Victoria’s largest ski resort just got a bougie glam-up with the unveiling of a 10-metre-high sculpture to mark the opening weekend of the ski season.
Suspended over the snow-covered crags above Falls Creek, the super-sized installation greeted powder hounds in a geometric bloom of golden petals as they returned to the ski fields for the first time this year.
And if you thought art was for viewing not touching, hold on to your helmets because this immersive artwork is part sculpture, part public viewing platform. Follow the walkway between the petals for an over-the-edge-of-the-mountain view of the alps like they’ve never been seen before.
The new sculpture Flower of the Alpine Sun by Giovanni Veronesi is revealed at Falls Creek. (Credit: Catherine Best)
The $750,000-plus Flower of the Alpine Sun artwork was officially unveiled on day one of the 2026 ski season, as snowboarders and skiers zipped up Halley’s Comet Chairlift for the first runs of the year.
Trumpeted as one of the highest-altitude artworks in Australia (certainly the largest in the alps), the Alpine Sun sits at an elevation of more than 1,600 metres. You’ll find it near Cloud 9, the newly renovated restaurant at the gateway to Mouse Trap, the beginners’ ski run at the top of Halley’s Comet.
Dine at Cloud 9, the newly renovated restaurant.(Credit: Peter Bennetts)
The ski season opens at Falls Creek. (Credit: Peter Bennett)
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Meet the artist
Milan-born Australian artist Giovanni Veronesi created the sculpture after taking a punt on an off-brief design. The original brief called for a sculpture in the village carpark, but Veronesi thought it would be epic to create an artwork ‘lookout’ on the mountain.
Drawing on his love of the alps and geometric fabrication, he designed a walk-through sculpture that frames a mountain panorama across Falls Creek village and beyond.
Falls Creek Resort’s Fred Weir (left) and artist Giovanni Veronesi at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Alpine Sun. (Image: Supplied)
“There is something about when you have those really cold winter days, when the sky is deep blue and the sun is blazing, and you can feel the wind biting your face while you’re skiing. I’ve always associated it with the feeling of being really alive, and so I wanted to put that feeling into physical form and share it with the audience," Veronesi says.
The sculpture, funded by the Victorian Government’s Alpine Business Support Package, was unveiled shortly after a winter blast dumped 32cm of snow on Falls Creek, raising hopes of a bumper ski season.
What’s new at Falls Creek in 2026
Soak in the new hot and cold mineral plunge pools at Nelse Lodge. (Credit: Supplied)
In addition to Falls’ new mountain bling, snowcationers can also expect a revitalised lineup of aprés-ski entertainment and hospitality. Nelse Lodge, one of the mountain’s original 1950s lodgings, has reopened to the public after a five-year makeover. The lodge, which operates as a ski resort in winter and high-performance athletes’ hub in summer, has a new 12-person sauna, hot-and-cold mineral plunge pools, gym, and reimagined Euro-inspired bar and restaurant.
Cooroona Alpine Lodge has launched its luxe Skyline Penthouse Apartments, promising some of the lushest digs on the mountain, as well as an expanded menu at on-site restaurant Cooroona Cantina. For aprés done your way, Cloud 9 Restaurant now offers live music on the mountain, while Lakeside’s new afternoon soirée serves up fireside aperitivo snacks and spritz. Did we mention it’s the best place to watch the Thursday evening fireworks?
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Falls faves
Warm up at Astra Falls Creek. (Credit: The View From Here/ Visit Victoria)
If you fancy your powder with a side of pampering, check in to Astra Falls Creek. The lodge has been named the Best Boutique Ski Hotel in the World Ski Awards for 10 consecutive years for good reason. If you can’t afford to stay here, at least splurge on a treatment in the spa or cosy up on the leather couch with a cocktail by the fire. If you ask nicely, the staff will even proffer marshmallows for your toasting pleasure.
Harvey Hour at locals’ favourite the Falls Creek Hotel has become a village tradition, with punters flocking to the balcony overlooking the Village Bowl for jugs of Harvey Wallbanger. It’s little wonder the pub has become Australia’s biggest importer of Galliano.
When you pass through the bowl, keep a lookout for the old 1960s ticket booth, today home to Falls Creek Distillery. This ‘gin with altitude’ is distilled with alpine botanicals and can be enjoyed at venues throughout the High Country. Don’t leave town before grabbing a hot jam donut at Snownuts Donuts at the bottom of Halley’s Comet to fuel your on-mountain adventures.
Grab a deal
Celebrate ski season for less. (Credit: Chris Hocking/Visit Victoria)
For a more wallet-friendly snow stay, take advantage of the early-bird specials. Falls Creek accommodation providers are offering up to 30 per cent off early-season bookings, while the Epic Australia 4-Day Pass offers lift access at three resorts – Falls Creek, Hotham and Perisher – for $669, (on sale until 17 June). New to snow sports? Try the new Epic Beginner Bundle – offering three days’ beginner lift access, group lessons and rentals for $499.
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The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.
There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd. In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.
Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.
‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.
Exchanging city chaos for country calm
The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)
I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.
I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.
The trails and treasures of the Grampians
Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)
Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.
Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles. I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.
Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)
There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail, Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.
Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.
“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.
Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)
We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.
Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)
The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.
What else is on offer in The Grampians?
Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)
You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.
And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).
Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)
Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.
The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.
Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)
There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.
The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.
Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.
And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.
Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)
You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.
A traveller’s checklist
Staying there
Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity.
