What is Mount Kosciuszko? (447)

Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on mainland Australia, with a summit elevation of 2,228 metres above sea level. It rises in the Snowy Mountains in southern New South Wales and forms part of the Australian Alps section of the Great Dividing Range. The Indigenous Ngarigo name for the peak is Targangal.

The mountain was named in 1840 by Polish explorer Pawel Edmund Strzelecki, who climbed what he believed was the highest peak in the area and named it after the Polish-Lithuanian general Tadeusz Kosciuszko. A boundary survey in the 1890s found that the summit Strzelecki climbed was actually the slightly lower neighbouring peak now called Mount Townsend, but the names were swapped to keep his original intent.

Mount Kosciuszko is one of the easiest of the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each continent) to climb. A chairlift at Thredbo carries walkers most of the way up in summer, and a paved walkway and 6.5 kilometre return trail lead from the top of the lift to the summit. The peak sits within Kosciuszko National Park, the largest national park in New South Wales at 6,900 square kilometres, gazetted in 1944. Mountain pygmy possums, the only Australian mammal restricted to alpine habitats, live in the park's boulder fields.

The Snowy Mountains around Mount Kosciuszko are home to Australia's main ski resorts, including Thredbo, Perisher, and Charlotte Pass. They are also the site of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, a massive engineering project built between 1949 and 1974 that diverts water from the Snowy River westward through tunnels to generate electricity and irrigate the Murray and Murrumbidgee river systems. The scheme is widely credited with helping integrate post-war European migrants into Australian society.