QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

“The pure juice of the grape” Toongara: The vineyards of Meyer and Isambert, dating from 1867, produced for one of the earliest wineries in the West Moreton district. To best suit Queensland’s climate, it sported an above-ground cellar, with the idea that greater airflow produced cooler fermenting temperatures. Stanthorpe: In the 1920s and 1930s, an influx of Italian winemakers was encouraged to the Stanthorpe area to take over insolvent soldier settler farms.* Wine making was developed there in the 1970s, and by the 1980s was regarded as a serious industry there. In May 1981, vignerons consigned the first export shipment of Granite Belt wine to Germany for two Hamburg buyers with Queensland business interests – 108 years after the first export attempt from the southern Downs. *Soldier-settlement was a joint program of the state and Commonwealth government which made available Crown land to servicemen returning from the First World War. The favourable financial terms did not always include equally favourable land, and largely failed to account for the specialist farming skills the often weary servicemen needed to cope with climatic and other challenges of life on the land. Many good intentions foundered and many soldier-settlers simply walked off the properties and returned to the towns. Lessons were learned and better applied, however, a quarter-century later.

Kedron Brook: A group of Germans was recruited by the Reverend John Dunmore Lang in 1838 (while the colony was still a penal settlement) to conduct a mission amongst the local Aborigines. The Commandant, Captain Cotton, granted the small group 700 acres (283ha) at Zion Hill. Although the mission ultimately failed, the German Station became a source of fresh fruit and vegetables – including grapes – for Brisbane. Of note was Carl Frederich Gerler. He was born on 24 February 1817 in Fielenzig in Prussia, migrated to Queensland, and in 1853 purchased 193 acres (78ha) of land – Carlsberg – along Nudgee Road where he started mixed farming. Within a year he advertised grapevine cuttings for sale at the German Station, and continued to produce wine for many years at Carlsberg until he suffered a buggy accident. Son Carl maintained the farm until 1919. By the mid 1870s grapes and wine were the main products of the German Station, although the wine produced was unpopular with everyone except the Germans themselves.

The unidentified location of this 1890s image is reliably thought to be one of Meyer and Isambert’s vineyards – either Toongara or Warilla. Image courtesy of Ipswich City Council

The Rockhampton Bulletin ’s very own Brisbane Correspondent reported some convincing recommendations in the paper’s issue of Monday 14 August 1876: “I am indebted to Messrs. E. and J. Young, whole sale grocers, of Queen-street, for some sample bottles of Queensland wine, manufactured by Messrs. Meyer and Isambert, at their vineyards, near Ipswich. One is a white wine of delicate and pleasant flavour and bouquet, and as agreeable a summer drink as one could wish to taste. The other is a red wine, and possibly just as tempting to an expert, which I certainly am not. Both are designated “Toongara”, and.though new are far more palatable than most colonial Wines. They are guaranteed the pure juice of the grape, and unfortified. The price by the case I understand to be,-quarts 24s. per dozen ; pints 26s. the two dozen. There ought to be a demand for those wines in Rockhampton.”

Among the current crop of Stanthorpe wineries is one distinctly German name – Felsberg (‘rocky mountain’) – established in 1991 after Otto Haag, a beer brewer with Castlemaine Perkins in Brisbane, and his wife Anne had Felsberg auf der Granite Belt

bought the land at Glen Aplin in 1983. It was sold to the Orr family in 2008.

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