Ski Australia - New South Wales

There are around 20 Australian ski resorts, a little under half of these are commercial ski centres, the remainder are club fields run by enthusiasts and generally volunteers.

Most of Australia's ski areas are located in New South Wales and Victoria, home to the country's highest peaks, as well as most of its population. There are two small ski centres on the southern island of Tasmania too however.

There has been heavy investment in resort development in recent years at the largest resorts, particularly Perisher, which measures itself as the largest ski area in the southern hemisphere (in terms of groomed terrain and number of lifts) but also at resorts including Falls Creek, Mount Hotham and Mount Buller.

So when you ski Australia you’ll find all the latest equipment on the slopes. Although uniquely Australian, the ski resorts typically follow the North American model of self-contained complexes with modern lift systems, all amenities on site and the opportunity for condominium ownership, most of them owned by a single company.

Snow cover can be an issue at Australian ski areas but, as in other countries where cold weather is not guaranteed through the winter, lots of coping strategies have been developed to ensure there is some snow even in the ‘bad times’ including snow farming, cloud seeding and traditional snow making. One resort has won awards for recycling ‘waste water’ in to snow after purification. And in fact Australian resorts typically have relatively good snowfall records from May to September.

Australian ski centres have hit media headlines in the country in recent years for a reason the centres are not so keen to promote – lift ticket prices have topped the world tables, sometimes overtaking the usual highest resorts in North America, as the most expensive anywhere. This is partly due to the high operating costs for resorts in Australia but more caused by the inexorable rise in value of the Australian dollar against other currencies (at least at the time of writing!)

Although Australia is one of the world’s newest major nations, skiing in Australia is as old as the sport itself anywhere in the world, thanks to immigrants bringing skiing to Australia with them in the nineteenth century.

Indeed Australia recently celebrated 150 years iof skiing – longer than most other countries – thanks to The Kiandra Snowshoe Club in Australia which lays joint claim to the title "world's oldest ski club" with a Norwegian contender.

The title may be a little academic, as the Kiandra Snowshoe Club's founder members were probably Norwegian immigrants anyway, as it is they who are credited with bringing skiing to Australia in 1861 during the gold rush. Since then Australians, along with New Zealanders, have re-exported their skiing talents world-wide, it's a rare ski school in the world's top resorts hat doesn't employ at least one antipodean ski teacher.

In more recent times the world's first indoor snowdome (arguably), Mount TheBarton, opened in Australia in 1987 although it closed after 20 years and subsequent attempts to bring indoor snow back to Australia are yet to prove successful. However several of the world's pioneering 'indoor snow' manufacturing businesses are also Australian.

Most resorts offer a good mix of accommodation from basic to high calibre. There's skiing here when 98% of the world's resorts are shut down through "lack of snow" in the northern hemisphere’s summer months but it can be a long trek to most of the resorts with few ski centres near major population centres. However increasingly good flight links from Melbourne and Sydney have shortened the trip.

Australia - New South Wales: latest snow conditions round-up

Snow: next 3 days

INTRODUCTION We are reaching the tipping point in the year when northern hemisphere ski areas begin snowmaking, and in the case of some already opening for the new 23-24 season, whilst in the southern hemisphere we'll see the first areas close for their 2023 seasons. This is the start of astronomical autumn/fall in the north, and spring in the south, three weeks after the seasons changed by the meteorological measure, so for the next few months everyone is agreed it is autumn/fall or spring.

AUSTRALIA REPORT Warming temperatures as spring continues to take hold remain the main factor impacting Australia's ski areas.

Things moved quickly on Sunday/Monday with Thredbo announcing at the end of the ski day on Sunday that it was closing a fortnight earlier than expected due to the heat. Mt Buller also closed as planned, joining already closed-for-the-season Selwyn resort and Mt Baw Baw, meaning more Aussie areas had closed for the season than remained open. But the cull hadn't ended with two more of the three still going at that point first reporting steep cuts in what could still safely open and then deciding to close altogether. Falls Creek (20/45cm / 8/18"), which was among the resorts reporting snow flurries at times through the past week, first announced it was closing around half its remaining eight lifts that had still been operating at the weekend for the remainder of the season. Then announced they were bringing that end lof season forward to this Wednesday 20th due to warm temperatures ad rain forecast. Mt Hotham (15/35cm / 6/14") also announced it had lost the battle to keep terrain open around its Village chairlift at the end of last week, closing that and more, before saying it was ending kits season dearly too. So it's just the county's largest resort Perisher (30/100cm / 12/40"), just about clinging on to its metre base, that's still open, at least at time of writing. It is down to about 40% of its terrain remaining open at 24km (15 miles) of slopes. The base stats were more than double any other centre in the country though.

Summary of forecast snowfall and ski conditions for resorts in Australia - New South Wales. Fresh snow is forecast at 0 resorts. Powder is reported at 0 resorts and 0 are reporting good piste conditions.