Franz Reiter, the man who pioneered the ski-fields of Mount Baw Baw and introduced generations of Australians to snow

For more than 50 years, Franz Reiter helped generations of Victorians experience snow for the very first time on the slopes of Mount Baw Baw.

The German immigrant was a fixture of life on the ski fields of the Gippsland mountain. He was instrumental in drawing visitors to the snow after he set up a ski-school and hire business on the mountain in the 60s and 70s.

A retrospective: Reiter passed away in March this year, at the age of 92. The Monitor spoke with one of his daughters, Trudi, about her father’s legacy and how Mount Baw Baw has changed since she was a child.

From the war to Baw Baw: Reiter was born in Germany in 1934 and immigrated to Australia around 1958 to join his sister, who was already living and married in the country.

Trudi, who was Reiter’s second daughter, told the Monitor that Reiter wasn’t a very experienced skier when he arrived.

“He had skied a little bit [growing up] but the second World War was going on, so it wasn’t until he was a teenager that he’d go into the mountains, hike up and ski down.”

Start with the pipes: Reiter worked as a plumber for a while before moving to Jamieson, Victoria where he married his wife, and Trudi’s mother, Janice in 1964.

Eventually Reiter got a job at the Mount Buller ski fields doing maintenance and caretaking.

“That's where he got more proficient at skiing,” Trudi said.

Then in 1967, Janice,  Reiter and their two children, Heidi and Stefan, moved to Mount Baw Baw to set up a ski-school.

“My early memories are of my parents running the business up there,” Trudi, who was born in May 1970, said.

Not long after setting up the school, Reiter started running a ski-hire business as well. 

“There wasn't an adequate and professional place for hiring skis, and he started getting schools coming up there,” Trudi said. “He needed to have a fair volume of higher equipment to cater for them.”

Trudi, along with her brother and sister, helped run the business while they were growing up and learnt a lot about skiing in their free time.

“I lived up there permanently until I was 12,” Trudie said.

“We had a single story flat-roofed, little two-room place when dad moved there. Then he extended it, [making] the lower part a more livable home. Then he built the second story, which had the ski hire in it originally.”

The building is still there today.

“It's sort of gone through a multitude of alterations, but the upper story of it is still a ski-hire,” Trudi said.

How much has changed?

Trudi said that beyond a couple of the new accommodation buildings, Mount Baw Baw is pretty much the same as when she was growing up.

“A lot of them were built when I was just a child. They've been there for a long time.”

Looking back

Baw Baw Shire councillor Adam Sheehan honoured Reiter’s life achievements at a council meeting in April, saying: “Many patrollers, locals and visitors will remember Franz not only for his contribution to the resort, but for the role he and his family played in shaping the spirit of the Mount Baw Baw community.”

Trudi and her husband Craig have been operating the business since Reiter stepped away from the business in 2005.