| Who was Count Strzelecki? What was his background?
Was his work in Australia important, or merely sensational? Is there much to be learnt about him in Geoffrey Rawson's [book] "The Count"? Was he like the Poles who used to throng Princes Street, Edinburgh in the
early months of the last war, impressive in their Polish
service uniforms, each with an unusual story; in a word,
dashing, but with a difference.
Who left their land, and lives and loves behind to challenge tyranny upon the risen wind.
The refugee habit, forced
upon Poles by fate so long
ago, makes Count Strzelecki
suspect. We in Victoria
know that he was not the
first into Gippsland, yet
named it, and got much
credit for its discovery. It is
a point of interest to us that
the Scottish Sellar, whose
farming methods he praises,
was closely linked to some
of our early settlers and
that the lad James Riley,
who accompanied him
through the bush, was the
great grandfather of cyclist
Russell Mockridge.
But was Strzelecki's large
volume a real contribution
to knowledge, or did Pelion
piled on Ossa baffle brains?
His contemporaries thought,
without doubt, that Sir Paul
de Strzelecki, K.C.M.G., C.B.,
naturalised British subject,
was rightly honoured. What
has the latest writer (Rawson) got to say?
"The Count A Life of Sir
Paul Edmund Strzelecki,
K.C.M.G., Explorer and
Scientist" (209 pp., plus index and preliminaries), has
grown from an essay that
was commended in the State
literary competitions of
1951. Rawson is an experienced
author, who, beginning with
studies of seamen, has already touched on aspects of
Australian history. He
brings to this book the inspiration of personal contact with Poland, sound
judgment, and new material.
He is imaginative without
being fanciful, sympathetic
but not emotional, and has
been guided by the quotation that Strzelecki applied
to himself: "The duty really
is, not to refute the experiments of others, not to show
that they are erroneous, but
to discover truth."
We have an interesting,
understanding, and essentially impartial account of
Strzelecki's youth, of his
exile but not through politics in his late twenties, of
his nine years' sojourn either
in Britain or Europe, his
span of five years in America and Oceania, his arrival
at Sydney in 1839, his Australian explorations and relationships, his return to
England; of his work during
the Irish Famine, and of the
London career that closed
with his death as a septuagenarian in 1873.
A review of Rawson's book, The Canberra Times, Sat 19th December 1953
The author also includes
some 40 plates - maps, photographs, and facsimiles - and
at the end, a copy of Strzelecki's will. The story is
rounded off by two contributed papers, one on Strzelecki in Poland, the other
about Mount Kosciusko - so
named by Strzelecki after
the Polish hero and patriot
(1746-1817).
The publishers claim that
this is a "full-length biography." But the pre-Aus-
tralian period is covered in
40 pages, the post-Australian in 30. Owing to lack of
material, and to the scope
of the original essay, two-thirds of the book are de-
voted to Strzelecki's four
years in Australia.
Within its restricted limits
the book is well-balanced.
The author concerns himself
mainly with Strzelecki the
man, his attributes and
achievements, particularly
his part in Gippsland history. He discusses this question fairly and at length,
gives Angus McMillan, the
Gippsland pioneer, an equal
hearing, and performs a
useful service by quoting
McMillan records that were
unavailable to the late A.
W. Greig (Victorian Historical Magazine, 1912).
An illuminating addition
has been made to the
known material touching
Strzelecki himself; a packet
of letters in Warsaw, apparently seven or eight.
They were sent by Paul
Strzelecki to Adyna Turno,
the girl of 15 with whom he
tried to elope, the woman to
whom he wrote for 40 years,
the old lady whom at length
he met, and from whom he
parted.
In handling them and
their contents, in dealing
with Strzelecki the man and
his evolution, the author is
master of his subject.
These letters were written
in French, but early examples of Strzelecki's easy
English are included among
the facsimiles. Then why repeat an old suggestion that
he handed his notes on
Gippsland to H. F. Gisborne
because of the language
barrier? And why call Henry Fysche Gisborne
"Henry Francis?"
Although thought and
time and effort have gone
to the work the book has
the gloss of thoroughness
without the reality. It is
sprinkled with occasional
defects that could have been
easily avoided. According
to all accounts, Strzelecki
was born in June, 1797 (p.
3), when a photograph of his
tombstone, published without annotation, shows 1796
(p. 189).
"It is add (odd)," editorial
correction of letter (p. 36),
but "It is odd," quite plain
in the facsimile (p. 35).
Or again, when, for instance, we come to the
wreck of the Clonmel, which
ran aground some 20 miles
east of Corner Inlet, and the
part it played in the Gippsland sequence, we need precision. "Somehow or other,
news of her plight reached
Port Phillip" is not enough.
What actually happened is
shown in the "Port Phillip
Gazette." Captain Lewis,
harbour master at Melbourne, picked up one of the
Clonmels boats off the
Heads, when returning in
the cutter Sisters from King
Island, and went to the site
of the wreck as soon as possible. He brought back news
of a sea approach to Gippsland that caused W. A. Brodribb and others to charter
the Singapore in order to
use it.
At first they tried the
wrong entrance, but finally
found the right one; then
resumed contact with Melbourne, where Henry Dendy
had arrived just after they
left, exciting the town with
his order for a special survey. The system seemed
made to measure for the
"Gippsland Company," but
their reliance upon it left
them stranded.
The surveys
were long delayed; in spite
of Strzelecki's and the Port
Phillip Herald's optimism,
it took three years to find
an overland route from Melbourne. During that time
the determined McMillan
and his associates had established an export trade across
Bass Strait.
Strzelecki's account of
squatting and the depres-
sion of 1841-43 is quoted
with commendation; but his
analysis of collapse is
topsy turvy, and his canons
of farming were not so
much unfamiliar as incapable of application within
the general framework. On
the other hand, the author
shows, through the expert
opinion of a modern geologist
that, as a scientific work,
Strzelecki's "Physical Description of New South
Wales and Van Dieman's
Land" is a classic, still
valuable for constant reference.
This opinion seems to be
borrowed from W. L. Havard's biography, to which - as to other sources - more
explicit acknowledgement
might have been made.
The history is slightly
blurred, but the figure that
it surrounds is definite and
well taken. Romantic and
practical, energetc and ambitious, generous and highly
gifted - a stranger of resource and quality.
TROVE.NLA
The Author of the Review - unknown. Amazinly, the Author of the book, Geoffrey Rawson is also unknown. The only information we get about Rawson is the one provided by National Library of Australia - that he died in 1969. Through time-consuming googling we have dug up an information that he comes from Essex. His mother Catherine Henbury-Rawson, wife of Charles, had 10 children. Next to Geoffrey's name we find the dates: 1886-1969 and the word (Australia) in the brackets.
Source: wikitree What is well known is that he is an author of several books (Australia, Sea Prelude, Pandoras Last Voyage, Desert Journeys, Matthew Flinders' Narrative of His Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798).
(ESK)
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