By Joanna Cowan
The snowy mountains are home to the highest mountain in Australia, Mount Kosciuszko. The peak being 2228 m above sea level.
The snowy mountains are home to Indigenous peoples, including the Ngarigo and Walgal tribes. They were permanent residents of the snowy range but over time many more Indigenous communities travelled through the mountains in the summer seasons to enjoy the iconic bogong moths common to the area. Through these travels, connections within communities were made through corroboree marriage as well as trade.
European explorers first came to the snowy mountains in 1835. Count Paul Edmund de Strzelecki is recognised for his ascent of Mount Kosciuszko in 1840. There is a misconception about whether or not the names of Mount Kosciuszko and Mount Townsend were switched when determining the highest peak. In fact, Strzelecki lost his official reports and found his monograph to be incorrect, doubting which peak was the highest. Many hikers also doubt that the highest mountain is Kosciuszko but we can confirm that it is.
After early settler farmers began to build settlers' huts, there was gold discovered on the mountain plains of Kiandra in 1859. This resulted in over 10,000 men, women and children to search for gold and begin the development of a town, now considered a ghost town and tourist attraction.
As the gold rush was brief, lasting approximately a year (1859-1860), tourists began searching for a new activity in the snowy mountains. This caused the commercial development of skiing ranges and villages such as Thredbo and Perisher.
In 1959, the snowy scheme “changed the face of civil engineering”. The creation of dams was a significant event, attributing to creating diversity through introducing job opportunities for migrants. The NSW government water committee explains the scheme, saying "The snowy mountains hydro-electric scheme (the snowy scheme) captures water from the rivers and streams of the snowy mountains, much of which originally flowed to the Snowy River and diverts it inland to the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers for the purposes of irrigation and electricity generation."
All these events led to the creation of the snowy mountains as we know it today, a popular tourist attraction in the summer and the winter.
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