All of us performers: the Lajkonik dance group, The Sydney Windjammers, sax player and composer Paul Dion, and singer-songwriters Slawek Kazan and myself, will surely rank this event among our most memorable. The sheer audacity and enthusiasm of lugging all those instruments and heavy sound equipment up the mountain into a terrain infamous for the unpredictability of its weather: this alone is something to be proud of, something for others to marvel at when we tell them about it.

As it was, the weather was fine on the Saturday, and again on the platform lookout over Charlotte Pass the following day. The outfits of the Polish folk dancers, all swirling green and scarlet, made a colourful contrast to the endless rocky heaths of the Snowy range which surrounded us.

It was pleasing to see the incredulous expressions on the faces of hikers from Thredbo and elsewhere, stumbling upon this concert of song and dance in full swing. I met some of them the next day at the Charlotte Pass gig – they had come to see more!

This event was all the more unique in that The Sydney Windjammers performed three wind arrangments of music actually composed by Kosciuszko. Paul Dion also played a jazz version of one of the pieces, a waltz, on sax. Haunting jazzy Kosciuszko music drifting out over the high country!

Kosciuszko is famous as a revolutionary general in the American War of Independence and the Polish uprising; this music is a side of him hitherto not known. Indeed, the manuscripts were apparently found only recently. The Polish explorer, Strzelecki, who gave our highest mountain its name, doubtless would have been unaware of this too. How fitting, then, that music written by the man after whom this mountain was named, was brought up to the summit, and played across the valleys.

From left: John Brock, John Hospodaryk, Les Strzelecki & Bogusia Strzelecki.

As a singer-songwriter who has composed several pieces related to Kosciuszko, Strzelecki and the Snowies, the event was particularly moving for me personally. I was curious to experience the sensation of playing two instrumentals I had written, “High Country Stream” and “Kosciuszko Paper Daisy”, in the very heart of the landscape which had inspired them.

There was something almost mystical about it, as if what I was playing had provided an aural landscape to the physical one which surrounded us. Two of my songs, “Across the Snowy” and “Adyna”, were about Strzelecki’s exploration of the high country and his discovery of Mt Kosciuszko. Here I was, then, 167 years later, at the actual site, recounting in song the events of that time!

To all who participated and who came along for the ride: etch this event in your memories, and tell your grandchildren about it…for there won’t be another one quite like it.

John Hospodaryk