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Great Dividing Range
Australia's 3,500-km eastern cordillera
The Great Dividing Range traces the entire east coast of Australia, some 3,500 kilometres of uplands that rank among the longest mountain systems on Earth, even if few of its summits are dramatically high. It is the continent's great watershed, splitting the rivers that flow east to the Pacific from those that drain west into the dry interior, and its forested slopes nurse the rainfall that makes the eastern seaboard liveable. From tropical rainforest in the north to the snow country of the south, it is a remarkably varied spine.
Far older than the Alps or Andes, the range is the eroded remnant of mountains uplifted over tens of millions of years and worn down ever since, so its crest is generally a high, rolling plateau rather than a row of sharp peaks. The highest point is Mount Kosciuszko, in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, at about 2,228 metres, mainland Australia's tallest summit. The range gives rise to the Murray-Darling system, the country's most important river basin, and includes the only part of the mainland with reliable winter snow.
For Aboriginal peoples the range was a network of homelands, trade routes, and seasonal gathering grounds long before Europeans arrived, and its rugged terrain initially hemmed the early colony to the coast. The crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813 opened the interior to settlement and pastoral expansion. Today the Great Dividing Range shelters celebrated national parks, vineyards, and ski resorts, and its catchments remain the lifeblood of Australia's most populous cities and its hard-pressed farming heartland.