Shiver House V4 by NEON was unveiled as part of the new suite of tourism highlights in the Snowy Valleys this week. Photo: Forestry Corporation of NSW.
The Snowy Valleys community has long cherished the mystic towering beauty of Sugar Pines, a landmark pine plantation lost in the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires.
This week they celebrated the return of that legacy with the announcement a massive new program of works across the Snowy Valleys includes a new Sugar Pines visitor area in Bago State Forest.
Located near the small village of Laurel Hill, the long-awaited development is the final chapter in a five-year story that began with the loss of the century-old plantation.
The deep green jewel in the crown of the region, the sugar pine forest was a place of adventure and wild imagining for locals and visitors, and a dream location for anyone with a camera or wedding bouquet.
With that in mind, a wedding arbour now takes pride of place in the newly-planted Sugar Pines grove – which took root in 2021 with the planting of more than 1500 seedlings – alongside a children’s nature playground and picnic area.
But that’s not all.
The gradually forming plantation is now also home to several new artworks forming part of Sculpture by the Sea’s inland initiative Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail – a 150-kilometre permanent public collection of nearly 60 sculptures in 12 locations across the Snowy Valleys – with Australian artist Stephen King’s striking work Grid Study IV visible from the Sugar Pines carpark.
Not far away stands another new sculpture – unveiled this week as part of the celebrations – called Shiver House V4 by NEON, a stark white, stunning and radical reinvention of a common Finnish hut (mökki).
The sculpture trail, another post Black Summer bushfires initiative, is proving quite the drawcard to the region with the Bago State Forest the centrepiece to this cultural experience.
Adding to the artistic arsenal and six kilometres down Kopsens Road from the Sugar Pines, Phantoms of Corporality – Urban Islands by Czech artist Vojtech Mica was also unveiled this week along the 1.5-kilometre Alpine Ash Walk at Pilot Hill Arboretum.
The Alpine Ash Walk is accessed via Pilot Hill Arboretum – with its 100-year-old plantings of more than 50 international tree species which miraculously survived the Black Summer fires – and is home to sculptural works that form part of the Bago Sculpture Forest.
A wedding arbour now sits in the new plantation of sugar pines in Bago State Forest, near Laurel Hill in the Snowy Valleys. Photo: Forestry Corporation of NSW.
The $2 million program ‘Enhancing Nature Based Tourism’ project, funded by the NSW Government and completed by Forestry Corporation and its partners, includes a reinvigorated Alpine Ash Walk and a new Wellness Walk at Pilot Hill Arboretum.
Rounding the project out are environmental and visitor improvements at Paddys River and Paling Yards in the south of Bago State Forest and upgrades to the Lochinvar Rest Area in Green Hills State Forest on Batlow Road.
For equestrian enthusiasts, the new Haenigs Horse Trail now connects Paddys River Dam and Paling Yards.
A strong focus of that project has been the inclusion of armoured watercourse crossings at Paling Yards – which features areas of Montane Peatland, a high-altitude wetland system – while enabling visitor experiences for bushwalking, horse riding, fishing and camping.
Sculpture by the Sea founding CEO and artistic director David Handley said the feedback they were getting from visitors and locals about the sculptures, especially at Pilot Hill Arboretum and Alpine Ash Walk was positive with a considerable increase in visitation.
“We are grateful for the shared vision by many to achieve this great result,” Mr Handley said.
Forestry Corporation of NSW CEO Anshul Chaudhary said this program of forest-based environment and tourism works had helped the community to reposition as a regional tourism destination and had brought visitors back to the beautiful Snowy Valleys.
“The forest and timber industry has always been an important part of the local community in the Snowy Valleys,” he said.
“Our pine plantations and alpine ash forests were devastated by the Black Summer bushfires and together with our staff, the timber industry, partners and community we have rebuilt and reinvested in our forests,” Mr Chaudhary said.
Bago State Forest consists of pine plantations and native forests and covers an area of more than 50,000 hectares between Tumbarumba, Laurel Hill, Batlow, Tumut and Talbingo.
