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One of the highlights of the Roof of Australia tour in the Australian Alps is a guided walk to the summit of Mount Kościuszko, the highest point in Australia.
December 2009
At 2,228 metres, Mount Kościuszko is the highest peak on the Australian mainland. Hard to spell, harder to pronounce – how did it come to be so called? How did it gain the name of a Polish patriot who never set foot in this country?
For an answer we need to go back to April 1839 and the arrival in Australia of the remarkable Polish traveller and scientist, Pawel (later Sir Paul) Edmund de Strzelecki.
Born into a long line of Polish ‘knights’ in 1797, Strzelecki left Poland when frustrated in his desire to marry his sweetheart Adyna Turno and cheated of the larger part of an inheritance from a rich employer. Between 1834 and 1839 he travelled extensively in the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the Pacific, analysing soil, examining minerals and gathering samples.
A self-taught but widely experienced geologist, ‘Count’ Strzelecki intended to conduct a geological survey of Australia (or, as he called it, the ‘geognosy’ of Terra Incognita) and in four years tramped some 10,000 kilometres on foot in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.
He was arguably the first discoverer of payable gold in the country – although he was required by Governor Gipps to keep his 1839 discovery secret, for fear of unsettling the penal colony, and the honour of first discovery was subsequently claimed in 1851 by Edward Hargraves (along with a substantial official reward).
One of a mere handful of scientists in the colony at this time, Strzelecki also carried out an extraordinary amount of original research into local palaeontology, meteorology, mineralogy, physical geography, geology, ethnology, biology and the agricultural sciences.
After an early expedition to the Blue Mountains and central west regions, in early 1840 Strzelecki joined up with James Macarthur – a grand-nephew of the pioneering pastoralist John Macarthur – and set off on a journey to the Australian Alps and eastern Victoria.
On March 12 1840 Strzelecki, Macarthur and two Aboriginal guides reached the peak of Mount Townsend. The Aboriginal guides were sent down to prepare a night camp and Strzelecki, by aid of his instruments, detected one of six neighbouring peaks as being higher than the others. He named the massif and its summit Mount Kościuszko. Macarthur proceeded to descend but Strzelecki set out on his own to conquer the highest point.
After leaving the mountains they entered the country which Strzelecki named Gippsland. Although preceded in his travels by the Scottish squatter Angus McMillan the previous year, Strzelecki’s maps and descriptions of the region were instrumental in opening it up to settlers and provided for many years the most accurate and complete description of its physical and natural characteristics.
Between 1840 and 1842 Strzelecki travelled throughout Tasmania as a guest of Governor John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane, carrying out a number of surveys and scientific experiments on behalf of the government and in his own right.
He then spent some time in the Port Stephens-Hunter Valley region as a guest of Sir Phillip Parker King of the Australian Agricultural Company (and one-time commander of HMS Beagle, which soon afterwards became Darwin’s vessel of discovery), before settling in London in 1843, where he became a naturalised British subject until his death at the age of 76 in 1873.
He published a journal of his Australian travels in 1845 as Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, a landmark in the annals of colonial science containing the first substantive description of a collection of Australian fossils.
This work, for which he received the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, attracted high praise from Charles Darwin. His honours included fellowships of the Royal Geographical and Royal Societies, an honorary DCL from Oxford, and the KCMG in 1869. Prime Minister Gladstone was an ardent friend and admirer.
His opinion of the Australian colonies was always very high and in his years in England, as well as performing admirable work for the government on poor relief in Ireland, Strzelecki was a shareholder and later Chairman & Managing Director of the Peel River Land and Mineral Company, which became a subsidiary of the Australian Agricultural Company.
He also helped to promote the emigration of many British families to Australia as a member of the Family Colonisation Loan Society initiated by Caroline Chisholm and also of Lord Herbert's Emigration Committee and the Duke of Wellington's Emigration Committee.
His name is borne by many places around Australia – including the Strzelecki Ranges in Victoria, Strzelecki National Park on Flinders Island and the Strzelecki Desert in Central Australia (named after him by the famous explorer Charles Sturt in 1845).
The Ascent of Mount Kościuszko
There is little reason to doubt that Strzelecki was not the first man to stand on the summit of Mount Kościuszko. Over many thousands of years of visiting the region, it is likely that Aboriginal people of the region at some stage stood on that point. It is also possible that early stockmen may have reached the apex.
But Strzelecki was the first person to record his visit and apply a recognised name to it.
Strzelecki and James Macarthur left Macarthur’s property Ellerslie Station, near the present-day town of Adelong, on Monday 2nd March 1840 with four others on a trip to what is now known as Gippsland in Victoria, with a detour to the highest point of the Australian Alps, then believed to be unvisited by previous explorers.
Macarthur was with the party to investigate the possibility of taking up Gippsland country for pastoral purposes and financed the trip for £500, quite a large sum in those days.
Also in the party were James Riley, an Englishman and protégé of Macarthur – employed as what we now call a jackaroo – plus two convict servants and an Aboriginal, Charlie Tara, who originally came from the Goulburn Plains and after whom the Tara Bulga National Park in Victoria’s Strzelecki Ranges was later named.
They arrived at John Hay’s Welaregang Station “on the Hume” (The Murray) on Saturday 7th March. They spent Sunday organising for the mountain trip and left on the 9th. They left the two convict servants at Welaregang but added another Aboriginal, Jacky to the party. Tara, being from the Goulburn country, was not acquainted with the topography of the mountains, whereas the local man would have accompanied other Aboriginals on their annual trips up the mountains to feast on bogong moths.
The party crossed to the south side of the Murray River and followed it upstream until they arrived at a ford known to the Aboriginals as ‘Nowong’ (part of the ‘Towong’ run taken up by the pioneer Guise family) where they spent their first night out.
Next morning they crossed the river and followed its northern bank until they reached a small plain known as ‘Gobollin’ and proceeded several miles up the ranges to “a small but rapid creek” where they made their second camp; they intended to leave the horses there and proceed on foot. Riley volunteered to remain in charge of the horses while the rest of the party made the climb.
Next morning the climbing party – Strzelecki, Macarthur, Tara and Jacky – started early in high spirits. Macarthur wrote “the weather intensely hot, we marched on with our blankets and provisions 'au militaire'. The Count carried in addition a heavy case of instruments for scientific observations”.
They followed up the Swampy Plain River, although they mistakenly believed it was the Hume (Murray) River. They crossed Back Creek and ascended the easy slopes to the top of the Geehi Walls, from where the whole of the way up to Mount Townsend is visible, except perhaps for the route up the river to the foot of the climb.
They descended the Geehi Walls, a drop of some 300 metres, finding it “so steep that we only accomplished it safely by clinging to the shrubs and small saplings”.
At the foot of the drop they crossed Bogong Creek and climbed the ridge on the other side, before dropping down on to the flat (later used by the Snowy Mountains Authority for its first camp in the area) and crossing the Geehi River (once more mistaken for the Hume or Murray).
They then proceeded up the left bank of the river for about two or three miles, crossing at the foot of Hannel’s Spur. The party was now at the foot of the climb up Mount Townsend after a very hot day “upwards of 90°”.
They decided to start the next stage of the climb in the moonlight – frustrating and not very sensible on an unknown timbered ridge but they seem to have attained a fair deal of ground. They secured a lyrebird for supper but had no water.
On Thursday 12th March 1840 the party left their night camp on the lower slopes of Hannel’s Spur on what was to be their final day of ascent. After five hours of steady climbing through the timber they came out in an open spot with water in it – near the present-day Byatt’s Camp. Macarthur wrote:
“The spot we had now reached was the favourite camping ground of the natives during their annual visit to feast on the Boogan Moth. Traces of their camps were visible in all directions.”
They had breakfast, replenished their supplies of water and, being at the limit of the treeline, decided to leave their blankets and other gear there to return to that night.
From this point they started to climb the steep and rocky Abbott Range. Jacky, the Aboriginal from Welaregang would have known the usual route around the end of the Abbott Range into the cirque at the head of the Wilkinson Creek – a much easier approach than the rocky, spiny-backed Abbott Range – but Strzelecki had seen the Abbott Range approach from the top of the Geehi Walls and was more inclined to follow the route he had seen.
After two hours of “toilsome ascent” they were still far from the top of the mountain they were aiming for (Mount Townsend). They had doubts about getting back at night to their camp so they sent the two Aboriginals back to fetch the gear while they proceeded to the summit, which they reached after a “very laborious climb”.
When they arrived on the summit of Mount Townsend, a very rocky top, they found that there were several other mountains in the near vicinity. Macarthur wrote:
“the Count by the aid of instruments quickly detected one of them as being considerably higher than where we stood”.
This was Mount Kościuszko, some 4 kilometres due south and 43 metres higher. While on Mount Townsend, Strzelecki named Kościuszko after the Polish nationalist and hero of the American War of Independence. Strzelecki left Macarthur to proceed on his own to the Kościuszko summit – at which point he recorded one of his rare comments on the route:
“Once on the crest of the ridge, the remainder of the ascent to its highest pinnacle was accomplished with comparative ease”.
Macarthur decided to return to the spot where the Aboriginals had been instructed to bring the blankets and gear. He made a leisurely descent to the selected camp site which he reached towards evening – but there was no sign of the camp or the Aboriginals.
He shouted and fired a shot but got no reply so he got a fire burning. He then heard a faint coo-ee and discovered the Aboriginals' camp below him on the top slopes of Wilkinson's Cirque – they had decided there was no sense in climbing back on to the Abbott Range where probably there was no water and little firewood, so had camped beneath it. Macarthur got down to them “making a perilous decent through a dark glen”.
Macarthur sent Jacky to search for Strzelecki and soon had him back in camp. Strzelecki had suffered falls while coming down Kościuszko in the dim moonlight but had managed to bring down a small bit of rock from the summit and an 'everlasting' flower which he afterwards sent to his beloved Adyna Turno in Poland, with the following words:
"Here is a flower from Mount Kościuszko -- the first in the new world bearing a Polish name. I believe that you will be the first Polish woman to have a flower from that mountain ... the highest peak of the Australian Alps. It towers over the entire continent, which before my coming, had not been surmounted by anyone. With its everlasting snows, the silence and dignity with which it is surrounded, I have reserved and consecrated it as a reminder for future generations upon this continent of a name dear and hallowed to every Pole, to every human, to every friend of freedom and honour -- Kościuszko."
While on the summit Strzelecki made several sextant observations and other survey observations, and copious notes on the geology of the top. In his Physical Description the geology of Kościuszko is mentioned quite frequently.
The next day the party returned to their base camp where Riley was looking after the horses. They spent another day in camp while Strzelecki made his computations. He told Macarthur that the height of Kościuszko was 7,800 feet, although in his report to Governor Gipps he gives the height as 6,510 feet.
Strzelecki reported falling over while descending from Mount Kosciusko to the forward camp. This may have damaged his sensitive barometer, which was the instrument he used for estimating altitude . It is possible that he discovered an error in the instrument when checking back at Riley’s base camp and, not realising that the error had arisen after the Kościuszko reading, endeavoured to correct his Kościuszko height and made it too low in his report to the Governor. It is significant that his next height reading, at Mount Pinnibar, was some 1,700 feet too low.
So who was Kościuszko?
Andrzej Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Bonawentura Kościuszko (1746-1817) was a Polish general and Polish-Lithuanian military leader during the 1794 “Kościuszko Uprising” against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia. He is a national hero in Poland and Lithuania as well as the United States, for whom he fought in the War of Independence between 1776 and 1783.
In recognition of his dedicated service, the US Continental Congress raised him to the rank of brigadier-general and made him a naturalized citizen of the United States. When he was leaving America, he wrote a last will, naming Thomas Jefferson the executor and leaving his property in America to be used to buy the freedom of black slaves, including Jefferson's, and to educate them for independent life and work – some 50 years before the British abolished slavery in the Empire and two generations before the Civil War ended slavery in the US.
Although Kościuszko achieved remarkable military success in the Polish-Russian war of 1792, the national cause was betrayed by the King’s surrender to the Russians. Further capitulations and partitions of Poland by the Russians and Prussians led Kościuszko to mount a popular uprising in 1794.
Kościuszko issued the Proclamation of Połaniec (the Połaniec Manifesto) on 7 May 1794 near the town of Połaniec – one of the most notable events of the Uprising and its most famous legal act. It partially abolished serfdom in Poland, granting significant civil liberties to all peasants. The reasons behind it were twofold: first, Kościuszko was a liberal and a reformist and believed that the serfdom was an unfair system and should end; second, the Uprising was in desperate need for recruits and freeing the peasants would prompt many of them to join the national army. Although it was never effectively implemented at the time, the Proclamation became one of the enduring symbols of Polish national history.
Meanwhile, after initial successes against the Imperial Russian forces following the Battle of Racławice, Kościuszko was wounded in the Battle of Maciejowice, taken prisoner and imprisoned in Prince Orlov's Marble Palace in Saint Petersburg. The Uprising ended soon afterwards with the Siege of Warsaw.
Kościuszko was freed after eight years’ solitary confinement and spent his remaining life as an active member of the Polish émigré communities in the US, Paris and Switzerland, where he died of typhoid fever in 1817.
Kościuszko's body was embalmed and placed in a crypt at Solothurn's Jesuit Church. His viscera, removed in the process of embalming, were separately interred in a graveyard at Zuchwil, near Solothurn, except for the heart, for which an urn was fashioned. In 1818 Kościuszko's body was transferred to Kraków, Poland and placed in a crypt at Wawel Cathedral, a pantheon of Polish kings and national heroes. Kościuszko's heart, which had been preserved at the Polish Museum in Rapperswil in Switzerland, was repatriated in 1927 with the rest of the Museum’s holdings to Warsaw, where the heart now reposes in a chapel at the Royal Castle. Kościuszko's other viscera remain interred at Zuchwil, where a large memorial stone and mound was erected in 1820 and can be visited today.
Thomas Jefferson called Kościuszko "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." Others claim he was a "pioneer of emancipation and a spokesman for racial democracy and justice in eighteenth-century America”. 1
Strzelecki himself stated in his report concerning the naming of Mount Kościuszko:
”that, although in a foreign country, on foreign ground, but amongst a free people, who appreciate freedom and its votaries, I could not refrain from giving it the name of Mt Kościuszko”.
Of numerous places around the world that bear Kościuszko’s name in memoriam, there is probably none larger or more prominent than Australia’s highest peak. It is interesting to speculate on the surprise and pleasure felt by the thousands of Poles and Lithuanians who came to Australia in the 1950s and 1960s to work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme and discovered this mountain named after their national hero.
It is almost certain they could pronounce and spell it correctly – the latter feat achieved by Australia only in 1997 after 150 years of leaving out the ‘z’ and the accent over the ‘s’. Meanwhile, we steadfastly adhere to the colloquial pronunciation of “koz-ee-os-ko” rather than the Polish pronunciation, which is closer to “kosk-chooshko”.
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Sources:
Paszkowski, Lech, Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki - Reflections on his Life (Melbourne, 1997)
Mt Kościuszko Incorporated – www.mtkosciuszko.org.au
www. wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Kościuszko
www.wikipedia.org /wiki/Proclamation_of_Połaniec
Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition –
www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020457b.htm
Organ, Michael, Quo Vadis Count? Paul Edmund Strzelecki's Illawarra Maps & Fossils (Online, 2009)
www.michaelorgan.org.au/count.htm
Bulletin of the Polish Community of Australia & New Zealand (1: Autumn 2005) –
www.polish.org.au/kosciuszko_biuletyn.pdf
1 Mikael Dziewanowski's "Tadeuz Kościuszko, Kazimierz Puaski, and the American War of Independence," in Jaraslaw Pelenki, ed., The American and European Revolutions, 1776-1848: Sociopolitical and Ideological Aspects; Proceedings of the Second Bicentennial Conference of Polish and American Historians, September 29 — October 1 1976 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1980).
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