Despite my own preconceptions about Australia, it does have mountains, and fairly sizeable ones too. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest part of the Australian mainland at somewhere around 7000 ft, it's nearly twice as high as Ben Nevis, so no mean mountain.
The national park that it's part of is Australia's snowboarding and skiing country, so most of the villages and towns are geared up for the winter. This means that at the moment they are very quiet, and its hard to imagine in 30 degree heat what they would look like under 8 feet of snow.
Mt. Kosciuszko Range
Our initial plan is to head to Thredbo and take a ski lift part way up the mountain then hike for a bit, but, because it's so hot, we think that's probably not a good idea and drive through the National Park to Khancoban.
At Khancoban it is even hotter, and we have some juice before deciding on heading towards Tumut at the northern end of the park. Maybe its the heat, or maybe my 'spidey' sense is confused by being in the southern hemisphere, but both our senses of direction take a turn for the worst from this point in. First of all we pause after entering Victoria, west instead of north, then turn back and find the road to Cabramurra, the right way.
After over an hour of twisty declines and inclines we end up in Cabramurra, Australia's highest town around a mile up. And a suitably quiet little place it is too. All of the buildings have steep sloped roofs and face away from the spectacular view, which suggests that the winters here are pretty fierce.
We leave Cabramurra, but unfortunately in entirely the wrong direction, nearly 2 hours of winding, twisting roads later we end up back in Khancoban. By now it's getting too late to think about finding the right road, so we backtrack and spend another night in Jindabyne.
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