The Great Failure of Australian Leisure and a vision to change it
Australia has perfected the art of hollow leisure. Our resorts, beaches, caravan parks, ski fields—everywhere you look, the same class distinction plays out with numbing predictability, leaving neither side admirable, neither side courageous enough to invent anything new.
At the top end sit the ski resorts, those sterile outposts of upper-middle class aspiration. Imported American corporate control—Vail Resorts at Perisher, Hotham, and Falls Creek—has transformed them into nodes in a global season-pass network, explicitly designed to lock Australians into a transnational consumer system (Vail Resorts Inc., 2019). The lift tickets now rival international airfare; chalets are marketed like lifestyle brands. Commentators have described this process as Disneyization (Bryman, 2004), McDonaldization (Ritzer, 1993), and as a wholesale shift from public commons to packaged “experiences.” What it feels like is a snow-covered shopping mall at altitude, where Australians pay for the privilege of consuming an idea of alpine elegance, all while standing in lift lines longer than a queue in equally sterile Coles or Woolworths. The shallow hedonism here is so totalising that it requires complete amnesia: no acknowledgment of Indigenous histories of these mountains, no recognition of the damage inflicted on alpine landscapes by bulldozed runs, snowmaking infrastructure, and the ever-expanding footprint of chalets and car parks (Goodwin, 2019; Tonts et al., 2010). Leisure here is narcotic—sedating class anxiety with overpriced mulled wine.
And at the other end—Mount Saint Gwinear, the cheap alternative. Free entry, a car park for the esky, families tumbling down the slope on plastic toboggans (Parks Victoria, 2023). It could be a relief, a reminder that leisure doesn’t have to be bought. But instead it manifests as a brutish parody of escape: 4WDs with P-plate flags, cheap beer in the snow, a day of knuckle-dragging masculinity that prides itself on being “real” precisely because it rejects any self-awareness. Here, as in the caravan parks turned budget snow-play zones, the failure is just as stark—no attempt at beauty, no imagination of collective possibility. Only defiance of refinement, a celebration of the lowest bar.
The tragedy is that both ends of the spectrum conspire in the same rejection: a refusal to deepen our awareness of history, or to invent new possibilities for collective leisure. Resorts smother the landscape under global capital; DIY culture smothers it under a haze of resentment. Neither generates anything admirable.
When I took my kids for a month van camping and ski touring in Nagano, I met an older Japanese gentleman who was willing to speak with us in English. He was a retired Kawasaki engineer, living in his tiny car the way only the Japanese can. He was living in the car park of a little-known ski field we stumbled upon. Later we sat together in an onsen, built perhaps hundreds of years ago and maintained with the loving pride and non commercial elegance of a temple—far beyond the reach of capital and hedonism, or so we pray. We talked about ski culture in Australia and Japan. Ito firmly stated that skiing should be for everyone, and worried that the Australians brought luxury and exclusivity. I agreed, but explained that Australians once shared that egalitarianism but now mask a deep cultural cringe with a shallow luxury that we call “nouveau riche”, and that’s what he sees now swamping the memories of his Japanese youth. We tried to imagine a fusion of the best from both our worlds, but looking at the walls of that onsen, I must admit I came up short.
A Vision for an Alpine Culture Worthy of Admiration
If the current leisure culture is a broken mirror, then what replaces it must be something quieter, humbler, and vastly more intelligent. Not wilderness purity, not “authentic nature” as another consumable, but infrastructure designed with the best of our engineering, architecture, and civic imagination, layered discretely, to preserve and give us access to the true uniqueness of Australian mountains.
I imagine the Alpine Road running through Hotham to Omeo, curling north again and up to Falls Creek and Mount Beauty. I imagine Dargo Road open in winter, the road from Khancoban through Cabramurra to Selwyn kept open, the full arc of Australia’s alpine spine threaded together like in Japan. And with this, a new level of infrastructure: underground tunnels cut into the road network wherever affordable. Shorter travel routes in winter, yes — but more importantly, safe refuges when bushfires roar through the valleys, and safe crossovers for wildlife. The savings from insurance payouts could cover some of this. A road network that doubles as life-saving shelter, as it does in Japan and in the highlands of many countries.
The roads themselves become the central experience: arteries of connection, with small villages strung along them, servicing travellers, offering only the simplest options for food, shelter, and rest.
There are no sprawling resorts with their imported “village plazas.” If luxury exists at all, it is tucked away, discreet, camouflaged in the landscape. It exerts no managerial power over the wider culture. And where it does exist, it is not the gaudy luxury of chalets and champagne, but something truly impressive as it is leading this vision — art, design, music, or culinary culture that deepens rather than dulls. Sophistication that lifts the spirit, rather than draping it in fur trim.
The real life of these mountains would be a network of modest alpine hamlets. Earth-covered cabins and campgrounds with the basics: bathrooms, showers, kitchens, communal rooms for gatherings and music. Their architecture is not conquest but shelter — dug into the hillsides, thermally efficient, resilient to fire. No garish chalets on ridgelines, no concrete scars. Instead, Australia demonstrates the best of underground building: cheap, practical, efficient, built from local stone, timber, and memory.
These villages would be quiet. No speakers blaring music, no billboards, no neon nightclubs. The mountains would keep their soundscape of wind, snow, and birds. The human layer would be muted but warm: shared kitchens, acoustic instruments, performance nights in fire-lit halls. Museums and interpretation centres would cradle history, bringing living historians into contact with travellers, telling stories of Indigenous ways of living, miners, drovers, migrant workers, and ski pioneers without myth or cringe.
The skiing itself is stripped back. Rope tows dispersed over extended terrain, operated by licensed sole traders, paid per ride. Huts scattered across ridgelines, dug into the earth, offering shelter, soup, and wood stoves. Touring trails linking them together, patrolled and groomed enough to stay safe but never corporatised. You pay a modest levy to support the upkeep, then move across the range freely, choosing your routes, your huts, your risks. There are no gondolas swinging over valleys, no concrete “villages” with rollercoasters. Just rope tows, skis, boots, and your own will.
This is not wilderness purity — it is infrastructure at its most elegant: quietly doing its work, sustaining habitat and human passage without spectacle. A chain of alpine settlements built into the ground, protecting ridgelines and views, offering modest hospitality and an honest escape from work and everyday life. A place where Australians might, finally, grow a culture of leisure that is neither shallow luxury nor knuckle-dragging defiance, but something worthy of admiration.
Australia prides itself on its leisure culture. But in truth, it has nothing of the sort. What it has is a broken mirror: on one side, the shallow hedonism of the resort; on the other, the knuckle-dragging brutality of DIY escapism. And in between, only the snowmelt, running downstream, carrying the debris of our failures into the rivers below.
Here’s a little slideshow of AI generated images to help you see this vision:
References
Bali: A Paradise Created — Adrian Vickers (1989), Penguin.
Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture — Michel Picard (1996), Archipelago Press.
“Beyond baggies and bogans in Bali” — Tim Lindsey (2012), The Conversation.
“Reimagining Bali Tourism: From Mass to Quality” — Putra, I. N. D., & Hitchcock, M. (2022), Tourism Planning & Development.
“Bali introduces new tourist tax and code of conduct” — ABC News (2023).
Australian Migration and Niseko Tourism — Y. Furukawa (2018), Hokkaido University Press.
Tourism and Gentrification in Contemporary Metropolises — Gravari-Barbas, M., & Guinand, S. (2017), Routledge.
The Disneyization of Society — Alan Bryman (2004), Sage.
The McDonaldization of Society — George Ritzer (1993), Pine Forge Press.
The Tourist Gaze — John Urry (1990), Sage.
The Tourist Gaze 3.0 — John Urry & Jonas Larsen (2011), Sage.
The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class — Dean MacCannell (1976), Schocken / University of California Press edition.
“Class, Culture and the Bogans” — Pini, B., McDonald, P., & Mayes, R. (2010), Journal of Sociology, 46(2).
“Nature-based Tourism and Environmental Damage in Alpine Regions” — Goodwin, H. (2019), Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(4).
“The Political Economy of Ski Resort Development in Australia” — Tonts, M., et al. (2010), Australian Geographer, 41(3).
Mount St Gwinear Visitor Guide — Parks Victoria (2023).
“Vail Resorts to Acquire Falls Creek and Hotham Ski Resorts” — Vail Resorts Inc. (2019), Press Release.
Commentary on Class Divides in Australian Holiday Culture:
From The Monthly:
“Luxe or Bust: Australia’s Holiday Class Wars” — Elizabeth Hickson, The Monthly (2021).
“Camping vs. Champagne: The Divided Landscapes of Leisure” — Nick Davenport, The Monthly (March 2022).
From The Guardian Australia:
“How our holiday habits reveal deepening class divides” — Jessica Thomas, The Guardian Australia (July 2023).
“Ski trips for some, snow-play for others: Australia’s Alpine inequality” — Mark Phillipps, The Guardian Australia (August 2022).
From Inside Story:
“Leisure, Consumption and Australian Identity” — Dr. Sarah Villani, Inside Story (2020).
“Escaping the Rat Race: Classed Versions of the Holiday Dream” — Liam Rutherford, Inside Story (2023).
