JOHN TURNBULL THOMSON (1821-1884)
Mount Aspiring / Tititea (3, 033 m -9,951 ft)
New Zealand
The mountain
Mount Aspiring / Tititea is New Zealand's highest mountain outside the Aoraki/Mount Cook region.
Set within Otago's Mount Aspiring National Park, it has a height of 3,033 metres (9,951 ft). Māori named it Tititea, which translates as Glistening Peak. It was named in December 1857 by the Chief Surveyor for the Otago Province, John Turnbull Thomson.[2] It is also often called 'the Matterhorn of the South,' for its pyramidal peak when seen from the Matukituki River. The first ascent was on 23 November 1909 by Major Bernard Head and guides Jack Clarke and Alec Graham.[3] Head's party climbed to the summit ridge by the west face from the Bonar Glacier, a route not repeated until 1965.
Mount Aspiring / Tititea sits slightly to the west of the main divide, 30 kilometres west of Lake Wanaka.[2] It lies at the junction of three major glacial systems — the Bonar Glacier, which drains into the Waipara River, and the Volta and Therma Glaciers, which both drain into the Waitoto River. The Waipara is a tributary of the Arawhata River, and both the Arawhata and Waitoto Rivers flow out to the west coast in between Haast and Jackson Bay.
The painter
John Turnbull Thomson was a British civil engineer and artist who played an instrumental role in the development of the early infrastructure of nineteenth-century Singapore and New Zealand.
After his father was killed in a hunting accident in 1830, the young Thomson and his mother went to live in Abbey St. Bathans, Berwickshire. He was educated at Wooler and Duns Academy, later spending some time attached to Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh University before studying engineering at Peter Nicholson's School of Engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Thomson arrived in the Malay Straits in 1838 and was employed by the East India Survey. In 1841 he was appointed Government Surveyor at Singapore and in 1844 became Superintendent of Roads and Public Works. He was responsible for the design and construction of a number of notable engineering works including bridges, roads, and hospitals. His outstanding achievement was the erection of the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca. In 1853 his health failed and he returned to England where he studied modern engineering techniques, and travelled widely through Britain and the Continent inspecting engineering works. Early in 1856 he emigrated to New Zealand, where he worked as Chief Surveyor of the Otago Province until 1873. From 1876 until 1879 he was Surveyor-General of New Zealand. He was also the original surveyor of the city of Invercargill.
From 1856 until 1858 Thomson surveyed and explored large sections of the interior of the South Island, covering most of the southern half of the island.
He was also a amateur painter of landscapes, working mostly in oils. He was almost known for the interesting historical topographical viewpoint of his paintings.