Mrs Mac's Cross

Mrs Mac's Cross is a cross made with daffodils, planted on a hillside in Kosciuszko National Park on 13 December 1978, opposite the ruins of the Hotel Kosciusko. It is approximately 4m wide, by 6m long, and appears to travellers on the nearby road in spring as a golden cross on the hillside.

Published Article

An article AbOUT the cross was published in 1978 in the now defunct Woman's World, by Dale McManus. The text of the article follows:

For a few weeks in late spring each year, passers-by on the road from Jindabyne to Smiggin's Holes in the Kosciuszko National Park see on a hillside still brown from newly melted snow, a cross of gold. Obviously not a natural formation, they wonder how it originated.

The story began in the days before the Perisher Valley was a tourist resort – when only the Government Tourist Bureau’s Hotel Kosciusko and the Chalet, 17km further along the road to the Summit, constituted the total built-up area.

When the Hotel Kosciusko burnt to the ground in 1951, all that remained that was habitable (and I use the term loosely!) was a barracks from pre-Hotel Kosciusko days, the shell of the four storey staff quarters, the stables and a vast corrugated iron shed. To keep the amenities of the area going, a staff of stalwarts moved into this barracks and the shed was converted into a bar (“a regular bloodhouse” as one Sydney newspaper report branded it in the early days of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a ski-hire room and a tiny primitive post office.

The postmistress, Mrs. Minnie McManus, became a legend as the only contact for the press, radio and television wanting snow reports (this was decades before mobile phones, internet or even dial phones!)

During the summer, activity waned. Mrs. McManus, always a lover of flowers, began to transplant daffodil bulbs from the clotted border of what had once been the croquet lawn of the gracious old Hotel Kosciusko. Little clumps appeared around the general area, but she thought it would be nice to make something really eye-catching.

The idea of a cross as a possible “drive-safely” inspiration came to her. So during the summer, she trudged across to the hillside with baskets of bulbs and began her project.

The next year, her husband died and the idea of making the cross a memorial to her beloved Bert replaced the original rather nebulous plan.

Each year as the bulbs multiply, the cross becomes more and more golden and though “Mrs. Mac” left Kosciusko area in 1967, it is only for the last few years that the cross has been remarkable. Mrs. Mac died in 1977.

There are now many legends about the origin of the cross of daffodils. Just to put the record straight, it is, as the local people know, “Mrs. Mac’s cross.”