Escaping the press gallery lows to revel in the high life

High above the treeline sprawl patches of snow, defying the advance of spring’s melt.

Gaunt forests of snowgums killed by a fierce bushfire years ago run along the valley, ghostly pale and skeletal.

We know this place so well it feels a part of us.

The sky roils with clouds changing shape and colour.

The Snowy River sits cold and trapped against a dam wall below us, the last wild run of it spent.

Each year for the past 17 years we have come bringing food and wine and benevolence, leaving the familiar world and all its parts in the lowlands.

Most years we came in winter, stamping on skis, wearing ourselves out on the slopes before vespers at the pub.

Whoever coined the name Snowy Mountains knew what they were talking about.

Some years we trudged to our lodgings towing luggage-heavy sleds through blizzards, and spent hours digging cars out of snow drifts before we could leave.

This year, life got in the way.

Some of our number published new novels and were required to undertake tours to libraries, bookstores and writers’ festivals across the nation for long weeks.

And so we postponed our 17th annual pilgrimage to the mountains until deep into springtime.

From the very start we called ourselves the Old Farts.

If we were old 17 years ago, what might we be now?

The word “elderly” would be employed, I suppose. Or “silly old buggers”.

And yet, of course, we feel we are no different at all from those blokes who rattled up the Snowy Mountains roads 17 years ago.

We have simply grown into what we had once thought to be irony.

We worked out of offices in Canberra’s federal press gallery for years. Print and TV journalists, mostly. A photojournalist. A TV director.

The trip to the mountains was a blessed escape from the often disagreeable, venal and sometimes outright vicious affairs of political life.

We came seeking clear air.

It was an uncomplicated escape. The high valley had no reliable mobile phone reception for years, and certainly no access to the internet.

This year, the phones work too well and the club lodge that houses us in the mountain village of Guthega has a brand-new connection to the internet through the madman Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The dysfunction in public affairs can’t be so easily avoided.

The federal Liberal Party tries unsuccessfully to pretend it isn’t convulsing over climate denial and related arguments that traditionally constitute the makings for a change of leader.

Elsewhere, Donald Trump and his appalling sycophants do whatever the hell they feel like doing, most of which would send you crazy if you tried to make sense of it.

We look at our phones, realise there is no clear air there, and put them away.

Most of the old blokes don hiking boots and set off among the snowgums, following a track through the wilderness in the general direction of Mount Kosciuszko.

A mate and I choose to stay around the lodge, chuckling we’ll be on hand to call out a search party if required.

We’ve shared adventures in other remote and tricky places long ago, and we’re wise to the benefits of a lazy afternoon snooze.

Soon after the trekking party returns, a vicious hailstorm sweeps the mountains, pelting hailstones with such force we fear for any hikers caught in the open. Beers are uncapped.

Few of us, it happens, were confined purely to the press gallery when we first took our expeditions to the High Country.

The press gallery was our base, but we were lucky enough to roam the world.

Some of us travelled with prime ministers and some were foreign correspondents posted variously to Washington, London, Moscow and European capitals. Some of us covered nasty conflicts in Africa, South-east Asia and the Balkans.

We would never be short of things to talk about when we gathered up there in the mountains, friends nod knowingly.

But indulgent tales from the wide world are never the point. We know what we worked at and what drove our lives, and we’re secure with who we are now.

Amusing anecdotes, news of other friends and a good sledging here and there have always been enough to keep our dinner conversations rocking.

As the years passed and most of my mates moved out of the gallery in pursuit of different lives – writing excellent crime books, retiring to farm or beach, making wine, taking up pottery, playing in bands or capturing more of life through the lenses of cameras – the annual trip to the mountains took on a deeper meaning.

Others look to RU OK Day. Some old fellows have their Men’s Sheds.

We Old Farts have the mountains. And the trust of each other.

Each of us cooks the day’s and evening’s meals in the lodge where we bunk down, and there is much critical scrutiny.

I’ve always been the breakfast bloke, with assistance from a mate who years ago tossed my supermarket toast aside and took to supplying good sourdough. Once I abandoned eggs and bacon and whipped up a Spanish omelette. Howls of dismay echoed across the mountains.

We transport crates of wine up the mountain road to lubricate the long and sometimes loud evenings, but when one of our mates took to teetotalling, no one raised an eyebrow.

We defend our independence, free in the mountains to say and do as we please. About our only unanimous agreements concern those we consider to be fools and charlatans. The list grows with the length of the evening.

Some time after the hailstorm abates, our oldest mate lets us in on his close encounter with prostate cancer, the fear among men that often doesn’t speak its name. “Get yourselves checked,” he orders, and for once, we all nod agreement.

We wouldn’t want to miss another Old Farts weekend.

Outdoors, the light fades.

The mountains abide. Friendships, too.

Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.