QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Fighting for a foot-hold in the Blackall Ranges

janelle lugge / shutterstock.com

At that time, Ludwig Gottfried was still living in the Logan district, for the birth certificate of his third child Edward Ludwig, who was born in 1889, shows his father’s address as Waterford, occupation wheelwright, and age 26 at that time. A family tale relates that, at the age of 17, Ludwig Gottfried unexpectedly found himself in charge of a bullock team, which he took to Hope Island, cutting and hauling timber, but his most significant early role concerns his endeavours to take over the Maleny land left abandoned by his younger brother Paul. Five days after the Land Bailiff’s ominous report, a ‘Ludwig’ – who, according to exhaustive research, could only have been Ludwig Gottfried – had a solicitor named Winter in Brisbane (telephone no. 498!) write asking for transfer to him “as brother and next of kin”. He submitted a declaration of identity but the Crown Solicitor’s Office noted it on the file as “worthless, letters of administration required.” This was satisfactorily attended to, after what must have been a frustrating and worrying period which moved one letter of Ludwig’s solicitor to say that delay was caused in trying to contact all the next of kin who were “scattered throughout the colony”. In April 1893, Ludwig moved on to the land and set about the improvements necessary to fulfil the conditions imposed. On 16 October 1894, a Carl Tesch and Ludwig Bergann signed a declaration of “Proof of Fulfillment” but this did not seem to mean much except perhaps to satisfy the authorities that something was at last happening with the selection. Top: This workshop interior, seen at the Miles Historical Village on the western Darling Downs, would be typical of the crude shelter and tools of the early settlers. Left: A bullock team with their cut tree trunk at Eumundi, to the north of Landsborough, about 1895. Background: the fog-wreathed rolling ridges of the Blackall Ranges today are a weekend vacationer’s retreat; a century ago, there would have been little enjoyment to be had in the “dense vine scrub”.

If this Carl Tesch was indeed the neighbouring Carl Frederick Albert, then it is possible he attested to the conditions being met by his relative, given the legal intervention and increasing mass of hand-written file notes. On 3 June 1896, the Bailiff for Crown Lands certified that Ludwig Tesch (as administrator) was “resident at inspection and for about 3 ½ years continuously, the selector Paul Tesch having occupied occasionally previous to his decease.” The Lands Department then issued a Certificate of Fulfillment of Conditions on 1 July that year. Ludwig applied for purchase at 30 shillings per acre on 9 September and the issue of a Deed of Grant to Ludwig Tesch “as Administrator of the estate of the late Paul Tesch” was approved. The file is noted “deed prepared 29 October 1896” but the date of transmission could not be readily discerned amongst all the stamps of the Survey Office and other notes and dates. Late that same year, Carl Frederick Albert obtained his Certificate of Fulfillment and Deed of Grant, at age 27; although his records are scant, the elapsed years suggest his Portion 21V was no more forgiving than the late Paul’s P19V allotment. “The picture aroused,” Colin’s research recorded, “is that of a penniless battler who fought his way out of the jungle and produced for the inspecting Bailiff’s approval a house valued at £60, out- buildings worth £5 and so many acres cleared and under cultivation.” So it is that the Maleny Tesch branch literally got its feet on the ground in the area five or six miles from Maleny’s embryonic township in a place first called Teutoberg and later Witta.

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