WHEN Perisher ski tuning maestro Adi Mayer first arrived in Australia it was for six months before returning to Austria.
“I worked for Stolz ski boot manufacturer and they needed somebody to foam boots and I only originally come out for six months, four months work and few months holiday in Australia,” said Adi.
“They talked me into staying in the summer and tune all their hire skis.,”
He now estimates he has tuned over two hundred thousand pairs of skis at his shop Adi’s Waxatorium in Perisher where he has been for 47 years.
This season he has taken possession of a brand new state of the art Montana automated tuning machine, the first one of its kind outside of Europe and can now tune 30-40 skis per hour.
Adi said he started out at Perisher working for the company in the 1970’s in boot and ski hire. “They would get their boots and then go to the next building outside of the number 1 T-bar (now Mitchell T-Bar) for their skis,” said Adi.
“The good old days where we were in the pit, with people stepping on your fingers when they were stepping into their skis.”
“1972 I started with just hand filing and a little sand grinding machine, that’s all I had.”
“In 1977 I approached the company and they realised they needed a tuning place and they agreed so I am still here, I am still doing it.”
Since the mid 1980’s Adi has had five state of the art machines, what he calls “robots”, but said he has never looked back from arriving in the Snowy Mountains.
His home region Villach has excellent ski pedigree including the legendary Franz Klammer and Sochi Winter Olympic downhill champion Matthias Mayer residing in the same small town, Afritz am See, where Adi grew up with Matthias’ grandparents.
Now though he is firmly entrenched working in the Perisher Centre during winter and living in Jindabyne.
Each day he loads the machine which does a full tune on skis and snowboards, including settings for different base structures and race tuning. He then checks them and waxes the skis and snowboards and they are ready.
On his wall in the downstairs arcade shop there are some old photos of his early days, a long way from the new Montana machine that is a modern standout in the shop.
“I went from a go go mobile to a Rolls Royce,” said Adi.
(Note: In the summer of 2020-2021 Adi retired and sold the business to Nathan Clough who has worked for Adi for the past 20 years.)
