In the middle is the river with the path to Blue Lake snaking up to the right. As you can see the area is montane heath, but in the foreground are the only trees able to survive at this altitude, Snow Gums Eucalyptus pauciflora. They have beautifully coloured bark, basically light grey which strips off to leave a lovely range of whites reds and browns - really very attractive trees indeed:

 

Puzzingly to botanists they have not evolved to be deciduous but instead cause their outer twigs and leaves to hang vertically thus assisting in shedding snow. Its Latin name of course means ‘few flowers’ but in fact it is covered in beautiful white flowers in the spring. Its name is thought to have resulted from the flower buds having simply dropped off the dried specimen originally used to name the species. By the very strict rules of biological nomenclature the given name must continue even though clearly wrong (my favourite example of the application of this rule is the American alligator Alligator mississipiensis whose name results from a simple mis-spelling of the river by the original French author.  A fierce debate has raged for years in appropriate circles about whether it can be corrected).

The VS crew toiled up the path in the spring heat towards Blue Lake, crossing our first snowfields for quite a while:

 

 

And arriving at Blue Lake:

 

 

This is the largest of only five glacial lakes in mainland Australia; the view could very easily have been taken in North Wales – except for the frogs. Up here lives the Eastern Froglet Crinia signifera which breeds in the near-freezing snow melt. They have a very loud chirping call despite being tiny and the whole valley resonates with their calls. Extraordinary.

And of course, there are the alpine flowers. Here is your correspondent botanising (note the sensible walking shoes previously referred to):

 

 

And here are some results of said botanising:

This first picture is of the Anemone Buttercup Ranunculus anemoneus a very rare and beautiful flower endemic to Kosciuszko. It suffered terribly after the arrival of Europeans who put cattle up to graze on the high alpine meadows from the 1830s onwards but has bounced back after grazing was stopped as part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme in the 1940s.  

 

 

And this is the Sky Lily Herpolirion novae-zelandiae with ground level flowers:

 

 

Ranunculus collinus, the Mountain Buttercup, one of twenty or so Australian buttercups:

 

 

This a mountain eyebright, Euphrasia sp – I know not which. These plants are parasitic on the roots of others and are therefore very difficult to cultivate:

 

There are some lovely flowers here - nothing like the wonderful displays of the European Alps, but better than most of upland Britain.