Australia: Skiing With the Family?

The skiing regions in Australia are on the Great Dividing Range, which is the main range of mountains running along the east coast of Australia.

Australian ski slopes tend to be relatively short so while there is excellent cross country skiing the downhill resorts that we are used to in Europe there are only really two states in Australia with ski resorts.

In New South Wales there are the resports of Perisher and Thredbo and in Victoria, Tripadvsor recommends Falls Creek, Mt Hotham and Mt Buller as good places to start.

Perisher

Perisher is widely considered as Australia's premier skiing resort in Kosciuszko National Park in South Eastern NSW, and is Australia's biggest alpine resort. This resort is the combination of 4 separate resorts:
Perisher; BlueCow, Smiggin Holes and Guthega with the ski lift allowing access to all four ski resorts.

Perisher Ski Map

With 47 lifts over 3075 acres, the ski runs are divided into beginner 22%, intermediate 60% and advanced runs at 18% so it is the ideal resort to spend a week skiing with the family.

Opens Saturday 7th June 2014 until Monday October 6th 2014

Thredbo

500km south of Sydney is much smaller than Perisher and opens the same weekend on June 7th.  It has the longest ski run in Australia at 5.9 km but with only 14 lifts over 480 acres it is more limited than Perisher when it comes to skiing.

Falls Creek

An Alpine style modern family resort it is situated 300km from Melbourne adjacent to the Bogong High Plains which forms part of the Alpine National Park. Falls Creek’s Village is located at 1600m above sea level while the resort ranges in elevation from 1210m to 1842m. With 14 lifts over 1115 acres this is a fair sized resort with short intermediate runs.

Aussiesnow.com.au have a brilliant website that goes into a lot of detail about the skiing and snowboarding resorts in Australia.

If you are heading off to the slopes for the first time with your family shortly then have a look at our "What to Pack" page  This article goes into what you really need to take and what added extras really help when taking young children for the first time.  Click on the PDF packing list and you can print the summary list off and add any extras and start planning!

Little Skiers ship regularly to Australia and New Zealand and use a fully tracked courier system so if you need some funky designed ski jackets or ski trainer reins to help teach your kids to ski then have a look at Little Skiers - the bonus for Australian customers are a large amount of stock is on sale as our season has ended!