Mt. Kosciuszko is Australia's highest mountain, within the New South Wales portion of the Australian Southern Alps, about 45 km north of the New South Wales-Victorian border. It is within the 690 000 ha Mount Kosciuszko National Park, where several tributaries of the Murray and Snowy Rivers rise. Its summit is 2 228 m above sea level, and there are nine other peaks above 2100 m in the vicinity. The summit is easily approached via a walking track. It was named by explorer Count Paul Strzelecki in 1840 after a Polish patriot, Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Mt. Kosciuszko consists of granitic rocks of the Siluro-Devonian Kosciusko Batholith, enclosing the Ordovician Kosciuszko Metamorphics. The summit area is composed of a granite gneiss. The mountain itself, together with other high peaks (such as Mt. Townsend, Mt. Twynam, and Carruthers Peak) and surrounding area, (about 50 square kilometres), have been subject to Pleistocene glaciation 20 000 - 30 000 years ago. They show typical features of glacial terrains, such as eleven cirques (e.g. Mawson Cirque), five glacial lakes or tarns (Hedley Tarn, Lake Cootapatamba, Lake Albina, Club Lake, and Blue Lake), glacial moraines (Helms moraine), grooved pavements and rock surfaces, large erratics, perched blocks, roche moutonnes, and broad glaciated valleys. Mawson Cirque, east of Lake Albina, is the largest cirque, having a diameter of 1200 m and walls 275 m high.
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