The snow also means good skiing for those many residents who like the winter sport. But for earlier generations out in the mountains that snow could represent a major - if not fatal - ordeal.

Almost as soon as settlers began taking stock into what is now the northern end of Kosciuszko National Park, the snow took a toll. Many stock died on the high plains in the 1830s when blizzards suddenly struck.

Graziers and stockmen realised that the climate was a force to be reckoned with.

Despite this, and the fact that the later snow-lease grazing was essentially a summer activity, some graziers on the plains like Currango and Cooleman and elsewhere did have stock up there year round.

But it was a hard life for the men who had to tend them, and loss was always a possibility.

Thomas Oldfield, a member of that large clan descended from convict Joseph Oldfield - a clan which in time ran stock in much of what would become Namadgi and Kosciuszko - worked for George De Salis at Cooleman and had many snowy experiences.

In July 1878 he reported that there was nearly a metre of snow at Cooleman. In July 1882 it took two men a week to get down from Cooleman to Cuppacumbalong and at the end of that winter Oldfield told De Salis that half of the 800-strong herd at Cooleman had died.

Oldfield was no wimp. By 1884 he and wife Hannah had taken up a selection on those high plains at The Pockets - around 1300m elevation or twice Canberra's height.

The family, with young children, had its share of white winters. He could certainly ride too. When his mother was on her deathbed in 1887 he rode from Cooleman to Naas in an amazing four hours and 15 minutes - less than half the normal time. But he arrived too late.

In the 20^th century, other Oldfields had trying experiences with snow and stock. The snow leases by then had to be vacated each year by the end of May, and invariably in some years that meant battling an early blizzard.

One year, Max Oldfield and his father Ted were bringing 2000 sheep and a few cattle back from Long Plain to Naas. Snow fell heavily and Max had to drive the cattle and pack horses back and forth every kilometre to break a track for the sheep to follow.

Without feed due to the snow, when the sheep eventually saw grass again in the upper Cotter, they "just went everywhere, just exploded", said Max. It took Max and his faithful dogs some time to get the sheep back together.

Dulcie White, who later married Jack Oldfield, accompanied her father Dan to the leases and she too was caught in early snow.

She told me in 1990, "The last winter I remember coming out of [the Blue Waterhole lease] with my father, I suppose it was about '49. That was a rough day - it snowed and was pretty cold."

Ralph "Stumpy" Oldfield had similar experiences, with half a metre of snow at Murray Gap on the stock route.

"It was terrible, shocking" on these snowy trips with sheep strung out for kilometres, he told me at his Tharwa home 30 years ago.

Life on the rural properties even without stock movements could be hard in winter. Colin Curtis and his brother Norman as boys in 1949 had their schooling interrupted by snow. Living in the far south of the ACT, they couldn't ride to Shannons Flat school.

"Norman and I never got to school for six weeks," said Colin. "Only the top barbed wire of a four-foot, two-inch fence was showing."

As an adult with his wife Daphne at their Mt Clear property in the 1960s, Colin's life was still shaped by cold.

Not only did water pipes freeze; Daphne said to me, "I can remember there several times, you'd boil the kettle to have a cuppa before you went to bed and you'd get up the next morning and it'd be frozen solid ... The big old kangaroo or possum rug or whatever seemed to be very popular," she exclaimed during our interview.

Colin hung part of a slaughtered bullock in a tree for the winter and cut the steaks off as needed; the meat always seemed to stay fresh.

Snow could be deadly. As reported in the local press back in mid-winter 1907, Gudgenby station manager James Davin was overdue from a trip to Adaminaby. His horse and saddle were found near The Gulf (downstream of today's Tantangara Dam), but no sign of Davin.

So locals began a search and they found the dead Davin.

Hughie Read inherited the story from his parents and said to me how "It was snowing and [Davin] was drinking rum - rum's no good to you in cold weather - and he'd got down and he died.

"And the dog was sleeping on the tail of his coat, under his knees."

Even funerals were sometimes made difficult by snow.

Elderly Davey Brayshaw died of exposure in the Bobeyan valley in August 1931 following a fall from his horse.

He was to be buried at the (Old) Adaminaby cemetery but heavy snowfalls the previous night blocked the roads near Bobeyan and locals had to work hard for several hours to clear the way for the undertaker to get through.

For previous generations in the high country, winter had a different meaning than it has for many of us today.

Mingled with the beauty of that Canberra view out to new snow on Mt Gingera or Tidbinbilla, these echoes of past experience continue to resound.