QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Heck family’s crush on Woongoolba

Many German sailors who ‘jumped ship’ from vessels visiting Moreton Bay found their way to Rocky Point where they were given work and protection. Carl, and later his sons, provided his employees and growers with meat and sugar (he had a butcher shop near the mill), the price being deducted from their pays. Thus the Heck family employees and growers had security in knowing they could always count on the boss in difficulties. From their first days their common Lutheran faith brought and held the German families together. Each Sunday they would worship – originally in the open air, then in one another’s residences, and finally in the community-built church. After the service they would picnic together, then at night they would share a sing-along. The children were taught to play instruments and they had their own band and choir. The community also worked together, cutting each other’s cane while their womenfolk fed them. And because they were such a close-knit community their language was their native German – not English. Education was a priority as most of them came from Prussia, which had a long tradition of compulsory primary education, and the Lutheran Church had from its beginning espoused education as essential. Most of the settlers had come from Bethania and Alberton, which both had congregational schools, conducted entirely in German, but they were

An early cane-train locomotive at Rocky Point mill. Image courtesy of Detlef Sulzer

too far away to serve the Pimpama Island families. A state school opened at Pimpama Island in 1876 with an English-speaking teacher – against the expressed wish of the German families! The school was relocated to its present site in 1883. Here the language was English, but on Saturdays from 8am until 4pm, the children were taught German by a visiting pastor, until WWI put an end to this indulgence. For the duration of the war the German classes were abandoned, but for children of Confirmation age there were German classes on Saturday morn ing followed by Confirmation classes in German in the afternoon. Even so it was not until 1924 that church services were switched from German to English.

View to the south (almost certainly from high up the chimney of the mill) towards the Tamborine plateau; the plant facilities are lower left and, in the centre foreground stands the Heck family home Friedensheim , built in the early 1900s and surrounded by rich, flat agricultural land. Image courtesy Kleinschmidt family collection

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