Mount Townsend is a mountain in the Main Range of the Great Dividing Range, located in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia.

History Mount Townsend was named after the eminent surveyor Thomas Scott Townsend, so named in 1885 by Austrian alpinist Robert von Lendenfeld.

There was some confusion on the historical identification of the summits named as Mount Kosciuszko and Mount Townsend for some time, which was clarified in 1940 by B. T. Dowd,Dowd, B.T. "The Cartography of Mount Kosciusko". Royal Australian Historical Society. Journal & Proceedings, vol. 26, part I, pp. 97-107. a cartographer and historian of the NSW Lands Department. His study reaffirmed that the mountain named by Strzelecki as Mount Kosciuszko was indeed, as the NSW maps had always shown, Australia's highest summit. When James Macarthur's field book of the historical journey was published in 1941 by C. DaleyC. Daley. "Count Paul Strzelecki's Ascent of Mount Kosciusko and Journey through Gippsland". The Victorian Historical Magazine, vol.19, no 2, pp. 41-53, 1941. it further confirmed Dowd's clarification. This means that "Targangil", mentioned in Spencer's 1885 letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, was the Aboriginal Australian name of Mount Townsend, not of Mount Kosciuszko.

Geography With an elevation of above sea level, Mount Townsend is the second-highest peak of mainland Australia. Located in Kosciuszko National Park, the mountain is north of Australia's highest mainland peak, Mount Kosciuszko,, with an elevation only lower.

See also

Australian Alps List of mountains of Australia Second Seven Summits

Footnotes

References