Townsend of the Ranges (Peter Crowley, NLA)

In Townsend of the Ranges, Peter Crowley pieces together from archival materials the biography of Thomas Scott Townsend (1812–1869), a surveyor previously forgotten by history. With the voice of a scholarly storyteller, Crowley explains how Townsend and his employees dragged a distance-measuring Gunter’s chain across the rivers and towns of New South Wales and Victoria to plot maps. The Victorian colony would later be separated from New South Wales, but only after Townsend identified the Indi Springs—the source of the Murray River—from which the Black–Allan Line to Cape Howe would create the state border. This epic narrative reveals Townsend’s life while taking the reader on a journey into the colonies, including a look at Batman’s arrival in Naarm/Port Phillip Bay and Strzelecki’s walk across Australia’s tallest mountain. The biography shows that early surveyors endured hard work across vast and rugged terrain—and that for Townsend, the nature of the job caused both physical pain and mental health problems—without avoiding the fact that surveyors were a cog in the colonisation machine. Their maps enabled the NSW colonial government to sell land to settlers, part of the carving up of territory that caused the displacement and massacres of First Nations peoples. Crowley has included images of Townsend’s intricate maps in the book and identified First Nations place names and nation groups often omitted in other histories. Readers of Don Watson and Peter FitzSimons will likely enjoy Townsend of the Ranges.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Andrew Wrathall is a digital producer at Books+Publishing, a writer of Gippsland history, and was also inspired by a high school trip to Mount Tamboritha like the author. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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