Kosciuszko

After a month to travel with two camper van, we are back on the road just the two of us towards Melbourne with on the way a stop in the Kosciuszko national parc, one of the biggest national park in Australia. It’s also here that you can find the highest australian summit, the mount Kosciuszko, 2 228 m high.

Kosciuszko

To be honest we were particularly surprised with the landscape changes as we were getting close to the park. After crossing beautiful rainforests with huge tree ferns, we started to see landscapes we knew quite well, similar to the Alpes landscape and we were a little surprised to discover the ski renting shops. We couldn’t imagine snow in Australia!

Kosciuszko

Kosciuszko

National Chase Snowy Mountains was the first name of the park, it was in 1944 that it was given its official name, Kosciuszko State Park before it became a national park in 1967.
For the history part of it, it’s a polish discoverer, Pawel Edmund Strzelecki who gave the name of the summit in 1840 to celebrate Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a polish hero of the United State independent war and brother of Jozef Kosciuszko, who is at the begining of the political french family Kosciuszko-Morizet. It’s alway strange to find a little piece fo France in Australia.

Kosciuszko

The second story about the parc is more linked to its summit. In fact, we find the mount Kosciuszko in the Bass list, which states the sevens highest summit of the sevens continents, but its presence on the list is often disputed. Hike the mount isn’t something hard to do. If you take the longest way, you can hike all day but for the quick way you have a cable car which takes you close to the top.

Kosciuszko

Kosciuszko

Kosciuszko

We choose the do the full loop by the crests, 20 km for approximately 6h hiking. We have been a little bit disappointed at the beginning of the hike to the summit, we expected something more physical. It wasn’t a mountain track but more a way for 4 RWD. The other partof the hike, on the crests, was itself really great and more like what we expected, with a smalls hiden lakes.

Kosciuszko

Finally the mount Kosciuszko did not really impress us, the view wasn’t what we expected. Hiking during the school holiday doesn’t help to enjoy the view either. This being said, we are proud to say we hiked the highest Australian summit and one of the Bass list summits.

Good to know :
We thought the park entrance fees are a bit expensive, 17$ per car per day. I think you can find a pass for more day.

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