Just climbed Australia's highest mountain

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kosciuszko

I was spending the Apr11-12 weekend in Australia's capital city, Canberra, attending my beloved Melbourne Football Club's game. But when they blew a 33-point lead and lost by 45 points, I made a sudden decision to leave town. I drove south to Jindabyne for Saturday night and drove on the next morning to the mid-year ski resort Thredbo. I took the chairlift part-way up Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, and walked 6.5Km (4 miles) to the summit 2228m (7310ft) above sea level. Only about 1% of the mountain had snow. Later that day, I drove to Charlotte Pass (location of Australia's coldest-ever temperature, -23.0degC or -9.4degF), returned to Canberra and flew home. The whole out-of-Canberra thing was done on a whim and, if it wasn't for a Brisbane stranger, I wouldn't have a photo from the summit!

[joveski]

you need a good rest, dave!. but, congrats!. i've only experienced -6'C at mount hotham - and loved it :)

[charlene]

well let's see that photo! I will be napping until then.lol..could you not have just gone shopping??
lol

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

Char,
I've got two photos in emails and will get someone younger than half my age to copy them to this forum.

Joveski,
Glad you enjoyed Mt Hotham in the north-east of our state, Victoria. The only places I've stayed in the snow were Wisconsin (for the Mar2008 Lightfoot concert), Pulaski in upstate New York, Moscow, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Innsbruck.

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

Here is the photo from Australia's highest point. (Australia is now a week into winter and the mountain is covered in snow.) Joveski will recognise the Melbourne Football Club jumper I wore at the previous day's game.

IMG_0856.JPG

[joveski]

i got the photos, but it says they're too big, but the max size for a .jpg attachment is 6.79MB. these are about 650KB.. should i reduce them?

[charlene]

reduce them if u can or e-mail to me. pm if so..

[charlene]

pics:

[joveski]

there should be another one coming soon

[johnfowles]

Dave had also sent me the two pix and asked for my help
I am sorry to say I failed
I really wanted to use my free onedrive cloud storage system but it has proved unreliable I then uploaded the other photograph to dropbox but now that will not display here either so here is a hyperlink to it
In this shot Dave seems to have extended legs!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e86t8qpjqw8ykna/dave%20on%20mount%20kos.jpg?dl=0

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

JohnFowles,
Thanks for getting that photo onto my post. It was taken at the Mt Kosciuszko sign a few steps below the summit. I guess lying on a 45-degree angle with the camera near my feet "extended" my legs.

Joveski and Char,
Thanks for your work on this too.

Are any of you able to add the other photo (taken at the summit, Australia's highest point, which has no sign)?

[joveski]

it can be done. the others told me they're too big to attach and even by reducing them, they were still too big. char should know how!

[charlene]

they aren't too big..the forum has reached it's quota..I've contacted Florian. I was able topost one in a post further up from this one in this thread..

[joveski]

ah ok.. post away then!

[johnfowles]

ah ok.. post away then!

OKOK

For the record Dave had emailed me just two photos of himself gloating/sweating on atop of the highest mountain in Australia
He actually forwarded the two emails that he had received from Jenn (presumably the visitor from Brisbane who had kindly taken the photos for him as proof of his achievement (no doubt after wiping his brow and handing him a tinnie??
In the first one Jen had said
Hi David,
Here are both photos again!
Regards
Jenn

but only one was attached
this was the "extended legs" shot sideways on
which I downloaded as a rather large image file in png format was 3.44 MB (3,611,144 bytes)
I dislike pngs so I opened it in Microsoft's latest improved Paint rotated it to the correct vertical orientation then saved it as a jpg which reduced the size to only 905 KB (927,641 bytes) (both actually had dimensions of 1632 by 1224 pixels)
In the second email David just said here is the second photo (that was the one of him posing alongside the sturdy looking stone pillar (that photo Charlene has already attached to her post (message number 8)-as a much reduced size jpg of 48504 bytes and dimensions of 389x528 my original download in png format was 2.96 MB (3,110,454 bytes)
Again I saved it from Paint as a jpg of656 KB (672,291 bytes)
both of my downloaded pngs and the converted jpgs had what is presumably the original camera resolution/dimensions of
1632 by 1224 pixels
I have now added the second photo as the 656KB jpg to my dropbox Public roster it is at
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77091473/dave%27s%20second%20photo.jpg
I knew the name Kos-whatsit was familiar and twice recently and again this very morning it has featured in the early morning on the road traffic reports "on the ones" i.e. 701AM 711AM etc on New York's monotonous all news radio station 1010-WINS
listen on
http://tunein.com/radio/1010-WINS-s29616/
because it is one of two New York Metro area ancient (and therefore eminently traffic jammable) bridges named for a pair of Polish mercenaries who helped the Yanks defeat my forebears (mostly in battles in New Jersey as it happened a couple of centuries ago)
sure enough as you can read on
http://forgotten-ny.com/2004/05/newtown-creek/
scroll down that page to read about two New York area bridges named in memory of the two Polish soldiers (General Tadeusz (Thadeus) Kosciusko(1746-1817) and Kazimierz Michał Władysław Wiktor Pułaski ( 1745-1779) who were recruited to aid the American Revolutionaries
To really confuse the picture there is also a long inelegant and decrepit structure called the
"Pulaski Skyway" that we sometimes take if we are so foolish as to drive the 15 or so miles to New York City
Coincidentally the K-Bridge and P-Skyway were both built in the 1930s and are now being replaced by new and expensive modern versions hence the liabilty of traffic jams nowadays
also on that page I found this interesting note
"many NYers pronounce this bridge"Kosk-y-OS-ko” but its correct pronunciation is closer to KO-sHUZ-ko, (http://www.goodwalkingbooks.com/mt_kosciuszko.html)
The local trffic reporters correctly use that pronunciation but "Kos -SHOES-Ko" is nearer to my ear; but I wonder how the Aussies tackle it ??)
talking about confusion and road problems see
http://johnfowles.org.uk/DUI_NJ_STYLE/index.htm
and now for a tad of history from the very good descriptive web page at
http://www.goodwalkingbooks.com/mt_kosciuszko.html
a note about what the polish explorer Paul Edmund Strzelecki said after he beat young Dave to it eons go
"'struck me so forcibly by the similarity it bears to a tumulus elevated in Krakow over the tomb of the patriot Kosciusko, that although in a foreign country, but amongst a free people, who appreciate freedom and its votaries, I could not refrain from giving it the name of Mount Kosciusko'. in 1997 the Geographical Names Board of NSW changed the spelling to KOSCIUSZKO"
I also read on that until 1976 you could drive to the summit so you were a bit late David!!

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

JohnFowles,

Thanks for your comprehensive and well-researched post. I missed Char's photo in post #8, because it came up on my computer as a little blue square with a question mark and I assumed it was another of the compatibility problems we've had since changing to Apple Mac. I have since managed to get further into post #8 and view the photo. Thanks, Char!

Aussies have always pronounced the mountain Koz-ee-OS-ko. I can't guarantee it's faithful to the Polish original. The American pronunciation you mentioned is one I hadn't heard before.

The history behind the naming of the mountain is mentioned on the sign in my photo. It was easy to read in the original email (from Brisbane woman Jenn who I met at the summit), but on the smaller version in your Dropbox post, I can't quite make it out. On the internet, I found pictures of Poland's original Kosciuszko object and Australia's mountaintop and they definitely have the same shape.