Streets and places named to commemorate
Strzelecki in Australia.
Witold Łukasiak - article translated by Marysia Thiele.
In AUSTRALIA we can find several streets named after Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki. Most of them are located in Victoria.
The most famous, for its importance of transport, is the B460 Strzelecki Highway, a motorway between the towns of Leongatha and Morwell in Gippsland.
It meanders among the picturesque hills of the Strzelecki Ranges and partly coincides with our compatriot's discovery route through the bush, then almost impassable.
The Strzelecki Road from Strzelecki to Ferndale, which branches off the Warragul-Korumburra road, is a local road. Strzelecki Road in Moe is a not very long street in a housing estate at the junction of railway tracks.
There are three streets in Melbourne called Strzelecki Court:
one in Taylor Lakes, located on the corner at the confluence of Calder Freeway and Melton Highway,
another in the Kilsyth district (a street near the Montrose district)
and the third, the most interesting, in Cranbourne, in an ingeniously designed new housing estate.It could be called the Discovery Estate because of the presence of Endeavour Drive, Cook, Flinders, Mitchel, and Kenedy Streets.
Also in Melbourne, in the Sunshine district, there is the recently designed Strzelecki Avenue - an avenue departing from the large Somerville Road and connecting to it a few kilometers away.
In Canberra's Narrabundah district is Strzelecki Crescent, and nearby is a small, surrounded by houses square Strzelecki Place. There is Strzelecki Street in Jindabyne.
On the town plan (1300 inhabitants) Corryong VIC 3707 is a street Strzelecki Way [ Z.L.].
The Strzelecki Avenue of Honour was established 1918 to commemorate WW1. Strzelecki Avenue of Honour comprises two rows of mature Monterey Cypress (Cupressus Macrocarpa) one on each side of the Korumburra-Warragul Road between the Uniting Church and the Strzelecki Public Hall.
The trees were planted on the 4th July 1918. [ Z.L.]
The above streets have the correct spelling. However, there are a few streets that contain mistakes in the name.
In Gippsland, in the Traralgon district, in its south-western part there is Strzlecki Court, and in Alberton - Streleski Street, in Corryong located on the border of Victoria and New South Wales runs parallel to the Murray Valley Highway runs Strzlecki Way.
In the Melbourne district of Laverton, we have Strezlecki Grove - the Princess Highway crosses it built later and in this way, two streets of Strzelecki were created: Grove and Grove South (unfortunately the name of the street is described further with an error - as Strezlecki. )
In the Sydney district of Wakeley there is Strzlecki Close, (the name has already been corrected - see foto _on right__above_ [ Z.L.] ) and in Hoxton Park - according to the letter of Feliks Krotowicz [Kurier no. 130] - there is a street under a monstrous name… Strzleck [sic!] (2014 - name corrected - also with an error.)
Correcting the misspelling of the explorer's name was one of the points on the agenda of the Committee for the Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Paul Edmund Strzelecki, a committee operating at the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Polish Organizations in Australia.
Letters similar to a letter to Wyndham City Council were sent to all interested city councils asking them to correct a misspelled name:
To mark 200th Anniversary of the birth of Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki that falls of 20th of July 1997, the Strzelecki Bicentenary Committee of the Federal Council of Polish Associations in Australia would like to invite you to correct the spelling of Strezlecki Grove in Laverton to Strzelecki Grove. We would be grateful for a reply from you at your earliest convenience indicating your reaction to this proposition.
For three Committee. Witold Łukasiak.(18 Jan 1997)
The new Presidium of the Supreme Council elected in 1997 ignored the Committee and its program (I sent the materials concerning Strzelecki's jubilee, as the secretary of the Committee, to Janusz Rygielski, Vice-President of the Presidium of the Council).
I do not know what happened to the rest of our interpellations to the city councils, but one answer - from Wyndham City Council - reached me before Ryszard Majchrzak took over the keys to the Council's mailbox in Melbourne.
I enclose the content as a whole to illustrate the attitude of the municipal authorities to change the spelling of streets:
The Council does not have any concerns with changing the name to the correct spelling, however, prior to doing so we are seeking the views of the property owners in Strezlecki Grove to check whether they have any major objections.
You wil be advised again following receipt of the views of the owners.
Ms G. Burden, Manager, Civic Services (29 I 1997).
Of course, I handed over the letter to Mr. Janusz Rygielski.
The photograph on _the left__above_ shows that the name of Strzelecki Street is also misspelled.
The authorities of Sydney's Liverpool district knew that Strzelecki was entitled to at least a street there. The naming of Strzelecki in Hoxton Park took place recently, as Feliks Krotowicz wrote.
In Hoxton Park, there is Horningsea Park House, (see photo below) a historic building built in the thirties of the last century by the hero of Waterloo, John Moore on a 200-hectare plot received from the government.
As Brian Davies reports in the „Liverpool Sketchbook” (Rigby 1980), preserved in the same condition when the convicts finished their work on it,
„Horningsea Park House was home in the 1840's to the Polish-born explorer and discoverer of Mount Kosciusko.”
In Polish Weekly of 28 June 1997 in the column „1997 - Year of Strzelecki” appeared a note by me entitled. „Horningsea Park House”, which I ended with the paragraph: „New streets are being designed in the new Liverpool housing estates...
at least one of them should bear the surname of Strzelecki, which can be requested by Poles living there. The occasion is the 200th anniversary of the birth of a famous compatriot”.
Yes, he wears, but why„in a dark glass”?
See the photo on _the left__above_
And I am afraid that Mr. Krotowicz's appeal for intervention will remain unheeded until the end of the term of office of the current Presidium of the Supreme Council of Polish Organizations in Australia.
The above article appeared in the September 130th issue of „Polish Kurier” in 1998.
See _polish excerpt_ of the article.
The photographs were obtained thanks to the courtesy of Mrs Maria Och. from Sydney, and Mrs Marysia Thiele from Adelaide - thank you.