Mount Townsend offers better views than Mount Kosciuszko without the crowds – making it a good option for a day-walk from Charlotte Pass (or Thredbo). Mount Townsend is only 19m lower than Kosciuszko, and from the north-west it looks like the highest mountain in the range. It was even mistakenly thought to be Australia’s highest mountain for a few years – more on this below.
There are great views from the top: to the north is Alice Rawson Peak, and beyond it is Mount Jagungal and Dicky Cooper Bogong, which marks the northern end of the Main Range. To the west is Geehi and Mount Youngal.
To the east you can see the boardwalk along the Main Range as it passes below Mount Lee and Mount Northcote. (Mount Kosciuszko is a little further to the left.)
Looking south-west is Abbot Peak and Mount Du Faur, and beyond these peaks is the Ramshead Range.
Getting to Mount Townsend
The craggy peak of Mount Townsend is reached by an easy scramble through the field of boulders that covers its slopes.
Summiting Mount Townsend gives you a slightly greater sense of achievement than walking to the top of Kosciuszko!
Climbing Mount Kosciuszko is worth doing. It is pleasant. It is easy. It is hugely enjoyable. And, when you have done it, you can bask in the glory that once you stood on the highest point between the Andes and the East African Plateau. Just don’t tell anyone you had to walk up a 4 degree slope to achieve the feat. I should point out that when I did the walk in 2000 I was overtaken by a one-legged man. So don’t try and tell anyone that it is difficult.
Aussie Towns – Mount Kosciuszko
Mount Townsend looks and feels more like a mountain – or at least a rocky hill!
Although Mount Townsend is often climbed as part of a multi-day Top Ten Peaks bushwalk, it can be done as a day walk from Charlotte Pass or Thredbo – and can be combined with a walk to the top of Mount Kosciuszko. Both trailheads offer very easy access to Rawson Pass (which is at the base of Mount Kosciuszko), and then another two kilometres of easy walking along the Main Trail boardwalk to Muellers Pass.
At Muellers Pass, look for a narrow trail (not signposted) that heads up the side of the ridge to Mount Townsend. Near the base of Mount Townsend is the distinctive “hanging rock” formation, first noted in the 1870s.
The intriguing history of Mount Townsend
The mountain is named after Thomas Scott Townsend, who surveyed the entire Main Range, including the Ramshead Range. (Prior to European occupation, it’s thought that the Aboriginal name for Mount Towsnend was Targangil, a word which describes the annual feasting on the summer-hibernating bogong moth.) There is some evidence that when Paul Edmund de Strzelecki and James Macarthur set out in 1840 to climb Australia’s highest mountain, it was Mount Townsend which they summited – naming it Mount Kosciusko.
This theory is based predominantly on the description of the mountain, and not helped by the fact that Strzelecki did not build a cairn on his mountain peak or leave any other record of his presence there. In his official report to Governor Gipps, Strzelecki described Mount Kosciuszko as:
This pinnacle, rocky and naked, predominant view several others, elevations of the same mountains, was and always will be, chosen for an important point of trigonometrical survey; clear and standing by itself, it affords a most advantageous position for overlooking the intricacies of the mountain country around.
Mount Kosciuszko Blog
In Strzelecki’s book, “Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land” six years after his trip, he describes the outlook from “Kosciusko” as:
Beneath the feet, looking from the very verge of the cone downwards almost perpendicularly the eye
E.K. & T.W. Mitchell – Kosciusko or Townsend?
plunges into a fearful gorge 3,000 feet deep, in the bed of which the sources of the Murray gather their contents, and roll their united waters to the west”.
Both these descriptions fit Mount Townsend far better than Mount Kosciuszko – and the “fearful gorge” (Geehi Gorge) cannot be seen from Mount Kosciusko. Hence the claim that Mount Townsend was actually named Mount Kosciuszko in 1840, and when the error was discovered rather than trying to re-educate the public on the real highest mountain, the NSW Lands Department decided it was easier to simply swap the two names.
Various measurements of the peak originally called by that name showed it to be slightly lower than its neighbour, Mount Townsend, and the names were thereupon transposed by the New South Wales Lands Department, so that Mount Kosciusko still remains the highest peak of Australia, and Mount Townsend, given by the Geodetical Survey of Victoria as 7266 feet, ranks as second. Officially the height of Mount Kosciusko is now stated as 7328 feet.
Australian Bureau of Statistics 1301.0 – Year Book Australia (1910)
The confusion continued into the 1870s: “Many early visitors ascended Mt Townsend instead of Mt Kosciuszko, as there was uncertainty as to which peak was Kosciuszko” (Kosciuszko Huts Association). Photographs of a large stone cairn and trig labelled as being at the top of Kosciusko actually depicted a
cairn erected by a Victorian survey team atop Townsend (today the remnants of a metal trig lies at the base of Mount Townsend).
Interestingly, no map has ever been published that shows Mount Kosciuszko and Mount Townsend transposed – and even if Strzelecki had summited Townsend thinking that it was the highest mountain, a few years later in 1846-47 Surveyor Thomas Townsend correctly mapped all the mountains in his official plan (map) of the County of Selwyn in 1851. The earliest parish map available online (1898) shows the correct placement of Kosciuszko and Townsend. There is no record of the name ever having been officially transferred from one peak to another!
More information
- Mt Kosciuszko blog
- Australian Bureau of Statistics – 1301.0 – Year Book Australia (1910)
- Kosciuszko Huts Association – Tourists on the Summit [PDF]
- E.K. & T.W. Mitchell – Kosciusko or Townsend? [PDF]
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