Rainbow Pines, Old Adaminaby

The year it did not happen

The first booking was for the same week a year earlier — three cabins, three families, for the end of July 2021. At the end of June the park got in touch and asked the group to cancel. The ensuite cabin that had been reserved was occupied by people who had lost their homes in the 2021 New Year fires, and there was nothing else on the park to move anybody into.

That is not a complaint and it is not a review. It is simply what the Snowy Mountains were like in that period, and it is the kind of thing that never appears in a listing.

The year it did

They went back the following winter and got in: three nights in its bungalows at the end of July 2022, on the Lake Eucumbene side rather than at Jindabyne. That is the decision this page is really about, so it is worth stating the trade plainly.

Worth knowing. A heated indoor common room matters more at Old Adaminaby in July than it does anywhere else on this site. Overnight lows here sit around or below freezing, and there is nowhere to walk to in the evening.

The bungalows, and the kitchen that made them work

Three families, and six children — two to a family, in two age groups — in three of the park’s four bungalows. They sit in a short row beside a building the park calls the Bungalow Kitchen/Lounge, and the arrangement only makes sense once you see the two together.

A bungalow is a room for sleeping. There is a double bed and a bunk, a heater and not much else: no kitchen, no toilet, no shower, and no air conditioning, which in July nobody missed. The rooms are small enough that the heater warmed them easily. Toilets and showers are in the park’s heated amenities block next door.

Everything else happened in the kitchen. It is a big room — a full kitchen and a long table with padded bench seating — and over three nights every meal was cooked there and every evening was spent there together: cooking, games, and a drink for those who wanted one, with the children in and out. Outside it was below freezing. The lake is a short walk away and there were a few strolls along it, but most of the time the warm room won.

The drive is the whole argument. Old Adaminaby to Perisher is about ninety minutes each way, against roughly half an hour from Jindabyne, and in winter that is on roads where chains may be required and the light goes early. These photographs are timestamped 16:30 and the shadows are already the length of the frame.

The afternoon itself was spent on a wide open stretch of snow just short of the main Perisher area, where plenty of families already had plastic toboggans going, and the children joined in.

The pool is fed by a thermal spring and sits at a steady temperature in the high twenties all year. Swimming outdoors on the last day of July, in a valley where the cloud is sitting below the ridgeline, is the single most surprising thing anyone in the group did that week.

The drive up was one of the best of the trip: long views across the ranges, and nobody else on the road. At the pool it had been raining, and from the car park the path drops steeply to the water. Wet, it looked risky both for pushing a pram and for carrying a small child in your arms, so one parent stayed in the car with the youngest, then about two and a half, and everyone else went down. Everyone who went got in, parents and children alike. Against that air the water felt only just warm, but it was warmer than anything else that day, and a long time was spent in it.

The bare, blackened branches in the last two photographs are the 2019–20 fires, which burned a great deal of northern Kosciuszko. Two and a half years on, the regrowth is up but the dead standing timber is still the shape of the view.

Getting there. Yarrangobilly is reached by a steep, partly unsealed loop road off the Snowy Mountains Highway, and the walk from the car park down to the pool and back is a solid climb on the way out. It is worth checking National Parks alerts for road and pool closures before you commit to the drive — it is a long way to find a gate shut.

For a ski week, no. Three hours a day in the car to reach Perisher is too much with children, and Jindabyne exists precisely to avoid it.

For a winter week in the mountains that happens to include some snow, yes. Old Adaminaby puts you within reach of things Jindabyne is actually further from — Yarrangobilly, Kiandra, the Tumut side, the top of Lake Eucumbene — and it is quiet in a way a resort town in July never is.

What we have learned here

Book the bungalows if you want the kitchen. The park now says its camp kitchen is for bungalow guests only, and there are just four bungalows — three families took three of them. For a group, book early and book them together.

Ask about bedding. In 2022 we were asked to bring our own pillows, sheets and quilts. The park’s own page now says the double beds are made up and bunk bedding is bring-your-own or hired at $15 a set, so ask when you book rather than assume either way.

It is a room to sleep in, and that is enough. The heater copes easily with a room that size, even below freezing, and the amenities block is heated — which matters more than it sounds at night in July.

Fires need permission. There are fire pits around the park. The park’s rules say a fire needs the office’s permission and goes only in the fireplaces provided. We did not light one.

Check-out is 10 am, strictly. The park’s rules charge an extra day if you are late.

It suits a group watching the budget. This was the cheaper way into the Snowy Mountains for three families who wanted to spend less rather than more, and it was — paid for in time in the car.

Still to come. What the park is like in a season other than winter. The written guide will say so when we have been back.

• Lake Eucumbene — trout, and the drowned townThe park is on the shore.Eucumbene is one of the best-known trout fisheries in the country and the lake is stocked; at low water the remains of old Adaminaby, the town moved in the 1950s for the Snowy Scheme, come back out of the water.The village you stay in is what was left behind.Free; a NSW fishing licence is required
• Yarrangobilly Caves and the thermal poolAbout an hour and a quarter north on the Snowy Mountains Highway.The thermal pool sits in the high twenties all year, which means swimming outdoors in July. Five caves, one of them self-guided.Access is a steep, partly unsealed loop road off the highway and the walk back up from the pool is a real climb.Check National Parks alerts before you drive — road and cave closures are common.Park entry applies; cave tours extra
• Perisher and the Smiggin Holes snowAbout ninety minutes each way.In winter, park entry is $29 a vehicle a day and two-wheel-drive vehicles must carry chains inside Kosciuszko National Park.Kosciuszko Road is closed beyond Perisher to Charlotte Pass from June to the October long weekend.$29 per vehicle per day in winter, $17 otherwise
• Adaminaby and the Big TroutEight kilometres away, and the nearest shop, pub and fuel.The ten-metre concrete trout has stood there since 1973.Do not plan on late-night supplies from anywhere closer.Free
• Kiandra and the Snowy Scheme countryNorth along the highway towards Yarrangobilly — the old goldfield where Australian skiing began in the 1860s.There is little left standing, and the 2019–20 fires went through it, which is visible in every direction from the road.Free, inside the national park
• CoomaAbout 35 minutes east, and the nearest town of any size.Supermarkets, the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre, and the last dependable fuel if you are heading further into the mountains.Free

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