Best ski resorts in Australia

Mt Hotham is the Powder Capital of Australia, a ridgeline village strung along the Great Dividing Range above Bright and Harrietville. You arrive at the top and ski down into the resort, an inverted layout you will not find anywhere else in Australia.

Thredbo holds Australia's longest vertical drop at 672 metres and sits at the foot of Mt Kosciuszko, the continent's highest peak at 2228 metres. A pedestrian alpine village tumbles down terraced slopes, home of the Australian World Cup ski team and the country's most credible attempt at a European feel.

Perisher sprawls across four linked villages in Kosciuszko National Park, the largest ski resort in the Southern Hemisphere by lift count. Forty-seven lifts thread runs through ghostly snow gum forests, six hours from Sydney, two from Canberra. Modest peaks, big footprint, unmistakably Australian.

Falls Creek is the only Victorian resort with a car-free pedestrian village, the kind of place where snowcats deliver your bags to ski-in lodges at the door. Ninety trails roll across a rounded high plateau in the Victorian Alps, with deep Nordic roots and the Mt McKay backcountry rising behind.

Mt Buller is the closest major resort to Melbourne, just three hours up the Hume and Maroondah Highway. A pedestrian village hangs off the cliffside above the Delatite Valley, with 22 lifts, 80 km of pistes and the most piste kilometres of any Australian resort.