On-Walkabout In: Jindabyne, New South Wales

After driving through Cooma on the Monaro Highway, my wife and I made the turn on to the Snowy Mountains highway and headed for our next destination of Jindabyne:

Jindabyne is another town that was greatly effected by the Snowy Mountains Scheme.  This massive hydroelectric project may have caused the population of Cooma down the road to swell, but in Jindabyne it forced the entire moving of the town.  The old town of Jindabyne sits below the beautiful Lake Jindabyne today, which was formed by the damming of a nearby river:

It was a bit gloomy this time when my wife and I visited the lake:

However, as can be seen in this picture from our prior visit, Lake Jindabyne is incredibly beautiful with stunningly blue water:

The city was moved in the 1960’s before Lake Jindabyne was filled with water in 1967.  At its current present location Jindabyne is one of the highest towns in Australia by sitting at an altitude of 991 meters:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald Jindabyne like so many other places in Australia has a convict history:

But Strzelecki was hardly the first explorer or settler in the area. Jindabyne is associated with the earliest settlers in the Snowy Mountains – the Ryries and the Pendergasts. It is thought that the Pendergast brothers, sons of an ex-convict, arrived in the area as early as the 1820s and certainly by the late 1830s both the Pendergasts and the Ryries had runs and were raising sheep and growing a little wheat. The Ryries actually built a flour mill in the area in 1847.

The goldrush in 1859-60 gave the area a brief boost which resulted in the establishment of a general store and a post office (1862) and in 1882 a school was opened at Jindabyne with a Police Station being constructed the following year. The decision to release Rainbow trout into the Snowy River in 1894 was the beginning of a fishing tradition which continues today.

The lake along with the skiing at the nearby Kosciuszko National Park, has made Jindabyne a tourist haven both in the summer and winter.  The tourist nature of this town is evident by the number of hotels and cabins that dot this beautiful lake:

Jindabyne is also well known in Australian pop culture because of an Australian movie titled Jindabyne. I have seen the movie before and it isn’t to bad. It is worth watching just to see the spectacular Snowy Mountains scenery in the film.  Very beautifully shot.

Anyway on this trip we were going through Jindabyne in the autumn season, but the way the temperature was dropping from the approaching clouds it was easily beginning to feel like winter.  At our next destination of Thredbo we would find out that winter was indeed upon us.

To read more about what to eat and where to stay in Jindabyne, click here.

Next Posting: Snowy Thredbo