View from the summit of Mt Townsend, Australia's second highest peak, looking north past Alice Rawson Peak and Watson's Crags to Mt Jagungal on the horizon - Nov 97. There is an 1800m drop from here down to the Geehi valley - the largest height difference in Australia. To reach here we walked from the top of Thredbo to Rawsons Pass then skiied on a long narrow snow drift most of the way from Mt Kosciuszko, over Mueller's Peak to the Townsend plateau. Note the comparison with the painting below.

This is a painting of the same scene produced by Eugene von Guerard after he visited the Kosciuszko area in the early 1860's. The painting hangs in the Australian National Gallery and is titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko", however the scene is actually from Mt Townsend. This is a scan of a postcard I bought of the painting at the National Gallery. Although the vertical scale on the painting has been exaggerated, it is still very close to the actual view shown in the top photograph.