ADB clears Sir Strzelecki of Heney’s allegations

A recent submission to the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) has been successful at last and, after 45 years, the ADB has finally rectified incorrect statements in the biography of Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki written in 1967 by Helen Heney.

The submission was prepared, documented and signed by (in alphabetic order) Professor Ewa Goldys (Macquarie University), Associate Professor Ben Goldys (UNSW), Associate Professor Andrzej Kozek (Macquarie University and a member of the Kosciuszko Heritage), Witold Lukasiak (Kosciuszko Heritage), Felix Molski (Kosciuszko Heritage) and Dr Ernestyna Skurjat-Kozek (President of Kosciuszko Heritage). The ADB also included, in the Obituaries Australia, an obituary of Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki which appeared in South Australian Advertiser on December 26, 1873, and added related links.

Professor Andrzej Kozek, who headed this effort, writes:

Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki is internationally known as the explorer who first identified the highest peak of Australia, named it ‘Mt Kosciuszko’ after Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish fighter for democracy, equal rights and freedom, and climbed the mountain on 12 March 1840. His travels with James Macarthur opened for settlement the part of Victoria that he named Gippsland after Governor Gipps. He was the first who discovered gold in Australia near Bathurst in NSW, coal and other minerals in Tasmania, produced the first geological map of Australia and summerized his research and discoveries in a monograph Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land awarded in 1846 with a Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Less known but far not less valuable was Strzelecki’s contribution to organizing help during the Irish Potato Famine disaster which stroke this country between 1845 and 1852, and for which he was knighted by Queen Victoria.

The success of the team of signatories to the Submission to the ADB was however possible only thanks to the hard work and persistent efforts of the Polish community in Australia collecting relevant documents over time and submitting complaints to the ADB over many years. Particularly outstanding in this effort was the monograph Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki – Reflections on his life written by Lech Paszkowski and published in 1997 by Arcadia, Australian Scholarly Publishing. Lech Paszkowski, author of five biographies in the ADB and a recognized documentarian of Poles and of the Polish heritage in Australia and Oceania, spent over 30 years collecting documents and researching all available documents on Strzelecki. This monumental work, as he admits, was inspired by a defamatory book on Sir P.E. de Strzelecki In a Dark Glass published in 1961 by Helen Heney, the same author who 6 years later wrote the biography of Strzelecki for the ADB. Late Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki summarized In a Dark Glass in his review of 1963: Miss Heney has done great disservice to Australian historiography, her publishers and sponsors.

The Polish Community in Australia is very pleased that the Australian Dictionary of Biography has finally (after 45 years) corrected controversial sections of the biography in its online version. This entry is popping up at the top of all search engines when internauts search for the keyword ‘Strzelecki’.

Other large biographical dictionaries like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Wikipedia or Polish Dictionary of Biography (Polski Slownik Biograficzny (2007)) have been able to avoid the trap of relying on Miss Heney’s work which was full of outrageous and unproven allegations. Yet In a Dark Glass, broadly popularized in Australia, has been misleading Australian readers for over 50 years. Let us recall that In a Dark Glass remains the only book on Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki available in Braille alphabet for visually-impaired readers. There is more work to be done to correct this too.

Andrzej Kozek