‘It all begins in Billtown’

One of the many topographical sightings of a New Zealand Antarctic expedition in the sixties was the Millen Range of Antarctica’s Victory Mountains. As they cataloged peak after peak, one precipice with a set of teeth snarling upward from the glacial wilderness stood out to them. ‘Crosscut Peak,’ they called it, for its serrated northern ridges that tore into the horizon.

The name came to them from the image of the crosscut saw that the mountain resembled; a staple of the lumberjack trade with alternating teeth used to cut across the grain of a piece of wood, rather than along it, like its cousin, the rip saw. First mentioned as far back as ancient Rome, crosscut saws became prominently used…