IN 1960 Ray Lopez and his then wife decided to go away for the weekend with three other couples.

They were friends that had connected through the Black Rock Spear Fishing Club and selected Mt Buller as their destination, as it was the closest ski resort to Melbourne.

Back in 1960 Mt Buller road was only sealed to the Hunt Club at Merrijig.

From there on it was gravel.

However, the Austin A40 Tourer (soft top) handled it superbly.

There were no beds available on Mt Buller so the group stayed at Sawmill Settlement where there were six weatherboard houses available for rental.

They ended up in the one nearest Mirimbah which was interesting as the back half of the house was missing as many of the weatherboards had been used for firewood.

The group had no ski equipment, it was to be a snow play weekend, but Ray’s wife had made parkas for them all.

From Mirimbah the road was an absolute goat track.

They parked at the Old Chalet site and made their way on foot up to the village.

There they met the brothers Ernest and Aurel Forras who had built and operated the Kooroora Hotel.

The snow seed had been planted.

Shortly thereafter a business associate enquired if Ray was interested in becoming a founding member of Sundowner Ski Lodge.

Gerry Gannon was the secretary of the Forests Commission Victoria and in 1960 he granted an occupancy licence for site 132 on Stirling Road.

It was valid for one year and needed to be renewed annually.

Sundowner Ski Lodge was the largest commercial site at that time, having even more beds than Kooroora.

In total the village had only 30 lodges.

There were 16 original members and the lodge took two summers to build.

Members would head up to SCV for showers while the lodge was still under construction.

Helmet Thory was the inaugural club president.

Up until 1965 Sundowner was powered by generator.

And the sewer was connected around 1966.

One story that Ray shared relates to Hans Grimus and his job as the ‘powder monkey’.

It was 1966 and while doing works he needed to detonate a charge of diesel fuel, potassium nitrate and half a stick of gelignite.

Well, the explosion set off a rock about a metre in diameter that landed on the Sundowner roof.

Fortunately it didn’t penetrate the galvanised roof.

Ray’s first skis were the much sought after Silvano Cable Bindings skis, purchased at Bruce Bretherton’s for £8.

Bruce had his shop and an indoor ski slope in an old picture theatre in Armadale.

He ran ski lessons from there and had a big block of wax built into the floor to help the skis glide.

Sundowner quickly built a reputation as the party lodge attracting the social set from Melbourne.

Opening weekend parties became infamous and in 1968 it even attracted two reporters from The Truth newspaper in Melbourne, to investigate what all the fuss was about.

I believe their banner headline read, “Mothers – don’t let your daughters go to Mt Buller”.

Besides Sundowner, Ray has been a member of the SCV (Ski Club Victoria) for 57 years and became a life member in 2006.

He was club president 1999-2003 and for 10 years he ran their race program.

In 2020 Ray celebrated his 60th consecutive Queen’s Birthday long weekend on Mt Buller – an amazing achievement.