She had fallen apart when 60s dreamboat Christopher Plummer croaked Edelweiss just before the singing Von Trapps made a sharp exit stage right to flee the Nazis.
Yes, my three-year-old daughter Anna and I would walk through the famous Mirabell Palace Gardens in Salzburg where Julie Andrews and the children danced and sang Do-Re-Mi.
But first we wanted to embrace the new Austria.
We landed at Salzburg - but headed straight for Saalbach-Hinterglemm - two neighbouring farming villages and ski resorts, a two-hour drive away.
It was the last days of July and we were about to be revitalized - without snow.
Cutting-edge
The winter season spans November to April but summer in this steep-sided valley offers a kindergarten for adults and children.
First we gazed spellbound from the terrace of our fourth floor room in the unpretentious but cutting-edge base - Garden Hotel Theresia.
So this was Austria - clean, neat, pretty. Rows of Audis, a fast-moving river and boxes of red flowers spilling from the traditional timber layers that front the hotel.
That first night an electrical storm surrounded the monstrous black mountains like a halo - it was hot in the valley and nature put on a spectacular show.
Earlier in the day we took a cable car to the start of Montelino's Adventure Trail in Saalbach.
Pitched at children aged about three to ten this is a clever chance for adults to breathe in endorphin-popping mountain air for two hours and stride through gorgeous scenery `Maria' style. The problem was we were seduced by a tavern half way down and our timing went to pot.
Our guide Juliana, who learned to ski at two, began to stress. She knew these parts far better than us and warned Anna and me, and Yorkshire terrier Jack (eight) and his mum (40s), we might miss the last cable car down the mountain if we didn't step up the pace.
The final scene was like that one in Von Ryan's Express when Frank Sinatra is grasping for the last carriage of a moving train edging towards neutral Switzerland but cops a bullet in the back from a German commander.
Anna and I were 500 yards from the station when the cable car buffeted into view.
Her sparrow-like legs had performed well all afternoon - now we had to up the ante.
Simple but inspired
With tears of fear in her eyes she did what a Manc girl had to do and legged it. We jumped on the moving car with 30 seconds to spare.
A kiddy stroll felt more like a boot camp but we were happy and the blood was pumping, we had been woken up.
The idea is simple but inspired. Kids go up a mountain in a cable car then spend two hours walking back down - looking for wooden squirrels, foxes, owls, and ticking boxes on a leaflet as you find them.
On our way down, three young Austrians astride the mountain bike equivalent of Audi Quattros flashed by - Alpine centurions with vast muscular bodies clad in protective kit.
The country appears to be fitness and perfection obsessed - and I was getting hooked.
On day two I was up for it. I might be 11 stone wet through and arthritis-riddled, but either the pollution-free atmosphere or the Teutonic temperament was getting to me.
It started with a justified dressing down by Marianne Brettermeier, who owns the hotel with her husband, Harald.
She shouted across reception to him that I had a blister because I had walked down a mountain in `Sunday shoes'. Within 30 minutes I had her husband's worn size nines. Correctly booted I was ready to hit the trail again.
We picked up mountain bikes in Hinterglemm and I strapped Anna into a seat behind my saddle.
Pure air and the rediscovery of my calf muscles propelled me towards an afternoon hewn from God's own parenting manual.
It was a 3km ride to Lindlinglam and over the next three hours my daughter saw her dad transformed from grumpy unfit 49-year-old creased toad to exuberant playmate.
We paddled in a crystal clear mountain stream, played with wooden dams and clung on to an elf rotated by water power.
The temperature of the water even on a sunny day was numbingly cold, but Anna was oblivious - she was having a ball.
Next we went into a wood and played simple games which fired her imagination. The duck race: place two yellow plastic ducks at the top of a stream and chase them as they weave and bob to a finishing line 100 yards away. Her excitement level reached fever pitch on that one.
Blizzard of activities
Then we chose a length of hazel wood from a neat pile and with assistance from the resident carpenter I stripped bark to make her a walking stick onto to which her name was embossed with a blow torch - magical.
In the spinney all the games were made from wood - bowls, life-size carvings, and a guttering contraption between trees on which you rolled balls towards a wooden white bear, hoping they wouldn't fall off before reaching the grizzly.
For older children and parents there was tree-walking - complete with safety instruction, helmets, clips and ropes.
Overlooking this is an eating lodge serving above average food. The owners had the idea of creating the blizzard of activities and with a toddler it certainly beats sizzling on the beach in the Med.
The cycle ride back to town was a joy - zipping downhill on roads which eerily never seem busy, along the bottom of a glorious valley.
In the evening we ate at the oddball but strangely magnificent Hotel Wolf. The reception captures everything about its styling - the smell of logs burning drifts around a glass elevator.
It has just had a ¤32m extension, and with wow-factor rooms costing ¤400 a night this place is for the ski glitterati. Eating in the room next to us was the Dynamo Bucharest football squad in town for a training camp.
On the third day it was another cable car, and another mountain - something I would never tire of.
This time we were hunting a mystical gremlin in need of an ASBO on an attraction called Kodak Mountain.
Anna's stamina was showing no signs of wilting and in the afternoon it was more fun at Captain Hook water park where crazed Austrians don't give a fig about health and safety and jump three at a time down rides.
The whistle-stop tour of the city of Salzburg on the way home gave us only a glimpse of this beautiful town which warrants at least a day-long excursion.
Neal and Anna Keeling travelled with Inghams who offer nine properties in Saalbach-Hinterglemm ranging from three to four star hotels.
Travel with Inghams Lakes and Mountains to Hinterglemm and stay at the Theresia Gardenhotel, 7 nights, half board, prices start from £647 per person. Price includes flights from Manchester to Salzburg and resort transfers.
Alternatively stay in a family room with prices starting at £2509 for a family of four, based on 2 adults and 2 children under 18.
All guests receive free lunch time snack, free bike hire, five free guided walks, free afternoon coffee and cake and free soft drinks from mini bar.
Captain Hook pools – adults 6.60E, children 3.60E.
Teufelwasser – mountain stream attractions at Lindlinglam – free.
Wood park at Lindlinglam – adult 4E, children 3E.
High rope course 14E.
Kodak Mountain – adult 9.20E, children 4.60E.
Montelino's Adventure Trail on Kohlmais adult 7.90E children 3.95E.
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