QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

“The gleam of that distant world …”

Infrequently accompanied by an assistant, her unconventional lifestyle and poor English isolated her socially in already remote country, and it was only after some years in Queensland that she was able to find friends among German settlers. Her disregard for her appearance and personal comfort persisted on her return to Germany. “I am in the middle of breaking camp and travelling further north to Makay [sic]... ,” Amalie wrote to Charitas in February 1866. “You would not believe what it looks like here! Birds, marsupials, shells, corals, insects and plants. A lot is still waiting to be skinned and preserved, through this all kinds of living animals are scrambling around between my feet. I still have to look through the plants, you know that when the stalks are not dry they go mouldy, and they have to make a long trip! My fingers are itching to work...” The collecting was then followed by preparation, drying, skinning, preserving, pressing, labelling and packaging. It was demanding work, but she maintained a steady flow of material back to Ham burg. Her collections covered a wide range, from beetles, small animals and reptiles, to shells, corals, fish, birds, ferns, fungi and seaweed.The usual terms were 30-40 examples of each specimen but, as she was the first person to collect a taipan snake, she may have made an exception in that case! During her two years in Bowen she set up a small zoo, from which she took back with her to Germany a tamed, white-breasted sea eagle. Her collection of spiders received high praise, providing for the major reference work on spiders to the present day, and a wasp was named after her ( Nortonia amaliae ). She published nothing herself, but her botanical collection and notes formed the basis of a book on the flora of Queensland by Lürssen. The wattle acacia dietrichiana was named in her honour. AMALIE’S FIRST TRAVELLING KIT A list, compiled by Dr Ray Sumner, of the equipment necessary for collecting samples which accompanied Amalie on her voyage: • 1 magnifying glass & 1 microscope • 25 retorts • 6 insect cases • 10 reams of paper • rags for packing • 6 tins of alcohol • 20 lb of plaster of Paris • 20 lb of oakum • 100 glass phials with large stoppers • 3 quires of tissue paper • 5 quires of brown paper • 4 flasks of shot & 10 lb of powder • 1 box of percussion caps • 2 boxes of poison • 4 boxes for live snakes and lizards • 3 casks of salt • 1 box of insect pins

Above: Lush tropical valleys fall away toward Mackay’s coastal plain from the rugged Sarina Range, inland from which lies Lake Elphinstone. Below: The Acacia dietrichiana Mimosaceae , found almost exclusively in central Queensland.

A controversial aspect of her collecting related to the widely-held 19th century anthropological belief that the Aboriginal people were sub-human and therefore a fit subject for ‘collection’ and study. Amalie Dietrich made collections of Aboriginal bones and skulls, and it has been speculated that her willingness to pay for well-preserved skeleton parts may have led to grave robbery and even murder. It is known that she took back to Germany a well-preserved human skin with prominent markings. Amalie departed Queensland on 6 November 1872, arriving in Germany in March 1873. For the next six years she lived rent-free in rooms above, and worked in, the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg, highly regarded among her scientific colleagues for her skills and accurate observation, and praised both for the quality of her work and her courage. After the collapse of the Godeffroy empire, Amalie moved to a municipal home for the elderly, and worked in the Botanical Museum. She died of pneumonia in 1891 in Rendsburg on a visit to her daughter, but left a legacy of knowledge and wonder in museum collections around the world. An unusual figure in German society, caring little for fancy dress and social conventions, Amalie was described by Sumner in stark contrast to her cultured daughter: “Amalie, on the other hand, peasant-like, rough, had something which made her seem like a foreign guest among civilised Europeans. The gleam of that distant world she had explored, with the greyness of the privations which she had suffered, remained about her. In her coarse grey loden costume, with her weatherbeaten but intrinsically distinguished face, she was an object of admiration and curiosity to the young people …”

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