Page 2. THE ASCENT. …the Kosciuszko National Park’s website rather extravagantly describes it as a “high altitude adventure” and refers to “ conquest” of the peak. Some visitors may well share this “ardour of discovery” with Count Paul Edmund de Strzelecki, the first European conqueror of the peak. For others, maybe it is an item on the bucket list, ticked off with relative ease; after all, unlike Strzelecki, today’s visitors do not have to climb 6,000 feet (2,000 m) up Hannels Spur with a pack load of instruments and gear.

Page 22. ALPINE. Successive governors of the colony called on the skills and interests of these travellers. John Lhotsky, Paul Strzelecki and Dr George Bennett were foremost among them as early discoverers of Australian alpine areas.

SURPRISE!A BALLAD OF MT KO¦CIUSZKO!

Listen to the song. Jan Wojdak - Ballada o Górze Ko¶ciuszki

Page 27. INDIGENOUS. The explorers remarked on the athteticism, agility, physical skills and health of Aborigines living beyond the corrupting influence of European contact. Strzelecki commented on their “instinctive good sense, accompanied by quick perception, and a retentive memory, here and there blended with the errors or excesses of an ardent imagination” f11 – qualities that were very useful in saving the lives of Strzelecki and his party when they were lost in dense forest of South Gippsland. (…) Strzelecki commented on the “highly sonorous and euphonious language”, and Lhotsky was very appreciative of Aboriginal music “which for majestic and deep melancholy, would not dishonour a Beethoven or a Handel” f13. He wrote down and later attempted to sell a Monaro womens’ song.(…) Strzelecki left the most detailed, sophisticated account of Indigenous culture, in his Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.f15. While adhering to the superiority viewpoint, he observed and recognized what many other Europeans did not: Aborigines had ideas and practices about religion, rights of property, social customs and etiquette. He astutely observed that Aborigines did not mention the names of the recently dead.

Page 28. INDIGENOUS. Strzelecki deplored the influence of European culture on this world, and called for land justice, seeing the Aboriginal point of view: “You prosper on our native soil and we are famishing”.f17.

Widok na najwy¿sze szczyty z Geehi. Fot. Puls Polonii.

Page 29.NATURALISTS. To be a naturalist was to pursue a popular, prestigious and useful hobby and to open up opportunities to be an explorer, surveyor and collector. The visits of Hume and Hovell, Bennett, Lhotsky, Strzelecki, Murray, Mueller and Clarke to the mountains in the 1820s to the 1850s were inspired by this wideranging interest. They noted details across the fields of geology, meteorology, botany, zoology and anthropology in a way that pre-dated the current specialization of these disciplines. (…) In 1858, Charles Kingsley described these in a popular guide to field studies:
“Our perfect naturalist should be strong in body; able to haul a dredge, climb a rock, turn a boulder, walk all day, uncertain where he shall eat or rest; ready to face sun and rain, wind and frost, and to eat and dring meagre; he should know how to swim for his life, to pull an oar, sail a boat, and ride the first horse which comes to hand; and finally, he should be a thoroughly good shot, and a skillful fisjerman; and if he go far abroad, be able on occasion to fight for his life.”f20.

Page 33. WATER. Although Lhotsky noted that cattle contaminated the water supply near Michelago, Strzelecki and Clarke were the ones who warned that livestock and other European land use practices were a problem under Australian conditions. They both argued for careful adaptation to local conditions rather than mindlessly repeating accepted practices. But recognition of this astute land management advice was still far in the future.
Strzelecki particularly noted how stock impacted soil. He used his extensive travels to observe the characteristic presence of drought in Australia and drew from general historical wisdom to suggest that a culture that abuses its soils does so at its own peril. In his Report to Governor Gipps, Strzelecki deplored the changes he witnessed. Once bared by clearing, he notes, soil becomes hardened and barren, even more so after the use of “a most prejudicial practice…the constant and periodic wilful incendiarism” that prevents growth and exacerbates dryness.
Strzelecki was the first to suggest the use of alpine water for irrigation on the thirsty plains downstream. He thought the fall from the characteristic plateaus at the headwaters of alpine Australian rivers was well suited to the damming of water.

PAGE 35. A WARNING. There were early warning from Strzelecki and others, but in general these were unheeded or not understood. In this early observors were shaped by the science of their day, and with focus on collecting, cataloguing and classifying rather than explaining processes. Ecological science was a long way in the future.

PAGE 38. AN EXCERPT FROM STRZELECKI'S BIO. In his major report, Strzelecki also carefully observed the conditions for agriculture in the colony, commenting on the detrimental effects of agriculture on fragile, nutrient-deficient soils – so unlike those he had seen elsewhere on his extensive travels in Europe, North, Central and South America and the Pacific islands. Strzelecki was aware of the delicate balance that enabled Australian grasses, shrubs and trees to thrive on relatively poor soils, and notes the destruction that had already occurred to soils subject to clearing, overstocking and too-frequent burning.

Spagnum bogs - ¿yciodajna g±bka boi siê kopyt

PAGE 45. SOIL EROSION. Thus, the British way of thinking was applied to alien conditions and in ignorance of the land’s capacity for use. Long established Aboriginal methods of balancing resource availability with human needs were not seriously observed, let alone considered. The peaceful landscape enjoyed by Lhotsky, Bennett, Strzelecki, Ryrie and Clarke underwent dramatic changes unleashed by the introduction of hard-hooved close-cropping sheep and cattle on the delicate soils and watercourses. Fire regimes changed, forests and woodlands were cleared, soil was tilled for cropping and weeds and feral animals were introduced. These changes all affected longstanding relationships between humans, soils, water and plants, but this was not accepted for years.

PAGE 46. PASTORALISM. Lhotsky and Strzelecki commented on conflicts over boundaries, gross overstocking, cattle duffing and indiscriminate burning off.

PAGE 95.FIRE. Australian vegetation is not the same as European vegetation. Much of it is fire evolved; frequent burning encourages dense shrubby growth to return, increasing fuel loads, not reducing them. With more and larger fires came increased stress on catchments [zlewiska] and serious sheer erosion. These changes were noted by some but ignored or dismissed by the dominant culture. In the 1840s, Strzelecki deplored the “constant and wilful incendiarism” [ryzykowne, nadmierne wypalanie] of the settlers, and Helms pointed out in 1893 that too frequent fire was drying out the country and making it even more flammable than before.

Eucambene Dam. Foto Puls Polonii

PAGE 107. THE SNOWY SCHEME. The Scheme’s logic was based on longstanding observations that lie of the land offered an opportunity for hydroelectric power generation and/or irrigation foreseen by Strzelecki. Constant, abundant alpine water flowed “wasted” down the Snowy River through a little populated area; yet to the west there was a precipitous fall of 1,000 meters to the dry inland plains from the high plateaus where the Snowy, Murray, Murrumbidgee and Tumut rivers have their sources. By diverting water from the Snowy River to Murrumbidgee and Murray systems through huge dams to control the flow, cheap water could be supplied for irrigation. Engineers devised a masterly piece of balance and ingenuit by utilizing the huge loop in the early course of the Murrumbidgee River to connect the upper Snowy River with the Murray catchment. The Snowy Mts Scheme built tunnels and redirected water westward to flow through these and greatly increase its fall. The fall was used to drive turbines before returning the water to rivers further downstream. The Scheme was a remarkable engineering achievement. Its two main developments involved- Sixteen massive dams, eighty km of aqueducts, more than 140 km of tunnels cut deep through the granite core of the Great Dividing Range, several regional towns and seven power stations (two of them underground).f47 In addition, there were several hundred km of roads and transmission lines for a total generating capacity of 3.74 gigawatts of electricity.

PAGE 115. HIGH MOUNTAIN CATCHMENTS. Events reached a climax in 1957, with the grazing lease period expiring in June. By then, research on the ecology of Australian mountain areas has established many basic principles that had been building slowly since the time of Strzelecki, Clarke, Mueller, Helms and Maiden.