run at its top speed of 6.5 metres a second (24.8 kmh) during its early years. Not surprisingly, this breakneck speed led to accidents and within a few years the lift was restricted to 4 m/s (14.4 kmh) when open to the public, although it still operated at full speed for staff use. 6.5 metres a second is much faster than any other ski lift in Australia has ever run at and it may have been the fastest ski lift in the world as no reports have been found of ski lifts or aerial ropeways running at over 6 m/s except for giant aerial tram ‘cable cars’. It’s worth noting that Blue Lifts, the rival Buller lift company installed Sun Valley Poma in 1980 and they claimed it was the fastest Poma-lift on the mountain, but this was long after Orange had slowed Summit Access / Howqua down, so it’s fairly unlikely that the steeply graded Sun Valley ran at anywhere near 6.5 m/s.

Ski lifts where the carrier is permanently attached to the haul rope such as T-bars, platters and ‘fixed grip’ chairlifts usually run at between 2 and 2½ metres a second (7 to 9 kmh), although fixed grip chairlifts with a moving loading carpet tend to run slightly faster than those without.
Many beginners lifts run as slow as 1.4 m/s (5 kmh). Easy Does It at Thredbo is almost exclusively used by beginners and probably qualifies as the chairlift that is consistently run at the slowest speed. Plenty of carpets are run at even slower speeds. Outside ski areas, tourist ropeways also operate at modest speeds. In the words of the operators of the Arthur’s Seat Eagle gondola in Victoria, it ‘has the ability to travel at 3 m/s (10.8 kph) but we generally run it at 1.5 m/s (5.4 kph) so guests can enjoy the view’.

1.3.7 Other questions

Ski resort with the most lifts. Perisher by a wide margin, although their total of 47 lifts includes 7 carpets and 2 rope tows.

Ski resort with the greatest variety of lift manufacturers. Falls Creek by a country mile. At least 11 lift makers have had their lifts installed there

Ski run with the most lifts built on it. The Bourke Street / Baldy run at Mt Buller has had 18 ski lifts installed on it between 1949 and 2019.

Lifts with curved routes or lifts that go around corners.
Most of the longer Poma lifts had bends in their paths, Cresta Poma at Mt Buffalo had two corners and resort maps indicate Brockhoff at Hotham had two as well, although some who remember it say it had only one. The only surviving cornered Pomas are International and Lakeside at Falls Creek and Home Run Poma at Selwyn.
The Olympic T-bar at Perisher is the only T-bar in Australia that has ever had a bend and the only Australian chairlift with corners was at Brisbane’s Expo ‘88 where for 6 months, a chairlift ran a 10 minute circuit through the Swiss Pavilion and outside into a park, before returning to the pavilion.

Double ended lifts. While some chairlifts have mid loading stations half way up the hill which allow them to operate when the snow is poor at lower elevations, a few lifts have a single cable with two different loading points and operate as lifts serving different slopes.

Keoghs / Orchard at Hotham is effectively a quad chairlift between two hills that descends into a valley with two loading points in the middle, Keogh's heads up one side, while Orchard climbs the other.

The former Summit Access / Howqua poma-lift at Buller climbed up a ridge and descended the other side. Skiers riding the lift from the Buller village side rode Summit Access, while skiers from the Howqua River side rode Howqua. For a few years after it was built, Howqua / Summit Access operated at 6.5 metres a second (25 kmh), making it by far the fastest ever ski lift in Australia and possibly the world.

In March 2021 Selwyn announced that their Township triple chair would be extended over the route of Powerline Poma-lift. While a map hasn’t been published yet, it is possible that the extended lift will also be double ended with skiers loading in opposite directions.

Earliest and latest dates for operating ski lifts
The length of ski seasons obviously varies dramatically depending on snow conditions. In NSW and Victoria the formal ski season has always lasted from Kings / Queens Birthday long weekend (the weekend before the second Monday in June) to early October. Of course if there was little snow in poor ski seasons, ski lifts operated for much shorter times, especially before the advent of snow making machinery.

While Mt Buller’s snow depths are often lower than other major resorts, its proximity to the Melbourne day tripper market means that in good seasons, Mt Buller has extended the dates its lifts have operated far more than its competitors. The best dates discovered are some lifts at Buller operating on the 2nd of May in 2009, although the lifts closed for a few weeks before reopening for the main ski season. After a long and heavy 1992 season Buller finally closed the lifts on Melbourne Cup Day (3 November) 1992. Baw Baw also ran at least one lift on Cup Weekend after the bumper 1964 season.
It appears that Thredbo operated their Basin T-bar for a few days over the 1992 - 93 New Year to utilise a heavy summer snowfall. Of course club owned backcountry tows have also been fired up to exploit unseasonable snow falls, but records are erratic and anecdotal.

At the other extreme, it is hard to establish just when the worst ski season was. For example snow depths have been measured at or near Falls Creek since 1910, but the location of the gauge gets shifted every few decades, so it’s difficult to work out highs and lows despite 114 years of records at that location. Things are slightly better in NSW as the Spencer Creek snow gauge has been at the same location for 77 years. However 1969 appears to have been the worst ski season during the time of ski lifts. In late August 1969, when snow levels are usually highest, Pole Line Poma (later Summit Poma) at Hotham was the only ski lift operating in Victoria.

Steepest ski lifts in Australia. Figures for length and vertical gain are not recorded for all lifts, but these are the most likely to be the steepest:
The ‘conventional wisdom’ is that the Rodway Tow at Mt Mawson in Tasmania is Australia’s steepest operating ski lift. It has an average gradient over its full length of 1 in 3.4 which is not exceeded by any other existing lift that stats are available for.
The former Northcote Tow on the Main Range in NSW was slightly steeper. The lift was 540 metres long with a vertical of 162 metres giving an average grade of 1 in 3.3. However the upper half was considerably steeper than the lower part, with sections between some towers being reported as having a 1 in 2 gradient. In the 1950s speed skiing contests were held on the Eagle run parallel to the Northcote Tow.​

Available figures for many older lifts at Mt Buller appear to have exaggerated verticals, but the most likely challenger for the title of steepest lift from Buller is the old Chamois Poma which Blue Lifts claimed was the steepest Poma-lift in the Southern Hemisphere. With a stated length of 608 metres and a vertical of 213, it would have had a gradient of 1 in 2.85. Another Buller lift which appears to have been unreasonably steep was the Sun Valley Poma, also operated by Blue Lifts in the 1980s. With a length of 900 metres and a claimed vertical of 300 metres, it would have had a 1 in 3 gradient.

It appears that the former Access double chairlift at Mt Baw Baw was possibly the steepest aerial lift. It is reported as having a length of 960 metres and a vertical of 320 metres, giving it a 1 in 3 gradient. Despite the name, the chairlift also serviced a ski run when snow was deep enough at its base level of around 1,190 metres.

Most travelled ski lifts. Many Australian ski lifts have been relocated including Australia’s oldest operating ski lift which moved from Mt Buller to Mt St Bernard (near Hotham) where it has run since 1955. But two lifts have operated at three different locations.

• Selwyn’s Township triple chair was previously the Helicopter Flat / Abom chair at Mt Buller until 2009 when it moved to NSW. In an earlier life at Buller the lift was the Horse Hill triple chair before it was replaced by the current Northside chondola.

• The engine house and accommodation for the legendary Mt Northcote Tow on the Main Range in NSW burnt down in 1956. As the nearby Kunama lodge had been avalanched a few weeks before, the nascent ski area was abandoned and the remainder of the tow was moved to Thredbo where, with a new engine, it became the Crackenback nutcracker for the 1957 season before it was replaced with a chairlift. After this the poles and tow rope were utilised in a number of shorter nutcracker tows at Thredbo before they were replaced with T-bars and chairlifts.

Lift towers installed by helicopter. Lift towers were originally installed using scaffolding and mobile cranes, where the sites were accessible. From the 1970s helicopters began to be used. The Summit T-bar at Baw Baw was built in early 1979 and it may have been the first. Another early surface lift to have heli installed towers was Buller’s Sun Valley Poma in the summer of 1979 - 1980.

The earliest chairlifts to have towers delivered by helicopter, that have been identified so far, are Snowgums double chair at Thredbo in the summer of 1979 - 80 and Blue Ribbon triple at Mt Hotham in the summer of 1980 - 1981.

How much does a ski lift cost to build? [Added 10 Oct 2020]

Costs of recent lifts including surveys, environmental impact statements and installation have been:

• Mt P Six Pack, Perisher. Doppelmayr detachable 6-seat chairlift. 1,254 metres. $20 million including substantial other works such as new bridges and a cafe. Due to open 2022, (subject to the virus).

• Merritts gondola. Thredbo. Doppelmayr 8 seat gondola. 1,350 metres. $11 million or $15 million (cost on different documents). Opened 2020

• Bourke Street 6-pack chairlift at Buller. $6 million. Doppelmayr detachable 6-seat chairlift. 503 metres long. Opened 2019.

• Leichhardt quad chair. Perisher. $4.2 million including lift and extensive snowmaking system. Doppelmayr fixed grip chairlift 490 m. Opened 2019

• Eagle quad chairlift at Falls Creek. $9 million. Leitner-Poma detachable quad chairlift. 800 metres long. Opened 2018

• Eagle gondola at Arthurs Seat, Victoria. Doppelmayr 8 seat gondola. 1,030 metres long. Opened 2016. Reported as costing $20 million although that may be a bit high as lift is shorter and tower access is easier than the similar Merritts gondola at Thredbo, although it does have a large cafe

Except for the fixed grip Leichhardt quad chairlift, these are all detachable chairlifts or gondolas at the premium end of the market. Resorts have not released costs for recent carpets and other surface tows in Australia, but an American carpet manufacturer has stated that their products are priced between A$70,000 and A$830,000. The cost of transporting a unit to Australia from Europe or North America would add an extra margin to that price. Rope tows are about half the price of a carpet, while T-bars are considerably more, especially when installation costs are included.

The price of a ski lift depends on a number of factors. These obviously include the type of ski lift and the length of the lift, but also the accessibility of terrain and, in recent decades the extent of environmental impact reports that need to be conducted and paid for. Political and legal opposition and the expenditure needed to rebuff it can also be a major expense for lifts away from the ski fields, opposition from environmental activists delayed the Cairns - Kuranda gondola which was the first project to encounter the massive costs that this entails and construction of the Arthurs Seat gondola was probably delayed for several years due to legal action by lobbyists.

Historical background to lift construction costs

In the post war years, broad permission to build a ski lift in an area could be granted by a state government bureaucracy managing the land while the finer details could be left to the group building the lift. Some lifts such as the 1949 Bourke Street rope tow at Mt Buller were mostly built with scavenged and repurposed second hand parts {add details and price] and upgraded in later years as more funds became available. Alternately a group building a lift could buy an ‘off the shelf’ lift from an established manufacturer such as Hotham did with their Blue Ribbon nutcracker tow in 1952. This was a more sophisticated lift and cost £3,000, although this was in a time of steep price rises with inflation hitting 24% in late 1952, so the premium above the 1949 Buller tow isn’t nearly as much as it appears.

By the 1960s nutcracker tows were rapidly being replaced in the developing major resorts although a few rope tows remained in use largely to assist access over areas of fairly flat terrain. At the time three types of ski lifts had become standard, T-bars, Poma-lifts and (fixed grip) chairlifts. All required larger towers, licensing use of technology and specialist manufacture, so the time of small groups with limited capital running ski lifts was coming to an end and they were replaced with the sort of lift companies we know today. Planning requirements and environmental regulations were also becoming more stringent although they were nothing like as demanding as modern requirements. [This sub-section may be extended if there is sufficient interest]

1.4 Ski lift names

Most common lift names. Summit and Village have been the most popular names for ski lifts. (Counting a duplex T-bar or Poma as a single lift.)
- 11 Lifts named Summit have been built at: Ben Lomond (2), Falls Creek (2), Mt Baw Baw (1), Mt Buller (2), Mt Hotham (3), Perisher, Blue Cow (1)
- 10 Lifts named Village have been built at: Ben Lomond (1), Cabramurra, NSW (2), Falls Ck (2), Lake Mtn (1), Mt Buller (1), Mt Hotham (1), Perisher (2)

There are no rules for naming ski lifts, they are named whatever the owner wants to call them. Often the first lift at a resort didn’t have a name, an example is that the original Blue Ribbon at Hotham was mostly known as ‘the ski tow’ until more lifts were built and there was a need to name the lift to distinguish it from the others. However there have been a few themes in naming lifts.

• Resort identities and Winter Olympic gold medalists. Thredbo has Sponar’s, Anton’s and Karel’s. Mt Buller has (or had) Kofler’s, Grimus, Whittaker and Lydia’s. Perisher has Kaaten. Falls Creek has Scott, and Hotham has (or had) Keogh’s, Davenport and Brockhoff.

• Ski runs. Many ski resorts existed before lifts were installed and when a ski lift was built, it was often named after one of the established runs it served.

• New lifts reusing the name of an older lift they replaced. This is probably the most common naming theme of replacement lifts in the past 50 years. In 2019 two new lifts, Leichhardt at Perisher and Canyon at Buller were given the same name as the old lifts they replaced. In 2020 the gondola that replaced Merritts chairlift at Thredbo was also named Merritts.

• Chairlift sponsorships. Eight chairlifts have been named or renamed after car companies. These names are usually temporary and when the sponsorship ended after a few years, the chairlift reverted to a more typical name for a ski lift. Lifts affected by this cash grab are: At Hotham: the Audi Quattro. At Buller: Holden, Mercedes Benz and (Land Rover) Discovery. (Skyline was built as a rope tow in 1959 and rebuilt as a T-bar in 1963, so it has nothing to do with the Nissan Skyline which was introduced in 1968.) At Falls Creek: Billia Volvo. At Thredbo: (Toyota Land) Cruiser, this chairlift has kept its name for its whole life and there still is Toyota signage on the lift. At Perisher: (Land Rover) Freelander, (Subaru) Forester and (Jensen) Interceptor… or perhaps not, as Jensen stopped making their Interceptor GT car before the Interceptor chairlift was built.

  Mt Buller also had an airline sponsorship with the Emirates chairlift. The same lift later gained a radio station sponsorship and became The Fox. However New Chum chairlift at Selwyn was not named after a reformulated version of Chum dog food, but rather after New Chum Hill, a nearby location in the Kiandra goldrush. Finally, the 1971 chairlift at Perth Showgrounds was originally named after a brand of cigarettes.

• Nationalism. Just before Perisher was sold to Vail Resorts, they named a new chairlift with the rather jingoistic American sounding name ‘Freedom’, apparently to welcome their impending American overlords. However, it’s also possible that the new lift may have been named after the recently introduced Freedom lift pass. A few years earlier Mt Buller went in the other direction and called a new chairlift the rather okker sounding ‘Bonza’. Perisher named lifts after explorers for 8 years and this could also be seen as an expression of pride in the country’s history

• Foreign ski locations. Before Australia had developed a strong skiing tradition of its own, some lift operators sought to utilise the glamour of overseas ski resorts. So there were ski lifts called Cresta at Mt Buffalo, Sun Valley at Falls Creek with Mt Buller also using Sun Valley as well as Chamois and Tyrol. Only one lift in NSW was named after an exotic ski area, Sun Valley T-bar at Perisher.

However Perisher did things differently to other ski resorts for its first few decades and had its own naming traditions.

• Numbers. After the lifts in Perisher’s Front Valley came under one company, they were simply numbered from 1 to 7. When a new lift was built between the existing lifts 5 and 6, it was called 5A. Obviously this only worked at a smaller resort, so as Perisher expanded, many of its lifts were named or renamed after…

• Explorers. The late 1960s saw a growing awareness of this country’s history, so when the unified Perisher Valley and Smiggin Holes areas decided on a new theme for their lifts, many were named or renamed after explorers. Strangely, none were named after explorers of the high country like McMillian, Strzelecki and von Mueller. Rather, some of the lifts were named after explorers who died in the contrasting environment of the desert such as Leichhardt, Burke and Wills. This theme was abandoned for new lifts after 1976, but the existing lifts were not renamed and when Leichhardt T-bar was replaced in 2019, the new chairlift kept its predecessors explorer name.

1.5 Planned resorts that were never built

New South Wales

In the late 1950s Geoff Hughes and John Gam developed a proposal to build ‘a series of aerial rope ways from Geehi up Mt Townsend, including restaurants, a ski school and parking. This was not just a vague idea from people who did not know what they were talking about. Hughes was a co-founder of Thredbo and together with Gam owned Ski Tows Pty Ltd, a company that built T-bars at a number of resorts, as well as at Lake Albina, on the slopes of Mt Townsend. However nothing became of the proposal, possibly due to Gam’s death in 1959. [From Anthony Mitchell. Rock Creek Ski Club: a brief mystery. 2024. p. 42.]

There have also been proposals to develop Twin Valleys to the east of Thredbo, but since Thredbo was established in 1957, the only new lifted ski area has been Mt Blue Cow in New South Wales, now part of Perisher ski resort.

Tasmania

A network of chairlifts and Poma lifts, complete with an access gondola was proposed for Mt Rufus in Tasmania in the early 1970s.

At about the same time Florentine Peak near Mt Mawson was assessed for it's viability as a modern ski resort, but sadly nothing eventuated at either location.

Victoria

A 1950 report on developing Victoria's ski fields recommended development of an 'alpine village' at Mt Wills, While it is right next to a highway, receives good snow and has the potential for a wide variety of ski runs, Mt Wills is just too far from major population centres to attract sufficient skiers. So the only things built there were the Tallangatta Ski Club lodge, a refuge hut and two lifts, (neither are still in use).

A plan for developing a network of ski lifts on Mt Stirling in Victoria was released in the early 1980s and another plan was produced in the mid 1990s, but nothing eventuated from either of these.

In the late 1970s, after a review of usage of Crown land, the Land Conservation Council recommended to the Victorian government that Mt Torbreck should become a ski resort. While it is the westernmost peak over 1600 metres in the state, Torbreck is very steep, covered in dense forest and huge boulders, making it especially unsuited to either downhill or cross country skiing. Not surprisingly, nothing was built there except for a picnic table at Barnewall Plain.

There was also a plan to develop Mt McKay, see the article at the end of Falls Creek section).

[Add photos of proposed lift networks on Stirling, and scenic photos of other mountains with resort proposals.]

1.6 Abandoned resorts and club fields

Mt Buffalo in Victoria had two lifted ski areas, Dingo Dell was a beginners slope developed by the Victorian Railways during the time they had the lease of the Buffalo Chalet. Ski lifts operated there from 1949 to around 1998. Later on a lift was renovated for snow tubing.

The larger Cresta Valley area mostly served beginner and intermediate skiers, but also had a couple of interesting advanced runs. Australia’s first ski lift was built at Cresta Valley in 1937, but after the Second World War the Cresta area went into decline as other ski resorts developed. It was revived and redeveloped in 1964 by a consortium led by ski instructor Ollie Polasek and financier Rupert Clark. However it was the only Victorian ski field located inside a national park which meant it attracted excessive bureaucratic oversight and intense focus from the environmental lobby; both factors made operating a ski resort very difficult. Polasek and Clarke were frustrated by new obstructions put in the way of further developing their small ski resort and eventually gave up sold the project to the state government in May 1975. The Cresta Lodges and lift network passed to Parks Victoria who, without much enthusiasm, allowed lessees to operate them until the 2006 season. At the time, the Cresta area was well managed and boasted a large ski centre, a couple of accommodation buildings, two chairlifts and three Poma lifts.

An escaped fuel reduction burn in December 2006 destroyed the day visitor centre, a restaurant and some accommodation, but left the ski lifts undamaged. However P.V. took the loss of buildings as an opportunity to pull the plug on the whole operation, although they had ordered the lifts to be closed in August 2006 when there was over a metre of snow on the ground, so it is possible that they planned to close down alpine skiing at Cresta anyway. Without the lifts and amenities at Cresta, the lessees of the nearby Buffalo Chalet couldn’t see much of a future for their business, so they walked away from their lease the following month and Australia’s biggest wooden building has been empty and decaying ever since. Overall, this debacle was a huge waste of a viable ski resort, especially as Parks Victoria headquarters in Melbourne subsequently ignored approaches until as late as 2015 from qualified business people with experience in the ski industry who wished to reopen the lifts and reinvigorate the Cresta area.

A site inspection by Haydn Skinner in January 2022, revealed that at ‘Dingo Dell both Number 1 and Number 2 pomas still have the towers located in a pile next to the last towers (last towers are still standing!) before the top bull wheel (could not see or find the bull wheel). Cresta valley still has its 5 lifts that operated in 2006. The 3 closest to the road (the 2 chairlifts and the Novice poma) still are in great condition, while the other lifts (Gully and Cresta pomas) are in a sad state.’

In the mid 1950s there was a nascent Main Range ski field in NSW developed by the Ski Tourers Association which had two lifts, three lodges and a large tow hut that also had accommodation. Other huts dispersed around the area provided more beds for skiers. However an avalanche destroyed Kunama Lodge in 1956, followed a few weeks later by the Northcote Tow Hut burning down. This largely put a hold on further development of the area. A few years later the Albina T-bar closed, followed by the authorities forcing the owners of Albina Lodge out. The lodge was eventually demolished in 1983 after all the other huts in the area except for Seamans Hut had also been demolished. The only survivor of the Ski Tourers Main Range activities is Illawong Lodge on the Snowy River. David Scott’s online article Ski lodges on the Summit is an excellent and comprehensive illustrated history of these projects.

There were also lifted ski areas in the Australian Capital Territory centred around Mt Ginni and nearby Mt Franklin. Four tows operated between 1957 and circa 1968. By that time the easier access and more reliable snow of Perisher and Thredbo had drawn enough Canberra skiers away that the local club operated ski tows were no longer viable. Since then, the only ski lifts in the ACT have been at Corin Forest. More information can be found in Matthew Higgins. Skis on the Brindabellas. Tabletop Press, 1994. Second edition, 2008.

Cabramurra was a Snowy Mountains Hydro construction town that was retained as a base for operations and maintenance of a nearby dam, power stations and electrical switching yards after construction was finished. It was largely rebuilt in a more permanent form in 1974. Cabramurra Ski Club operated a number of lifts from 1955 until 2016 when Snowy Hydro ordered their Poma-lift and handle tow to be closed. Other activity in the town was also wound down and the last permanent residents left in 2018.

Kiandra was a gold rush town in the Snowy Mountains from the 1860s that struggled into the 20th century when interest in skiing led to a minor revival of the towns fortunes. In the 30 years after the Second World War it boasted four ski lifts at various times plus a few huts owned by ski clubs. However the snow was never that reliable and the lift operators transferred their operations to nearby Mt Selwyn.

A number of club operated ski tows were scattered around the area near Kiandra and Cabramurra (see Section 13, NSW outside resorts), but lifted skiing in the area slowly consolidated at Cabramurra and Mt Selwyn and the last club tows outside these ski fields had closed by the early 1980s.

Mt Donna Buang on the outskirts of Melbourne was Australia’s largest and busiest ski resort in the 1930s. It was principally a day resort with over 10,000 visitors being recorded on several days and had six ski runs, a large ski jump, two cafes, a ski hire, first aid posts and four ski lodges, although it never had ski lifts. Much of the infrastructure was burnt in the 1939 fires and after six years of minimal use during the Second World War, Donna had a brief revival in the late 1940s before skiers attention moved to larger mountains such as Mt Buller. Donna Buang was largely deserted by skiers after 1951 although it continues to be a popular snow play destination. A comprehensive history: Donna Buang: the forgotten ski resort can be found on this website.

Only four club ski fields remain in Australia since the forced closure of Cabramurra in 2016, In descending order of size they are:

• Mt Mawson, Tasmania. Three tows, seven club lodges. Lift tickets are sold to the public.

• Mt St Bernard, Victoria. Wangaratta Ski Club. Two tows, one lodge. Members & their guests only

• Rover Chalet, Bogong High Plains, Victoria. One tow, one lodge. Members and their guests only

• Mt Wills, Victoria. Tallangatta Ski Club. One lodge, two former tows that have not been used in decades.

1.7 Lift ticketing

Every Australian ski resort was a little different with ticketing last century, but the most common formats in the 1950s were strip tickets and tokens.

Strip tickets came in a roll with perforations between the tickets which were about 2cm wide and 4 cm long. It often cost one ticket to use a short lift and two to use a long lift. They could be bought individually, but there were discounts if you bought about ten or a dozen. When a skier wanted to use a lift, they detached a ticket from the strip they had bought and gave it to the "towie" if the lift was only lightly used or a separate ticket collector on more heavily used lifts, they often had a small booth to sit in. The sale of strip tickets persisted into the 1970s at most resorts, although they were rarely used by then.

Another option was to sell tokens, they looked a bit like coins, but were often stamped with the resort name or logo. They could be given to the ticket collector or put in a slot which turned a turnstile. I vaguely recall reading something in an ancient magazine about gold and silver tokens being sold, perhaps silver tokens were for use on short lifts or beginner lifts and gold tokens were for the longer lifts?

Punch cards were more fiddly and thus less common, but Perisher and possibly other places used them for a while.

All three of those systems were rather labour intensive for ticket collectors and bothersome for skiers, so by the mid 1960s many (perhaps most?) resorts had begun to issue day tickets printed on waterproof paper and later paper like plastic. They came in a variety of colours and were further customised to the specific day by the woman (apparently the vendors were always female) selling tickets who scrawled numbers or letters in thick texta across the face of the ticket. The ticket booths were located in one or two central locations at each resort and were usually understaffed, so there were often long queues. Half day tickets were also sold, typically they cost more than two thirds the price of a day ticket and were usually valid from 8.30 to 12.30 or 12,30 until the lifts closed, although the times varied between resorts.

In the 1980s five day and weekly tickets became available, but the tickets were still printed and displayed on a skiers jacket, which limited the variety of tickets which could be issued as a liftie still had to glance at tickets as skiers shuffled past.

Until about the end of last century, season tickets were fairly rare as they cost as much as three or four weeks worth of day tickets, rather than the five-ish days for season tickets at most resorts these days. But day tickets were relatively cheaper than they are now. In the 1970s season tickets were often laminated cards with a black and white polaroid photo of the persons face to stop them being shared.

The new century saw the introduction of electronic tickets that could be read by a scanner. This vastly increased ticketing options and led to things like advance purchase discounts.

2. Types of ski lifts

Only the five big resorts (Buller, Falls, Hotham, Perisher and Thredbo) have quad chairs, the smaller resorts have a combination of surface lifts, double chairs and triple chairs. Except for Hotham, major Victorian resorts have tended to replace their lifts far more often than their NSW counterparts.

Lift makers have several ways of describing aerial lifts, none of which are easy for a person outside the industry to understand. So in this listing, characteristics of aerial lifts are shown by: the capacity of each carrier, then Chair or Gondola and then Fixed or Detachable grip, so 6-Chair-D indicates a 6 person chairlift with Detachable grips.

2.1 Aerial lifts

There are three main types of aerial lifts; chairlifts, gondolas and aerial trams. A fourth type of lift, usually referred to as a chondola, runs a mixture of chairs and gondolas on the same cable. A gondola has many small cabins that run closely together, loading almost as frequently as chairlifts, while an aerial tram has two very large cabins with only one cabin going in each direction resulting in intervals of several minutes between cabins leaving a terminal.

2.1.1 Chairlifts in Australia have been built to seat 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 people per chair. Most chairlifts are fixed grip, with chairs directly attached to the lift cable, the cables move at around 2.3 metres per second. Detachable chairlifts remove the chairs from the cable near the top and bottom stations and move them slowly through the terminals, allowing passengers to get on and off a slow moving chair (about 1 metre per second). This means the main cable can move much faster, around 4 to 5 metres per second (18 km/h). However detachables are much more expensive to build and maintain, so more economical, but slower, fixed grip chairs are still being at built at major resorts around the world for lifts under about 1 km long.

Chairlift capacity is determined by the number of people per chair and the interval between chairs. The highest capacity for a quad chairlift is 3000 per hour, which would mean a fairly quick 4.8 second interval between chairs. However most quads have a nominal capacity of around 2400. The real number moved is usually lower due to stoppages, not all chairs carrying the maximum number of people and the lift not running at full speed. A few older lifts also have 'generously' spaced towers, meaning that chairs need to be spaced further apart to reduce the weight on the cable and sheaves.

Australia's first (and only) single chairlift was built at Falls Creek by Bob Hymans in 1957. The first double chair was Thredbo's Crackenback in 1958. Triple chairs appeared in 1976 when the Back Perisher Triple was built. 1984 saw the advent of the quad chair with Big D at Hotham and Blue Bullets 1 and 2 at Buller. Australia's only eight seat chairlift is Perisher's Village built in 2003 and the first 'six pack' in the country was Abom Express which opened at Buller in 2008. Buller's Blue Bullets were also notable for being the first detachable chairlifts in Australia and the third and fourth in the world

Australia's longest chairlifts were the two that briefly connected Thredbo Valley to Charlotte Pass in 1964 and 1965 at 4,757 and 3,323 metres. The longest existing chairlift is the Kosciusko Express (formerly named Crackenback) at Thredbo which, at 1860 metres, is slightly longer than the Northside quad (previously named Horse Hill) at Mt Buller. The shortest ski chairlift was the 160 metre long Valley chairlift at Mt Buffalo which last ran in 2006. The shortest operating ski chairlift is probably New Chum at Selwyn.

2.1.2 Chondolas are essentially detachable grip chairlifts that can also have gondola cabins attached to the cable. They are also known as hybrid lifts and marketed as combination lifts or telemix by some lift makers, although in the absence of manufacturers settling on a common name, chondola has become the most common term in the English speaking ski world. Close to Australia, Cardrona ski resort in New Zealand has named one of their lifts McDougall’s Chondola.

With the introduction of detachable grip chairlifts, attaching small gondola cabins to the same cable was an obvious extension of the concept, with Poma apparently building the first, but they were soon followed by Doppelmayr who built their first chondola at Mt Buller in 1986.

The two installed in Australia are Northside (formerly named Horse Hill) built at Mt Buller in 1986 and Thredbo's Kosciusko Express (formerly Crackenback) which dates from 1990. Both have four person gondola cabins, although they operate solely as quad chairlifts most of the time. Although Buller ran a mix of chairs and gondolas in the earlier years, in recent times it appears they have rarely used the gondolas. However Thredbo uses their gondolas more often and at one stage Kosci Express ran at night with only gondolas on the cable to transport passengers to the restaurant at the top of that lift. It’s worth noting that the Doppelmayr website states that Horse Hill was the first chondola built by them in the world.

2.1.3 Gondolas. A gondola is an aerial ropeway with enclosed cabins where passengers walk in and sit facing each other. Gondolas can seat between four and twenty people, although eight is the most common capacity. In ski areas there are usually racks on the outside of cabins for skis and snowboards. In addition to Merritts gondola at Thredbo ski resort, tourist gondolas away from the mountains are popular tourist attractions. The longest gondolas in Australia are Skyrail between Cairns and Kuranda in Queensland. Skyrail is two different lifts (passengers change over at a mid station), they have a combined length of 7,500 metres.

In 2009, the Falls Creek resort plan proposed replacing the Gully triple chair with a gondola. Similarly the 2010 Buller master plan included a proposal for a gondola connecting the overnight car parks with the town centre. A less likely plan is the 2009 local tourist authority proposal for a gondola on Mt Buffalo, a little to the south of the (then) toll road. However they didn't mention any financial backers for their expensive dream.

Finally in 2016 the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service and the Tourism Industry Council proposed a 9 km gondola at Cradle Mountain to replace over loaded mini bus shuttles along the narrow gravel road from the Visitors Centre to Lake Dove at the base of Cradle Mountain. The southern gondola terminus would be an underground building on the site of the present car park. However as a Mercury report explains, this ambitious plan is unfunded, although the accompanying video makes the whole project look very appealing and much less intrusive on the landscape than the current situation.

The most recent Australian gondola outside ski areas is the Arthur’s Seat Eagle on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne which opened in 2016

There are also couple of less common variants of the standard single cable, detachable grip gondola:

A funitel is a twin cable gondola. They are able to operate in extreme conditions and as they can run with wind speeds up to 100 kmh, they are rarely put on wind hold. However they are very expensive to build and only 24 have been built across the world, none in Australia.

The second non standard gondola variant is a pulsed gondola or group lift. These are fixed grip lifts that run two to six gondola cabins in a close formation. One group or ‘pulse’ of cabins go up the hill while the other pulse comes down. The lift is stopped or slowed down when the cabins reach the terminals and all cabins load at the same time. While the three main companies that manufacture gondola lifts list them in their product catalogues, very few have been built in recent years. The most recent are one in Lithuania built by Bartholet in 2015 and Doppelmayr’s Skyview Gondola in Miami completed in 2020. This gondola services a sports stadium and operates at a rather sedate 2.5 metres a second before slowing to 0.3 m/s second when loading and unloading. The only pulsed gondola in Australia was the Sky High Skyway at the Sea World theme park on the Gold Coast which ran from 1989 to 2015.

2.1.4 Aerial Trams or Cable Cars. These lifts usually have two large cabins permanently attached to the cable and shuttle between the termini. When a cabin arrives at the terminus, the direction the cable travels in is reversed, so the cabins never go around the bullwheels.

While they are popular at overseas resorts, none have been built at Australian ski fields. However two aerial trams, Scenic Skyway and Scenic Cableway operate at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.  In addition to the proposal for Mt Wellington in Hobart, in 2014 a group in Sheffield in northern Tasmania floated a proposal for an aerial tram up nearby Mt Roland.

2.2 Surface lifts with an elevated cable

All Australian ski resorts started out with surface lifts (also called drag tows). They are much cheaper to build and maintain than chairlifts and are not as vulnerable to high winds. However they are not as 'beginner friendly', and they usually have a much lower capacity. They also need a consistent uphill slope. Sadly, surface lifts have been phased out by most major resorts except for areas high above the treeline that are exposed to strong winds. However at Perisher and the smaller resorts, they continue to play an important role.

2.2.1 T-bars. T-bars consist of several parts. The first is a stick with a bar across the bottom which looks like an inverted T shape. Skiers and boarders lean on this bar, holding on to the central stick. This T-bar is connected to a retractable cord running from a spring box which is permanently attached to the elevated moving lift cable. Because they are fixed grip, T-bars tend to run at fairly modest speeds. The first T-bars in Australia were the 1957 Township Hill T-bar at Kiandra in NSW and the short lived Gam Tow at Thredbo. The longest was the Tyrol T-bar at Mt Buller which was 1,610 metres long before its top station was moved downhill to make room for other lifts.

2.2.2 J-bars are essentially single person T-bars. A few were built in the early days of ski lifts, but none have been built in Australia for half a century because they cost the same to build and run as T-bars, but only transport half as many people. However after snowboarders experienced difficulties riding the platters and Pomas at Ben Lomond, some J-bars were added to lifts at that resort for the 2009 season. The first J-bar in the country was installed at Charlotte Pass in 1938. It was only the second ski lift in Australia.

2.2.3 Platters (or button tows). Platter lifts look a bit like Poma lifts because skiers are hauled uphill by a button between their legs, but they are fixed grip and the platter has a retractable cord connected to a spring box, so they operate like single person T-bars. Confusingly, many platters have been described as Pomas, presumably because they both use a button between a skiers legs to move them uphill, even though they are a different type of lift in every other respect.

2.2.4 Poma lifts. Pomas are the only detachable grip surface lift still used at major resorts. Sticks are stored in a rack at the bottom of the lift. Passengers move to the front of the lift queue, grab a spring loaded stick and put the button between their legs. At the same time, the grip at the top end of the stick attaches to a moving overhead cable. This can either by manually activated by a liftie or automatically by skiers tripping a knee height switch as they move past. A spring in the stick absorbs the sudden jerk of the stick connecting to the cable and gives the passenger a fairly smooth transition to full speed.

Pomas are the only surface lift found at resorts where self loading works in practice (although this is standard procedure for nutcracker tows at club fields). There have been experiments with self loading T-bars and platters, but skiers and boarders don't seem to be able to cope with them.

Because the grips to the tow rope are detachable, Pomas are by far the fastest surface lift. The diesel powered International Poma at Falls Creek had a speed of 4.2 metres per second until a new and slower electric motor was installed. The speed record for any ski lift in Australia (and possibly the world) belongs to the former double ended Howqua - Summit Access Poma at Buller which operated at 6.5 m/s for a few years until the inevitable carnage led to a reduced speed of 4 m/s when open to the public, although it was still cranked up to 6.5 m/s for staff access.

Pomas are the only type of ski lift that can easily accommodate bends in their path (T-bars and chairlifts can have bends, but they are awkward and expensive to build). Half the Pomas built in Australia had bends, Brockhoff at Hotham and Cresta at Buffalo had two. Pomas were very popular in Victoria and at one stage there were four of them running parallel to each other at Buller. However they were never as popular in NSW. Most Poma lifts were, not surprisingly, built by the company of the same name although some, such as Headwaters and Lakeside at Falls Creek, were built by other companies, Schippers and Montaz Mautino respectively, presumably under some sort of licensing arrangement.

An early form of Poma lift first ran in 1960 at Smiggin Holes and at Sponar's Inn. More modern Pomas made their appearance in 1964 at Buller, Hotham, Charlotte Pass and Falls Creek. The longest Poma to run in Australia is the 1,219 metre International at Falls Creek, which is one of only six Pomas still operating in this country.

2.3 Surface lifts with a lower cable

Put simply, a rope tow has an unsupported rope which the skier grasps in their hands to be hauled a short distance up a gentle slope. A handle tow is similar, but has plastic handles attached to the rope making it easier for a skier to get a secure hold. A typical nutcracker tow is far more complex. Along its track it has towers or poles with sheaves to support the rope a metre above the snow, a tensioning system to keep the rope tight, specifically designed and fabricated parts like sheaves and bull wheels and a proper, weatherproof engine shed. Because they are often steep and it is awkward to grip the rope in a gloved hand as it passes over pulleys, a rope gripper (or nutcracker) is essential when using a nutcracker tow.

2.3.1 Nutcracker tows. Some skiers who don't venture beyond the main resorts are unfamiliar with nutcracker tows. But almost every ski resort in Australia and New Zealand began with them. While they have been replaced at the resorts, nutcracker tows can still be found at 'club fields'.

A nutcracker (or rope gripper) is a device attached to a belt worn by a skier that clamps onto a moving rope at waist level, allowing the skier to be towed uphill. The height of the rope and the pulleys that support it are adjusted according to snow levels. While it may not be necessary to use a nutcracker on short, gently graded tows, it is difficult for skiers to hold onto a rope with their hands on steeper tow lines or where the rope passes over a pulley. 

Despite many attempts to simply explain the process, it’s very hard to describe the procedure of attaching a nutcracker to the tow rope, without seeing it done in person. But most skiers get the knack after two or three tries and after half a dozen rides it becomes subconscious and loading and riding a nutcracker tow becomes as easy as loading and riding a T-bar. Riding nutcrackers explained, Powderhound article on nutcrackers.

Most Australian nutcracker tows were derived from those designed by Bill (later Sir William) Hamilton in New Zealand. Hamilton installed his first ski tow at Coronet Peak in 1947 and within a few years had perfected the Hamilton Model B design that has been used ever since. Because it was easily copied and readily available material could be substituted for Hamilton parts, (such as modified wheel rims for rope pulleys), many nutcracker lifts were home made and built by the groups that ran them. As the towers are relatively small, nutcracker tows can be moved fairly easily and some Australian tows have operated at four locations.

The first nutcracker tow in Australia was on Bourke Street, Mt Buller when an earlier rope tow was upgraded to a nutcracker tow for the 1950 season. The longest nutcracker was probably the Crackenback Tow at Thredbo (as it was in 1957). One of the newer nutcracker lifts in this part of the world also claims to be the longest and steepest. The Heritage Express Tow at the small Roundhill resort in New Zealand first ran in 2010. It is 1473 metres long with a 626 metre rise.

2.3.2 Handle tows are short, portable ski lifts with plastic handles permanently attached to a moving waist high cable. To move uphill, a skier just grabs one of the handles and holds on. As they were mostly used on beginner slopes, they have largely been superseded by carpet lifts. Handle tows are also known as Pony Lifts at some overseas locations.

2.3.3 Rope tows. This term is sometimes used to include nutcracker tows and handle tows, but a true rope tow is one where the rope is not supported by sheaves and the skier or boarder simply grasps the rope in their hands. As they are rarely tensioned, the rope often drags through the snow. (See one at 8:36 in this 1950 video of Mt Buffalo.) Parts for early rope tows were often adapted from second hand material such as using truck or tractor wheel rims as very basic bullwheels. They are only practical for short and gently graded slopes as it is difficult to hold onto a rope on steep slopes and an unsupported cable dragging on the snow places heavy demands on the motor. A modern example is one of the Canyon tows at Buller which assists skiers over a minor bump on a mostly downhill access trail. In this directory many of the old lifts described as rope tows were probably nutcrackers as the distinction between the two types of lifts was a grey area. The first ski lift in Australia was a rope tow made out of recycled railway tracks that was built at Mt Buffalo in 1937.

2.3.4 Carpets. (Also known as Conveyors, People Movers or Magic Carpets.) A carpet lift is simply a conveyor belt at ground level. They move quite slowly (around 1.2 metres a second) and are used exclusively for gentle beginners slopes as they do not require any technique to ride other than the ability to stand up. Australia's first carpet lift was installed at Mt Thebarton in Adelaide in 1987 to service the world's first indoor ski slope on machine made snow. The longest carpets to operate in Australia are probably the two 160 metre carpets that ran at Mt Buller in 2010 and 2011. They were installed to provide access to slopes that became unlifted after the Burnt Hut triple chairlift was destroyed by lightning and were in turn replaced by the new Bonza quad chairlift in 2012.

2.3.5 Funicular Railways. A railway or tramway with parallel tracks on a steep slope with two cars connected by a cable. The descending car counterbalances the ascending car, while an engine house at the top provides any necessary power or braking. While many funiculars have been built in Australia for timber harvesting and hydro electric purposes, only a few have taken passengers, none of them at ski areas. The most recent serious proposal to build a passenger funicular was in 2005 for the Maydena Hauler in southern Tasmania.

2.3.6 Carousels. Look a bit like over sized rotary clothes lines that pull small children around in a circle. At times, Mt Buller, Perisher, Hotham and Charlotte Pass have listed them as lifts, but that is probably stretching the definition of a ski lift a bit too far.

3. Ski lift manufacturers

This section was completely rewritten in May 2019. Please send any feedback or additional information to australianmountains (at) gmail.com

In recent decades ski lift and aerial ropeway manufacture across the world has been dominated by two companies; Doppelmayr-Garaventa and Leitner-Poma. While Bartholet competes with them in Europe, in new world countries such as North America, Australia and New Zealand the duopoly largely have the market for chairlifts and gondolas to themselves. A few smaller companies such as SunKid manufacture carpets and to a small extent compete with the big two in the market for light surface tows.

In earlier times there were many more lift makers, but by 2003 all had either gone out of business or been taken over except for BMF Bartholet. The advent of detachable grip chairlifts seems to have been a determining factor, most mid sized companies appear to have lacked the capital and the economies of scale to develop, build and maintain the more complex technology involved.

In Australia, the Swiss manufacturer Mueller built the early chairlifts installed at Thredbo and Perisher (the 1961 Mt Perisher Double is one of the oldest surviving Muellers in the world), while the American company Riblet also built chairlifts in NSW. However foreign products were not always successful in Australian conditions. The Mueller Crackenback chair at Thredbo derailed several times and had to be partially rebuilt using material supplied by Riblet. One case that pointed to the future was when Blue Lifts at Mt Buller installed the world's first Doppelmayr double chair, rime build up in Mt Buller's damp and foggy conditions became a major problem. In contrast to Mueller (which appears to have left Thredbo to sort out its own problems), when Doppelmayr received photos and a description of the severity of the problem, they sent engineers to Buller to study and rectify it. Perhaps that is a pointer to the reasons why Doppelmayr survived and prospered while most of its competitors went out of business. In any case, Buller has retained a strong brand loyalty for Dopp products ever since.

Local manufacturers were initially on the scene too. Many rope tows and a few nutcrackers were home made in small workshops (although the most reliable nutcrackers were Hamilton branded ones imported from New Zealand). Some local products like Gam T-bars were not a success, but others like Vladimir Hayek's Australasian Ropeways built a number of chairlifts that were in use for many decades. The most successful local lift maker was Ron McCallum who built reliable and long lived T-bars and chairlifts at several ski resorts as well as tourist chairlifts at locations away from the mountains.

3.1 Ski lift manufacturers: Australia and New Zealand

From 1937 most early Australian ski lifts were built as one off projects by the groups that operated them. In the early days several rope tows and nutcracker tows were built by the groups or clubs that owned them, utilising whatever materials and trade skills that were available from their members.

However at least four local companies got into the business of building ski lifts, although by the mid 1970s all had ceased production. This was probably due to the economies of scale of European and American companies, which the local makers could not compete with. For local companies each project was custom designed and built, as it was impossible for them to generate enough business to implement the sort of large scale production that foreign makers had. In 2020 an Australian designed and built chairlift was installed as a personal project on private land near Albury, making it the first substantially Australian made chairlift in over 40 years.

3.1.1 McCallum Engineering

Ron McCallum built 16 lifts throughout Australia from 1954 to 1970 from a base at Moorabbin in suburban Melbourne. He also assisted John Gam and others to erect lifts in the 1950s. This is a list of the lifts where McCallum built the entire lift including most of the components and does not include lifts he helped site or others where he supervised their erection. The ropeways built by McCallum Engineering were:

Location Lift name Lift type Dates operated Notes
 Falls Creek Hyman's skyline Portable Rope Tow 1954 - ?
 Mt Buller Baldy Portable Rope Tow 1957 - 1961
 Falls Creek Summit T-bar 1961 - 1991
 Falls Creek Village T-bar 1961 - 1999
 Portsea Back Beach Double Chair, fixed grip 1962 - 1967?
 Thredbo Middle T-bar 1962 - present. Moved to Merritts Spur, renamed Ski School
 Thredbo Basin T-bar 1963 - present
 Mt Buffalo Double Chairlift Double Chair, fixed grip 1964 - ?
 Falls Creek Gully Double Chair, fixed grip 1964 - 1981
 Mt Buffalo T-bar T-bar 1965 - 1984
 Mt Buffalo Beginners Poma Platter 1966 - ?
 Falls Creek Sun Valley T-bar 1967 - 1988
 Mt Buller Boggy Creek T-bar 1967 - present. Shortened for 2020 season to allow a dam to be built
 Falls Creek Link Lift T-bar 1969 - 2000
 Frankston / Caribbean Gardens Double Chair, fixed grip 1969 - 2020. Moved to Scoresby c.1971 when Whistle Stop park closed
 Perth Royal Show Chair Lift Double Chair, fixed grip 1970 - present

Thanks to Ron McCallum and his son Andrew for the list.

There was at least one other possible McCallum lift. I was sent a table of older lifts in the broader Perisher area including details of their length, manufacturer, etc. and it listed the original Blue Cow T-bar at Guthega as a McCallum.

Perisher: Guthega Blue Cow T-bar 1976 - 1980 Allegedly formerly at Mt Buller, but as no known McCallum T-bars
      were retired before 1976, the lift may not have been a McCallum?

3.1.2 Australasian Ropeways

Another local outfit that built a few chairlifts. It was run by Dr Vladimir Hayek, a Czech migrant who may have designed Australia's first chairlift at Falls Creek in 1957, but details are sketchy. Chairlifts definitely built by Hayek include Arthur's Seat (Mark 1), Hobart Showgrounds, Brisbane Showgrounds and Launceston’s Cataract Gorge (which still operates). Any further information would be very useful.

3.1.3 Gam / Ski Tows Pty Ltd.

Run by John Gam and Geoffrey Hughes, who was one of the founders of Thredbo. From a base in Newcastle they built the Gam portable T-bars that ran at Thredbo and Lake Albina in the late 1950s and also built the improved T-bars at Kiandra in 1958, Perisher in 1959 and 1960 and two T-bars at Mt Buller.

In 2008 Hughes wrote in Starting Thredbo that ‘the Gam Tow was built for lightness. Under-powered and complicated, it lacked attention from a good mechanic to nurse it through its teething problems.’ and ‘all those T-bar lifts had problems with rope grips and spring boxes due to mistakes made when they were too hastily manufactured in Newcastle’. Gam's death in a road accident in late 1959 (one source says 1958) put an end to lift design, although the company continued to operate for a few years as an agency for Mueller. (Not to be confused with Ski Tows Ltd, the original lift company at Mt Hotham.)

3.1.4 Hamilton

Most Australian nutcracker tows were derived from the the designs of Bill (later Sir William) Hamilton in New Zealand. Hamilton installed his first lift at at Coronet Peak in 1947 and within a few years had perfected the Hamilton Model B design that has been used ever since. Most of the early nutcracker lifts installed in Australia were Hamilton products. Hamilton appears to have been the only commercial maker of nutcracker tows installed in Australia and New Zealand, although the Model B design was later widely copied by individuals and clubs.

3.2 Ski lift manufacturers: foreign

In recent decades the market for ski lifts has cosolidated, but unlike most industries it has been the Europeans who now dominate the industry with all major North American companies being taken over or going broke.

The two conglomerates that now dominate the ropeway market are Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr-Garaventa. But like duopolies in other industries, there are aspirants looking to take market share from the two main players as well as smaller companies content to focus on less glamorous installations such as carpets and light surface tows.

In the past there was a much greater diversity of overseas ski lift and aerial ropeway manufacturers. Companies with installations in Australia are listed as well as brief descriptions of a few other lift manufacturers that made important contributions to the development of ski lifts.

3.2.1 Doppelmayr-Garaventa

Doppelmayr-Garaventa is a conglomeration of many companies. Doppelmayr began in 1893 as an Austrian metal working and tool making business and built its first ski lift, a J-bar at Zürs am Arlberg, in 1937. Garaventa built its first ropeway in 1928 to transport timber harvested in the Rigi mountains of central Switzerland and by the 1960s both companies had progressed to manufacturing and installing larger passenger carrying aerial lifts.

The two companies merged in 2002, but before then Doppelmayr had taken over the Swiss ropeway builder Von Roll in 1996. Von Roll had previously bought out Hall, an American chairlift maker in 1982. Garaventa had merged its North American operations with the local lift maker CTEC in 1992 and traded as Garaventa CTEC. The merged Doppelmayr-Garaventa incorporated over a dozen other companies from Europe and North America which gave it expertise in a broad range of operating environments and engineering approaches.

In Australia, Garaventa only built a few lifts such as the Towers quad chair at Falls Creek. But Doppelmayr was far more involved. Their T-bar spring boxes were highly valued in the early 1960s as their design dealt with the build up of rime and icing better than those built by other local or foreign manufacturers. With this reputation for reliability and quality in Australia, Doppelmayr built what appears to have been their first ever double chairlift at Mt Buller which opened for the 1964 season. The story goes that the family patriarch was suspicious of chairlifts and regarded them as a passing fad, so their first double chair was quietly designed and built on the other side of the world so it wouldn’t be as obvious to Doppelmayr customers if it wasn’t a success. When there were problems with hard rime ice, the company sent out engineers so they could understand the problem and fix it. That sort of attention to customer service distinguished it from its competitors of the time.

Whether the story of why their first double chairlift was built as far as possible from Austria is entirely true or not, the Buller chairlift was the first of thousands from what became the worlds biggest chairlift builder. Doppelmayr is responsible for more Australian ski lifts than other company.
Link to Doppelmayr’s website.

The Australian ski resort of Mt Buller occupies an important place in the history of Doppelmayr. It appears they built their first double chair there in 1964, their website identifies the Horse Hill (now Northside) Chondola as the first combined chairlift and gondola in the world and the Blue Bullet detachable chairlifts were the company’s second and third detachable quads and the third and fourth detachable quads from any maker in the world

3.2.2 Leitner-Poma

Leitner-Poma is one of the two companies that dominate the modern ski lift and aerial ropeway market. In 2000 Leitner’s owners took over the Poma group, but before then both companies had absorbed several other ski lift makers. Leitner and Poma continue to operate as different companies in Europe (albeit sharing some parts and technology), but since 2002 they have run a combined operation outside Europe. Most recently built Australian lifts have been sourced from North America.

In Australia Poma is much better known than Leitner as it has been building lifts here for over 60 years. The company began when Jean Pomagalski started building and designing ski lifts in 1935. He established Pomagalski as a French based company in 1947 and began to market the Poma lift, a platter with a spring loaded pole and a detachable grip attached to an elevated tow rope. The most successful refinement of the design appeared in the early 1960s. Poma lifts were especially popular in Victoria, partly because they are the only ski lift that can easily accommodate curves in their route, which was an important factor in the time of mostly surface lifts which need to maintain a consistent uphill slope. At one stage Orange Lifts at Mt Buller had three Poma lifts running in parallel on upper Bourke Street. From 1958 the company diversified and also began building chairlifts, gondolas and aerial tramways. There is an excellent French language history of Poma, although if you need to use an auto translate application, there are a few amusing mistranslations.

Leitner is located in the Italian Tyrol and built its first chairlift in 1947. Today it manufactures aerial trams, chairlifts platters and T-bars. Leitner ski lifts were fairly uncommon in Australia, although the Big Dipper and Towers duplex T-bars installed at Falls Creek in the early 1980s were Leitners.

Links to Leitner-Poma’s North American (and Oceania) website for Australia. Poma’s website (Europe) and Leitner’s website.

3.2.3 Other modern lift makers with details of their Australian lifts

Bartholet (formerly BMF), pronounced Bart-holay, is a Swiss maker of fixed grip and detachable chairlifts, gondolas and aerial trams as well as amusement rides. It is probably the biggest competitor with the two giants of the industry. While it has a healthy market share in Europe, so far it has yet to crack other markets except for a few chairlifts and gondolas in China, Argentina and Chile. Link to website. UPDATE. On 15 March 2022 the HTI Group which also owns Leitner and Poma bought a majority stake in Bartholet, the last major lift maker to remain independent of industry giants Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr-Garaventa. Sadly the industry has been reduced to a duopoly.

GMM or Gimar Montaz Mautino is a French maker of chairlifts and surface lifts. While the former Gimar didn’t build anything in this part of the world, before they merged, Montaz Mautino was a successful lift maker and sold many lifts in Europe. In 1976 the company built the Lakeside Poma lift at Falls Creek. French language website.

Harusch is a small Canadian maker of light surface lifts. In the 1960s many of their handle tows and rope tows were installed in mainland ski resorts, especially Thredbo. Their old style website announces recent developments, so they appear to still be in business.

Sunkid is an Austrian company established in 1974 that initially built amusement rides. In the late 1990s they diversified into light ski lifts and they later incorporated Bruckschlögl, a company that had a few rope tows installed at Perisher. Sunkid lifts are often overlooked beside larger constructions in ski resorts and their products are not always noticed, but they have had some success in Australia with their carpet lifts. The most recent Sunkid products in this country are a hybrid platter/handle tow at Mt Buller that first ran in 2019 and three new Sunkid carpets as part of the reconstruction Selwyn after it was largely destroyed by fire in 2020. Website.

Team Service is an Italian company that makes carpet lifts, carpet lift tunnels and belt conveyors for loading chairlifts. Their products have been installed at several Australian ski locations including five carpets in 2018 at Mt Baw Baw, Corin Forest and Lake Mountain. Website.

3.2.4 Significant foreign lift makers no longer operating (with details of their Australian lifts where applicable)

Duport was a French maker of light ski lifts from the 1960s to the early 1990s. They produced two models, Caddy for beginners and Yac for longer lifts up to 500 metres. In addition, each year they built a few dozen of the uniquely French light cars which did not require a licence to drive. The ski lifts were marketed as low cost, light and quick to install which is probably why they appealed to Alpine Enterprises who installed four Yac platter lifts at the Tasmanian resort of Ben Lomond in 1973 to compete with an existing lift operator.

Hall Ski Lift was a successful American maker of T-bars and chairlifts from 1955 to 1982 when they were bought by Von Roll and operations of the two companies were merged. While a few of their lifts were installed outside North America, none ever made it to Australia.

GMD Mueller (GMD Müller in German) was a Swiss company founded in 1947 that began by building rope tows, then contributed to the development of modern T-bars and became a major chairlift manufacturer. They went out of business in 1992.

Mueller was most successful in Europe and North America but it did build a few chairlifts at New South Wales ski resorts and another chairlift at an amusement park in Perth. The company’s reputation was damaged in Australia when their 1958 Crackenback chairlift at Thredbo suffered multiple failings including derailments and had to be substantially rebuilt using Riblet parts. However their 1961 Mt Perisher chairlift operated for 63 ski seasons until 2023. It will be replaced by a Doppelmayr six pack in 2025.

Riblet began building chairlifts in the USA in 1938 and closed down in 2003. They were highly successful, but only built fixed grip chairlifts. The company had a good start in Australia, Ramshead and Merrits double chairs at Thredbo were Riblets and the trouble plagued Mueller built Crackenback double chairlift was partly rebuilt using Riblet parts. But apart from those three early chairlifts, there was no subsequent Riblet activity anywhere in Australia. The company’s website has been preserved as it was in 2003.

Schippers was a French company that produced surface ski lifts and tubing lifts from circa 1962 to 2004. Schippers lifts that have operated in Australia include the Headwaters Poma lift, Playground and Tom Thumb platters at Falls Creek and a platter at Corin Forest.

Von Roll was a Swiss based company that had great success with its gondolas, aerial trams, monorails and amusement rides, especially in North America. The company went through a number of financial crises before its cableway division was bought by Doppelmayr in 1996. Von Roll branded products ceased to be sold in 1999 although the original factory continues to be used by the new owners. The only Australian Von Roll lift was the chairlift that followed a rectangular route at Brisbane’s Expo ‘88, but they never built a lift at an Australian ski resort.

Yan Lift (or Lift Engineering) built chairlifts in America from 1965 to 1996. They were one of the few manufacturers that were able to make the transition from fixed grip chairlifts to high speed detachables. However that didn’t save them as a number of accidents led to decreased demand for their products and the company went bankrupt in 1995. None of their lifts operated in Australia.

The best listing of former ski lift makers is Remontees-mecaniques, but you will need to use your browser’s auto-translate feature. However even this very long list is not complete as it omits many companies including Harusch and all the former Australian and New Zealand lift manufacturers.

4. Australian Capital Territory

The Corin Forest platter was further uphill than the present carpets. It appears to have only run from 1983 to 86 and again from 1994 to 95, but please send an email if you have more information. Information is sketchy on the Corin nutcracker, there is a Facebook video of it in operation, but no dates.

Corin Forest (ACT). Resort website.

More on ACT ski history. Matthew Higgins. Skis on the Brindabellas. Tabletop Press, 1994. Second edition, 2008.

A brief but good history of Corin Forest appeared in Snow Action in Nov 2020. It can be found at this link.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2020. This list was first published on 23 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

5. Ben Lomond

In common with Mt Buller and Mt Baw Baw, for a time Ben Lomond's ski lifts were run by two companies. The Northern Tasmanian Alpine Club's (NTAC) first tow was built by Eddie Hausegger and Bill Mitchell in 1963. In 1990 the lifts were split off from the club to become Tasmanian Ski Lifts (TSL). The other lift company was Alpine Enterprises (AE), established in 1973 by Eryl Williams, Brian Hill and Arvids Endelmanis.

There is a long tradition of smaller ski resorts in Australia buying second hand lifts from the larger resorts, so it was no surprise when Tasmanian Ski Lifts bought an old chairlift from Mt Buller. However installation of the chairlift that formerly ran on Bourke St, was repeatedly delayed by bureaucracy, eventually TSL simply gave up trying to get around the new barriers that were constantly put in the way of installing the lift and abandoned the project. Early this century the chairlift was still stored on a nearby farm, but apparently the drive terminal was then sold to a horse breeder to be used for training purposes while the rest was sold as scrap metal, a sad end for what was the first Doppelmayr double chairlift in the world. :(

Some years after the chairlift fiasco, Tasmanian Ski Lifts was refused permission to operate their Pomas by the former Ben Lomond Skifield Management Authority and told to remove their lifts. Eventually rival lift company Alpine Enterprises was given salvage rights to them and Thirty Second and Big Ben were removed.

In July 2021 the lift company was bought from Kate Williams by Ben Lomond Ski Lifts, a group headed by Stewart Hosken and Ben Mock. The new owners plan to improve the water supply and implement a three stage snow making plan which will cover Summit, Village Home Trail, Big Ben and Fannies using Technoalpin equipment runing at significantly higher pressure than the snow guns currently operating on the mountain.

There is a passing reference to a ski tow on Ben Lomond on p.24 of Skiers novice handbook published circa 1958. However this is the only mention I have found of it and several people I have spoken to who worked on the mountain in the early 1960s are confident that it never existed. My conclusion is that the mention in the handbook may be a confused reference to Cuming's tow at Mt Mawson. Any further information would be appreciated. 

Run names.

30 Second was named in November 1931 when a party including Fred Smithies skied on a late spring snowdrift near Legges Tor with the descent of the small drift taking exactly half a minute.

Other than runs with the same names as lifts, the only named runs at Ben Lomond are:

• Little Slalom to skiers left of Summit lift, loops around to the lift line half way down.

• Milk Run to skiers left of Fannies to top of Village left.

• Coal Mine to skiers right from top of Giblin.

Trail map. A 3D map showing the former routes of Thirty Second and Big Ben (as black dotted lines).

More on Ben Lomond history.

David M. Harvey. The Ben Lomond Story. The author, 2000.

Thanks to "Ben Lomond Brad" and "Bulldozer" for help with this list.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2021. This list was first published on 4 August 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

6. Charlotte Pass

Around 2009 a double chair with markings indicating it came from Mt Baw Baw was moved to Cooma Airport. Rumours said that it may have been destined for Charlotte Pass. In late 2013 the scattered components were still there, quietly rusting.

Information on the 1960's Pulpit lifts is a bit ambiguous. Sponar's tow had previously run at St Christoph, Austria in 1949, it was the first tow at that resort. Woodrum may have been demolished at the end of the 1962 winter rather than after the 1963 season. Current trail map.

The former Thredbo Valley - Charlotte Pass chairlifts have a page on a wiki here. Parts of them have been reassembled to make a chairlift at Wollongong which still operates. See Section 18 of this page Other passenger ropeways.

More on Charlotte Pass history.

Rick Walkom. Skiing off the roof: the Kosciusko Chalet at Charlotte Pass and its place in the history of the Australian snowfields. Arlberg Press, 1991. Reprinted by Tabletop Press, 2000. Second edition 2008.

Thanks to Bob McLennan for information on lifts in the 1960's.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 16 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

7. Falls Creek

Lift makers. Falls Creek has had by far the greatest diversity of ski lift manufacturers of any Australian resort. Other resorts appear to have developed a brand loyalty to a particular maker (or perhaps it was just complacency?), but Falls seems to have always been on the lookout for the best lift at the best price and several overseas manufacturers had their only Australian lift at the resort.

The first major lift at Falls Creek was a Hamilton nutcracker and they gave local maker McCallum Engineering plenty of business in the 1960s. Falls subsequently built lifts from Poma, Doppelmayr, Leitner, Garaventa, Montaz Mautino (now GMM), Schippers, Harusch and Sunkid. It appears they may have even played the European and North American divisions of Leitner-Poma off against each other to get the best price for the Drovers Dream quad chair.

An example of how complex lifts at Falls Creek can be is that the 1964 Gully chairlift was built by McCallum Engineering, but it included some Doppelmayr parts and one report says the main gearbox was a Leitner product.

Lift companies. In the 1950s every lift had a different owner. In late 1960, Bill Bridgeford's Alpine Developments Holdings (ADH) bought Nissen and Village and by the 1961 season had replaced them with T-bars. ADH continued to expand the lift network until 1983 when the lifts were sold to Transfield. Then in 1996 B.C.R. took over and in 2004 the lift company was sold to MFS Living and Leisure, a listed Gold Coast land developer that also owned aquariums and treetop walks as well as the lift company at Hotham.

After MFS L&L went into liquidation in 2008, National Australia Bank sold Living and Leisure to Arctic, Jamie Packer's leisure industry holding company who took control for the 2009 season. As a Packer controlled company also owned Perisher, for a few years three of Australia's five large ski resorts were under one owner and a season ticket bought at one resort was valid at all three. In December 2011 L&L was bought by Merlin Entertainments, a UK based tourist group with attractions worldwide including theme parks and the LegoLand and Madame Tussaud’s chains. Merlin appears to have been mainly interested in L&Ls aquariums and the ski resorts just came as part of the package of tourist attractions they bought. Merlin had not previously owned any ski resorts so what they planned to do with Falls Creek Ski Lifts Pty Ltd was unknown. They appear to have expressed interest in buying a New Zealand resort circa 2017, but ultimately decided that ski resorts were outside their core business. So in early 2019 Merlin Entertainments sold Falls and Hotham to Vail Resorts, the largest ski resort operator in North America which had also bought Perisher in NSW in 2015. Thus from the 2019 season, a lift pass bought at any of Falls, Hotham and Perisher was again valid at all three resorts.

Misc lift trivia. The removal of the Big Dipper, Headwaters and Village lifts greatly reduced the amount of easily accessible lifted terrain compared to the 1990s. It appears it was intended to build the proposed Damsite lift from components of Big Dipper that were in storage. The storage shed was burnt in the 2003 wildfires and afterwards the rumor was that if Damsite was ever built, it would be a chairlift.

Alpine Chair Lift - 1957 profile

Bob Hyman's 1957 Alpine Chair Lift was the first chairlift in Australia. Built from poles that might have been intended for use on the nearby Kiewa Hydro Scheme, it lasted until the 1960's when it was condemned by a state government lifts and cranes inspector. As a completely new mode of transport, it attracted a lot of interest. Here is one description of it.

Australian ski-ing history was made at Falls Creek on 21 July 1957, when the first passengers were carried on the first Alpine Chair Lift to operate on our snowfields. Available to all visitors, the lower end of the lift is about 100 yards above the Upper Kiewa Road and it rises 400 vertical feet to the top terminal above the race-line, a length up the slope of 1,280 feet. Forty chairs transport skiers continuously at a speed of five feet per second, the upward trip taking just over four minutes. Each chair has a safety bar above the rider's knees, so the maximum height above the snow of about forty feet is quite safe.

Outstanding impressions of every skier riding the lift is its simplicity, one's perfect relaxation, and the immense increase of downhill ski-ing it provides.

At the lower terminal a skier hands over his ticket to the starting attendant, stands on his skis on a slight snow platform, gives a glance over the left shoulder as a chair gently tucks itself under his bobo - and he is cosily chairborne and bound upwards. Four minutes and 400 vertical feet later he approaches the upper terminal in its huge shelter. As he his skis touch down on another snow platform, he slips out of his chair and obeys the attendant's request to 'move off to the right, please" - and he skis downwards again.

There are no jerks or tensions as the skier settles into his chair and commences his ascent up the hill. The chairs run smoothly in complete silence, broken only by the clicking made by their attachments passing over the pulleys at each pylon. The impression is of floating slowly and quietly in space in complete relaxation, independent of the surface conditions underneath. One may chat with the occupants of adjoining chairs and with others on the slopes below - or just continue to relax.

Bill Beatty. The white roof of Australia. Cassell, 1958. pp 62 - 63.

International Poma - Lift profile

The International Poma is a 1,219 metre long Poma lift. It was built over the 1968-69 summer and was ready to operate in 1969, but due to a poor snow season, the 'Inter' didn't open to the public until 1970. It is a unique lift (or 'iconic' as the Falls Creek marketing department calls it) and even has its own fan page on Facebook.

It was called the International because it serviced the area where a F.I.S. international race was held in 1960. The race required 1500 feet of vertical descent, so a ski bridge was built over the road and the race ran from the summit right down to Rocky Valley Creek. The bridge was removed in the mid 1960s, but the name for the area remained.

The International Poma could have sticks attached every 6 metres along it's 1,219 metre length and it's original V12 diesel engine powered it at 4.2 metres a second, possibly making it the second fastest drag lift in the southern hemisphere (after Buller's Summit Access / Howqua Poma). Kids riding the International could get serious air time going around the corner at tower 9. This had occasionally caused the cable to derail with consequent short term closures, but on 2 August 2015 a rider swung too far out on the corner, derailing the cable and causing it to snag and break as well as causing other damage. The lift was out of action for 13 days while 300 metres of replacement cable was sourced from Sweden and spliced into the remnants of the old cable by a team from Doppelmayr, the arch rival of the lift's manufacturer Leitner-Poma.

The combination of high speed and loading riders close together gave the Inter a similar capacity to the former Towers and Big Dipper duplex T-bars. Now the new (single speed) electric drive only powers the lift at a modest 2.4 metres per second, so it's much slower and slightly less fun.

But the International remains the longest cornered Poma this side of the equator and even with a much lower speed, it's lifting capacity still matches that of some chairlifts. The other reason why it hasn't been replaced, despite it's extreme age of over 50 years, is because its top half runs along the exposed ridge line of Frying Pan Spur. This route is necessary to service ski runs in The Maze, but a chairlift on this route would frequently be on wind hold.

McCallum lifts. After a two year stint as manager of what became Orange Lifts at Mt Buller, Ron McCallum was a founder of Alpine Developments, the company that unified the lift network at Falls Creek for the 1961 season. It appears that his first lift was the Skyline portable tow at Falls Creek in 1954. As an engineer, he went on to build about 20 chairlifts and T-bars in the 1960's and early 1970's including at least five at Falls Creek. Many of the earlier lifts were hybrids, mostly of McCallum origin, but incorporating parts from other manufacturers. The Village and Summit T-bars had McCallum towers and hydraulic drives but had a few bits from other manufacturers, including Dopp spring boxes (which caused a lot of trouble). The original Gully Chair had a Doppelmayr drive, but otherwise was McCallum. Initially the Saddle / Link Lift T-bar had T's hanging from Poma sticks until they were replaced with conventional T-bar spring boxes bought second hand from Buller (possibly of Dopp origin?). The Sun Valley T-bar was 100% McCallum and was one of the most reliable lifts to operate at the resort.

Proposed Mt McKay, Rocky Knolls and Damsite expansion of the lift network. (Added March 2021)

From the 1940s skiing at Falls Creek was focused in the Village Bowl and while there was a short lived plan to develop the slopes of Spion Kopje, a few kilometres to the north, the first lift to be built beyond the Bowl was just to the south when the Sun Valley T-bar was built in 1967 along a similar line to today’s Scott chairlift.

With the construction of the adjacent Ruined Castle Poma in 1973, there was a sufficient variety of lifted slopes in the area overlooking Rocky Valley Lake to divert the primary attention of most skiers away from the Bowl and over the ridge. In the 1970s more surface lifts were built in the area, but by the time Panorama Poma (since replaced by Drovers Dream Chairlift) and the Big Dipper T-bar were built in 1979 and 1983 respectively, most potential ski runs in the Sun Valley area had been lifted.

So attention tuned towards a third possible ski area, the slopes leading towards Mt McKay. The mountain had been visible to Falls Creek skiers ever since the Nissen Tow was built in 1951 and it offered the prospect of long, steep slopes well above the treeline, something Falls had always been short of. After more than a decade of speculation, by the late 1990s solid expansion plans began to emerge.

In March 2002 the Rocky Knolls and Damsite Ski Field Development Plan was released with details of a $2.8 million proposal for two lifts in the area between Ruined Castle and Mt McKay. These lifts would serve a variety of ski slopes in their own right, but would also provide access to future lifts on Mt McKay. In contrast to many of the old lifts which were still diesel powered, both lifts were to be electrically driven which would involve laying new power cables. The lifts were to be:

• Rocky Knolls chairlift, 587 metres long , 9 towers, top station at 1770 metres

• Damsite ‘surface lift’ (almost certainly a T-bar), 750 metres long, 9 towers, top station at 1785 metres. Notably it was planned to include ‘lift componentry from the former Big Dipper T-bar’ which had been decomisssioned in the mid 1990s.

• The plan also mentions future 'expansion… on to Mt McKay with the installation of a chairlift system’. The low res photo from another document shows one of the planned Mt McKay lifts.

So why wasn’t any of this built? There’s no simple answer, but here are a few possible reasons.

• It would have been expensive and the more desirable slopes of Mt McKay could only be accessed if Rocky Knolls and Damsite were built first.

• The area was remote from the resort and it would have taken skiers a long time to get out to Mt McKay and return using at least three lifts. This would restrict the hours of operation of the more distant lifts and the isolation could potentially lead to safety problems, especially if the weather turned bad while thousands of skiers were in the Mt McKay area.

• The plans coincided with a time when the ski lifts at Falls were owned by a succession of real estate developers whose focus was on improving returns from real estate and who may have been less interested in expanding the lift network.

• Changing preferences among skiers and the rise of snowboarding meant that customers increasingly preferred chairlifts over surface lifts, so there was growing pressure to spend money destined for lift construction on replacing existing surface lifts with chairlifts rather than expansion into new areas.

• Just before this time, the lifted area had contracted with the closure and removal of a number of surface lifts including Big Dipper, Headwaters and Village. While some of the slopes these lifts served could be accessed by other other lifts, getting to the slopes without the original lifts was more difficult, so the areas were only rarely skied after the lifts were removed. The effective loss of these slopes does not appear to have affected ticket sales, so there was probably not a perceived need to expand the lift network.

• The final reason was probably the loss of components of the Big Dipper T-bar which were intended to be used in the Damsite surface lift. After the lift was removed parts had apparently been stored in a shed at Howmans Gap which was burnt in the 2003 wildfires.

The Falls Creek resort area includes the northern slopes of Mt McKay and the area is accessed from Howmans Gap by Road 24 and Power Station Road, both are well maintained roads below the tree line, originally built as part of the Kiewa hydro electic scheme. While no plans were published, a few buildings there or even a very small village would overcome some of the problems associated with the relatively isolated slopes of Mt Mckay being so far from the town of Falls Creek. However around (2010?) the Falls Creek Resort Management Board did a land swap with Parks Victoria giving up an area north west of Mt McKay and in return for degraded land on the slopes of Rocky Valley near the western end of the dam wall. Soon after, plans were published for a small residential development in this more scenic location, further decreasing the chance of any development to the north of Mt McKay or west of Howmans Gap.

This brief article will hopefully be improved and expanded with more information. So any corrections or further information, including more details of the planned ‘chairlift system’ on Mt McKay would be appreciated. Please send anything potentially helpful to australianmountains (at) gmail.com

More on Falls Creek history:

Julian Newton Brown. Falls Creek: how it came to be. Janby Productions, 2005.

Bob Howe. Melting tracks: history and memories of Albury Ski Club and early Falls Creek. The author, 2004. 

Thanks to Nick Manson for information on Big Dipper.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2021. This list of Falls Creek lifts was first published on 9 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

8. Mt Baw Baw

In the dates operated field "78><83" indicates that the lift was installed at some time between 1978 and 1983. Info on more precise dates appreciated.

From 1971 to 1980 skiers had to choose between two lift companies, Dartos and Baw Baw Ski Tows. The combined lift company merged with the chairlift in 1988. In 2001 the state government decided to not renew the lease of Mount Baw Baw Ski Enterprises, but as they were unable to find another company to bid for the lease, the lifts were operated by the government until Belgavia Leisure took over in 2014. Media release.

Except for the towers, the original Access chairlift was reused to build a chairlift on the Nut at Stanley in Tasmania. The second Access chairlift was almost entirely new. The towers of the first chairlift were removed, sand blasted and replaced, but everything else was new and sourced from Dopplemayr. It also had about 80 chairs rather than the 50 odd on its predecessor.

After the second chairlift was removed, its parts were in storage at Drouin for many years, but a chair from the lift is on display on the veranda of Kelly's Cafe. Local gossip said it may have been sold to Charlotte Pass and the owners of Charlotte Pass did have a double chair stored at Cooma airport in 2009, although what they would want with Baw Baw's 20 year old, fixed grip double chair is anyone's guess.

Current trail map. Thanks to “Onlybackscratchers”, "djam", Ray Chapman, "HiLo", "sooty68" and Andrew Graham for help.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2020. This list was first published on 22 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

9. Mt Buffalo

Dingo Dell’s last season was probably 1998 (or possibly 1988), at the time there was a rope tow and two Pomas there. Cresta’s last season was 2006 when five lifts remained. Final trail maps for Dingo Dell and Cresta areas before they closed.

None of the histories of Mt Buffalo pay much attention to the precise dates, location or names of ski lifts, so the information in this table is rather vague. Any accurate information would be appreciated. Please email australianmountains at gmail.com

In December 2006, The Buffalo Lodge (formerly known as Tatra Inn) burnt down and in January 2007 the lessees relinquished their lease of the Buffalo Chalet. At the time the Chalet (built in 1910) was still structurally sound, but it is unlikely to operate again. In 2007 the state government was unwilling to grant a lease long enough to justify the huge expenditure required to make the rather old fashioned Chalet attractive to guests. While they are now prepared to offer a long lease, it's probably too late. Unless the Chalet is occupied and maintained, it is only a matter of time until a storm or fire damages it irreparably. It all makes a sad end to Victoria’s first ski resort, Australia's oldest surviving ski lodge and the site of Australia's first ski lift.

In the summer of 2012-2013, the ski lifts were offered for sale . One was bought by Dinner Plain and will be used as a tubing lift from the 2015 season, while a Poma may have been bought by a caravan park outside Albury and adapted for use by mountain bikes. News of any others would be appreciated.

Reopening proposal. In winter 2015 a proposal was floated to reopen five lifts at Cresta by an outfit called 'Mt Buffalo Snow Resort Pty Ltd'. It's directors were Ben Mock and Jamie Cottee. Detaiis were on their website www.mtbuffalo.com. After they were largely ignored by the Parks Victoria bureaucracy, Ben Mock partnered with Stewart Hosken to buy Ben Lomond ski resort in Tasmania in 2021.

A site inspection by Haydn Skinner in January 2022, revealed that at ‘Dingo Dell both Number 1 and Number 2 pomas still have the towers located in a pile next to the last towers (last towers are still standing!) before the top bull wheel (could not see or find the bull wheel). Cresta valley still has its 5 lifts that operated in 2006. The 3 closest to the road (the 2 chairlifts and the Novice poma) still are in great condition, while the other lifts (Gully and Cresta pomas) are in a sad state.’

Thanks to "Wangaratta_bloke" and to Steve Kemp for information on Dingo Dell.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 3 August 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

10. Mt Buller

The vertical gain figures were obtained from a range of old documents, but the numbers are definitely incorrect for several older lifts at Buller as there is no way the former Shaky Knees T-bar was the steepest lift in Australia.

In common with Ben Lomond and Mt Baw Baw, Mt Buller had two lift companies for many years. They issued a joint ticket in 1984 and merged in 1985 when Bull Run Enterprises (Blue Lifts) took over Mt Buller Ski Lifts (Orange Lifts). The company is now called Buller Ski Lifts.

The interactive trail map for Buller's ski slopes.

At least eight old ski lifts from Mt Buller were relocated to other Australian mountains in three states. Buller is the only Australian resort with a consistent record of selling its discarded lifts.

• Ben Lomond bought several lifts including the Bourke St rope tow, both summit Pomas and the Bourke St (or Baldy?) double chairlift.

• The original 1953 Bull Run nutcracker tow was relocated to Mt St Bernard (near Mt Hotham) in 1955. It is Australia’s oldest operational ski lift and one of the oldest in the world.

• Guthega bought a T-bar from Orange Lifts in the mid 1970's, (probably the Bourke St T-bar, as both had arch type frames).

• I've been informed that Painted Run T-bar at Mt Baw Baw also came from Buller, but have not been able to confirm this.

• More recently, the Helicopter / ABOM triple chair was sold to Selwyn Snowfields.

The Horse Hill chairlifts

The original Horse Hill triple chairlift was designed to revolutionise things. At the time Buller had two lift companies at the time and they painted their towers Orange and Blue. Orange Lifts wanted to shift lift access away from the bus terminus in the Village Square area because only Blue Lifts had lifts accessing that area. If a skier wanted to use Orange Lifts, they had to walk up to Helicopter Flat. So having an access lift at the day car park would turn the tables and give Orange the advantage. No doubt the Forests Commission, who managed the resort in those days, liked the idea too because it would have reduced the number of shuttle buses on the heavily trafficked and often icy last bit of the road.

So in 1982 Orange Lifts installed the best lift they could buy at the time, a Doppelmayr fixed grip triple chairlift at great expense. What they didn't know was that both Doppelmayr and their arch-rival Poma were both about to introduce quad seat chairlifts and even more importantly, they were both working on the development of detachable grip chairlifts where the cable moved at double the speed (about 4.8 metres a second as opposed to 2.3-ish m/s for fixed grip chairs). That speed difference was important for very long lifts like Horse Hill.

So just two years later in 1984, Orange was understandably very pissed off when their local rival Blue Lifts scored a double first, building two chairlifts on Bourke Street and Baldy. They were not only the first quad chairlifts in Australia, but were also the third and fourth detachable grip chairlifts in the world. Orange appears to have believed that Doppelmayr should have told them about these new developments before they made such a massive investment, because if they knew, they could have waited two years and installed the latest type of lift, a detachable grip quad instead of the fixed grip triple that they got.

But the cut throat competition between Blue Lifts and Orange Lifts continued and that meant that each company had to have the best lifts. So after a life of only four years, the fixed grip triple chair was ripped out and replaced with a detachable grip quad chairlift. It was the first "Chondola" (a lift that has both chairs and gondola cabins on the same cable), that Doppelmayr had ever built, (although Poma had built the first in the world a few months earlier). The old Horse Hill triple was moved to Helicopter Flat to replace a 1969 poma-lift. It operated there from 1986 to 2007 when it was sold and reinstalled at its third location at Selwyn Snowfields in NSW where it still operates.

Bourke St and Baldy double chairs, Blue Bullet 1 and 2 quads. Working draft. Ski lifts on Bourke St

These lifts were amongst the most revolutionary to ever be installed in Australia. Not only were they amongst the first quad chairs, but they were also the first detachable chairlifts in the country.

Background

Bourke Street has always been Mt Buller’s busiest beginners run and it was named after the similarity of its crowded slopes to the crowds on Bourke St in central Melbourne. The first lift on the slope was a simple rope tow which operated for the 1949 ski season which was rebuilt and upgraded to become a nutcracker tow for the 1950 season. At the time several new lodges were being built every year and Buller’s explosive growth meant that Bourke St became more crowded despite the construction of new ski lifts on other slopes. So in 1956 and 57 two more tows were built from the upper part of Bourke St at Helicopter Flat to Baldy, (a distinctive hill that overlooks the run). These were joined by a T-bar in 1959 and a duplex nutcracker tow in 1961. There were so many lifts on some parts on the ski run that they reduced the room available for skiers. At the same time the multiple independent lift operators were consolidating into two companies.

So inhe crowded slopes of lower Bourke Street

Allegedly Dopp senior said chairlifts were a fad…

Cutthroat competition between the Blue and Orange lift companies meant they were always looking for points of difference and new innovations. One of these was the Bourke Street double chair installed for the 1964 season. This was the first double chair in Victoria and it appears to also have been the first double chair built by Doppelamayr. In 1959 a T-bar on the route replaced a nutcracker tow considerably improving comfort, but the chairlift completely outclassed the T-bar.

Problems with rime and icing and Dopps help with it. Include a photo.

The chairlift was successful and great publicity for Blue Lifts. So in 1974 the route was extended to the top of Baldy by a second chairlift, which may have been made by Poma (?). The top station of the Bourke St lift and the base of the Baldy lift were adjacent, allowing a quick transition between the two.

However while the Blue chairlifts offered the most comfortable route from the village to the top of Baldy, they were not the fastest as in 19xx Orange installed duplex fast Pomas to Baldy. By the 1980s the slow, fixed grip Bourke St chair often featured long queus as it was the only lifted access from much of the village to most of the ski slopes. In 1984 these two factors led to a solution even more radical than the installation of the double chair 20 years earlier

Triple chairs had operating in Australia since 19xx and the natural evolution from them were the quad chairs built at yyy and zzz resorts in 19xx. A quad chair would have solved the problem with queses on the Bourke Street chair, but Blue Lifts went several steps beyond that by installing a detachable quad. Before this all chairlifts in Australia were ‘fixed grip’ with chair permanently attached to the cable. Chairs could not move overly fast through loading and unloading points, so this limited the speed of fixed grip chairs to around 2 1/2 metres per second. This may not have been much of a problem, but Orange Lifts were operating their Baldy Pomas at twice that speed.

So over the summer of 1983 - 84, Blue replaced both double lifts with detachable quads. Australian skiers and resorts had never seen anything like them before. Detachable chairlifts remove the chair from the cable and move them slowly through the terminal at a low speed of around a metres per second. This allows the main cable to move quite fast at around 5 m/s which is double the usual speed of a fixed grip chair. So detachable chairs are easier to load and travel faster. Everyone wins… except that the cost of building and maintaining them is much higher than fixed grip chairlifts.

Not all of BB1 was scrapped over the summer of 2018 -2019, the chairs were auctioned off and many found a new life as garden furniture. The bull wheel was reused in a private chairlift near Albury. Blue Bullet 1 photo gallery.

One of the first detachable chairlifts in the world

Both Doppelmayr and Poma introduced detachable chairlifts in the early 1980s, with other companies following the two industry leaders (such as Xxxx in 198* and Yyyyy in 199*). The first detachable in North America (and probably the world) was the Quicksliver quad chair that operated at Breckenridge in Colorado from 1981 to 1999.* This was followed by a Poma detachable quad at Serre Chevalier in France in 1982 and a Dopplelmayr detachable triple chair at Mt Bachelor in 1983. This triple appears to be the closest relative of Mt Buller’s Blue Bullets. So it appears that the Buller probably had the third and fourth detachable quads in the world.

* In 2000 Quicksilver was relocated to the Mont Owls Head resort in Quebec and renamed Lake. So the worlds first detachable chairlift still operates

Operations, effect on Buller.

Maintenance and spare parts difficulties. Detachable quads are very complex machines and as the early technology evolved it was quickly superseded. But unlike T-bars, nutcrackers and even Poma lifts, replacement parts cannot be easily made in a workshop. As the lifts aged, spare parts became more of a problem and hearsay suggests this was one of the reasons BB2 was removed, so parts from it could be used to keep BB1 running.

Replacement with 6 packs.

Summit Access / Howqua Poma - Lift profile

Profile will be completed and the text further edited soon.

More than any other mountain in Australia, Mt Buller had a love affair with Poma lifts. By the early 1960s there was fierce competition between Blue and Orange lifts and both companies were quick to replace nutcracker tows as soon as there were reliable alternatives. So 11 Pomas were built at Buller between 1964 and 1980. One of Buller’s Pomas was the fastest ski lift to ever operate in Australia and was amongst the fastest in the world.

In 1959 the BMW tow group (Brighton Mountain Wanderers, not the car company) installed the Koflers/Transportation nutcracker tow to provide access to areas of the mountain further from the village and Federation T-bar was built in the same year. At the time, there was competition between Blue Lifts and the groups which would soon combine to become orange lifts, to access as much of the mountain as possible. The Transportation tow and Federation T-bar allowed Orange to claim part of the south west part of the mountain as their own. However T-bars of the time were not reliable, they ran at even slower speeds than they do today and there was trouble with every type of spring box on the market.

Blue lifts had been running trips to the summit area with skiers towed behind oversnow vehicles and by 1964 Orange were ready to establish a claim to the area. However their nutcracker which accessed Federation and the lower Baldy area did not have the capacity to serve further areas. So in 1964 the Koflers / Transportation nutcracker was replaced with a Poma lift and an additional Poma was built on terrain which had not seen a lift before, the same path as todays Summit quad chairlift.

The new Summit Access / Howqua Poma opened in 1964. What made it different to any other was that it was double ended. The lift started in the village at Helicopter Flat and climbed to the ridge just south of Baldy, then it descended along a path parallel to the present Howqua chairlift. The east side was named Summit Access, the west end was Howqua. Skiers could load onto the lift at either end and get off wherever they wanted to at the top of the ridge. While the new Poma served some ski runs, it was more of an access lift. And, because the Poma sticks detached from the cable and were spring loaded, the lift could operate at up to three times the speed of T-bars.

Pomas were a new type of lift and Orange were keen to emphasise their advantages. One of those advantages was speed and in it’s first years they often ran Summit Access / Howqua at its top speed of 6½ metres a second. This not only got their customers up to the Federation and Summit lifts faster, it allowed them to zoom past skiers on Blue Lifts Skyline T-bar or the expensive new Bourke St chairlift, neither operated at more than 2 metres a second. However this breakneck speed led to accidents and within a few years it was restricted to 4 m/s when open to the public, although it still operated at full speed for staff.

In 1984 the Poma was partly replaced by the Howqua quad chairlift and two years later the other end was removed to make way for the Helicopter / ABOM triple chair. From the late 1980's to the early 1990's, a truncated at both ends Summit Access poma ran from near Fawlty Towers to the top of the Howqua chair.

Howqua (this section was 536 long / 86 vertical).

Howqua quad chairlift. This lift replaced one end of the old Howqua / Summit Access poma-lift

When Orange Lifts decided the 1964 vintage Howqua poma-lift needed to be replaced, they were allegedly a bit short of money, so despite having a strong loyalty to Doppelmayr, they decided to shop around for the cheapest quad chair they could get. In the end Poma found some head-frames and bullwheels for triple chairs in their parts inventory that they couldn't shift because no one was buying triples any more, so they sold Buller a cheap package of mixed parts. The new Howqua quad chair was built using head-frames and bullwheels for a triple, but with quad chairs, which is why the chairs pass disconcertingly close to the towers.

I pieced this story together from books, unpublished documents, chats with Buller veterans and email correspondence. However it strikes me as perhaps as a little too cute to be entirely credible, especially in a time when close bureaucratic supervision of projects like this had become prevalent, (unlike Bob Hymans 1957 chairlift at Falls Creek which was built from random parts). So any information clarifying the details would be appreciated. Please email australianmountains (at) gmail.com

More on Buller history:

Jim Darby. Mt Buller: the story of a mountain. tSm Publishing, 2008.

David Joss. Mt Buller: a history. Alpine Resorts Commission, n.d. (1995?). 36 page booklet.

Ernest Forras, Jan Henderson. Ernest escapades, or seriously for fun only: the autobiography of Ernest Forras. Ernest Forras, 1994.

Harry Stephenson. Skiing the high plains: a history of the ski exploration of Victoria's alpine area. Graphic Books, 1982. Pages 198 - 219.

Merrick Summers. Buller between Summers, 2017? The authors ski adventures invcluding building the 1949 Bourke St tow & BMW SKi Club

I. C. Dillon. Tracks of the morning: a Timbertop history text. Geelong Grammar School, 1989. Pages 323 - 357.

Magazines. Most ski magazines have covered the development of Buller, but the Australian and New Zealand ski yearbook and two Victorian ski monthlies, Schuss and Ski Horizon were published during the formative years of the mountain. Later magazines were not as good at providing news sections, although Fall Line which was produced in the 1970s and 80s was also pretty good.

Club histories. Club histories tend to focus on work parties, lodge construction and administration, but they also give a good idea of skiers experiences over the years.

Lynette Sheridan. University Ski Club 1929 - 1979. U.S.C, 1988. Chapter 9, pages 130 - 161.

Janis Lloyd. Skiing into history: 1924 - 1984. Ski Club of Victoria, 1986. Pages 93 - 197.

Ann Crawford. A proud achievement: 50 years of YHA on Mt Buller 1947 - 1997. YHA, 1997. 58 page booklet.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2023. This list was first published on 10 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

11. Mt Hotham

There is fragmentary evidence of a hand held rope tow operating in the Diamantina Hut / Murray Valley Ski Club area in the late 1960's or early 1970s.  Any conformation of it's existence would appreciated, solid details such as it's route or a photo would be appreciated even more.

Information on lifts at Hotham in the 1960's is conflicting. After the monthly magazines Ski Horizon and Schuss ceased publication, there was no reliable record of exactly what was happening in Victorian skiing. Wendy Cross's excellent book Australian skiing: the first 100 years doesn't cover events after 1962, but she states that Basin was the second lift, running from 1958 - 59 before being moved to Davenport.

Lift companies. The original lift company: Ski Tows Limited was operated on a cost recovery basis by members of the University Ski Club and the Alpine Club of Victoria. It never paid a dividend. Jack Hedley also ran a couple of lifts for a few years and a tow near Diamantina Hut also operated in the late 1960s(?), most likely associated with the nearby Murray Valley Ski Club lodge.

Ski Tows Ltd's lack of capital hampered further development of the mountain. After the 1968 season a controlling interest in the company was sold to Desmond Schumann who built the Playground double chair. It was originally planned for the Australia Drift / Avalanche Gully area, but the location was changed just before it was installed. In 1995 the Schumann family sold Ski Tows Limited to BCR Management so they could concentrate on Silver Star and Big White, ski resorts in B.C. Canada which Schumann family interests had acquired.

In the latter years of Schumann ownership a number of old surface lifts were replaced with chairlifts. When BCR Management took over, they continued the chairlift construction programme and in 1997 built Gotcha, Keogh's and Orchard in areas that had never had lifts before. Infrastructure development continued in 1999 with the opening of the airport at nearby Horsehair Plain.

All this development appears to have over extended BCR Management and in 2004 the lift company was sold to MFS Living and Leisure, a listed Gold Coast land developer that also owned aquariums and treetop walks. They had great plans for expansion of both lifts and buildings. As they also owned the lifts at Falls Creek, a lift ticket was valid at both resorts. However the plans came to nothing when MFS L&L went broke in 2008. The company was bailed out when a controlling shareholding was acquired by the Jamie Packer controlled outfit that owned the ski lifts at Perisher.

In December 2011 L&L was sold to Merlin Entertainments, a UK based tourist group with attractions worldwide including aquariums, theme parks and the Legoland and Madame Tussauds chains. Merlin appears to have have been primarily interested in the aquariums that L&L owned, but picked up the ski resorts as part of the package deal of tourist attractions. Merlin had not owned any ski resorts before, so there was speculation about whether they planed to hold on to the renamed Mount Hotham Skiing Company, and while they did not produce new master plans of the type announced by previous owners, there was an indication that Merlin was interested in expanding in the ski industry is they were negotiating to buy Cardrona ski resort in New Zealand in 2013, although Cardrona was later bought by a local company. As Falls and Hotham were the only ski resorts within Merlin’s global empire, their orphan status was always going to be resolved by either further expansion into the ski industry by Merlin or the resorts being sold. Thus, no one was surprised when, in early 2019, Merlin Entertainments sold Falls and Hotham to Vail Resorts, the largest ski resort operator in North America which had also bought Perisher in NSW in 2015. So from the 2019 season, a lift pass bought at any of Falls, Hotham and Perisher was again valid at all three resorts.

Recent trail map.

More on Hotham history:
Donald Bennett. Hotham horizon: the Alpine Club of Victoria. The author, 1987.
CSIR Ski Club: the first 70 years. CSIR S.C., 2017
Sarah Martin. From first tracks to last drinks: the first 50 years of Ormond Ski Club. Ormond Ski Club, 2019.
Jennifer McLennan. Not below 5000: a history of the Ski Club of East Gippsland. S.C.E.G., 2001..
Gillian Salmon. The king of Hotham: my father. Lindsay Salmon - the Drift Chalet - Mount Hotham. Gillian Magnabosco, 2013.
Lynette Sheridan. University Ski Club: 1929 - 1979. U.S.C., 1988.

Ticket prices in 1965. A 7 day ticket for all tows cost £7. Blue Ribbon nutcracker cost 30 shillings for 10 rides or 5/- for a single ride. Basin Poma and Higginbotham rope tow: 30/- for 40 rides or 1/- for a single ride.

Thanks to Tim Meier for help with information on lift manufacturers.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 19 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

Playground double chairlift - Lift profile

Ski Tows Limited was a non profit company that ran most of Hotham’s lifts from 1952. However operating on a cost recovery basis meant that after building the Blue Ribbon nutcracker tow, it barely had the money to build a few short surface lifts in the years that followed. The under capitalisation of the lift company became a serious impediment to the development of Hotham at a time when Buller and Falls Creek were booming. This changed after the 1968 ski season when a controlling interest in the company was sold to Des Schumann who immediately began planning new lifts.

At the time Hotham had a few shortish beginner lifts but the Blue Ribbon tow was the only lift that served longer slopes with more difficult terrain. However the mountain had huge potential, with a wealth of challenging but unlifted slopes. It seems Schumann wanted to make a splash in his first season of owning the lift company, so he ordered a Doppelmayr chairlift, something that Hotham skiers had hardly dared to dream about. It was originally planned to install the new lift in the Australia Drift - Avalanche Gully area, but late in the planning process it was moved to the slope north of Zirkys leading down to Swindlers Creek

In 1969 the brand new chairlift only operated from the mid station. This may have been because it wasn’t quite finished, and anecdotal reports say it broke down a few times. But 1969 was a very poor ski season without much snow and the brand new International Poma at nearby Falls Creek ski resort never operated at all. So for whatever reason, the new chairlift only operated from top to bottom from the winter of 1970. Initially it was simply known as ‘the chairlift’ but after the Blue Ribbon chairlift was opened in 1981, it was given the name Playground.

The original base station was built almost on top of Swindlers Creek and in the late 1980s a flood destroyed the base station. As there had recently been a lot of earth works upstream to improve runs served by the new Heavenly Valley quad, and the disturbed area had not had time to revegetate, the flood also washed a lot of dirt down the creek, slightly raising the ground level near the chairlift. So after a bigger channel was built for the creek, a new base for the chairlift was installed that required a shorter first tower. While original lift towers had a rectangular profile, this newer tower was round.

The chairlift was successful in its first years of operation as it served a variety of runs. It also permitted development further up Swindlers Creek Valley and when Brockhoff Poma opened in 1972, it accessed a huge area that had previously required long climbs on foot. Both lifts were heavily used and in a way became victims of their own success. Long queues meant that more lifts were required to relieve crowding and in 1987 Heavenly Valley quad chair replaced the Brockhoff Poma. This placed even more pressure on the double chair as it had been used as an access lift for Brockhoff and then Heavenly Valley, with queues up to 30 minutes long after the newly built quad closed at 4.30. So in the summer of 1992 - 1993 the Village quad chair (later renamed Audi Quatro) was built close to the double chair.

While the top stations of the two chairlifts were over 200 metres apart, it was decided to build the Swindlers Creek base station of the new Village quad right next to the base of Playground, meaning that the loading point of Playground had to be moved. As the slope immediately above the creek was particularly steep, the old double chair had a new base station built further up the hill above the steep section. The new load platform was supported by reused towers from the former Brockhoff and Summit Pomas. At the same time the shortened lift got new chairs.

There was room in the valley for the base stations of both chairlifts, so many people could not understand why an alignment was chosen for the new quad that did not allow Playground to continue operating without being shortened. An email from a former RMB member clarifies this: ‘The reason was totally because of concern that two lifts so close together would place a dangerous and excessive level of skiers onto the Slalom Gully run - something the ski patrol and resort management was absolutely against.’

When the Sun Run T-bar was built in 1979, Playground’s mid station was removed as the new T-bar duplicated the upper section of Playground. After Sun Run T-bar was replaced by the much longer Road Runner quad chair in 1995, an improvised mid station made from snow was utilised for a year or two before a proper mid station was rebuilt around 1996 or 1997.

However the new base of the double chair was never terribly popular and in its last few decades Playground probably loaded most of its passengers from the mid station adjacent to the base of the Sun Run T-bar and Road Runner quad. After Road Runner was built, Playground essentially operated as a replacement for the Sun Run T-bar.

From the turn of the century the old chair was used less and less and in its last few years it was only used occasionally, mostly when Road Runner was on wind hold or to move skiers when things became crowded. Playground ran for the last time on 7 October 2018 at the end of its 50th ski season. A video of a ride from the mid station can be found at this link.

There a few uncertainties about Playground. Please email australianmountains (at) gmail.com if you have more information

• While the replacement chairs from circa 1993 were from Doppelmayr, I have been unable to confirm that the original lift was made by them.

• The original lift was 954 metres long with a vertical ascent of 300 metres. The length and vertical of the shortened lift from 1993 is recorded as 614 and 199. However I doubt the shortened lift was less than two thirds the length of the original, so these figures may be a bit out.

Blue Ribbon nutcracker tow - Lift profile

Blue Ribbon was the first lift on Hotham. It was built in 1952 and operated until at least 1972. It appears the tow was never formally decommissioned, instead it may have just been used less and less. Some anecdotes claim it was still running as late as 1974. Relics remained on site for years after the replacement triple chairlift was installed in 1981.

Details: Hamilton 'Type B' rope tow. Cost of purchase and construction £3,000. 1836 feet (560 metres) long, vertical lift 770' (235 m.), average slope 25 degrees. Powered by a 28 horsepower (21 kilowatt) Bedford Truck engine which was housed in a hut at the top of the tow near the road. The tow rope was 1 inch ( 2.54 cm) sisal. It was supported on 9 poles with waist height pulleys that could be raised or lowered according to the depth of snow. Capacity 12 at a time. The trip took four minutes at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour (11 kph) compared to a 40 minute walk up the slope. A canteen was added to the tow hut in 1957.

Building the Blue Ribbon tow. Don Bennett

An extract from: Donald Bennett. Hotham horizon: the Alpine Club of Victoria: reminiscence. Pages 95 - 97.

The first ski tow on Hotham was a major development. This too was conceived and brought about by the joint efforts of the University Ski Club and the Alpine Club of Victoria...

... The subject of tows was first raised during a... meeting on 22nd June 1950. The minutes... state, 'George Chisholm opened the subject of a ski tow for Mt. Hotham and produced detailed information of the Hamilton tow widely used in New Zealand. A meeting of a group of interested people was arranged for Monday, 3rd July 1950, to discuss the type of tow and the financing of the project'.

George Chisholm had visited New Zealand in 1949 as Captain of the Australian Inter Dominion Team. He had been most impressed by the Hamilton rope tow manufacturers at Littleton near Christchurch. This rope tow was used at Coronet Peak and gave George ample opportunity to assess the practicability of the device.

A company, rejoicing in the name of Ski Tows Ltd., was formed in 1950 with four U.S.C. and three Alpine members earlier mentioned as directors. We determined to purchase a Hamilton Tow and, as usual, the immediate problem was finance. This elusive commodity was acquired by our joint contributions and the practice of a polite species of highway robbery, brow beating and moral suasion on our unfortunate friends. In all there were over fifty shareholders of touching faith.

Nobody ever expected that the company would pay a dividend. Their expectations were absolutely correct.

The Hamilton tow consisted of an endless one inch diameter sisal rope passing over pulleys, mounted on brackets adjustable in height to cope with varying snow depths. The pulley brackets were attached to nine inch steel pipes some 20 feet high, set at appropriate intervals down the slope. A 'nut cracker' attached to a waist belt, clipped onto the moving rope. These waist belts were fabricated from old war time aircraft belts. Power was derived from a 28 Horsepower, 6 cylinder, Bedford Truck motor, located in an engine house just below the road. The engine house also provided accommodation for the tow operator in separate living quarters.

A certain skill was required whilst stationary and awaiting uphill transport to clip the nut cracker onto the moving rope. Failure to adequately connect, or careless ski orientation, resulted in undignified collapse or being dragged up the slope on your posterior. Another hazard was the possibility of loose clothing being wrapped up in the moving rope. On its upward journey the rope sometimes revolved slowly compounded with forward motion. Legend has it that a lady of superb physical charms became thus caught up. First the parka was shed, then the pullover and finally the shirt. The tow operator, a man of rigid moral principles, is alleged to have stopped the tow some distance from the expectant uphill onlookers. This allowed the deprived damsel to fade gracefully into the bushes. Topless skiers were rare in those days.

Despite these hazards the ascent out of the Drag was reduced from 40 minutes on climbing skins to about 4 minutes over 770 vertical feet, the rope tow carrying ten skiers upwards at a time. Initially, there was much debate amongst the directors on a suitable location. After all, the tow was to be the longest in Australia at that time and the first at Hotham. The chosen site was on a slope now occupied by the Blue Ribbon chair lift and effectively serviced the Drag, Blue Ribbon and the Wood Run downhill descents. The final location was surveyed and cleared during the weekend of 16th and 17th February 1952.

An alternative site was considered near the later situation of the Brockhoff Tow. This was ruled out partly because of doubts if a rope tow and passengers could negotiate a bend in the tow line, obviously needed at this location because of the terrain. It is of interest to note that during our explorations in the valley around this area we discovered a small grass grown flat on which could still be seen the outline of a log cabin. The outline was nothing more than moss lines with cross-over points at four corners. We surmised that it had once been an overseer's quarters when the water race to Brandy Creek Mine was under construction in the sixties of the last [19th] century. Today, of course, the water race, partly dug into the hillside and partly supported by stone escarpments, is a convenient track for skiers passing between runs off Loch Spur.

The company was unique in that the Directors were also the installation engineers, fabricators and general labourers. A shop steward of the Builders Labourers Federation would have been completely non-plussed. A major labour was pole erection, much of it over a rock scree slope. In some locations base holes had to be blasted out of the rocky soil. Hamish Pearson was O/C gelignite and he developed a playful habit of letting off a charge with scant warning. If one was working down the pole line the drill, on hearing the explosion, was to immediately cease all activities and gaze intently at the blue sky. Thus the observer skipped nimbly aside to avoid falling rocks descending out of the heavens.

To assist in correct installation, we imported a New Zealander, one Snowy Hansen, to supervise the project. Snowy was a man of iron nerve, having been in a Bomb Disposal unit at the Middle East Front during the 1939-1945 war. However, like many New Zealanders, he had somewhat of a complex about snakes - New Zealand is free from these reptiles. On arriving at Melbourne Airport his anxious queries concerning snakes at Hotham were soothed by soft and oblique answers. Even we did not then know that the Blue Ribbon scree slope housed a significant number of tiger snakes and copperheads.

Snowy was installed at Hotham and all was peace and joy until one day he noticed various directors at work down the scree slope suddenly leaping downward or sideways for no apparent reason. Naturally he queried this eccentric behaviour and, perforce, we had to tell him about the snakes. His immediate reaction was to arm himself with a pale blue broom handle as a defensive weapon. This never left his side and rumour has it that he even took the broom handle to bed with him! Our duplicity pained him and he sorrowfully stated that 'if he had known he would not have left New Zealand'. Fortunately nobody was bitten and it is probable Hamish Pearson's mighty gelignite blasts dispersed the snakes to more peaceful quarters.

The tow commenced operation in the winter of 1952 and gave many years of service until 1965. Subsequently Ski Tows Ltd. was disposed of to Desmond Schuman. It was the forerunner of the network of chairlifts, pomas and T-bars now reticulating over Hotham slopes.

12. Mt Mawson

Unlike Ben Lomond in northern Tasmania, Mt Mawson never developed into a modern ski resort. It is the last 'club field' in Australia that is still open to the public. (Although three club run nutcracker tows still operate in Victoria, a club owned Poma plus a handle tow operated until 2016 at Cabramurra in NSW and there are plenty of club fields in New Zealand.)

The lifts are operated by volunteers drawn from the seven clubs with lodges on the mountain. In recent decades they have only operated on weekends, although in the past they ran midweek during school holidays. Rodway is probably the steepest surface lift in Australia, but it often doesn't operate even when other lifts are open. This is due to shortages of volunteer lift operators and ski patrollers as well as government restrictions on summer grooming to remove rocks and scrub, meaning a heavy snow cover is often needed for the lift to run.

Resort website: http://mtmawson.info/

Click for resort map showing the day shelters, three ski tows and seven club lodges.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2020. This list was first published on 25 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

13. New South Wales, backcountry areas outside resorts

All non resort lifts in NSW were probably nutcrackers or rope tows except the Lake Albina T-bar, Sponar's Poma, the Cabramurra Poma and handle tow and the Kiandra T-bar. Thanks to Craig Doubleday for his reports on sites near Selwyn Snowfields and the Northcote Tow. Thanks also to Kerry Symes for an email about the rope tow between Sponars and Smiggins. ‘Circa1962’ for extra info on Cabramurra Ski Club tows and ‘Matty’ for informing me of the Jagumba Creek tow near Tooma Dam.

The tow building activities in the 1950s around the Kings Cross - Selwyn area are a little confusing. An example is that the May 1954 issue of Ski Horizon reports that the Cabramurra Ski Club built a tow with 700 feet of vertical 'from the foot of a long valley'. But it is difficult to work out precisely where that tow was. The Tumut Ski Club appears to have built four tows (or possibly moved existing tows?), but again, I have unable to work out the details. If you have any further information, please email australianmountains at gmail.com. Thanks.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 24 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

14. Perisher (including Smiggin Holes, Guthega and Blue Cow)

It has been difficult to sort out often conflicting anecdotal stories about lifts at Perisher Valley and Smiggins up to the mid 1960's, so any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Perisher Valley Unlike many resorts that have replaced lifts on the same site several times, Perisher has stuck with many original lifts and a lot of them are over 50 years old. By 1964 Perisher had 12 lifts and by 1972 there were 14 lifts. Ken Murray sold the resort to Australian Consolidated Press after the 1972 ski season. Originally, the Perisher T-bars on Front and Centre Valleys were not named. Number 1 was Wentworth on Front Valley, and they were numbered consecutively westward to what is now Leichhardt. The Mt Perisher T-bars, Sun Valley, International, Olympic and Eyre have always had those names. Current Perisher and Guthega trail maps.

Guthega. For an updated history of Guthega and its ski lifts, see Guthega History on Wikiski.

Mergers. Perisher and Smiggins merged after the 1972 ski season. Blue Cow and Guthega merged in 1991 (as ‘Alpine Australia Group’ under the ownership of Transfield Kumagai). Both these combined companies in turn merged to become Perisher Blue in 1995. In 2009 'Blue' was deleted from the resort name and it became just 'Perisher'.
In 2015 the unified resort was bought by Vail Resorts for A$176.6 million. Vail Resorts also owns the lift companies at Falls Creek and Mt Hotham in Victoria, Whistler Blackcomb in Canada and 33 resorts of varying sizes in the United States.

Thanks
Perisher. Thanks to "VSG", "Ian S", "Golds70", "shadow1" and especially the person who wishes to remain anonymous who supplied many of the dates

Guthega. Thanks to "Atlantisau" for contributions that helped to untangle the confusion of hearsay and conflicting information.

More on the history of the greater Perisher area:

Peter Southwell-Keely. Highway to heaven: a history of Perisher and the ski resorts along the Kosciuszko Road. Perisher Historical Society, 2013. Some of the information on early lifts conflicts with other sources.

- Appendix F, pp. 249 - 251 lists all club and commercial lodges built in the area (although it excludes staff accommodation, retail premises, etc.)

© David Sisson 2007 - 2024. This list was first published on 20 August 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

15. Selwyn Snow Resort

6 February 2020. Selwyn Snow Resort has announced that they will not open for the 2020 ski season following the devastation of the area in wildfires a month ago. Blyton Group, the owners of the resort stated that all buildings will need to be demolished and rebuilt as well as ‘extensive damage to power, water, sewerage and snowmaking’. So far they have not announced anything specifically about their ski lifts. Media release.

Either Powerline or Homerun Poma was moved from Smiggins. Colin Myers and his family built and operated all tows on Mt Selwyn from 1966 to 2015. In October 2015 it was announced that the resort had been sold to the Blyton Group, owners of Charlotte Pass. More information on dates of lift construction would be appreciated. Current trail map.

In the past there were 11 other lifts nearby at: Kiandra (4), Tumut Ski Club (1) Kings Cross (1), Cabramurra (3), Round Mountain (1) and Tooma Dam (1). All were removed long ago except a Poma and a handle tow at Cabramurra which Snowy Hydro forcibly closed after the 2016 ski season.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2023. This list was first published on 12 August 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

16. Tasmania: proposed ski resorts and proposed gondolas

Proposed Tasmanian ski resorts

Despite a number of proposals, there have been no successful attempts to build ski lifts at locations other than the ski resort at Ben Lomond and the club field at Mt Mawson. More information would be appreciated, especially for Florentine Peak or either Mt Rufus proposal.

Proposed Tasmanian ropeways (gondolas, funiculars and aerial trams)

There are a surprising number of proposals for Tasmanian gondolas and aerial trams at the moment. Of course, obtaining funding and then passing innumerable bureaucratic, legal, environmental and most of all political obstacles are the big problems for the proponents. The ones most likely to be built are probably the Mt Wellington aerial tram and the Cradle Valley gondola. A brief 2017 article covering most of the historic proposals for Mt Wellington can be found here. It includes a 3 minute video of the 1987 plan.

17. Thredbo

See the Charlotte Pass section for details of the two chairlifts that operated between Thredbo Valley and Charlotte Pass in 1964 and 1965.

Crackenback nutcracker, double chair and chondola

This profile is being expanded and rewritten. Complete by late Dec 2019

Other major ski reports took years to consolidate after they were established before they built their first ski lift, (Mt Hotham began in 1925 but didn’t have a lift until 1952). But Thredbo was different. In the first winter accommodation was available they had two ski lifts. One was an unreliable T-bar, but the other was the longest ski lift in the country.

This was partly because Thredbo was the last resort to be established in Australia but mostly because of the terms of the lease. Its founders were required to build a chairlift and a hotel with X00 beds within ?5? years. So there was no opportunity to build a basic lodge and let demand slowly build, Thredbo’s founders had to build a fully operational ski resort and build it much faster than any other resort in the country. So they hit the ground running.

In [month] 1957 the syndicate built a basic lodge and installed the Crackenback tow.

However the enormous capital required to meet the requirements of the lease was beyond the syndicates means and in 196X they sold their operation to…

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The original Crackenback nutcracker Tow was built from components of the Northcote Tow. Gelignite was used in the Kunama Basin to stop further build up of the avalanche causing snow which had demolished nearby Kunama Lodge. When faulty heating in the Northcote Tow hut caused a minor fire, the occupants bolted outside before the gelignite ignited, blowing the hut to smithereens. Another report claims that the tow hut merely burnt down without exploding.

Geoffrey Hughes was a member of the Ski Tourers Association's Northcote Tow sub-committee, he was also one of the founders of Kosciusko Thredbo and was in the process of starting up Ski Tows Pty Ltd with John Gam, a company which planned to design and build ski lifts. Hughes designed the tow and utilised the heavy duty sheaves and bullwheels from the Northcote Tow which were in good condition. As the tow was a short term installation and was to be replaced with a chairlift, the poles supporting the tow rope were built from sawn timber. The engine was second hand from a rock crusher which had been used on the Snowy Hydro Scheme, the gear wheels and bullwheels were from cranes. The engine was put on a sled and winched itself up to the top station where it was installed in a shed made from bush timber and second hand iron. The tow cost £1870 to buy and install. After it was replaced by the Crackenback double chairlift, the tow was moved up hill to provide access to the higher slopes.

The Crackenback double chair was originally 100% Mueller product, as was the 1962 extension. There were many operating difficulties with the lift including an occasion in 1962 the cable lost tension causing people to fall into the snow. Later the towers and sheaves on the upper section were later replaced with Riblet components due to what was described as 'technical issues' including derailing. The lift was built by Transfield with on mountain transport provided by Helicopter Utilities. The cost (before the extension) was £35,000 (one source says £45,000).

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A few areas of this listing are still incomplete. Names are missing for some Thredbo rope tows and dates for a few lifts on the same sites overlap, so they may be a year out. Current and historic trail maps.

Thanks to 'Ian S' for help and to 'Richardo' for details of manufacturers of early chairlifts.

More on Thredbo history.

Jim Darby. Thredbo 50: 1957 to 2007. tSm Publishing, 2006.

Helen Swinbourne. Accordions in the snow gums: Thredbo's early years. Thredbo Historical Society Inc., 2006.

Geoffrey Hughes. Starting Thredbo. The author, 2008. pp. 28 - 33.

Roger Andrew. Thredbo: my story. The author, 2011.

Chas Keys. Thredbo: pioneers, legends, community. Halstead Press, 2017.

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 31 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

18. Victoria: backcountry areas outside resorts

There is fairly reliable anecdotal evidence for a hand held rope tow operating at Diamantina Hut near Hotham in the late 1960's or early 1970s.  Any conformation of its existence would appreciated. Solid details such as its route, a map, a photo or printed information would be appreciated even more

© David Sisson 2007 - 2022. This list was first published on 30 July 2007 and has been updated regularly since then.

19. Other passenger ropeways (non snow)

In addition to these passenger lifts, there were dozens of aerial freight cableways and hundreds of tracked steep cable haulages built for dam construction, timber harvesting, mining, hydro electricity, etc. Thanks to Pascal Hess who has visited many of the surviving chairlifts and sent me details of them and for his investigation into the Queenstown chairlift.

Expo ‘88, Brisbane - Lift profiles

Background. Two lifts operated in the Swiss Pavilion during Expo ‘88 in Brisbane. World expos were exhibitions of the industries and achievements of nations, the first was the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851. They remained popular throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The eighth “International Exposition”, and the only previous one in Australia, was the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880 and Brisbane’s expo 108 years later was part of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations. 36 nations, 14 states and provinces and 29 companies and organisations built pavilions on the south bank of the Brisbane River with 16 million people visiting the Expo over the six months it operated.

As a point of difference the 1,453 square metre Swiss pavilion was themed ‘Come along to enjoy skiing’ and included an early indoor ski slopes using artificial snow (the first in the world was Mt Thebarton in Adelaide which opened in 1987). Skiers used a handle tow to ascend a 40 metre long ski run with a 9 metre vertical fall. On Sundays ski races were held, one correspondent with this web page reported that the ‘race course had about 4 gates and took 4-5 seconds. First place apparently was a $800 Swiss watch, second place was a T-shirt. Anyways I've got a T-shirt’. Ski instructors were available to assist Queenslanders unfamiliar with the cool climate sport. Not surprisingly, the handle tow remains the only lift ever used for skiing in Queensland.

The second lift is more interesting, as it was the only chairlift with corners to operate in Australia. Operating at 11 metres above the ground, its route was a 10 minute circuit beginning outside the Swiss Pavilion, entering the building, passing exhibits before leaving the building, then running through parkland and returning to the starting point. The marketing information said that ‘Visitors will see the variation in Swiss landscapes with the alpine regions especially highlighted’. However an actual visitor described it as being ‘painfully slow with horrendous queues’. But the queues were a sign of its success and the cornered chairlift was a novelty, even to experienced skiers.

The Swiss cableway manufacturer Von Roll built the chairlift and a monorail which transported visitors around the huge expo site, although who was responsible for the handle tow is unknown. After six months the expo closed, everything was demolished and the site was transformed to become Brisbane’s South Bank Parklands.

Arthurs Seat chairlift (1960)

From 1959 to 1960 Czech migrant engineer Dr Vladimir Hájek built a chairlift at Arthurs Seat on the Mornington Peninsula to the south of Melbourne. He built a house next to it in 1962 and used the area as a base for his company Australasian Ropeways which built several other chairlifts at tourist locations and his Cataract Gorge chairlift at Launceston in Tasmania still operates every day. It appears that none were built at ski resorts.

The 950 metre long chairlift had 60 chairs and cost £20,000 to build, it was only the third chairlift in Australia. It moved at a rather leisurely 0.8 metres a second, a third of the speed of most fixed grip chairlifts at ski resorts. However as it was used for sightseeing, the modest speed was a bonus for passengers who had plenty of time to take in the views of the Mornington Peninsula and Port Phillip.

The chairlift opened in December 1960. It was successful and became an established tourist attraction on the Mornington Peninsula.

Hájek died in 1976 and in 1979 the chairlift was sold to Richard Hudson

Chairlifts were still first generation in those days. So by the time of the first incident in 2003~ish, it was over 40 years old and the design was very archaic

One of my correspondents wrote saying that in the 1990s, his company had been trying to buy it for some time, but the owner didn't want to sell. There is an implication that the owner didn't want to pay for updates / upgrades and that maintenance may have been skimped on.

Anyway, after a tower collapse in 2003 which injured over a dozen people, Arthurs Seat chairlift was partially rebuilt using Doppelmayr parts and reopened in 2004. However later that year a chair slipped back along the rope and in 2006 the chairlift stopped for 3 hours leaving passengers stranded. It closed permanently later in 2006.

The "Arthurs Seat Eagle" gondola was built along its path and that opened in December 2016. It is quite popular with tourists and well worth a ride if you are on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne.

But even the geriatric and allegedly poorly maintained old chairlift on Arthurs Seat never dropped chairs.... unlike Thredbo's Gunbarrel.

2.50 Fairfax video on the old chairlift and new gondola history, I can't get it to embed here.

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More on the proposed Albury grass ski lift. The original owners of the park Peter King and his brother Graeme employed a local engineer in Albury named Jock Hutton to design the lift and it was built by a local engineering shop. He thinks they commissioned it in 86-87 for grass skiing and after grass skiing died a natural death in the late nineties, a local guy along with Peter built some wheeled toboggans and park guests paid to use it on and off up to 2006 when the park changed ownership... It was planned to be recommissioned by the end of 2013 for a mountain bike park...

Thanks to Tim Moore, Jason Ford and ‘Legs Akimbo’ for details of the Expo ‘88 lifts, Pressman for info on Adelaide Showgrounds chairlift, Russell Diffey for details of the Albury lift, Maurie Copsey for info on FNQ ropeways and these posters from http://ski.com.au/forum for help with this section: SnowAndrew, ians 158, HiLo, jt-ski, Heinz, Dive, BLB, cashie, SAL, Claude Cat, pigface, Rowdy, PolePlant, K10, TACKIE, Mamabear, kimberlee81, currawong, D-eye, the following from http://www.railpage.com.au/f.htm : Johnmc, 2001, watchdog, and these posters fromhttp://www.parkz.com.au/forums : reanimated35, pinksmile, AlexB

20. Proposed ski developments outside snow fields

21. Cross country ski resorts (no lifts)

Surprisingly, the resort logos shown at the start of the sections on downhill ski resorts have been remarkably popular. So to complete the record, here are logos from cross country resorts with links to their websites.

Please send any older logos not shown on this page to: australianmountains (at) gmail.com

 Dinner Plain (Victoria). Resort website.

 Lake Mountain (Victoria). Resort website.

 Mt Donna Buang (Victoria). No resort website, no skiing since 1950s. Donna Buang ski history article.

 Mt Stirling (Victoria). Resort website.

 Mt St Gwinear (Victoria). Resort website.

WikiSki notes on Australian backcountry ski touring in all states.

22. Links

General

• The Australian page of Skimap.org contains 80 historic lift and run maps of all Australian ski resorts and the club fields at Mt St Bernard and Mt Mawson.

• A useful illustrated glossary of ski lift terms. It's American, so some terms may be a little different.

• The well illustrated site Australian oversnow equipment has information on oversnow vehicles used in Australia, with a blog and a directory of manufacturers.

• Chairlift identifier. Identify the manufacturer and age of lifts by parts such as grips, terminals, sheaves, etc.

Other ski lift directories

• List of New Zealand Ski Lifts. A page which started well, but is no longer maintained, possibly due to overzealous interference from Wikipedia editors.

• An incomplete directory of North American ski lifts. Choose US or Canada on the left of the page.

• A directory of Swiss ski lifts. Despite a basic English interface, much of the text is in German.

• Lift World includes lifts in most countries, but there are lots of omissions and only two Australian resorts have (incomplete) entries.

23. Older news stories.

See Section 1.1 near the top of this page for recent lift related stories.

20 July 2020. Corin Forest on the outskirts of Canberra announced a proposed new lift. Full details will be announced soon, but what is known is summarised in an article in The RiotACT. UPDATE 21 July 2020. Corin announced on Facebook that their new lift will be a chairlift. A T-bar or platter would have been a major upgrade for Corin Forest which only has two carpets at the moment, but a chairlift has left everyone surprised at what will be the first chairlift ever built in the ACT. The exact location has not been confirmed, but it is likely to be just uphill from the current ski area where a platter lift operated intermittently in the 1980s and early 90s.

UPDATES. 20 Nov & 18 Dec 2020. Parts of chairlift arrived at Corin around 20 Nov, the bullwheels were delivered on 17 December and after the rest arrives it will be installed in summer 2021 to serve a slope with 137 metres of vertical. The chairlift is a 20 year old double imported second hand from Queenstown, New Zealand (it is NOT the old Queenstown, Tasmania chairlift).

2 July 2020. Caribbean Gardens park in eastern Melbourne was formally closed. The park had not opened for some months due to the Corona Virus. It operated a McCallum double chairlift built in 1969 which originally ran at Frankston. McCallum was the largest Australian ski lift manufacturer and built a couple of dozen T-bars and chairlifts in the 1960s and 70s.

I July 2020. Charlotte Pass announced that a new Doppelmayr chairlift will replace the vintage 1963 Guthries Poma for the 2022 season. It appears likely that the new lift will be named Mt Guthrie Chair, be only 400 metres long, 180 metres shorter than the old poma-lift and be a fixed grip quad. However… the Blyton group also has the old 1990 Baw Baw double chairlift stored at Cooma aerodrome, so if any parts of that are still usable… there are also rumours that it might use parts of the former Merritts double at Thredbo from when it was refurbished with a new motor and two new towers. But while both these rumours make interesting stories, it’s more likely that the Guthries chairlift will be entirely new.

29 May 2020. In good news, the larger resorts have announced that they will be opening on 22 or 24 June, subject to restrictions related to Corona Virus. In most cases this means that less tickets will be available, season passes at some resorts will be refunded and that day tickets must be pre purchased, none will be sold on the day. Thredbo and Mt Buller will both open on 22 June, while Vail Resorts which operates Perisher, Falls Creek and Hotham announced in a media release that they will open their resorts on 24 June. Most smaller resorts will probably open at about the same time, but Selwyn will not open this year due to damage in the January bushfires. Of course all this is subject to changes in state government policies or further outbreaks of the disease.

April 2020. It will not be news to anyone that Australian ski resorts are unlikely to open in early June 2020. However some resorts are optimistically operating on the assumption that the ski season will only be delayed by a month or so. Even if things return to normal by August it may not be worth the expense of opening lifts for only a couple of months, so if the lockdown is eased, backcountry skiing may still be our only option.

6 February 2020. Selwyn Snow Resort has announced that they will not open for the 2020 ski season following the devastation of the area in wildfires a month ago. Blyton Group, the owners of the resort stated that all buildings will need to be demolished and rebuilt as well as ‘extensive damage to power, water, sewerage and snowmaking’. So far they have not announced anything specifically about their ski lifts. Media release.

6 January 2020. Bushfires have caused extensive damage to Selwyn Snow Resort and the nearby club ski field at Cabramurra. The main buildings at Selwyn and the club house at Cabramurra have been destroyed and vegetation around at least two of the ten ski lifts at Selwyn has been burnt. There are claims about further damage at both locations on social media, but they appear to be exaggerated and sensationalist.

No lifts at other resorts or other backcountry ski lifts were damaged in the fires.

23 December 2019. Perisher has lodged a planning application to replace the Mt Perisher Double (1961) and Triple (1979) chairlifts with a 6-pack. The new detachable Doppelmayr chairlift will be 1254 metres long with a vertical rise of 309 metres. The base station will be at 1733 metres, top station at 2042 metres and the top of Eyre T-bar will be moved 11 metres downhill to make room for it.

The new chairlift will run at 4.5 metres a second with an interval between chairs of 7.2 seconds. A ride will take 5 minutes 31 seconds, allowing for slower running through terminals. Together with associated works including new bridges and an upgrade of the cafe, the price is estimated at $20 million. The new lift will probably open in 2021 after the Mt P double has completed its 60th year of service. Webpage with planning documents.

UPDATE. May 2020. Rumour has it that Vail Resorts have put a hold on all major capital expenditure worldwide. If this is accurate, the new chairlift and associated development may be delayed.

28 September 2019. New section. Section 1.3 lists records, oddities and Frequently Asked Questions in relation to ski lifts in Australia.

8 September 2018. Mt Buller’s Boggy Creek T-bar ran for the last time in its traditional form. The 1967 lift was manufactured by Australian ski lift maker McCallum Engineering. From 2020 it will be shortened and converted to electric power. The former base station area will become part of a new dam for snow making and town water.

16 September 2019. Following the recent trend to hold charity auctions for redundant chairlift carriers at Mt Buller, Thredbo and Falls Creek, Thredbo will be auctioning most of the 112 chairs from the old Merritts double chairlift in a staged online auction from 24 September to 1 October. If you fancy a new garden swing, the reserve price is $1000 per chair. UPDATE. The auction raised over $200,000 for worthy causes with Chair 2 going for the highest price of $4005. A more typical price was $2500 each.

22 July 2019. A chair on the Gunbarrel lift at Thredbo fell 10 metres on to soft snow. The only person on the chair suffered light bruising. The resort gave the reason as ‘a freak gust of wind’, although this is not an isolated incident, an unoccupied chair also fell from the same lift in 2016.

Gunbarrel is a 31 year old, 1679 metre long, Doppelmayr detachable quad chairlift that climbs 426 metres from the Woodridge and Friday Flat areas up the mountain to just below the treeline. Safework NSW imposed a non disturbance order on the lift while it was investigated, but the lift was reopened a day and a half later without any explanation for the cause of the accident. Many other detachable quads in Australia are far more exposed to wind than Gunbarrel and none have ever shed chairs, so some people find Thredbo’s explanation less than convincing. Sixty years earlier Thredbo had similar problems with its original Crackenback double chairlift shedding chairs until it was partly rebuilt circa 1963.

30 May 2019. Selwyn opens first and beats the big resorts. Mt Buller and Perisher are often the first resorts to open each winter, both have brand new chairlifts this year and both planned to open on Saturday 1st of June. But in a surprise move, Selwyn Snowfields beat its larger competitors by opening New Chum chairlift on 30 May to earn bragging rights as the first resort to open in 2019. But all three resorts will only operate a very limited number of lifts until the formal opening of the ski season on the 8th of June when other resorts will start running their lifts. So the early opening is mainly for publicity and perhaps for last minute training of new lifties.

April 2019. Mt Buller is replacing the top Canyon rope tow with a SunKid Comfort Star, hybrid handle tow / platter. The lift is located on an access route between Chamois and Bull Run and assists skiers over a rise. It is being replaced because some users had trouble getting a firm grip on the rope of the old tow. The second Canyon rope tow on a gentler rise will remain.

21 December 2018. The media is full of reports that Merlin Entertainments may sell the Mt Hotham and Falls Creek lift companies to Vail Resorts. It appears that Colorado based Alterra Mountain Company may have also been interested in buying the resorts.

Merlin is the worlds second largest owner of tourist attractions (including Legoland, Madame Tussauds, theme parks, over 50 aquariums, etc.). It acquired Falls and Hotham as part of a package deal of attractions in 2011, but has never owned any other ski resorts. Unlike Merlin’s broad approach, Vail is a specialist ski company and the worlds largest owner of ski resorts including Perisher in NSW.

Neither Merlin nor Vail are saying anything and the media is reporting widely divergent prices for the alleged transaction, so whether this is a real sale or just speculation that has got out of hand will presumably be revealed in the next few months. The best summary of the speculation and what is known is in the Financial Review.

UPDATE. The deal was finally confirmed on 22 February 2019 (Australian time). Vail’s media release gives the price as A$174 million for both resorts. The deal received ACCC clearance and was finalised on 5 April 2019.

1 December 2018. No new projects were announced in the spring, however this page has been updated to include a chairlift that went around corners and a handle tow that operated on indoor ski slopes in the Swiss pavilion at Expo ‘88 in Brisbane (Section 18). Additionally a list of the 16 lifts built by Australian ski lift manufacturer McCallum Engineering has been added (Section 22.1). Finally I’m still looking for confirmation of a ski lift that may have been operated by the Murray Valley Ski Club around 1970 at Diamantina Hut near Mt Hotham. It was reported by a rather reliable person, but any further conformation of its existence would be useful, solid details such as its route, a map, a photo or printed information would be appreciated even more. Please send details to australianmountains (at) gmail.com

7 October 2018. It appears that Mt Hotham’s Playground chairlift ran for the last time today. While the resort has not made an announcement, staff have verbally confirmed its fate. Hotham’s first chairlift (and the oldest surviving chairlift in Victoria) operated for 50 ski seasons, although it was shortened from 954 to 614 metres after the 1992 season. A new profile of the chairlift is under the table of lifts in Section 10. Mt Hotham.

16 August 2018. The final design for the Mt Wellington Cableway in Hobart was revealed today. It replaces the previous plan for a two stage system of an aerial tram and a gondola. The new plan will have a 2.7 km aerial tramway with a vertical gain of 920 metres featuring a span of 2040 metres between support towers. Passengers will be transported in two 80 person, 7 x 4 metre cabins travelling at a speedy 10 metres a second. The top station will be recessed into the mountain with a more discreet profile than the current shelter. Details of the plan on the MWCC website.

9 August 2018.  Mt Buller has announced that Blue Bullet 1 will be replaced with a six pack. It will be built during the 2018 - 2019 summer at a cost of $6 million. Dating from 1984, BB1 was one of the first detachable quad chairlifts in the world and is one of the oldest surviving ones. No announcement yet on which manufacturer will produce the new lift, but given Bullers remarkably consistent brand loyalty to Doppelmayr, no one will be surprised if the detachable six pack is another Dopp. Link to media release. UPDATE 15 March 2019. Lift will be called Bourke St Express.

17 May 2018. The Rodway Tow at Mt Mawson, Australia's steepest surface lift, has been repaired. The tow was buried under snow for most of the 2017 ski season and was caught in a slow moving 'slab avalanche', resulting in the poles that support the tow rope being severely bent and several pulley arms and sheaves were destroyed. The Southern Tasmanian Ski Association has straightened the poles and replaced the arms and sheaves, allowing the tow to operate on weekends in 2018, provided sufficient volunteers are available. STSA news report. In other Tasmanian ski news, the pub at the northern resort of Ben Lomond burnt down last night. ABC news report.

16 May 2018. A 9 km, $60 million gondola 'transport system' will be built to replace crowded shuttle buses on the gravel road from Cradle Mountain visitor centre to Dove Lake. The road is closed to public vehicles but still has heavy traffic as buses take 250,000 tourists annually to the the lake. A viewing shelter will be be built on the revegetated site of the present car park. The Prime Minister announced that the Commonwealth would fund half the cost, matching a state government commitment for the same amount.

22 February 2018. Thredbo has filed an application to replace Merritts fixed grip double chairlift with a Doppelmayr designed gondola costing $10.67 million. The gondola will follow the same path as the chairlift, but with a slightly higher mid station. The lift will have 50 cabins able to carry 8 passengers each. It be 1311 metres long with a 299 m vertical rise and have 13 towers compared with 17 for the old chairlift. It will run at 5 metres per second providing a 6 minute ride, much faster than up to 20 minutes at present. Capacity will increase from 520 to 2000 passengers per hour.

Construction is planned to begin with demolition of the old lift in October 2018 and the gondola will debut at the start of the 2019 ski season. It will be the first new lift at Thredbo (excluding carpets) since 1994. The current Merritts chairlift first ran in 1968 and is Australia's last remaining Riblet lift. The vast number of documents necessary to satisfy modern bureaucracy can be viewed at this link, the first 8 pages of the Statement of environmental effects summarise the project. UPDATE June 2018. Merritts will live another year, the gondola will now be installed in the summer of 2019/2020.

20 January 2018. In stark contrast to other resorts building quad chairs and gondolas this year, Lake Mountain, a cross country ski resort , will be installing its first lift, a moving carpet on a toboggan slope. On 28/12/17 it was announced that the carpet would be on the Park slope, but this has been revised to the Village toboggan run. Link to the latest announcement and the original announcement. UPDATE. Two carpets were installed, although the resort never formally announced this.

8 December 2017. Perisher announced a new fixed grip quad chairlift to replace the Leichhardt T-bar and Home handle tow for the 2019 season. 18 months notice before opening allows skiers the 2018 season to farewell the old lifts. which were built in 1976 and 1982 respectively. Media release. The budget for the chairlift and "significant" additional snow making is a relatively modest $4.2 million, reflecting both the short length of the new lift and that it will be fixed grip rather than detachable.

26 September 2017. Falls Creek has announced that it will replace its Eagle triple chairlift dating from 1980 with a new $9 millon Leitner-Poma detachable quad chairlift. The new lift will be operating by the start of the 2018 ski season. This will be the first lift built by Merlin Entertainments since they bought Falls Creek and Mt Hotham in 2011. Media releases in Snowsbest and the Border Mail.

3 December 2016. The Arthurs Seat Eagle gondola formally opened. Located at Dromana to the south of Melbourne, it is the first dedicated gondola in Victoria, although a 'chondola' (a hybrid gondola and chairlift) has operated at Mt Buller since 1986.

28 October 2016. A fund raising campaign has been launched by a company wishing to buy Ben Lomond's Alpine Enterprises (lifts) and Snow Sports (ski school, ski hire & cafe). The campaign offers discounted season passes to subscribers if it is successful. There are plans to increase slope grooming and install 15 extra snow making machines on the five busiest runs and on a toboggan slope.

14 September 2016. The 'Eagle Skylift Arthurs Seat' will open on 3 December. Video of load testing is on their Facebook page. Rides in the first 8 seat gondola are being auctioned on their website with proceeds going to charity. The next gondolas will be filled by VIPs before the lift is open to the public.

27 May 2016. Corin Forest on the outskirts of Canberra has installed a 75 metre long carpet, the first ski lift for 20 years at this mainly cross country skiing and snow play destination. It is Australia's only new ski lift for 2016 although construction of the Arthurs Seat tourist gondola in Victoria is nearly complete. Canberra Times article.

2 October 2015. Selwyn Snowfields has been bought by the Blyton Group, owners of Charlotte Pass. Media release. The resort logo was changed for the 2016 season.

21 July 2015. The $16 million Arthurs Seat Skylift has passed all planning hurdles, a 50 year lease has been signed and construction is due to begin shortly with a planned opening in 2016. It appears it will be a 'chondola', a detachable quad chair that also features gondola cabins. Link to newspaper article.

14 June 2015. Sea World on the Gold Coast closed its 'Sky High Skyway' pulsed gondola and removed the open cabins from the ride. Aus Parks report.

15 December 2014. $14 million Arthurs Seat gondola near Melbourne granted planning approval. This one looks likely to go ahead, the syndicate appears to be well organised and to have adequate funding. There is an informal NIMBY group, however they don't appear to have any tangible moral or legal arguments against replacing the old chairlift with a gondola. Newspaper article.

11 December 2014. A tubing lift (ex Mt Buffalo) arrived at Dinner Plain and will be operating for the 2015 snow season.

30 June 2014. Perisher's new Freedom chairlift at Guthega operated for the first time today. Report and video.

17 April 2014 The Hobart Cable Car proposal has been formally launched. It will involve a Doppelmayr gondola from the Cascade brewery to Golden Gully Park, approximately a third of the way up the mountain. Activities such as mountain biking and a high rope course will be based there. From Golden Gully an aerial tram will head up to The Pinnacle at the top of the mountain.  (an earlier proposal was for a funitel twin cable gondola) Details at their Facebook page and website.

Finally, this listing is regularly updated, so if you notice any errors or omissions, please send an email to australianmountains (at) gmail.com

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