QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Albert and Logan Germans

The beginning was inauspicious. The community was cut off by major flooding in the Logan River and famine threatened. The ship bringing relief could not come upstream, and a relief party finally managed to cross the river and walk to Brisbane for supplies, returning in two days. However the settlement flourished. In September 1866 a Brisbane Courier correspondent described the settlement in detail: “The Germans have the best notions of starting new communities. They never leave out the essential trades that must always accompany profitable cultivation and agriculture.” He referred to “the industry, skill and perseverance” of the settlers, qualities along with persistence, determination, hard work and thrift marked the progress of thousands of German immigrants in the following years, confirming the government’s decision to actively recruit in the German states and provinces. The Bethania settlers particularly were a sober and God-fearing group, and won the admiration of the few English and Irish landholders nearby. Bethania, often known locally as German Pocket , became a nurturing place for many later German immigrants. They found not only compatriots, but also a closeknit and self-sufficient community living an almost German life in the Queensland bush. New arrivals – such as the later Tesches – often went first to Bethania before taking up land in new districts being opened up, such as Witta, and the Fassifern Valley. Within a year, the district population had grown to several hundred. They began moving out into surrounding areas as the smallest holdings were barely sufficient for subsist ence farming. Upstream, they took up land as far as Logan Village, and later out to Beaudesert. Downstream, they again formed almost entirely German settlements – in 1866 at Philadelphia (today Eagleby), Elkana (now Alberton) in 1867 and Pimpama Island (now Woongoolba) and Steiglitz in 1871. The township of Beenleigh, which soon replaced Waterford as the commercial centre of the Logan Albert region, was a more English settlement, but still with a high number of Germans. Blacksmith Johannes Dauth was among the first to set up a business on the site of the new township. In 1882 it was reported that 80% of the children attending the school were from German families. By 1921 only 9% of the population in the Beenleigh Shire Council was German-born, reflecting that German migration almost ceased after the 1880s, but 52% were Lutheran, which at that time indicated German descent. The Logan Germans were involved in local government at an early stage. When the first Divisional Boards, the forerunners of Shire Councils, were set up in 1880, a large proportion of the Waterford and Beenleigh Boards were

German because whole Divisions were populated almost exclusively by Germans. From 1890 to 1930 Germans or their first generation descendants were chairmen of the Beenleigh Shire Council for more than half that time. Sugarcane became a major pursuit in the region from the early 1870s, although mixed farming still predominated. There was a marked difference between the German and the English growers. The English established large plantations with their own mills, most of them employing Kanak labour, whereas the Germans ran their smaller farms using family members. The Germans farms survived while most of the large plantations failed after the collapse of the sugar industry in 1888. A year later, there were 11 sugar mills in the region, six of them owned and operated by German farmers. Of these the Heck family’s Rocky Point Mill operates today, the only privately owned mill in Queensland, the last of the many others having closed in 1946. An undated image of the Lutheran Church at Bethania. Lutheran Archives image courtesy Kleinschmidt family collection Below: For many years following settlement, punts such as this one – seen carrying a load of sugarcane across the Nerang River near Southport – were the only means of crossing the many such waterways piercing the coastal plans southeast of Brisbane. Image (digital ID 2515) courtesy Queensland State Archives Copyright State of Queensland

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