That's what I was thinking when my brother called my mobile to wish me a happy birthday, and asked what I was doing.

I was skiing down Mt Perisher, as it happened, in fine snow conditions under a clear, blue sky, with my five-year-old daughter by my side.

"Fantastic," he said, "you can't get better than that."

I readily agreed, before correcting him slightly.

"You can get better than that, actually," I told him, explaining that my wife was also with me, on the other side.

He laughed.

It does us all a power of good, I reckon, to take stock occasionally and acknowledge to ourselves how truly blessed we are.

The vast bulk of Australia's 20 million people are by definition among the top 1-2 per cent of the world's luckiest.

A big call? Don't forget there are more than six billion out there, and sadly hundreds of millions die of disease and malnutrition, or suffer degradations ranging from political oppression to abuse and lack of rudimentary education and health services.

In this lucky country almost all of us, at the very least, have all the basics going for us.

And up at Perisher on my birthday, I certainly felt among the luckiest of the lucky.

There I was doing one of the things I love most with two of the people I love most, on a beautiful day in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

It's impossible in those circumstances to be thinking about any of the things that are supposed to give us grey hairs - from the price of petrol and the cost of living to traffic jams and global warming.

On top of all that, I was enjoying a birthday treat at one of the swishest places on the snow, the lovely stone-walled hotel at the heart of Perisher Valley.

When you wake up in the morning you press a bedside button to open the curtains electronically.

If the skies are blue, up you get.

If not, just press another button to close the curtains, roll over and go back to sleep.