"Road trip to Threadbo"

Each winter (in Australia months June-August), the Bain office sponsors a ski trip to Threadbo, a town ~5 hour drive from Sydney. This was literally one of the first emails that I got after arriving in Sydney, and of course I signed up.

Before writing about the trip itself, I do want to mention a few things about taking long drives on Australian highways:
There is absolutely nothing off the road. Every 40 minutes or so, there will be a service station, McDonald’s (or “Mackers” as they call it here), and a souvenir shop. Besides that, you see goats, sheep, horses, and cattle. Just imagine a drive through rural Alabama or Mississippi. And then imagine less stops along the way. And less cars on the road. And only 2 lanes. That’s an Australia highway. And there even more desolate in the Outback.
The aforementioned souvenir shops do indeed make an attempt to get tourists to stop. To do this, they shape the actual building like what they are selling inside. For instance, we drove up to the “Big Merino” (large ram). The building, picture above, is shaped like a ram, and most of the merchandise inside of it made out of rams wool or stuffed animals of the ram. Other such buildings (which unfortunately I didn’t get to see) include the big lobster, the big banana, the big prawn, the big cow, and the big scorpion.
Road-kill is everywhere. And it’s not American road-kill like possums, armadillos, rabbits, or raccoons. It’s certified Australian wildlife. On the way back, we saw 7 wallabies, 3 wombats, 2 rabbits, an emu, and a kangaroo that was at least 5 feet tall. Driver beware.