QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Fishing in the Victoria River. Image courtesy of family collection

Bogged in rutted mud on her way to Hayes Creek, seeing from the air buffalo grazing on flood plains, and watching Ansett-ANA Bristol Freighters fly in loads of cattle for branding and breaking-in … the contrast between the old world she had left behind and the bizarre, colourful continent on the far side of the planet could not have been starker. Determined to see more of this vast, strange wildness, Ilse travelled by sea from Darwin via Port Hedland to Perth in 1953, returning via train to Port Augusta, thence by ‘The Ghan’ to Alice Springs and by road back to Darwin. A post-war Germany looking for diversions amidst its diligent rebuilding exercised its dreams with words and photogravure images such as Bernd Lohse’s “Lands of Longing: Australia and the South Seas” (Umschau Verlag, 1953) coincidentally featuring a motorbike-riding young Bavarian woman in its cast of exotic places and characters.

Darwin harbour was still littered with the masts and upturned hulls of wrecked ships bombed only a few years earlier, but Ilse quickly and happily came to call the town home. More than 60 years later she still fondly recalled that time, saying there could not have been a better start to her new life in Australia. Just one of many immigrants helping make up that ethnically diverse town, she was welcomed for who she was as a person and for what she contributed. She met many colourful characters, forged enduring friendships, and had some extraordinary adventures that befitted her inquisitive and independent character and spirit – and made for interesting reading in her letters home (and the odd published appearance in newspapers and books!). Apart from the occasional ‘rum party’ on the Darwin wharf, her experiences included crocodile hunting by night in a dugout canoe on the Daly River (the canoe overturned, giving her a few pulse-racing moments in the dark waters), and a motorcycle tour of the Northern Territory, which lasted 13 weeks and took in places ranging from Katherine to Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Daly Waters and Timber Creek. Her bosses were remarkably understanding; each time she cabled back to ask for more leave, they granted it. Such was life for the first female holder of a motorcycle licence in The Territory in what – in the ’50s – was still very much a pioneering place.

Somewhere in the Outback: Ilse in sensible frock and even more sensible footwear, poses for the camera on the bonnet of a classic Aussie Holden in June 1954. Image courtesy of family collection

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