Adaminaby /ædəˈmɪnəbi/ is a small town near the Snowy Mountains north-west of Cooma, New South Wales, Australia, in the Snowy Monaro Regional Council. The historic town, of 301 people at the 2016 census, is a trout fishing centre and winter sports destination situated at 1,017 metres (3,337 ft) above sea level. Economic life is built around tourism and agriculture–the town serves as a service point for Selwyn Snowfields and the Northern Skifields. It is also a popular destination for horse riders, bushwalkers, fly-fishermen and water sports enthusiasts as well as a base for viewing aspects of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

Adaminaby is one of the highest towns in Australia, with regular snowfalls that are quite often heavy during winter. The historic Bolaro Station and scenic Yaouk Valley are located near the township and Charlie McKeahnie, said to be the inspiration for The Man From Snowy River, a poem by Banjo Paterson, lived and died in the district. Later, Nobel winning author Patrick White wrote about the town. The construction of nearby Lake Eucumbene made it necessary to re-locate the original township of (Old) Adaminaby in 1957. In times of drought, the original township and relics of the old valley re-emerge from under the waters of the lake. The present township is located on the Snowy Mountains Highway and is known as the "Home of The Big Trout" and the location of the Snowy Scheme Museum.

The Snowy Mountains region was an important gathering point for the First Nations peoples of the Adaminaby and surrounding districts for many thousands of years, with intertribal summer meetings being held in the High Country involving up to a thousand people for feasting on the Bogong Moth. This practice continued until around 1865.

Agriculture led to the early development of Adaminaby as a township and the Kiandra goldrush and subsequent history of skiing in the Northern Snowy Mountains opened up new opportunities for economic development. A number of noted Australian writers have found inspiration in the Adaminaby district.

Europeans penetrated the district from the late 1820s and Adaminaby first began to develop as an agricultural centre from the 1830s, with sheep and cattle becoming an economic mainstay.

Some historians believe that Banjo Paterson's most famous poem, "The Man from Snowy River", may have been inspired by the exploits of an Adaminaby stockman, Charlie McKeahnie. McKeahnie died in a riding accident in 1895 and is now buried in the Old Adaminaby Cemetery on the shores of Lake Eucumbene. Paterson's character, the Man From Snowy River, is most likely a composite character, based on various people involved in brumby hunts such as were conducted in the Adaminaby district.

Paterson was not the only Australian writer to find inspiration at Adaminaby – the poet Barcroft Boake also wrote about McKeahnie's ride in "On the Range", in which McKeahnie chases down a well-bred horse which had escaped with a brumby mob of wild horses; while Nobel Prize winning author Patrick White worked as a jackaroo at Adaminaby's Bolaro Station in the 1930s. His subsequent and critically acclaimed first novel, Happy Valley was inspired by his time working at Adaminaby and the people he knew in the town. It won White the 1941 Australian Society of Literature's gold medal.

The fortunes of the town were affected by the discovery of gold at nearby Kiandra in 1859 and subsequent introduction of recreational skiing to the district around 1861, when Scandinavian gold prospectors are reputed to have strapped fence posts to their boots and slid down the snowbound hills of a landscape too frozen for mining. For around a century, Kiandra remained Australia's highest township and a base for skiers, before the last permanent residents left the township following completion of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Kiandra's ski facilities were permanently shifted "up the hill" to Selwyn Snowfields in 1978 and Adaminaby remains the main service centre for the Northern skifields of New South Wales–one of the oldest areas for recreational skiing in the world.