Australia’s Snowy River springs from the alpine snowmelt on Mt Kosciuszko, carving a 352-kilometre route through gorges, plains and forests before meeting Bass Strait at Marlo, Victoria. Our multi-day journey followed this legendary waterway, tracing its heartbeat. From Gippsland dairy flats to Kosciuszko’s rocky headwaters, every bend revealed a version of the Snowy, wild and restless. Gravel roads, high plains, and camping shaped the rhythm of travel.
Stratford to Barry Way
The trip began at Stratford in Gippsland’s heartland, where the Avon River flows past bovine paddocks. The landscape shifted gradually, flats giving way to rising granite and stringybark ridges, the air sharpening. The sealed road narrowed until, beyond Buchan, gravel took over and the Barry Way began its sway along the Snowy.
Few roads rival this one. It’s a masterpiece of shit, intrepid roads, narrow, raw, and unforgiving. Blind corners, stones, corrugation, and sheer drops to the Snowy below. Where the road clings to the hillside, you sense insignificance: an ancient river at work, humans merely passing through.
As you ascend, the river’s snarl grows deeper, the colour shifting from ice blue to copper-green. Above, wedge-tailed eagles ride thermals; below, the Snowy washes boulders smooth. Every kilometre delivers Banjo Paterson’s mythology, not riders on wild horses, but travellers gripping the steering wheels of the domesticated Suzuki Jimny.
By dusk, we reached Willis Campground, straddling the NSW-Victoria border within Alpine National Park. Dropping from dusty road to riverbed felt like descending into the Snowy’s lungs. Pebble crunched underfoot, ankle-deep shallows. We pitched a tent among ghost gums, cooling air, the rush of water against stone; this was the Snowy in full stride, an artery cutting through the forest
Jindabyne
Morning brought the climb out of Willis Camp. The road unfolded through open pasture and snowgrass plain until Jindabyne’s lake shimmered into view, a human-made expanse holding back the Snowy’s flow. Its calm surface hid a twentieth-century epic of nation-building: the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, launched in the 1940s, channelled waters beneath to feed the thirsty Snowy River Scheme. Entire valleys vanished beneath the reservoir.
We stayed two nights in a well-appointed tiny house, days unfolded easily, coffee in town cafés, hikes along shoreline paths tracing where the river once ran free. The Snowy here was harnessed energy, its strength turned mechanical. Over evening beers, we watched the sky bruise purple.
Kosciuszko source, then Clarke Gorge
Kosciuszko Road wound upward through ribbons of snow gum and grassland. The higher we climbed, the more the river’s origin whispered through trickles beside the track. From our base at Kosciuszko Tourist Park, we set out early for the Summit Walk, a piss-easy 18-kilometre return tramp from Charlotte Pass across the exposed plateau. Across this high country, the Snowy River is still embryonic, a tiny stream of meltwater slicing through the tundra. Standing on Mt. Kosciuszko, the wind took away my words. The view of the Australian Alps looked like rolling, gentle waves. As an old continent, the mountains are small, rounded and underwhelming, but up here, the Snowy River’s potential is easily missed.
New Year’s Eve found us farther north in Kosciuszko National Park at Clarke Gorge, reached by the lumpy Long Plain Road through tundra flat plains. The track through Clarke Gorge traversed limestone ravines where streams spilled clear and cold over polished rock. We crossed on slippery stones, boots sodden. The place felt undisclosed, Kosciuszko’s inner secret.
Cooma to coastal forests
Descending to Cooma felt jarring after days of bush. Asphalt replaced dirt; cafés replaced the Jet Boil. Cooma wears its hydro history with pride. Statues of hard-hatted workers commemorate the 100,000 migrants who poured concrete and hope into the mountains through the 1950s and 60s. Their legacy is etched not just in tunnels but in Australia’s multicultural identity, shaped in these alpine valleys. A cheap motel room with a piping-hot shower and a Coles roast chicken felt extravagant.
From here, the road home bent south through sheep country, granite rocks the size of cottages, lone gums on wind-bitten slopes. Now and then the Snowy reappeared, glimpsed through hollows, quieter and slower as it neared its coastal plain. A tourist deluge began to fall at Cann River, the suburbs on wheels, drop point intrepidity.
We pressed on to Croajingolong National Park, settling at Thurra River Campground. Thurra River mirrors the Snowy’s lower temperament: smooth tannin pools, shifting dunes, the hush of distant surf. Evening walks followed the estuary mouth to the sea, where crabs scuttled sideways, and giant Monitor lizards walked confidently forward.
Marlo’s mouth
From here, the drive east to Marlo seemed an epilogue, the land flattening into coastal heath and sandbar. Marlo greeted us, the Snowy inlet opening into Bass Strait in a soft meeting of brown and blue. At low tide, the river spreads wide and slow, looping through reedbeds before surrendering to the surf.
Standing where saltwater lapped over our sandals, we considered the whole arc. From the delicate trickles beneath Kosciuszko to this tidal expanse, the Snowy’s story is one of transformation: natural power harnessed, released, and reborn. Fire and flood have sculpted its bends; engineers have chiselled its path; a thread stitching Australia’s physical and mythic landscapes together.
Driving back towards Sale, for those drawn to trace the Snowy from source to sea, the reward lies not just in scenery but in understanding what connects high granite to tidal silt. Its rhythm is Australia’s rhythm, the mediocre highs of its mountains, the tedious myths of nationhood, the dams, the power, the landscape often scarred, but always moving.
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