mountain
A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...
Great Dividing Range
The Great Dividing Range, also known as the East Australian Cordillera or the Eastern Highlands, is a cordillera system in eastern Australia consisting of an expansive collection of mountain ranges, plateaus and rolling hills. It runs roughl ...
, located in the
Snowy Mountains
The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", is an IBRA subregion in southern New South Wales, Australia, and is the tallest mountain range in mainland Australia, being part of the continent's Great Dividing Range, a cordillera syste ...
region of
New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
.
With an elevation of
above sea level
Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...
Kosciuszko National Park
The Kosciuszko National Park ( ) is a national park and contains mainland Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, for which it is named, and Cabramurra, New South Wales, Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. Its borders contain a mix o ...
, the mountain is north of Australia's highest mainland peak,
Mount Kosciuszko
Mount Kosciuszko ( ; ; Ngarigo: ) is the highest mountain of the mainland Australia, at above sea level. It is located on the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains in Kosciuszko National Park, a part of the Australian Alps National Parks and ...
.
Although lower than Mount Kosciuszko, Mount Townsend has a more craggy peak and is arguably more dominant than the relatively round-topped Mount Kosciuszko.
The confusion about swapping the names of Mount Kosciuszko and Mount Townsend was straightened out in 1940 by B. T. Dowd, a cartographer and historian of the NSW Lands Department. His study reaffirmed that the mountain named by Strzelecki as Mount Kosciuszko was indeed, as the NSW maps had always shown, Australia's highest summit. When Macarthur's field book of the historical journey was published in 1941 by C. DaleyC. Daley ''Count Paul Strzelecki’s Ascent of Mount Kosciusko and Journey through Gippsland'' The Victorian Historical Magazine, vol.19, no 2, pp. 41-53, 1941 it further confirmed Dowd's clarification. This means that Targangil, mentioned in Spencer's 1885 article," M. Spencer ''The Highest Point in Australia'' The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 1885" was the indigenous name of Mount Townsend, not of Mount Kosciuszko.
Mount Townsend has a prominence of only 189m which is relatively low compared to other mountains worldwide. By stricter prominence cut off points, the most common of which being the 300m prominence rule, Townsend would not be classified as its own mountain, and instead a subsidiary peak. Due to Australia's much flatter topography than all other continents, a prominence cut off point of 300m is almost never used, cartographers opting instead for less strict definitions, such as 50m or 100m when classifying peaks. If using the 300m rule this makes
Mount Bogong
Mount Bogong, located in the Alpine National Park and part of the Victorian Alps of the Great Dividing Range, is the highest mountain in Victoria, Australia, at above sea level.
The Big River separates the massif of the mountain from t ...
in Victoria the second highest mountain.
See also
*
Australian Alps
The Australian Alps are a mountain range in southeast Australia. The range comprises an Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, interim Australian bioregion,