QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Amalie Dietrich

In an age when natural history collections were a popular hobby of the wealthy, as well as respectable scientific pursuits, writes Robin Kleinschmidt, Amalie Dietrich made Museum Godeffroy the envy of the world with the wonders of Queensland. Konkordie Amalie Nelle was born in 1821 into a working-class family in the Saxon village of Siebenlehn, receiving only a basic education. At 25 she married August Dietrich, a doctor and chemist 10 years her senior. Her husband taught her the skills and principles of collecting natural history specimens, in preparation for a shared career as naturalists. She learnt well and found the topic absorbing. They spent some years working together creating collections, selling them to museums and private collectors. They had a daughter, Charitas, but after six years of marriage, Amalie left her husband because of his infidelity. Despite a reconciliation, the marriage failed again, and she was left alone at 40 to support her daughter and herself. We have already met wealthy shipping magnate Johann Cesar VI Godeffroy, who began in 1861 to create a private natural history museum, and a broad network of other collectors of botanical, zoological and ethnographic material. His traders, sea captains and many missionaries had precise instructions about how to collect and preserve a wide range of specimens. Sumner, in her authoritative work (1993) on Amalie, describes an unlikely collaboration thus: “The innovativeness and risk-taking which Godeffroy showed in his business ventures was also demonstrated in his choice of scientific collectors and employees. Godeffroy’s next collector appointed was quite the opposite of Gräffe [his first]: middle aged, without academic qualifications (though with excellent references), without formally accredited training, and a woman – this was Amalie Dietrich… the only woman Godeffroy employed for scientific collecting.” Amalie placed her daughter in a boarding school (they were not to see each other for a decade) and sailed for Australia on the La Rochelle , arriving in August 1863. Settling and working in Brisbane, she later travelled extensively throughout the state, living for prolonged periods in the most primitive and harsh conditions, travelling in remote areas with a horse and cart, tent and small boat.

Pastel portrait of Amalie, held in the family collection.

Lower left: This 1867 view of the tranquil Port Denison (later to become Bowen in central Queensland) was made three years before Amalie Dietrich arrived for her investigations. Below: This aerial view made in 2000 shows some water in Lake Elphinstone, about 320m above sea level, fed by Anna Creek through the gorge through the 600m-high Carborough Range. The settlement named after the lake once stood on its northeastern edges, although it was not gazetted as a town until a decade after Amalie left. No dwellings remain, although camping, fishing and birdwatching remain popular pastimes. Images Copyright State of Queensland “O, how easy and free I felt on the one hand, and on the other hand I felt lonely and uncertain in this foreign continent. Mr. Heussler told me that Australia is still very little explored and I will find something new and interesting at every step” she wrote home to Charitas soon after her arrival. Among the areas she collected specimens in were Gladstone, Rockhampton (where she dissected 6.7m-long crocodiles), Mackay, Lake Elphinstone (about 110km southwest of Mackay), and Bowen, her northernmost point of travel. She suffered fever, the burning down of her house, and near drowning in a water lily swamp, from which she was rescued by Aborigines. However she was energised by the freedom of her scientific work, which helped her to endure gladly the heat and discomfort.

52