Selwyn Snow Resort
Burned to the ground by the Dunns Road fire on 4 January 2020, the Snowy Mountains resort lost every building and sat shut for three winters before reopening in June 2023.
- Region
- New South Wales
- Country
- Australia
- Status
- reopened
- Year closed
- 2020
- Reason for closure
- The Dunns Road bushfire, part of Australia's Black Summer, swept through the Snowy Mountains and destroyed the resort on 4 January 2020. Every building - the day lodge, the workshop, the staff accommodation - was lost and the ski lifts were damaged. A rebuild aimed at winter 2022 was pushed back by pandemic material shortages and early snowfall, and the resort stayed closed for three seasons.
History
Selwyn lies in the northern Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, near Cabramurra - the highest town in Australia, whose own ski tow is a separate entry in this dataset and closed in 2016. Selwyn was the family and beginner mountain of the range, and on 4 January 2020 the Dunns Road fire, one of the Black Summer blazes, ran through it. The resort manager reported every building a loss: day lodge, workshop, staff accommodation, the lot, with the ski lifts damaged as well. Unlike Mount Buffalo, where fire in 2006 ended alpine skiing for good, Selwyn's operators committed immediately to rebuilding, but the job took far longer than intended - a target of June 2022 slipped because of pandemic material shortages and an early snowfall - and the mountain stayed shut for three winters. It reopened in June 2023 with a new Selwyn Centre, an upgraded New Chum chairlift rebuilt by Doppelmayr Australia, additional snowmaking and a purpose-built toboggan park with a snow carpet. It is included here as a resort that was genuinely destroyed and genuinely came back, a useful counterpoint to the fire closures elsewhere in this dataset that never did. The resort's opening year and its full historic lift inventory are not established in accessible sources.
Lifts
| Name | Type | Manufacturer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Chum | Chairlift | Doppelmayr | Damaged in the January 2020 fire and upgraded by Doppelmayr Australia as part of the rebuild |
| Unnamed lift | Surface lift | A snow carpet installed on a purpose-built toboggan park during the rebuild |
Sources and further reading
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-06/nsw-fires-selwyn-ski-resort-completely-destroyed/11844142
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-05/selwyn-snow-resort-returns-to-snowy-mountains-after-bushires/102425588
- https://selwynsnow.com.au/about/rebuild/
- https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6568647/pretty-confronting-selwyn-vows-to-rebuild-after-dunns-road-bushfire-devastates-ski-resort/
- https://snowbrains.com/australian-selwyn-snow-resort-to-reopen-after-being-burned-to-the-ground-in-2020-bushfires/
More in Australia
Location
-35.9088, 148.4517