Alpine Beach: a Family Adventure

By Susan Steggall

Alpine Beach: A Family Adventure is an autobiographical account of a decade the Steggall family spent in the alps of south-eastern France. In 1978 we (John, Susan, Zeke aged seven and Zali, four) left Australia to live in the Alps of southeastern
France, so beginning an extraordinarily successful relationship with wintersport competition. We went neither for work nor study, but simply for the adventure of it. Although the decision to leave was simple, the actual going was more complex – finalising business affairs, packing up our lives – but leave we did: family, friends and financial security.
We spent ten years in the mountains, the passing seasons marked by the children’s progress in ski racing. It was an active, energetic life with few comforts or possessions. Time, effort and ingenuity we had aplenty – of money there was little to spare.
The passing seasons were marked by our children’s progress in ski racing and our experiences of living in two cultures, two languages. Alpine Beach is the record of that magic time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Steggall
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780958196420

Susan Steggall

http://steggalls.com

Book preview

Prologue

It is the twenty-fourth of December and we have come to Europe to spend Christmas with our children, the first time we will all be together for many years. Snow is falling when we disembark at Geneva airport. The flakes flutter about my face and swirl in the chill winterstorm wind before settling on the strip of wet tarmac that we must cross to reach the shelter of the terminal. I look towards Geneva, sensing rather than seeing the sprawl of a once familiar city and the Salève Mountain beyond. The all-pervading icy greyness is made more palpable by a lingering memory of multicoloured brightness in an Australian summer left only a day ago. The warmth of our reunion with son, daughter and their friends is everything we could wish for. In festive mood we drive out of Switzerland and into France towards a supermarket near Thonon-les-Bains to buy provisions for Christmas dinner.

It is snowing heavily when we negotiate our overflowing trolley to the car and cram bulging plastic bags in between bulky winter luggage. Soon everything buildings, lake and trees are cloaked in a familiar fairytale mantle and even though it is early afternoon, the December daylight is already fading. As we drive into the mountains, the snow falls thicker and faster and the villages along the way disappear behind a tumbling curtain of white flakes, promising the best yuletide cover for a decade. By the time we arrive at Saint-Jean d'Aulps, just below our destination, snow is piled high along roadsides and people are shovelling paths and driveways clear of snow. Five kilometres later in Montriond there is barely room to park in the square between the growing mounds thrown up by the road clearers.

I extricate myself from luggage and car, stand for a minute in the lee of the church and look up at the old house that was our home for ten years. I feel an overwhelming sense of belonging and of being reunited with something very dear. Now,' I think, 'I will I can write about it.'

The suitcases and shopping bags are hauled into the house; the car is locked against the storm. I walk up the snow-covered steps, remembering, back to 1978 to the beginning of our journey, to travel forward along its path, trace its progress and revisit the seasons of our lives.

Susan Steggall 1999

Chapter One

Setting Out

N

ow that we have decided to go, it is a relief to turn from the treacherous reefs of emotion and doubt to the practical landscape of departure. The sequence of events once put in motion takes on a rushing inevitability. I resign from my job as a pharmacologist, organise passports; make lists. Our house is to be leased: the rent will provide essential income. The furniture stays in place, but personal and fragile belongings must be packed away in a small storeroom at the back. Our two children, Zeke seven and Zali four, pose proudly but somewhat uneasily for a photograph with the family car, understanding well what the sale of it will mean. I realise that we have not really asked them how they feel about our project. Perhaps we parents take for granted the unqualified faith our children have in us to keep them safe in childhood for their grown-up lives. Is it a responsibility sometimes taken too lightly?

Find boxes, go through the house room by room; what to do with toys, bikes, the doll’s house? Fill boxes. Find more and bigger boxes. Pay outstanding bills, cancel the papers, ring around to say goodbye. More boxes! Arrange something for the cat… Oh dear, the old cat… Try to think of other eventualities… just try to think!

There is a trunk of ski clothing and equipment to be packed and sent by sea for pick-up later in Paris. What to take with us? What about books in English for the children? What sort of clothes? How many shirts, skivvies? Do they need overcoats? The answers I must find for myself as my husband John is busy winding up his legal practice. Fend off well-intentioned advice and ultimately unusable gifts. Concentrate! I tell myself. Don’t panic!

Finally departure day arrives. Food remnants are thrown out of the fridge and the care of the cat is officially handed over to the next-door neighbour. There is a last minute scramble to the shops to buy a bigger suitcase and the farcical horror of finding another cupboardful of things not yet processed. My mother comes early to field last-minute telephone calls of good luck and bon voyage. She is also keeping her mind off our approaching departure with the self-appointed, and very welcome, task of entertaining an impatient Zali until it is time to leave.

She (the child, not the grandmother) has been camped at the front door since six o’clock in the morning, clutching her backpack, refusing to budge, berating anyone who tries to pass that it is time to go. ‘What are you all doing?’ she cries in frustration. Zeke is more circumspect. He has memories in this house, of Christmases and birthday parties. He knows the space of his bedroom intimately and has friends at school. Although caught up in the excitement (perhaps hysteria would be a better word) he is guarded in his enthusiasm and clings to his precious teddy.

The last suitcases are shut, papers and essentials gathered into backpacks and handbag. There is a sudden twinge of realisation that this is it: for the foreseeable future the house is no longer ours to live in; we are already strangers to it, ready to leave. Sisters and their children arrive and we drive in convoy to Mascot where any last-minute private misgivings at the foolhardiness of the venture are drowned in the very public bustle of the airport. John’s parents meet us there. They are older than my mother, ill at ease in the impersonal airport environment and visibly upset at our imminent departure with two of their eight grandchildren. The grandfather hides his distress behind a blustery aloofness; Nanny is less inhibited and cries openly. Grandmothers however, are made of strong stuff and both of them cloak inner sadness in outer manifestation of largesse - toys, books, coloured pencils - and swamping, enfolding kisses.

Our bags are processed without incident, not so overweight as to attract excess charges. There is time for a quick farewell drink but with so many people crushed into the airport bar, it is unsettling and unsatisfactory: so much noisy conversation, so much suddenly to say and no words in which to say it. Zali begins afresh her earlier exhortation to leave, now. Zeke quietly positions himself close to both grandmothers. ‘OK, mate?’ I ask. ‘Yes Mum,’ is all he replies.

The loudspeaker announces our boarding gate. It is time to round up the children and hug final goodbyes. With a last wave and promises to write soon, we are propelled inside the customs hall as abruptly as if transported in a time machine, acutely aware that ‘family’ now means the four of us and we are on our own. There is no turning back, no point in lingering. ‘Come on kids,’ calls John, ‘let’s get on the plane.’

Get settled, stow coats and hand luggage in the overhead lockers. Keep brown bag with games, books and Vegemite stored under feet. Fasten seat belt; negotiate take-off. Ah, a whisky and soda has never tasted better. Now I can relax and enjoy the prospect of the adventure ahead. John and I turn to look at each other, properly, for the first time in weeks, as if to say, we’ve done it! We’re off and we’ve no idea when we will be back.

A year of adventure in 1975 had been a voyage of discovery, travelling as outsiders, always moving onwards. The goal was to get there, wherever ‘there’ may have been. Follow the map… three days to X, a month here or three days at Y – which is the best way to go? Direct or picturesque? But don’t waste time. We were nomads, always passing through. And we had our return tickets. This time we want to leave the ending open. Two or three years?

For the first time I wonder at our temerity and careless enthusiasm in taking the children away from their familiar world. And why our fascination with the mountains and ski-ing? Perhaps because these are so foreign to our lives as coastal valley dwellers close to the white beaches and green surf of the Pacific’s rim. In our families sport has always meant swimming and ball games of one sort or another. I learned to ski as an adult and its attraction has always been bound up with romantic images of alpine adventure and Europe. To my warm-climate existence, snow, ice and high jagged peaks represent the ultimate in exotic other.

Cruising…

Our destination is Frankfurt, then Stuttgart and Sindelfingen to pick up a car that we have ordered in advance. This time I know not to change the children into clean clothes for our arrival; there will be no welcoming committee to impress with boy and girl in pristine condition.

‘Hey Dad, look at all the beaut cars!’ exclaims Zeke as we pass through the imposing gates of the Mercedes-Benz factory, hallowed grounds indeed, consecrated to the gods of elite engineering. We are ushered into a grand reception hall where the ritual of taking possession begins. I have little time to appreciate this, being too busy trying to keep son off a sparkling vintage antique in the corner and small daughter off everything else while John concentrates on the paperwork. Finally we are released. John drives cautiously out into the traffic and turns towards Switzerland. The car is beautifully appointed, with chocolate-brown duco and cream leather interior, the latest in automotive splendour.

‘Can it go really fast, Dad?’ comes insistently from the back as we negotiate unfamiliar roads and search for the motorway. Well, it can and it certainly does and we all share in the exhilaration of travelling in a powerful luxury automobile on the German autobahns for which it was designed.

The day’s driving becomes an engulfing blur, the kilometres eaten up as rapidly as our al fresco lunch. It is late September, many restaurants and hotels are closed and we are forced to drive longer than intended before eventually finding a motel. I buy fish fingers and bread to go with the Vegemite but the children fall asleep before I can find a frying pan. We eat the fish but are also soon asleep until two small bodies still tuned to Sydney time, wake up in the middle of the night for those Vegemite sandwiches.

Our first destination is Haute-Savoie and the French village of Les Gets (where we once spent several months) to arrange accommodation for the winter to come. The day is sunny and clear as we pass Montreux and approach the southern shore of Lac Léman. Above green foothills and rocky crags, Mont-Blanc floats majestically. The mountains! I feel I belong here. At least I want very much to belong here, I think, as I read out names from the map. At the end of the lake there is an old bridge and the inevitable Hotel du Pont. We stop for a cool drink in its courtyard. Sunlight dapples the paving stones through late summer leaves, lilting Savoyard accents float lightly on the breeze and there is an invigorating coolness to the air. In this moment we count ourselves amongst the luckiest people on earth.

Once through the Franco-Swiss border at the village of Saint-Gingolph we are in relatively familiar territory and I can put away the map and my anxiety of not quite knowing where we are. We bypass Evian and take the Route de Thonon that leads up into the mountains.

Four kilometres to go and the road opens out into a broad sunny valley. Farmhouses and hamlets dot the slopes on either side; cows graze on the lower pastures. In the middle distance a group of hikers and a lone cyclist are the only signs of human presence. The population of the region may increase ten, twenty-fold in the winter season but today in the languor of autumn the countryside is almost deserted.

Soon we arrive at a village situated in a wide alpine pass. Les Gets (its name, from Latin, signifies a passage or a corridor) is an old farming community become modern ski resort and most of its houses and hotels are of comparatively recent origin, of architectural styles adapted from the best and worst the West has to offer. The stone church and its parish house are, not surprisingly, the oldest structures standing since the high risk of fire has made the predominantly wooden Savoyard farmhouse an endangered species.

The children do not remember our previous stay although they have looked at the photos and heard the stories so many times that they share our anticipation and press their noses to the windows, trying to see what John and I remember. We find demi-pension for the night in one of two hotels still open then drive to the other end of the village to look up our former landlords. We have been looking forward to seeing them again but now that the moment is here, hesitate at our easy presumption that they remember us as we do them. The warmth of their welcome dispels any doubts and they are delighted that we have returned.

‘Un appartement? Bien sûr, M’sieur-Dame!’ Le Clos Savoyard and Les Gets will once again be our winter home.

Another important task is to enrol the children in school. We knock on the door of a large grey building in the main square and are greeted by Madame-la-Directrice in pink dressing-gown and slippers. My French is not up to this, I think but smile as John explains our case. She says she will be delighted to have the children.

‘When? Oh, not until December. Tant pis.’

We hoped for acceptance but are not prepared for such enthusiasm. Later we learn that it is a numbers game and country schools struggle to keep enrolments up to officially acceptable levels.

The next morning before setting out on the long drive to Paris, we explore the ski trail behind our hotel, climbing upwards under the stanchions of the cable car, past uninhabited farms, through tall forest, then stunted trees and low tough vegetation at the top of Mont-Chéry. Here we turn to catch our breath and the view. The village is now a cluster of dots far below. The gently sloping sides of the valley are covered in dark forest, interrupted by snaking ribbons of turf groomed in readiness for winter’s skiers. Higher up there are the chair lifts and T-bars of Les Chavannes and Le Ranfolly and beyond, in a shimmering blue-ice distance, the ice-cream dome of Mont-Blanc rising behind its craggy advance guard.

John takes a photo of the children, two small blond Australians, grinning widely, legs planted firmly on the slope, arms folded in adult imitation, framed by shoulder high gilding grass and the black diagonal of a lift cable bisecting a pale blue sky.

‘Surely this is paradise and people are right not to leave,’ says John.

‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘and we are right to come back.’

Settling in…

In the last week of September we drive northwards. Leaves have lost their summer freshness and gardens, hotels and restaurants have a boarded-up look. The air over orchards and grain fields has a bluish, smoky tinge from burning stubble. We leave the Alps, bypass Geneva, nod briefly at the mountains in the Jura and join the autoroute near Macon. Now towns and villages exist only as blurred names on the indicator boards flashing by along the carriageway. We stop late in the afternoon and leave early the next morning - travellers not tourists.

In Paris we face our first difficulty: that of finding a reasonably priced apartment for a short-term lease. The best available is a small flat way above the city streets, the size of a cupboard and for an astronomical rent. With the help of our one Australian contact, we arrange to have a large caravan towed to the camping ground in the Bois de Boulogne, not far from Auteuil and Longchamp racecourses. The rent is reasonable, the van comfortable, with a fuel heater, decent oven and fridge. The grounds of the camp are spacious and at weekends there will be the parks and gardens of the Bois to explore.

Once the matter of address is settled we turn our attention to the business of education: to book ourselves into Alliance Française and, hopefully, the children into a school close by. John and I both learnt French at school and during the year before leaving Australia, and backed this up with evening classes. We also took the children to the kindergarten at Alliance Française in Sydney. Thus prepared but unsure of what we will encounter, we set out early for 100 boulevard Raspail, a massive grey stone pile well grimed by age and pollution.

It is re-enrolment time for October’s courses and the scene is one of cheerful chaos as other prospective students like ourselves attempt to find the How, When and Where of class schedules. The Why at least, everybody knows since the common purpose is to master the French language. English holds no privileges in this tower of Babel and it sounds as if every language known on earth is being shouted and answered in the dingy fire-hazardous maze of staircases and corridors.

Enrolment procedures are actually quite simple; no special visas or qualifications are required. Classes are organised in daily two-hour segments for a month at a time with a test at the end. You can advance as rapidly or as leisurely as you like. Pay your money; fill out the first test sheet. Low mark? Put your name in the beginners’ class. Pass? Go on to the next level of difficulty, repeat ad libitum to ability threshold.

We sort out our timetable (easy) and the location of the designated classrooms (not so easy) and ask directions to the nearest municipal offices to enquire about schooling for the children. The clerk behind the desk at the Mairie is very helpful and records ‘Alliance Française, Boulevard Raspail’ as our residential address so that the children can qualify for admittance to a school within the same arrondissement. He then asks whether Monsieur and Madame would like the children to commence class this afternoon or tomorrow morning? Flabbergasted at the unexpected speed of Gallic procedure we reply, ‘Merci, that demain would do parfaitement.’

Next thing is to find a department store to buy essential household and school items. I think of Manly West Infants and Waratah Street Kindergarten and hope there are more similarities to, than differences from, La Maternelle and l’École Primaire in rue de Vaugirard.

Unbeknown to us we have arrived in Paris in the middle of the autumn sales and the crowds in les-grands-surfaces are overwhelming. We hone our family survival skills with only one lost-child alert and escape as quickly as possible to check out of our hotel and into the caravan park which is to be our home for the next few months. The summer season is tailing off and the camp has a deserted air. Hardy Australasian souls are heading north to Scandinavia, hedonists south to Africa for the winter. The only long-term inhabitants of the camp are a group of fairground folk. They are unkempt and untidy but intriguing all the same with their tribes of children, unfamiliar accents, huge caravans and flashy cars. From our Anglo-Saxon perspective, they are strangely foreign, and troubling. The women appear to have few rights and even fewer comforts. They keep very much to themselves and more or less ignore us, probably despising our customs. Entente cordiale is maintained through brief nods in the camp supermarket.

The rented van is well-travelled but spacious, with a set of double bunks – ‘I bags the top one!’ – a table which folds down to a double bed, a good wardrobe, plenty of shelves and a proper poêle-à-mazout for heating. The fact that we haven’t the faintest idea what ‘mazout’ is, let alone where we can buy it, is quite incidental to that splendid moment of moving-in in the balmy, warm-for-season, autumn air. The children fall asleep almost before they finish eating. John and I celebrate with a ‘proper’ bottle of wine (one with a cork in it) but are too tired to have a late evening. We must be up early to take the children to school.

First day…

John drives to the Métro where we buy monthly rail passes and, with each adult holding firmly to a child’s hand, make our way to the line to Odéon station. The train is packed with rush-hour commuters and the children stare, fascinated, at the eclectic mix of race and religion. I wonder what they are thinking. It must be daunting but, perhaps reassured by our manifest adult confidence, they approach the coming new-school experience with equanimity. There are no school uniforms so each is dressed in best jeans, shirt and sneakers; I hoping they will blend with their peers. It is a five-minute walk from station to school entrance and we are too soon at the gate saying ‘Good luck, goodbye, be good, see you at lunchtime.’ (There is a two-hour school lunch break and our plan is to picnic in the nearby gardens.) For a second or two, they hesitate; hold on tightly. There is a hint of tears but almost immediately they are whisked in welcoming hand by the duty maîtresse. The heavy door closes firmly against the outside world and we are left standing in the street, not sure of what to do next.

Our own classes have not yet started, so we spend the morning exploring the quartier, trying not to worry about how the children are getting on. There is plenty to see. Rue de Vaugirard runs through the fifth and sixth arrondissements, from the Place de la Porte de Versailles in the south-west, crossing boulevards Montparnasse and Raspail, skirting the seventeenth-century Luxembourg Palace to end an intersection with the boulevard Saint-Michel quite close to the Seine.

We return early to the school door and hang around the edge of a group of waiting parents. Promptly on the dot of eleven thirty the doors open and a wave of noisy youthful energy flows onto the footpath, our children swept along with it. Boy and girl are full of the morning’s doings. They chatter and skip as we make our way across the street to the Luxembourg Gardens.

‘Mum, Dad, we did gymnastics nearly all morning,’ Zeke tells us.

‘And,’ says Zali, not to be outdone, ‘I did a painting.’

Both children are hungry and already breaking chunks off the baguettes tucked under John’s arm.

‘Oh, and Mum, the maître said I need a towel and a bathing cap. We’re going swimming this afternoon.’

Towel and bathing cap! John remembers a likely looking shop from our morning’s walk so he and Zeke rush off while I pack up and walk Zali back to school.

‘Tomorrow, Maman, we’re going to make things’

She produces a polite note asking for cartons, plastic bottles and…old clothes. I think of her kindergarten far away in Sydney. There really is no difference, after all, is there?

Routines…

With the month of October our new life truly begins: early showers, a hurried breakfast, a dash to the Metro with the car’s four-speaker stereo blasting Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell, a marker as powerful as any madeleine. Then a crowded half hour in the train, a quick-march along morning pavements-turned-obstacle-courses in the peak hour rush to reach school and classes on time.

In the afternoon we retrace our steps and Métro stops, check at the camp office for mail, rush through the supermarket for supplies and arrive at the caravan while it is still light enough for the children to ride their new bicycles. Then it is chore time: homework, laundry, cooking, letter-writing - all the trivia of daily life. Dinner is no culinary masterpiece but nourishing, hot, and as quick as I can make it.

The children have only those few books, cars, teddies and dolls we were able to carry onto the plane, yet they seem content and enjoy exploring together the new world around them. They quickly develop a strong sibling bond of productive interaction, private to themselves. Of course they squabble and compete for favours; it would be unrealistic to expect - or say - otherwise.

Zali is in kindergarten, learning to sing, dance and count in French without yet having to tackle agreements and conjugations. Zeke is in year two (of primary school) which is already well advanced in the three Rs. He pals up with a Scottish boy in his class. This slows his progress in French and causes concern among the teachers. After the first month in Paris, he is transferred to a special school for foreign children, to receive concentrated tuition. It is close to our habitual Métro stop but in the opposite direction to the rue Vaugirard and too far for us to collect both of them for a park picnic at midday so he stays at school for the canteen lunch. He is happy enough and his French improves quickly but he is aghast at the food.

‘Mum, today, there was carrot, in wet juice!’

Carotte-rapée-à-la-vinaigrette is apparently not to be one of his favourite dishes.

Each morning we battle the complexities of French grammar. Nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue is all very welcome but there are times when I could easily abandon myself to the tactic taken by many: that of using all verbs in the infinitive, gliding past tenses and conjugations with a smile, leaving the listener to fill in the gaps. It is a humbling experience, learning to speak and live another culture and I feel much sympathy for those who struggle to adapt to a country and a language not their own. John still loves to recount how, in the first week of class he nodded ‘Oui’, affirmatively to every question until a fellow student dug him in the ribs and whispered loudly that la maîtresse was asking him his name! Yet we make good progress and both pass our first month’s tests with gratifying ease.

Students at Alliance come from all parts of the globe. English is not a privileged lingua franca and we must use French to converse with them. Many, from African countries, are young, lean, poorly clothed, and miserable in cold weather, but hell-intent on an education. John and I are the oldest in our respective classes, except for one elderly American woman in mine whose husband is busy with takeover season back home in Seattle. She has come to Paris for the duration, booked into Alliance and is working her way through October’s ‘what’s on’ and ‘Paris-by-night’ with a determination that would exhaust a busload of younger tourists.

Someone tells us that the vernacular is best acquired from pop-cultural sources so we dutifully study advertisements in the Métro stations and buy comics to read after dinner. The children enjoy the comics and probably get more useful cultural information from them than we ever could. French radio is, as yet, a static of unfamiliar sounds so we keep abreast of current affairs via the BBC World Service and on a clear day the ABC for some news of Australia.

It is a physically demanding but exhilarating time. Camping