Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

WWI RECORD: SAMSING Hilda Therese Redderwold : Age: 43: Service Number - Sister : Place of Birth - Christiania Norway : Place of Enlistment - Cairo Egypt : Next of Kin - (Brother) SAMSING George. 1st Australian General Hospital. Served in Egypt, England and France.

Buffalo Chalet Victorian Alps.

An even more radical and innovative woman on Buffalo was Alice Manfield’s contemporary, Hilda Samsing. Samsing was a First World War nurse who took over the lease of the run down Buffalo Chalet in 1919. She repaired and renovated the building and marketed it in innovative ways. To boost business in the quiet winter season she imported skis and hired an instructor. It’s fair to say that she provided the boost that made skiing take off as a popular sport in Victoria. She was so successful at turning the Buffalo Chalet from a loss maker into a highly profitable business that the railways lobbied the government not to renew her lease, so she was thrown out and the railways took over as the new landlord in 1925.
Not to be deterred Samsing formed a syndicate to build a rival to the Buffalo Chalet on nearby Mt Feathertop. They built a basic guesthouse, the Feathertop Bungalow as a pilot for a far grander Feathertop Chalet which was to be twice the size of the Buffalo Chalet. However the railways were threatened by the new competitor and they managed to get the lease of the land the Bungalow was built on terminated. They then bought the Bungalow for only 8% of what it had cost to build 3 years earlier and ran it as their own hotel until it burnt down in 1939.
Hilda Samsing was a brilliant hotelier at a time when there were few women in such positions and she did far more to establish skiing as a sport in Victoria than anyone else, but she is almost forgotten now.