Mount Kosciuszko
— — the high point of a low continent.
Not only on a wall.
“The highest point on the Australian mainland, at 2,228 metres — modest by alpine standards, vast by the standards of a continent that is mostly flat and old. The summit is a long, walkable rise above the Snowy Mountains, reached from Thredbo by chairlift and a metal walkway across the alpine herbfields. In summer it is wildflower country. In winter, the only true snow Australia has. from the studio
Mount Kosciuszko, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Mount Kosciuszko stands at 2,228 metres in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, the highest summit on the Australian mainland and the high point of the Australian Alps. It sits inside Kosciuszko National Park, a 6,900-square-kilometre reserve that protects the headwaters of the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Snowy rivers. The mountain was named in 1840 by the Polish explorer Paweł Strzelecki, in honour of the Polish-Lithuanian general Tadeusz Kościuszko. The summit lies roughly 500 kilometres south-west of Sydney and 200 kilometres south-east of Canberra.
The Australian alpine zone is small — about 250 square kilometres of true above-treeline country — and Kosciuszko is its peak. The treeline here, of snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora), sits around 1,800 metres, far lower than equivalent latitudes in the northern hemisphere because the continent is dry and the summers short. In January the summit averages about 5°C; in July, below freezing. Wildflower season runs December through February, when the alpine herbfields turn pink and white with billy buttons and silver snow daisies.
The standard route is from the village of Thredbo: the Kosciuszko Express chairlift to 1,930 metres, then a 13-kilometre return walk on a raised steel mesh walkway built to protect the fragile alpine soils. The walk takes most people four to five hours. A longer route from Charlotte Pass, the original road head, runs about 18 kilometres return past the source of the Snowy River. Kosciuszko is the easiest of the Seven Summits, often walked in trail shoes in summer, but the weather above 2,000 metres turns quickly.