Ski Bunnies

The girls from Blue Heelers swap Mt Thomas for the ski slopes of Victoria’s Mt Buller.

When TV WEEK invited Blue Heelers stars Caroline Craig and Jane Allsop for a weekend away at Victoria’s Mt Buller ski resort, they didn’t need to be asked twice.

Both girls are avid skiers, and they were keen to hit the world-famous slopes and display their prowess.

"I absolutely love skiing, but I actually don’t know whether my knees can take it for too much longer," says Jane, who impressed her castmate Caroline, a skier since childhood, with her ability to stay upright all weekend.

"Jane’s really good, but I don’t think she likes the wet weather too much," says Caroline. "I’ve been concious of not falling over because I don’t want to hurt my finger (Caroline injured her finger during an abseiling excersise several months ago).

"I think skiing is all about confidence. Whenever I’m skiing, I always picture the skis going in all directions and my arms going everywhere!"

Caroline was taught to ski by her father, who sang songs to her while teaching her.

"Dad was taught to ski by my mum, who was on ski patrol, and then Dad taught my brother and I," she explains. "We got a pair of plastic skis and I’d follow behind him while he was singing songs.

"I’ve been skiing since I was a kid, but I’ve just started snowboarding, which is really hard. The day after I started, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck!"

Deciding to leave the snowboards alone, the girls released a little on-screen tension with a friendly snowball fight.

"We were playing nice for a while there because it was for the TV WEEK cameras, but things pretty soon got right out of control," Jane laughs.

"I copped one straight to the face, and it just dribbled off," Caroline adds. "Jane was, like, ‘You might want to go fix your makeup’. My whole face was covered with water and snow. I got her back though. We didn’t pull any punches but it was fun."

With a blizzard then hitting the resorts, the girls were happy to relax by an open fire with a hot chocolate and a bag of marshmallows.

"It’s funny, because yesterday morning I visited the Police Search and Rescue crew and said that I was going to the snow - and they replied that they didn’t want to come looking for me," Caroline says.

"The blizzard has caused a complete white-out, so it would have been pretty easy for us to get lost."