Mountain · Australia
Mount Kosciuszko
Mount Kosciuszko is mainland Australia's highest peak, standing 2,228 metres tall in the Snowy Mountains. Unlike jagged Alpine peaks, its summit is a smooth, gentle, rounded dome you can simply walk up.
Picture credit: John Wormell (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Toby Hudson (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Ymblanter (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Mount Kosciuszko?
Mount Kosciuszko is part of the Snowy Mountains, Great Dividing Range.
You will find it in: Australia.
Summit: 36.456° S, 148.264° E
The story behind it
Mount Kosciuszko is made of ancient granite that has been worn down by wind, rain, ice, and time for hundreds of millions of years, smoothing away any sharp edges and leaving a broad, rounded summit that walkers can reach on a wide, easy track without ropes or technical skill. Snow covers the area most winters, and Australia's oldest ski resorts sit on the mountain's lower slopes, a surprise for many people who imagine Australia as endlessly hot and dry. The mountain was named in 1840 by Polish explorer Paweł Edmund Strzelecki after Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish and American military hero, because Strzelecki thought the summit's shape reminded him of Kościuszko's grave mound in Poland. The Ngarigo Aboriginal people had lived in and travelled through this alpine region for thousands of years before European explorers ever arrived, following seasonal food sources including migrating moths that gathered in nearby caves.
Find it on the globe
Mount Kosciuszko is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How tall is Mount Kosciuszko?
Mount Kosciuszko is 2,228 metres tall, making it the highest point on the Australian mainland, though several peaks on Australian territory in Antarctica are taller.
Where is Mount Kosciuszko?
Mount Kosciuszko is in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, in southeastern Australia, inside Kosciuszko National Park, a few hours' drive south of Canberra.
Is Mount Kosciuszko hard to climb?
No, it is one of the easiest of the Seven Summits — a wide, gently sloping walking track leads to the top, with no technical climbing needed at all.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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