By Peter Crowley
I spent almost seven years piecing together the life story of Thomas Scott Townsend (1812–1869) from hundreds of fragments, scattered across archives in Australia and the United Kingdom. The result is my first book, Townsend of the Ranges, published by the National Library of Australia.
The reasons Townsend’s story was so important to tell are revealed at every stage of a career that is a compelling chronicle of hardship and tragedy. At the age of 24, he volunteered to serve ‘in the field’ as a path to promotion. It was a lonely, itinerant life living in a tent in remote parts of the colony, exposed to extremes of weather with little protection from the elements.
In order to complete his assignments efficiently, which involved drawing the pioneering maps of some of the most rugged country on the south‑east mainland, Townsend was also prepared to sleep out in the open for long periods, without the protection of bedding or cover.
His work was also dangerous, not only in a physical sense, but psychologically – he was well aware of the risks of isolation and privation to what he called his ‘constitution’: his emotional wellbeing. Few people are suited to a life alone in Australia’s timbered ranges far from home, an experience that can unsettle even the steadiest of minds. My book reveals how this existence was endured at a terrible cost to the surveyor’s health.
Townsend’s sacrifices were to the enduring benefit of European geographical knowledge and the spread of settlement beyond the original ‘limits of location’ – the original 19 counties of New South Wales. You may not have heard of Townsend, but if you live in southern New South Wales or Victoria, there is a good chance that you live in a district that was shaped by his labours. His career lasted more than 20 years, from 1831 to 1854, encompassing the age of the squatters as pastoral expansion exploded in a land rush. He was also the pre‑eminent pioneering surveyor of the Australian Alps, the first European to locate the source of the Murray River at Indi Springs, the first to traverse the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains, and quite possibly the first to have stood on the summit of Mount Kosciuszko – a feat he accomplished in early 1847.
That last statement may come as a surprise. Credit for the first European ascent of Kosciuszko usually goes to the Polish scientist Paweł Strzelecki, but doubts have been raised about his claim. Th e debate over whether Strzelecki climbed the mountain we know as Kosciuszko, or the peak that is now called Mount Townsend, is, in fact, an old one. Th e uncertainty stems from the weakness of Strzelecki’s own documentation of his ascent of the Main Range in 1840. Essentially, historians were asked to accept his claim to have reached the highest point in Australia at face value. A century later, notes by James Macarthur, who accompanied Strzelecki part of the way but not to the summit, became public, but did not settle the matter.
