Kosciuszko

The incredible life of the man behind the mountain 

By Anthony Sharwood
Published by Hachette
RRP $34.99 in paperback | ISBN 9780733650970

This is a little off track of our general theme of Australian military and related history but it may be of interest to some readers of my blog. I guess the question every Australian asks themselves at one time or another is—why is our tallest peak, modest as it is by world standards of soaring peaks—named Mt Kosciuszko? And who is this man Kosciuszko—we all assumed, rightly, it was a man for whom the mountain was named?

The fact is that Polish explorer Pawel Strzelecki (we’ve heard of him via the Strzelecki Track and other well known place names) named it in honour of a fellow countryman—great freedom fighter, champion of human rights and military engineer Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746-1817) who led an uprising against Russia and other invaders in his native Poland, promising freedom and equality to all who joined his cause. He also figured prominently in the American War of Independence. Thomas Jefferson was an admirer.

Sharwood, happiest with the Australian vernacular, does wander off the point a bit in this book. The repatriation of Kosciuszko’s heart to Poland 110 years after his death—he specified it could only happen when Poland was free—drew comparisons with the dispersal of Phar Lap’s body (and extracted heart) to various institutions and somehow he felt it was then appropriate to anoint Darryl Kerrigan, the fictitious protagonist of Australian movie The Castle as the nearest thing we have to an Australian national hero. Really!

He does redeem himself however with his desire to understand the high country’s pre-European history and the stories of its original custodians. Now, he writes, it’s time to understand the Aboriginal history.

And perhaps now it’s time to retire the name of a Polish adventurer, worthy as he may be, in favour of a name the Aboriginal custodians can agree on. It’s been done before. Think Uluru.

By writing about the man for whom the mountain is named, Sharwood has inadvertently demonstrated how inappropriate it is to honour a man with no connection to Australia or Australians with such a famous landmark. After all, he was a man who never sought personal glory. I don’t think he’d mind at all if it was renamed.

About the author:

Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has worked in TV, newspapers, magazines and online news sites. Formerly a sportswriter who covered several Olympic Games, he now specialises in the environment, climate and weather. In 2020 he released the acclaimed From Snow to Ash, a love letter to the Australian High Country written after walking the Australian Alps Walking Track and in 2021 he explored the passionate environmental and cultural battle over Australia’s wild horses in The Brumby Wars.