QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Albert Kleinschmidt

If there was a public committee or organisation in Beenleigh at the end of the 19th century, it was likely to include Albert Kleinschmidt. When the Logan Progress Association was formed in 1894, the newspaper reported that almost all the members were private individuals. Only Albert Kleinschmidt was “a public man”. He had achieved this public profile at the age of only 37. Born in the Uckermark village of Stegelitz in 1857, he was six years old when his parents left for Queensland on the Susanne Godeffroy with their four children, leaving six in the Stegelitz graveyard. Friedrich Kleinschmidt owned 18 acres (7ha) of land on the Logan River at Bethania, but in 1870 extended his holdings by selecting a homestead at Pimpama Island, a district of fertile land interlaced with swamp on the shores of southern Moreton Bay. In the next 10 years he and oldest son Ferdinand acquired more than 400 acres (162ha) of land, some excellent, some swamp, which had to be drained to become arable. By the time Albert married in 1884 (his bride Marie Rehfeldt was the first white child born in the Bethania settlement), he had his own farm on which he grew mixed crops, mainly sugar cane, and bought a second from his father in 1890. In 1882 Friedrich and his three older sons had built their Stegelitz sugar mill on the shores of Moreton Bay. The name eventually became the name of the whole district, slightly modified to Steiglitz. Despite his youth, Albert’s talents were recognised and he was given responsibility for managing the mill. After the sugar industry in Queensland collapsed in 1887, it was Albert who in March 1889 appeared before the Royal Commission to Inquiry into the General Condition of the Sugar Industry in Queensland on behalf of the family and the mill. In April 1893 tragedy struck when the oldest child (also Albert) was shot and killed on his way home from school. He was just eight years old.

The incident divided the community, but perhaps also changed the course of the life of the bereaved father, who went on to become the manager of Davy and Gooding’s Beenleigh Plantation and sugar mill on the Albert River. He thereby also became manager of the rum distillery, newly relocated there after the 1894 floods. In 1896 he moved his family to the manager’s residence. His public life began much earlier. In 1886, replacing his brother Ferdinand, he was elected to the Beenleigh Divisional Board (later the Beenleigh Shire Council), and elected Chairman in 1891. He resigned two years later on a matter of principle, but stayed on the council and served again as chairman in 1898, 1901, 1903-1904 and 1906, remaining with the council until he left Beenleigh in 1911. Although not a dairyman he was one of the instigators of the Kingston Butter Factory in 1907 and was a director until 1911. His distilling efforts won a Diploma of Honour, equivalent to a Gold Medal, for his Bosun’s Rum at the Greater Britain Exposition in London in 1899. Beenleigh Plantation sugar mill and rum distilllery in 1908, seen from approximately the site of today’s motorway bridge over the river. Image courtesy Kleinschmidt family collection

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