Great Dividing Range

The Great Dividing Range (in English: the Great dividing arranges ) is the only important assembly line of Australia. It extends starting from the north-eastern point from the Queensland, over the entire length of the Eastern coast through the News-Wales of the South, then the state of Victoria front, at the southern end of the continent, to turn to the west and to come to die in the immense central plain with the Monts Grampians, in the east of Victoria.

More the Australian high summit, the Mount Kosciuszko (2 228 m), as all the zones of high mountain of continental Australia belong to this cordillera. The highest zones, in the south of News-Wales of the South and in the east of Victoria, are known under the name of the Australian Alps.

In fact, the term of Great Dividing Range is badly suitable, the assembly line not being only one holding. However, it separates the Eastern basin from the rivers which throw directly in the Pacific Ocean on the east coast of Australia, of the Bassin Murray-Darling where the rivers run out towards the interior plains, while moving away from the coast to throw itself in the ocean in the area of Adélaïde (see chart).

In certain places, such as the blue Mountains, the Snowy Mountains (" Enneigées" mountains;), the the Alps victoriennes and the escarpments of the east of the area of New England, the mountainous regions form an important barrier. In other places, the slopes are soft and by places the cordillera is hardly perceptible.

While certain tops reach sizeable heights (a little more than 2000 meters), the old one of the cordillera and erosion explain why the majority of the mountains are not outrageusement pointed, and practically all the summits can be reached without equipment of climbing.

Most of the cordillera is a succession of national parks or other reserves. The low parts are used for the Sylviculture, an activity which is source of many frictions with the conservationists. The cordillera is also the source of practically all the water provision of Eastern Australia, as well by the reserves of the human stoppings as, by the Large Artesian Basin, immense natural reserve of subterranean water.

At the beginning of European colonization, the blue Mountains, the part of the cordillera directly in the west of Sydney, represented an impenetrable barrier for the colonists, until in 1813, when Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth, three owners of grounds, succeeded in passing the mountains.

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