QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
I often found myself reflecting upon my paternal great-great grandparents, who, in May 1863, exchanged the woods and fields of Prussia’s Uckermark for what had been described by migration agent Johann Heussler as “noble districts” but which turned out instead to be the steamy scrub of Waterford and the almost inaccessible and unworkable slopes of Witta. Their journey via the Elbe and North Sea to the shores of Moreton Bay and the Logan called for an irreversible decision to change homelands – a massive gamble which might have gone badly wrong but which, through persistent hard work, paid handsome dividends. It would be doing them, and the many thousands like them, an injustice to suggest a direct comparison, but there have been times I felt a keen empathy with Great-Great Grandpa Ludwig, wielding an axe on a springboard 60 feet up in the rainforest with nothing between him and the ground. There was much to be discovered as this project evolved and took form; sometimes patterns emerge only after up-ending boxes and moving their contents around. It was curious to learn that my forebears shared the same rolling decks as Amalie Dietrich on their life-changing journeys to the Fifth Continent, and something to flag for later investigation to see if Bert Hinkler’s father was on that, or another, voyage of the La Rochelle . But that’s looking back, and this book is about much more than the journey. There are surprises in equal measure, in Queensland’s German connections, in all manner of things today. I have been privileged to collaborate with two highly experienced writers, Peter Ludlow and Robin Kleinschmidt, in giving voice to these stories, and our efforts have been resoundingly endorsed by Detlef Sulzer as we’ve strived to actualise his vision for just such a book. Despite numbering builders and wheelwrights amongst my ancestors I want to reiterate that we’ve not set out to ‘reinvent the wheel’. So let’s close this bit with a reminder of words others wrote a quarter-century ago; they resonate still. In August 1987, six months shy of Brisbane’s ‘coming-of-age party’ at Expo’88, the University of Queensland’s Department of German hosted a conference which mined a rich vein of contributors. In their Introduction to the published collected papers, editors Jurgensen and Corkhill wrote: “It must be clear from the wide range of topics that a unified approach or shared methodology would have been inappropriate. To a very large extent the nature of the subject determined the manner of its treatment. This collection brings together contributions which are academic studies, literary criticism, club histories and homages, scholarly and creative writing, descriptive accounts and argumentative reasoning. If there is one factor they all share, it is that they ultimately add up to a mosaic of the German Presence in Queensland.” They surely nailed it then. I hope we have now, as well, in our own way. In browsing through these pages, the moment you find yourself realising ‘Gee, I didn’t know that ’, we will have fulfilled our goal with this book. Dive in and enjoy it. And remember those who will follow us, too.
Matthew Tesch September 2012
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