The winter landscape at Mt Kosciuszko is just stunning. Like most winter-time visitors, we come here to ski. Whilst it can be hit and miss with the snow cover, the landscape is always beautiful. One of the most striking features are the snow gums. They always catch my eye. They are so distinctively Australian. When you’re skiing among the snow gums, you couldn’t be anywhere else in the world but Australia.
These huge, heavy trunked, ancient trees are real survivors in the harsh alpine conditions. The most striking ones have rainbow coloured bark. It’s hard to imagine that the shades of yellow, rusty-red and orange, creamy-white, green and silvery-grey patterning is not painted on.
We are curious to know what caused this. It seems that the gum sheds its bark at different stages and the exposed strips change colour over time so that at any given time you might have several different shades of colour on the one trunk. It’s quite unique.
NOTE: To enter the Kościuszko National Park you either need to have a National Parks pass or pay the daily car fee. A day pass this year was $29 (a year pass was $190 but includes all NSW national parks). The good bit is that you pay per car, not per person, so a family in the one car only pays one fee.
