A love affair at the top of Australia

By Nikki Gemmell

Can a car save a relationship? Remind two people of what they once were, before life took over and pushed them away from what really mattered as a couple; which is quite possibly mutual pleasure and comfort and joy? The unstated aim of the Mazda CX-60 experience on this weekend away: to somehow unlock my husband and I into a previous existence, if it possibly could. To remind us of who we once were. For normal service had not resumed for a very long time and our lives now felt like a static of stress.

 

 

We were joined this weekend by Jago, our youngest. The late arrival into our family of six, who’d never had his parents to himself on a holiday. We three were taking the luxury Mazda CX-60 - a vehicle that takes the brand to new heights - to the high country, in search of some early season snow; to that magical mountainous region that feels like it’s on the roof of the world.

Could we find a beautiful repairing, alone, far removed from civilisation? And could our weary, work-bowed shoulders possibly unclench?

We settled into the CX-60’s high-tech cocoon which seemed to instantly soothe with a subliminal message: relax, enjoy, and let my wizardry take care of you. We had entered a new world of nurturing, totally alien to us, for we are luddites with two creaky old cars that eat solace and we have not kept up with the times.

With the CX-60, we felt like we’d entered a portal into the future. The seats were caramel-coloured leather with a smart black stripe down their centre and my aesthetic radar thrummed (it’s all about the look.) The engine was started with the press of a button and it purred into instant life.

With another few buttons the driver’s seat was moulded around my grateful form; it felt like it was cupping me in the palm of its hand. The button for the heated steering wheel was found, alongside another for a heated seat.

In my world this felt like going from Little House on the Prairie to a modern day Brideshead Revisited. My bottom felt loved and an aching lower back nurtured. 

After we glided away from pressing family life, our Jago fell quickly asleep. Miraculous. For it was daytime and he hadn’t slept in a vehicle since he was four, and now he was 12 and programmed to grab any screen time he could. But the Mazda worked its therapeutic magic on him; holding him, too, in the cup of its hand. All it took was a heated leather seat and the hum of assurance that was smooth, creamy luxury. And I could exhale as the city was left behind. Happy family, happy Mum.

 

 

We felt transported into relaxation by the benevolent, attentive presence of the CX-60, which felt like it was on our side - unlike our printer or television. The Chap was content, busy in the front passenger seat finishing off the week’s business calls and emails. The three of us were in our separate zones yet warmly together, working, sleeping, or driving in my case, with pure, Penelope Pitstop pleasure. Feeling as gleeful as a 10-year-old at Christmas and no, The Chap was not getting anywhere near that heated steering wheel. For the moment. 

As soon as the city was cleared he settled into dreamy relaxation, too, fiddling with the buttons ahead of the wide central armrest from where the console was commanded; a chocolate box of entertainment and navigation. The SUV was big yet we all felt mysteriously cosy, sustained in our separate bubbles.

 

 

In my everyday, Very Basic school run existence, navigation to new worlds is via a precariously balanced phone. Now map instructions were illuminated along the bottom of my windscreen like a fighter jet’s display; what fresh Matrix world was this? Oh the joy, which also included a little maximum speed indicator encased in a red circle that gently pulsed if the limit was ever veered over. I was grateful for Mazda’s thoughtfulness.   

We headed deep into high country. Through the panoramic windscreen, land bleached out and sky widened. Exhilarated, I took down my hair like I was in a ’70s hair advert for Pantene; a Distracted Driver alert politely encouraged my hand back to the wheel.

The CX-60 seemed to float over winding country roads, its acceleration effortless. I couldn’t feel the strain and grunt of an engine working hard - my usual overtaking experience.

 

 

My heart brimmed at the sight of distant snow-capped mountains. This was the land that sung me home from all my London days. Pale, windswept grass on high ridges. Twisted bark on snow gums. Tumbling mountain streams. Boulders dappled grey like ponies, cities of stone flanked by towers of dead gums; their skeleton trunks reaching arms to stretched skies. And air so fresh it was like it was teaching your lungs to breathe again.

Thanks to the cocooning luxury of our car we didn’t arrive in Jindabyne clenched and exhausted, as per usual, but were raring to go. To find snow and not waste a second of the light.

We headed to Thredbo but its slopes looked a little grassy and sparse so we headed higher, then higher. To the roof of the mountain world, absent of other people. And amid stunted, snow-burdened gums and ice-frosted heathland we found the silence that is a presence, the quiet that almost hums. And a sunset glowing a billowy, orangey-pink through tree trunks still blackened from summer bushfires. Oh this land, this beauty, thrumming my heart like a cat in bliss.

 

 

The next day, the CX-60 transported us effortlessly on our quest for deeper snow. We headed out to Perisher and Guthega on the advice of workers at the Jindabyne Woolworths and servo, fonts of local knowledge and because there had been a panic: where was our proper-deep, holiday snow? We had ski jackets and goggles in the Mazda’s very roomy boot and it all needed hauling out.

 

 

Our hearts leapt as we saw snow-turreted mountains in the distance like a mythical Shangri-La. Onward! To sparkly snow on snow gums in a severe clear light and mounting excitement that we were close, closer … and then we found it. The buzz of a ski season in full throttle. Snow machines pumping out a powdery carpet. Cool dude snowboarders. Trudging skiers. Euphoric tobogganists. Queues at ski lifts.

Jago located some made-on-the-spot, mini hot donuts; we adults some very welcome coffees. And in the wild, by the road, there were snowballs and snowmen and snow angels. We were all drunk on glee and hadn’t felt like this, as a family, for a very long time. And always there were those warm Mazda seats to hop back into, and a start button instantly clicking on. Oh how we loved this car, this trip.

 

 

Reluctantly we headed back down the mountain, reading up on Jindabyne’s history of an older village submerged by a lake. We joked that a distant buoy on the water’s surface sat atop the church spire, which, according to legend is sometimes exposed at low tide. But we had no idea, really, where the watery grave of Jindabyne’s old town lay. The local museum would have to wait for another trip; we’d been too excited on this one by the pursuit of snow. And by road testing our buzzy new car.  

The Chap finally got his go. “I feel very commanding,” he announced, with chuff, from his individually snug driver’s seat.

“Do you want me to take over the driving?” I enquired at one point. That would be a no. Meanwhile, Jago slept on the way home. This, again, was unheard of and I blame, or thank, Mazda’s exhilarating levels of comfort. Our boy started Year Seven in January and this lovely car-slumbering felt like a vast release, at last, of all the accumulation of tiredness from a very big year.

 

 

Meanwhile, Mum and Dad were relaxed, happy, playful. We hadn’t felt like this, been like this, for what seemed years. The CX-60 had made us forget what we were now, and made us remember what we were once.

“I feel like you’re going to have to wrench me out of this experience, quite possibly with a crowbar,” I had declared when I sat in the driver’s seat for the very first time. And at the end of our lovely Mazda sojourn I felt exactly the same way.