Snowy Mountains
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The Snowy Mountains (known for short as the Snowies) are the highest Australian mountain range and contain the Australian mainland's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, which reaches 2228 metres AHD. The range contains Australia's five highest peaks all above 2100 metres. They are located in southern New South Wales and are part of the larger Australian Alps and the Great Dividing Range. It is host to a low-lying type of pine tree suspected of being the world's oldest living organism.[citation needed] It is one of the centres of the Australian snow industry during the winter months. The Alpine Way and the Snowy Mountains Highway are the major roads over the Snowy Mountains.
HistoryThe mountain range is thought to have had Aboriginal occupation for twenty thousand years. It was first explored by Europeans in 1835. In 1840, Edmund Strzelecki ascended Mount Kosciuszko and named it after a Polish patriot. Glacial lakesPart of the mountains known as Main Range contains mainland Australia's five glacial lakes.[1] The largest of these lakes is Blue Lake, headwaters for the Snowy. The other four glacial lakes are Lake Albina, Lake Cootapatamba, Club Lake and Headley Tarn. Water supplyThe Snowy Mountains also feed the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers, via the Tooma River, Whites River and Yarrangobilly River. The range is perhaps best known for the Snowy Mountains Scheme—a project to dam the Snowy River, providing both water for irrigation and hydroelectricity. The project began in 1949 employing a hundred thousand men, two-thirds of whom came from thirty other countries during the post-World War II years. Socially this project symbolises a period during which Australia became a "melting pot" of the twentieth century but which also changed Australia's character and increased its appreciation for a wide range of cultural diversity.
 By 1974, 145 kilometres (90 mi) of underground tunnels and 80 kilometres (50 mi) of aqueducts connected the 16 dams, seven power stations (two underground), and one pumping station.[2] The American Society of Civil Engineers has rated the Snowy Scheme as "a world-class civil engineering project". References
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