Farm Stays in Snowy Mountains, NSW

The Snowy Mountains are Australia's high country in the truest sense — the roof of the continent, where cattle and horse properties around Jindabyne, Berridale, Adaminaby and the Monaro plains sit at 800 to 1,000 metres beneath the peaks of Kosciuszko National Park. This is big, open, treeless-hilled grazing country: granite tors, snowgrass, wide skies, and air that feels scrubbed clean even in midsummer. Sydney is about five hours away, Canberra two and a bit, and the last hour of the drive is the best part.

A farm stay in the Snowy Mountains changes completely with the season. Winter properties become ski bases — many farms sit 20 to 40 minutes from the Thredbo and Perisher lifts, with wood heaters, boot-drying rooms and paddocks under frost or snow. Summer and autumn are the graziers' seasons: mustering, fishing the Thredbo and Eucumbene rivers for trout, hiking to the main range, and evenings cold enough for a fire even in January.

This is also the spiritual home of Australian horse culture — brumby country, the landscape of Banjo Paterson's stockmen — and it remains one of the best places in the country to travel with your own horse. A number of properties offer yards and paddocks for guest horses, and riders can access historic stock routes and trail networks that run for days through the foothills. If a bring-your-horse holiday is on your list, this is the region to start with.