Real Climate Records

A geological party, organised by Professor L. A. Cotton and led by Professor Sir T. W. Edgeworth David, has been exploring Kosciusko.

The object of the expedition was to study the traces left by the now vanished glacier ice. Lake Albina as well as all the lakes of Kosciusko owe their origin to glacial action, the water in them being held up by vast natural dams of rock rubble, dumped by the glacier ice to form the terminal moraines, and later left there by the ice on its final retreat.

OLD GLACIERS.

New discoveries proved that the old glaciers of Kosciusko once extended at least seven miles farther than they had previously been traced by the Government Geologist, Mr. E. C. Andrews,

Mr. C. A. Sussmilch, and Professor David. In fact, according to Professor David, there can be little doubt that even the site of the Hotel Kosciusko was once under glacier ice, the ice terminating only about 200 yards from the hotel down Diggers’ Creek.

The ice also descended Wilson’s Valley, near the hotel, for at least a mile below the source of Sawpit Creek.

Thus the glacier ice from near the summit of Mt. Kosciusko to Wilson’s Valley was about 18 miles in length.

ANTARCTICA IN AUSTRALIA.

“During the maximum glaciation,” said Professor David, “the Kosciusko plateau must have been a miniature Antarctica with only a few crests and peaks of granite, like the ‘nunatakr’ of

Greenland, rising above the snowfields, and the glaciers were so closely crowded together as to make a nearly continuous ice cap from the summit (7328ft.) down to a level of about 5000 feet

above the sea.

“The geologists estimated that the last glacier ice disappeared from the Kosciusko plateau about 5000 to 10,000 years ago, the traces of the earlier and more extensive glaciation dating back to perhaps 100,000 or more years ago.

While Kosciusko was cased in ice, Australia at lower altitudes was probably enjoying a cool but damp and rainy climate, which favored the development of rich pastures, even in Central Australia.

AS KOSCIUSKO WAS.

Professor David hopes that, with the help of Mr. J. S. Cormack, Director of the Government Tourist Bureau, it may be possible to construct a large relief model of the Kosciusko plateau as

it was when under glacier ice. Such a model could be exhibited at the Tourist Bureau in Sydney, and replicas at the Hotel Kosciusko, and also at various educational centres.

Kosciusko is the only part of Australia where such old glacial topography can now be studied. Such models should not only interest and instruct those who are unable to visit Kosciusko, but

should increase the enchantment of Kosciusko for the visitor.