A truly Australian friend gave us the proper pronunciation as well, 
when he said: „Been to K-aussie-usko for skiing. It’s awesome, mate!“ The peak and National Park were originally named after a Polish explorer, but the Australians do make it sound patriotic.
It’s not quite as challenging as Everest I guess. In fact there is a cable car up the hill from the mountain town of Thredbo, a two hours drive south of Canberra. From the end of it, it’s a pretty flat 6.5 km that takes about an hour and a half. We gave the cable car a miss and instead also walked up the steep hillside, so over all it made a nice little tour. The iron boardwalk at the top helps to protect the alpine landscape from erosion. Unfortunately it feels (and looks) rather like a highway than a hiking trail – also in terms of the number of people. The alpine landscape though is rough and beautiful and certainly unique in Australia. Southern late spring is also the time to see the mountain flowers blossoming and we even caught a glimpse of a pygmy possum.
On top of Australia’s highest mountain we thought about the other six summits again and recognized that we won’t make them. Dick Bass by the way became the first person to finish all seven summits in 1985 – Reinhold Messner only accomplished it a few years later.
