QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

About the editorial team

Matthew Tesch has designed, illustrated, written or edited seven books during a 25-year career in graphic design, marketing and publishing; this book is his eighth, and a ninth is about to push-back and call for taxi clearance. A former commercial pilot, his impressive body of work reflects those early aeronautical interests, ranging from aviation history (two volumes of Eric Allen’s Airliners in Australian Service ) and air safety investigation (three sold-out volumes of Macarthur Job’s Air Disaster series) to a pivotal editorial, design and production role in the more recent ABBA: Let the music speak – a 420-page world’s first analysis of the music and techniques of the Swedish supergroup. This is complemented by an extensive portfolio of technical publications and experience across a wide gamut of client industries, and he is also providing editorial guidance for a Doctoral thesis. He has produced numerous commissioned works in a range of media, including gouache, watercolour, oils and hand-made aircraft and ship models. His creative work has won for his clients a string of state, territory and national tourism awards. He is a fourth-generation descendant of immigrants who arrived from Prussia on several sailings of the La Rochelle and Reichstag , and has visited the country of his forebears more than a dozen times. This triggered waves of personal and community interest, throughout the 1990s, in gathering and recording historical material about Moreton Bay from those who have lived, worked and played around its waterways and islands. The accrued material is sorted and compiled, then disseminated back to the community through published books, interviews and talks, and, since 1997, via his online blog and website www.moretonbayhistory.com. The popular Moreton Bay People series – volumes 1 to 5 – was a collection of yarns about Moreton Bay life by the locals who knew it best. A combined edition in 2001 brought the earlier books together under one cover, Moreton Bay People – The Complete Collection, and was followed by two sequels: Moreton Bay Letters (2003) and Moreton Bay Reflections (2007). In demand as a speaker at many public and community events, Peter’s other works include Mater Scripts: The History of the Mater Hospital Pharmacy 1930–2010 (published) and a commissioned history of the Port of Brisbane told through the words of its workers and other characters on the river, during its life as and evolution beyond Brisbane’s working waterway (in production late 2012). Robin Kleinschmidt has a long-standing interest in 19th century German migration to southeast Queensland. Beginning with his family’s arrival in 1864, he has expanded his interest and research to many other families and groups and the districts and regions in which they settled. Since retiring in 2001 he has written or edited five books with an historical background. The most recent (2011) is Stegelitz to Steiglitz, the history of the Kleinschmidt family in Germany and Australia . A major work of 520 pages, its production involved research in State Archives in Potsdam and church archives in Berlin and Brandenburg-an-der-Havel, as well as libraries in Canberra, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. His formal academic qualifications are a BA (First Class Honours) and a B.Ed from the University of Queensland. Peter Ludlow is an author and local historian with many books and collected works to his name, the first, titled Peel Island – Paradise or Prison , published in 1988 as a personal contribution to Australia’s Bicentenary events.

Information about the GACCQ may be found on page 313.

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