Dinner Plain – Dog Friendly Snow Day
Australia, everything snow is pretty much located within National Park, where you can’t have dogs – except for Dinner Plain.
Dinner Plain is located on the edge of Alpine National Park, just 12kms South of Mt Hotham Ski Resort, yet still at 1,600 meters above sea level. Snow country. A snow village, is more precise.
Accommodation at Dinner Plain is ridiculous, thousands per night, but Omeo is 35 minutes at the base of the mountain and very affordable. There are normal options available in Omeo, or if you have a caravan or camper, you can have a powered site for $40 a night at Omeo Holiday Park, which has clean amenities and plenty of room. Its not busy there during Winter. Cheaper for non-powered.
We wanted to take our Cavoodles to the snow, so we booked a few nights at Omeo Holiday Park on a powered site, used the shower and toilet blocks, and found it very reasonable, safe, clean and generally a nice place to be.
Our dogs had an absolute blast. I honestly couldn’t believe how many dogs were running around there. Approximately 25% of all people there had a dog with them.
Dinner Plain is more about track walking and tobogganing, not so much skiing itself. Great to just walk around in the snow, visit cafes and such, let the dogs experience snow.
You don’t need a park pass for Dinner Plain. If driving from Omeo, the ranger entry is after Dinner Plain, and if driving from the Harrietville side, as long as you aren’t stopping for any reason within the gates where a park pass is required, then you don’t need one to drive through on the Great Alpine Road. I do mean you can’t stop from one Ranger station to the next, not even for the toilet, lookout, nada, otherwise you have to pay the park fee and cameras record everything between the two sides of Hotham.
You will need chains, or to have them in your vehicle, again, not worth the $500 fine. You need them even for Dinner Plain, legal requirement during winter months.
For the sum total of our fuel, food, $40 chain hire and $120 for three nights powered site use, this was seriously one of the best, affordable, snow adventures.
