QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Second-generation cuckoo

Institutions can exist for many reasons, and longevity and authenticity stand high among these, as Peter Ludlow rediscovered on a visit to Mount Tamborine. I am sitting in the shop of Lothar and Sigrid Schafroth with their daughter, Stefanie. It is 9:30am and all around us a cacophony of sounds comes to life. Music plays as figures hurry in and out of little wooden chalets; springs unwind and wheels spin. From the deep-throated gongs of the grandfather clocks to the mechanical tweets of the cuckoo, the orchestra of sound erupts around us: weeny wheels whirr, ratchets click, pendulums swing in metronomic discipline, trying to keep everything in time. In the corner the witches quietly await their hour. This is, after all, the workshop of the German Cuckoo Clock Nest. Oblivious to the din, Stefanie explains the story behind this wonderful enterprise. “My family does not actually come from a long line of clock repairers. My father, Lothar, is self-taught in clock repairing. It is more the region my parents came from that influenced their decision to get into the business. Dad came from Mering, which is near Augsburg in Bavaria, about a 45-minute drive from Munich. My mother, Sigrid, comes from Freiburg, in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald). It is a big tourist area, and that is the region where all the clocks and cuckoo clocks are made.” Lothar was originally a fitter and turner by trade, moving around Germany to wherever the work took him. He also worked in South America and Papua New Guinea and in 1967 arrived in Australia on what became a working holiday around the country. Returning to Germany in 1971, his work took him to Freiburg where he lodged with a family whose daughter, Sigrid, captured his heart. After their marriage, they decided to make a new life together in Australia.

“Mum was already pregnant at the time they migrated,” Stefanie confided, “but they kept that quiet from her parents, and said they were only going to Australia for two years. They came out in 1974 and my sister, Angie, was born in January 1975.” The Schafroths went first to Adelaide where they met other German families and made lasting friendships. Lothar took any available work and they remained there for about a year until they had saved enough money to travel with a caravan up through the ‘red centre’ to Darwin, Katherine, Arnhem Land, and back down into Queensland. “Mum, dad and Angie travelled down the coast and settled in Toowoomba. They liked the look of the town: lots of trees, and mum was looking for somewhere to put her feet down. They met some people who had a service station and dad asked to lease their existing workshop and rent a house from them. “My brother Anton was born four years after me. and by that stage my parents had bought their first house in Gladstone Street, Toowoomba. Dad was also a self-taught blacksmith and as a sideline to his day job he set up a shed in the back yard of his house where he produced wrought-iron objects such as doors, fences, gates, and roosters that go on weather vanes. He worked the markets and the home show: it was a painstaking effort, and his customers didn’t see what he had to put into it.” A Sunday drive up the New England Highway to Crows Nest led to the Schafroths purchasing an old Queenslander house on 10 acres (4ha) of land with a cottage out the back at Cabarlah, some 15km from Toowoomba. They also purchased a little corner store there. Cabarlah consisted of the hotel, the corner store and the army barracks. Lothar also assumed the role of postmaster.

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