The top of Australia
Today we climbed to the top of Australia! Lest you faint with just how impressed you are with our efforts, I’m pretty sure there is nowhere else in the world where you can trundle up to a country’s highest peak pushing a pushchair. People were actually doing this which explains a whole lot about some of the unfathomable behaviour seen on some of NZ’s hiking tracks (Woman wearing heeled sandals on the Tongariro crossing c.2002 I’m referring to you…)
Getting to commence the walk was an adventure all on it’s own: somehow three of us in the car missed seeing several signs and got all the way to the Perisher resort, commenting on the scenery and high volume of cyclists, before realising that this was NOT Thredbo and that we had gone horribly wrong. A silent turnaround and an hour later, we were at the correct destination: the Thredbo resort and specifically the Kosciosko chairlift. It took approximately 40 mins of queuing and we were on our way for a 560m ascent via the comfort of a 4 seat lift.
A brief comfort stop (mainly to assess the availability of bar facilities at Australia’s highest restaurant) and we were on our way. It didn’t take long to realise this wasn’t going to be the walk we had prepared for…..We had assumed that this would be somewhat like a NZ hike just not as steep and all literature had indicated it was going to be a 5 hour affair. We had duly packed enough food, water, technology and clothing for a mild variant of a NZ experience. Only to find that this was more akin to a walk in your local park with slightly better scenery. It was practically paved the entire way!
So we were up and back in just under 3 hours including a lunch stop at the top. I repeat…nowhere else in the world could you climb the highest peak of a country in such comfort. The walk commenced on beautifully laid brick pavers, progressed to 4km of steel walkway, some stone paving and then a weird plastic-gravel situation that looked like fish scales and finally, large granite blocks. Per Garmin, the steepest that is got (asides from a set of 12 stairs) was around 15% and then only very briefly - the average grade across the entire walk was 6.5%.
I can also confirm that the flies and crows are as numerous at the highest point as they are at ground level. Asides from all of that it was a fabulous walk - the scenery was amazing, we got to see Australia’s highest freshwater lake and there was a cold sparkling wine at the end!
