QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Brisbane’s first free settlers: “we are here now”

As an interim step an outstation was built at Burpengary on the northern outskirts but, after Gottfried Haussmann was attacked at the hut there and was severely wounded, barely escaping with his life, these plans were abandoned. Closer settlement and the negative attitudes and influence of some caused deterioration in relationships with the Aboriginal people, making mission work even more difficult. In 1844 the Gossner Mission Society sent four more missionaries, and both the Society and the committee in Sydney promised renewed financial support, but difficulties persisted. Pastor Eipper left the mission in 1844 to serve in the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales, and Pastor Schmidt in 1845 to work as a missionary in Samoa. By 1848 all mission activity had ceased. The New South Wales government resumed the mission reserve, surveyed it, and sold the small blocks to the mission families. In time, some of them moved into surrounding areas such as present day Chermside, Clayfield and Hendra. Acquiring larger blocks of land, they became successful farmers. Their names survive to the present day in the northern suburbs of Brisbane – the suburb of Zillmere, Rode Road (Chermside and Wavell Heights), Gerler Road (Hendra), and Wagner Road and Franz Road (Clayfield). Several maintained their desire to spread the faith. Gottfried Wagner, followed by Peter Niquet and Gottfried Haussmann, attended Lang’s college in Sydney to prepare for the ministry. All three were ordained in the Presbyterian Church, but Niquet and Haussmann spent almost all the rest of their very long lives as Lutheran clergymen, Niquet in South Australia and Haussmann in Victoria and Queensland. Wilhelm Gehricke and Carl Gerler were also ordained as Lutheran pastors, the latter serving at German Station for a time.

The missionaries established their village and farms, built a small church, and organised schooling for their children. The houses were built in one row, each with an acre in front for fruit and flowers and five acres (2ha) behind for crops, back ing onto Kedron Brook. They soon developed cordial relations with the local Aborigines, some of them also travelling further afield to make contact, but their efforts were entirely unsuccessful: in ten years they did not make a single convert. They found that the Aboriginal peoples’ nomadic way of life made it difficult to exercise an ongoing influence, and the Aboriginal people regarded them primarily as a source of food and provisions. The ringing of a crude bell (actually beating a large tin dish with a ladle) to announce the daily church service also served as the signal for the natives to raid the missionaries’ gardens. The mission led an otherwise quiet life, developing productive farms and gardens and selling their surplus farm produce to the convict settlement and later to other settlers. German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt spent time at their village before his great northern journey in 1844 and wrote in admiration of their orderly and sober life style, of their positive influence on other local settlers and of the mostly positive relationships with the Aboriginal people. The pious and respectable way of life provided to the indigenous inhabitants a stark contrast to the example of European civilisation exhibited by the convicts, who were the ‘worst of the worst’ offenders – recidivists who were subjected to brutal treatment and harsh public punishments. Financial support from the Presbyterian cause in Sydney began to falter, with a corresponding reduction in the government subsidy, which declined from £310/19/1 in 1838 to £93/0/2 in 1841 and was entirely withdrawn the following year. Compelled to devote more time to providing for their families in preference to mission activity, the missionaries’ privations grew. In 1842 the Moreton Bay penal colony was closed and the region opened to all. The New South Wales authorities wanted the mission enterprise to relocate to a more remote site, and plans were made to move to the Bunya Mountains. Opposite page, left : Carl Gerler’s well-known 1846 “sketch” of German Station is informative for its depiction of flora, fauna and activities; it was left to a later blueprint (opposite, right) to map the district with greater cartographic exactness – Sandgate Road may be seen wrapping around “Zion Hill” on the lower left. Right: This cairn was dedicated on the centenary of settlement, and can be best seen today heading inbound to the City, where Sandgate Road bisects at the Nundah underpass tunnel.

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