Townsend of the Ranges

His name is given to the country’s second highest mountain, but the details of his career are obscure and his personal identity has remained a mystery.
Yet, if you live in southern New South Wales or Victoria, there is a good chance that your town or district has been influenced by his work: he covered a huge extent of territory and worked furiously hard in a career that spanned two decades.
Townsend of the Ranges is a sensitively told, surprisingly dramatic biography of Townsend’s life, from his early days as a junior surveyor in Australia to his time living as a recluse in London before his death. The author has engaged in extensive research of primary sources, relying on letters from estranged family members, Townsend’s employers and Townsend himself to map the story of his life.
Accompanied by original maps drawn by Townsend, this book is a beautifully written portrait of a young man fighting loneliness in the wilderness, mapping the watershed crests of the Dividing Ranges and the contours of south-eastern Australia. The narrative also reveals a picture of destruction and violence as settlers and squatters moved across the land.
In the collection
Reviews
Andrew Wrathall, Books+Publishing
- 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. Readers of Don Watson and Peter FitzSimons will likely enjoy Townsend of the Ranges.
Read more at: Townsend of the Ranges (Peter Crowley, NLA) - Books+Publishing
Norrie Sanders, Queensland Reviewers Collective
- Peter's painstaking trawl through the archives has produced a work of meticulous detail that would do justice to an historian, even though he is a medical doctor with no prior books to his name. He has brought Townsend's name back to public attention. Townsend was a top-class surveyor, who was well regarded by his employers, but deserves to be recognised as an important figure in Australian history.
Read more at: Townsend of the Ranges by Peter Crowley - Queensland Reviewers Collective
Canberra Weekly Magazine
- In a lucid and engaging manner, Crowley provides an interesting biography of Townsend from his early surveying days to his tragic end. It is an absorbing story that also charts the terrible impact of settlement on the local indigenous people.
Janine Rizzetti, The Resident Judge of Port Phillip
- Crowley captures well the incessant demands of the work, the beauty and intimidation of the lands he was surveying, and Townsend's inexorable spiral into mania. It is both a very human story, and yet one placed within the vastness of unsurveyed territory. Townsend may have had to have wait more than 150 years for his biographer, but with Crowley's book he receives the recognition earned and withheld for so many years.
Read more at: 'Townsend of the Ranges' by Peter Crowley - The Resident Judge of Port Phillip
HortInsights
- This book paints a poignant portrait of a young man navigating isolation in the wilderness, mapping the watershed crests and contours of south-eastern Australia. Amidst his solitude, the narrative unearths a darker side – a landscape scarred by conflict and upheaval as settlers and squatters laid claim to new territories.

About the author
Peter Crowley is a medical doctor, a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and an historical researcher.
He attended school in Gippsland and lived for several years in the Strzelecki Ranges, a place of steep hills, eerie mists and occasional snow falls.
Peter has been married to Rasika, a teacher, for over thirty years and the couple have two adult sons, Tom and Dan.
He lives in Melbourne on Wurundjeri land and feels most at home close to the Yarra River. Townsend of the Ranges is his first book.