This is a brave book, for it is the biography of a phantom. Archives hold ample evidence of the many professional achievements of the surveyor Thomas Scott Townsend, but of him personally almost nothing is known. Townsend left little trace of his passions, frustrations, or loves, the substance that animates biographies. A letter that Townsend wrote to his brother in 1839 is the only item of his private correspondence known to exist. And yet somehow the book works, and brilliantly so. Peter Crowley has written a compelling account of a remarkable figure in Australian history.