The second snow gum summit will happen on Ngarigo Country in Jindabyne over the weekend of March 14 and 15 next year.
The first summit happened at Dinner Plain earlier this year, attracting about 100 people, who heard from wonderful speakers.
Tickets for the 2026 gathering have just gone on sale. Like the 2025 event, this is expected to sell out, so grab one today if you’re planning to attend.
We produce Mountain journal magazine once a year, and distribute 1,000 copies for free in breweries, cafes, gear shops, and info centres in valley towns and resorts between Melbourne and Canberra, plus in mountain huts across the high country. It is intended for outdoors people who love the mountains. The magazine is also produced as a PDF and freely available on the website (here).
We now have a theme for the 2026 edition: managing change in the mountains, which will aim to delve into the complex issues of new people and groups who are now visiting the mountains, and how we can welcome these groups while ensuring everyone has a good and safe time in the hills.
Now we need to find the funds to make it happen.
Continue reading “Can you help us to print and distribute mountain journal mag 2026?”
Mountain Journal magazine theme – 2026
The mountains are changing – are we ready?
Change is everywhere. As the snow line slowly but steadily climbs higher up the mountains, climate change is impacting on winter as we know it. Erratic weather, boom and bust snow cycles, the borderline rain that should be falling as snow. Businesses and mountain staff feel the brunt of these more unpredictable days. Winter ice skating and regular snow on the lower peaks is already fading into the distance as we move into an uncertain century of unprecedented warming. In summer we often face the challenges that come with longer and more intense fire seasons.
Continue reading “We have a theme for mountain journal 6 & would love your contributions”
The Tasmanian National Parks Association (TNPA) recently dedicated an issue of their newsletter to the question of how to manage wild fire in Western Tasmania. As has been widely noted, including here at Mountain Journal, fires having been getting more intense in western lutruwita/ Tasmania since a ‘tipping point’ sometime around the year 2000. Since then, there has been an increase in the number of lightning-caused fires and an increase in the average size of the fires, “resulting in a marked increase in the area burnt”.
As TNPA notes in the introduction:
The direct impacts of climate change for Tasmania are changes to weather patterns with corresponding changes to levels of temperature, rainfall and evaporation – most likely a warmer, drier climate overall.
The outcomes of some of these changes are beyond our ability to influence. For example, there are no options for protecting an entire landscape from drought, although it may be possible to save examples of individual species.
As discussed in the following essays, the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires is already resulting in demonstrable impacts on some of Tasmania’s most highly valued species and ecosystems (paleoendemics and alpine ecosystems) and options do exist for how it is managed.
Continue reading “Fire: how do we control things when we can’t control things?”
Snow Gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora) are the classic tree of the Australian High Country. They are profoundly different to the trees found in mountain areas in other parts of the world, and give a uniquely Australian sense to our high country. However, they are facing a double threat: they are at risk from dieback and climate change driven bushfires.
Like most eucalypt species, the snow gum can survive fire. However, climate change is leading to more frequent and intense fire, which is causing more death of trees and changes to forest structure. And while dieback, caused by a native beetle, is a natural occurrence, the dieback is getting worse and more widespread because climate change is making winters warmer and summers drier and hotter.
While most snow gums in Victoria are included in national parks, we are on the verge of losing the landscapes that we spent decades protecting.
Friends of the Earth have been running a campaign to ensure that the Victorian government acts in a meaningful way to head off these threats. Here is an update on recent progress made in the campaign, and new directions in the work.
A secret plan to revive the cable car
As has been reported here for years there has been a long community campaign against plans by a developer to build a cable car up the face of Mt Wellington / kunanyi. It has long been supported by the Tasmanian government.
Whenever it seems like the battle has been won, the proposal resurfaces like a zombie at the end of a horror movie.
Now, it appears that it is back once more, and Respect the Mountain – no cable car is asking people to send a submission opposing the proposal.
Continue reading “Take action to protect kunanyi/ Mt Wellington. Again!”
Although most of our mountains are still a wild landscape, largely free of housing and direct development, they are a deeply peopled landscape. In the ‘story’ of the high country, the cattle people have been dramatically over represented in films, books, books and even poetry. First Nations people barely get a mention. The hydro workers have a lot of literature around their story and mining is a distinct sub set of history, although when Australians think of our mining history, I don’ think many connect with mining in the high country.
I spend a lot of time around the Mt Hotham – Dinner Plain area, and mining features in the early story of those places. And there is one story that often intrigues me that doesn’t seem to have an answer. What happened with the miner’s strike near Mt Hotham in 1883?
Continue reading “What happened after the miners strike at the Cobungra Ditch?”
Mountain Journal started as a website in the summer doldrums of 2010. In 2021, it finally emerged in print form as a covid lockdown inspired project. Since then there have been five annual editions produced. It is written each summer and distributed through mountain areas each autumn and winter.
As we get to the end of 2025, we are thinking about the 2026 edition and would welcome your ideas and contributions.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Protect our Winters (POW) recently collaborated on a series of events in north east Victoria as both groups aim to ramp up their efforts in that part of the state in coming months.
There has been a long community-led campaign to oppose the plan to build a cable car up the face of kunanyi/ Mt Wellington, the mountain above Nipaluna/ Hobart. (You can read the many MJ stories on the topic here).
You may have heard of a new push by the government for a cable car.
The following information comes from Residents Opposed to the Cable Car.
Continue reading “A new push for a cable car on kunanyi/ Mt Wellington”
For years now we have covered the debate around the Victorian governments plan to radically upgrade the Falls to Hotham Crossing (you can find stories here). It would upgrade the current walk, diverting it via Mt Feathertop and The Razorback, and is deeply unpopular among most outdoors users and environmentalists as it would introduce private commercial infrastructure in the Alpine national park.
While this is a state government initiative, there is now a very short period of time to make a submission to the federal government about the proposal. This is because it is being reviewed under the federal nature laws (called the EPBC). Opportunities for public comment close on November 10, 2025. Please take a few minutes to send in a personal submission.
Continue reading “The federal gov is assessing the Falls to Hotham development”
Back in 2022, I helped host an event at Mt Hotham called Climate change, fire and the Alps. I remember being struck by something that was said by one of the speakers. Craig Hore, who at that point was a Ranger in Charge of Fire and Emergency Operations North East District, at Parks Victoria, reflected on his long connection to the mountains. Fire regimes in the high country have changed in the last quarter century, with more frequent and intense fires.
Craig reflected on the fact that since the fires of 2002/3, the mountains have been transformed. With ever more frequent fire and drier conditions, he doesn’t think that we can go back to what the Alps used to be like. In his early days as a Ranger he could drive through older forests for hours. But now so much of the park has been badly impacted by fires. “I doubt we will ever see those old forests again.”
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