Australia’s 5 highest boat ramps

Boating doesn't always have to be about coastlines. Some of Australia's more spectacular waterways happen to be inland and well away from the coastal fringe.

Once you head inland, the waterways you take to will be above sea level. In the case of a few of Australia's inland waterways, this can be well above sea level. Yep, we're talking thousands of metres.

Snow in parts of Australia will regularly fall as low as 700m, and sometimes as low as 300m if there’s an extreme weather event whipping up winds that feel as though they’ve come straight off Antarctica.

But a dusting of snow is not the only threat. Some of these lakes will have year-round temperatures that struggle to get into double figures, so the chance of being exposed to hypothermia if you come into contact with the water is extreme. 

So where are Australia’s highest boat ramps? Here are the five highest that we can find. Feel free to let us know if we happen to miss one.

Before you go backing up the Toyota LandCruiser to the 7.0-metre offshore catamaran in the hope of ticking Australia’s highest boat ramp off the bucket list, there’s something you need to know – Rocky Valley Storage has a 15hp engine limit. 

The tinnie it is, then.

The manmade Rocky Valley Storage is small, at 265 hectares and measuring around 8.7km long and 2.5km wide. Its main source is seasonal snowmelt, with the water used to power the Keiwa Valley’s hydroelectric scheme.

Getting there is a pain in the arse. For starters, it’s a five-hour drive from Melbourne, with the last 30km along tight and twisted mountain roads when coming in via Mt Beauty. If you’re keen, you can also access the tank via the Omeo Highway, but that would add another three hours.

The road is generally closed during the snow season for obvious reasons, not to mention that in a harsher winter the lake will often freeze over completely rather than just around the edges.

Rocky Valley Storage is known for its rainbow trout fishing, with the lake regularly stocked in previous years – although finding out when it was last stocked is difficult. Given the harsh extremes, fish caught here tend to be small, with many anglers opting to catch and release than claim a trophy.

There’s a single gravel boat ramp that may need the services of an all-wheel-drive vehicle in anything but dry conditions.

Australia’s snow line – often identified by where the vegetation predominantly becomes snowgums – is generally around 1200m, so the Eucumbene Dam sits just below that.

The Eucumbene Dam is the largest body of water in the Snowy River Scheme, located on the southern fringe of the Kosciuszko National Park.

Cold, narrow and filled with tortured-looking dead trees, it’s a visually stunning site to visit. It also holds the equivalent of nine Sydney Harbours in its relatively shallow format – at its deepest point it is only about 38m.

There are a number of boat ramps scattered around the dam so access is relatively good, although they vary from concrete to dirt, so consider which vehicle you use carefully.

Getting there is either a breeze or a trial depending on where you live; from Canberra, it’s a lazy 2.5-hour trip, but from Sydney, it’s a minimum five-hour haul, and Melbourne … well, let’s not even bother.

But the fishing is good, with brown and rainbow trout in abundance. The record for the lake is a monster caught in the late 1960s and weighing around 10kg.

This lake started as a natural body of water but was dammed to increase its capacity in the 1920s, and again in the 1960s.

The lake is essentially split into two, with a large, open northern section with plenty of trout and narrower, more tourist-heavy southern section where the trout are harder to find. 

Even though the 22km-long and 11km-wide lake is almost in the geographical centre of Tasmania, it's still only around two hours from the centre of Hobart to the Great Lake shoreline, or 90 minutes from Launceston.

Most of the tourism is focused around the southern part of the lake, so anyone launching a boat normally heads north for the day.

The quality of boat ramps varies from quite rustic on the south-eastern side to concrete structures with floating pontoons on the south-western side.

The lake is recognised as one of Tasmania's best spots for targeting brown and rainbow trout, but it pays to check if the lake is only open to fly fishing before you set off for the day – seasonal restrictions help to keep fish numbers healthy.

On a cold day you can easily expect it to snow.

Most people will be familiar with Jindabyne as a stopover on the way to the NSW snowfields. However, that big body of water you see form the road is a big tourist hotspot, particularly over summer.

Long and relatively narrow, and fed by the famous Snowy River, the manmade dam even has its own yacht club nestled on the shoreline. It's also one of the state's more popular waterski destinations, but only during the warmer months.

But Lake Jindabyne is also known for its fishing, with brook and rainbow trout, and even Atlantic salmon targeted.

Helping the lake's prospects is the nearby Gaden trout hatchery, which supplies much of the state with the fish needed for its inland waters restocking programs.

Jindabyne's boat ramps are all clustered around the southern end of the lake, and are pretty much fair weather access only if you have a two-wheel-drive vehicle.

If you visit the lake when water levels are low you can see the remnants of the old Jindabyne township, left over from when it was moved to make way for the new watercourse.

Those images of Jindabyne blanketed in snow indicate that it can get pretty cold out on the lake.

If getting away from everyone is your thing, Lake Sorell is a good place to visit.

There's not much there other than a campground with basic facilities, a rough-earth boat ramp and what will one day hopefully be some of Tasmania's best trout fishing.

Why one day? Lake Sorell has spent a fair bit of time closed to fishing as the Tasmanian Government grappled with a carp infestation that threatened all the other waterways in the area, including the nearby Great Lake.

The carp eradication program used trackers to trace where male carp were congregating, allowing authorities to target fish in that area. Unfortunately, efforts to eradicate carp also impacted the brown trout population.

Lake Sorell was re-opened to anglers last year for the first time in 25 years.

Lake Sorell is about two hours north of Hobart, and about the same from Launceston, making it within easy reach of day-trippers.