QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Wide Bay growers and builders

Perhaps most eminent of the German immigrants to Maryborough was Fritz Kinne. Born in Groß Wanzleben in Sachsen-Anhalt (Prussia) in 1844, he became qualified as a builder, but also worked as a butcher. After his arrival in Maryborough on the Reichstag in 1870 he worked as a butcher until he set up a construction business. He undertook many major contracts, and some of the notable historic buildings in Maryborough today were built by his firm. A well-liked and respected public figure, he was popularly referred to in the town as “our Fritz”. He served for almost 20 years on the Maryborough Municipal Council, including one year as Mayor from April 1895. In 1897 he and two partners purchased the financially troubled Maryborough Sugar Factory, a co-operative which was on the verge of bankruptcy, for the price of its liabilities. He pledged to operate it effectively and ensure that the livelihoods of the cane farmers were protected. Despite some very difficult times financially he kept his word, and the mill remained an essential part of the Maryborough economy. His son Otto, a stalwart of the Lutheran Church in Maryborough, was the cane inspector for 40 years. He was so strict about the necessity of receiving clean cane at the mill that it was said that the German farmers at Island Plantation “used to wash and polish their cane” before delivering it. Fritz Kinne died in Maryborough in 1929. The German community provided another mayor for Maryborough when Charles Raabe held the position in 1901, 1909-1910 and 1911-1912. References: Kay Gassan; Where the Eagle Nested The Maryborough Family History Institute Manderson, Pennie: The Voyages to Queensland of the Lam mershagen Parsons, Ronald: Migrant Sailing Ships from Hamburg (Gould Books) Kerr, John: Sugar at Maryborough:120 Years of Challenge (The Maryborough Sugar Factory Lt 1987 www.en.wikipedia,org Port of Maryborough

In Wide Bay, Haussmann had not abandoned his Lutheran roots (he later became a Lutheran pastor for 36 years), and gladly served the many German Lutherans in remote areas of the region. It is reported that on one occasion he baptised 42 infants and children of German families according to Lutheran rite, strong evidence of a large German presence early on, and the rarity of a pastoral visit. He returned to Maryborough in October 1864, at which time he was the pastor of a Lutheran congregation in South Brisbane, for the purpose of “raising a Lutheran Church” in Maryborough. He was cordially received by 50 German Lutheran families in the town, and a strong congregation came into being in due course. The 1868 census recorded 882 people of German birth in the town, rising to a peak of 1,112 in 1881. As in most parts of sub-tropical Queensland the sugar industry became a major agricultural activity in the districts around Maryborough soon after Captain Louis Hope’s first successful experiments. In 1864 John Eaton grew the first sugar cane at Rosehill , and small sugar mills and juice mills sprang up along the Mary River and Tinana Creek. The farmers, especially the plantation owners, attempted unsuccessfully to bring in cheap Chinese labour, but instead found a ready supply of reliable and cheap labour among the Germans. In time, many of them saved capital, bought or selected land and became successful farmers themselves. German farmers have been described as ‘the backbone of the Maryborough cane industry.’ Within 10 years a steady stream of Germans moved north as the land around Bundaberg was opened up. Bundaberg finally outstripped Maryborough as a sugar town, but shared with it the contribution to its success of a large contingent of German farmers. The Germans in the Maryborough district differed a little from those in other areas in that a larger group made their homes and livelihoods in the town rather than as farmers and rural workers, although the latter group still predominated. Island Plantation was a locality with a very high proportion of German farmers. Situated in a pocket bounded by the Mary River and close enough to be within the extensive municipal boundaries of the town, Island Plantation offered remarkably rich and productive soil because of constant replenishment through regular flooding of the river. Sugar cane was their main crop, but they also grew potatoes, lucerne, sorghum and setaria. Though an ethnically mixed community, it had enough Germans for a visitor in the 1880s to report that it was reminiscent of a German rural landscape because many of the barns were built in a German style.

damien herde / shutterstock.com

Night illuminations of Maryborough City Hall.

111