German Australians in Rural Society 1914-1918.

John McQuilton

In the literature devoted to the home front during the first world war there is a general acceptance that the German Australian had moved from being a model citizen in 1914 to the ‘enemy within’ by 1916. The pressures of war and government propaganda demonised the German Australian, creating an ugly social climate that allowed the suspension of civil rights, encouraged witch hunts and personal scores to be settled using ethnicity as an excuse. Michael McKernan has argued that this was deliberate government policy. 1 was a long way from the battlefields of Europe and the government, to boost the war effort, manufactured an internal threat. The German Australian became the ‘Hun’ beloved of propaganda. Without doubt, the most influential book on this subject remains Gerhardt Fischer’s chilling analysis. He paints a dark picture of prejudice, xenophobia, cruelty, dispossession, farce and occasional kindness.2 Walla Walla was a German Australian enclave with Culcairn Shire.3 For many in the district German was their first language and the riding consistently returned German Australians as councillors. Tensions between the German and Anglo communities was clearly evident at the outbreak of the war. In November 1914, the local branch of the Farmers’ and Settlers’ Association met to consider three motions: enemy aliens should not be employed by local farmers; enemy aliens were to be denied access to country districts; and all enemy aliens in country districts should be rounded up and interned in Sydney. The motions were lost by seven votes to five but allegations that local German farmers employed fellow nationals at under-award wages persisted.4 Although many of the young men from community enlisted, a sizeable section of Walla Walla’s German Australian community largely ignored the war. Others openly opposed Australia’s involvement. Frederick Heppner was fined £100 and bound over to keep the peace for twelve months in 1915 after charges of disloyalty had been brought under the War Precautions Act. Celebrating the fall of Warsaw he claimed, ‘Germany will beat all the world and all you b- Australians.’5 Tensions within the local German Australian community were clearly evident during the recruitment campaign in early 1916. After a violent struggle, the police arrested a ‘German national’ for singing ‘Wacht Am Rhine’. After his arrest, the ‘German’ compounded his error by calling for three cheers for the kaiser. Two armed men attempted to spring the prisoner from the cells, but failed and were arrested. The charge laid, however, was not attempting to release a prisoner: the charge was threatening language used against local German Australians.6 Although the first internments from Walla Walla had taken place in 1915, doubts about the loyalty of the district’s German Australians persisted, especially after the second conscription referendum in 1917. Walla Walla was now seen as a hotbed of not only German disloyalty but also Sinn Fein dissent. There was little the defence department could do with the Sinn Feiners but they could do something about the

178 Rural Society

‘German’ disloyalists. In March 1918, four men were arrested and interned, Herman Alfred Paech, Edward D Heppner, Ernest G Wenke and John Wenke. All were Australian born. The Wenke brothers were third generation Australians. The four men were justices of the peace and Paech and John Wenke were shire councillors. The shire council was embarrassed by the arrests, expressing its ‘regret’ at the action: John Wencke’s son, David, had been tended a welcome home social from the front a week before the arrests were made and Wencke had another son still serving overseas. He was released in June. The other three men, however, remained interned.7 The war’s end brought little change. In 1920, both Paech and John Wencke stood as candidates for the Walla Walla Riding in the council elections. Paech lodged £50 with the Culcairn newspaper to be forfeited if anyone could prove his disloyalty. The reward was never claimed. But both candidates faced strong opposition from the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA). Branches at , Wagga Wagga, Henty, Culcairn and Walla Walla began a campaign to stop them standing. A deputation asked the premier, Holman, to intervene. Holman referred them to the federal government. A second deputation visited W M Hughes, the prime minister. Surely the still operable war precautions act could be employed to stop Paech and Wencke, they argued: supporters of Paech and Wencke had threatened rival candidates with bodily harm. They also alleged that 200 ‘Germans’ were armed and ready to escort the two men to the council chambers after the election. The deputation argued the RSSILA felt compelled to take up arms and was prepared to supply ‘an even stronger force of determined men’ to stop the escort. The deputation’s concluding remarks, however, they demanded land for returned men. The best land in the district, they claimed, lay in German hands. It should be resumed for soldier settlers. The federal member for led a smaller deputation supporting Paech and Wencke. Hughes characteristically huffed and puffed but decided that it was a state matter and referred the whole matter back to Holman.8 Meanwhile, the elections were held. Paech and Wencke lost. Obviously the non-German Australian constituency had deserted the two men for the first time. The defeat was greeted with three cheers for the king by the returned men and a hoisting of the Union Jack. The Albury Evening News claimed that the campaign against Paech and Wencke was more a political matter than a patriotic matter.9 The RSSILA was testing its power in a postwar Australia. How typical was Walla Walla of the treatment of German Australians in rural Australia during the war? Less than one hundred kilometres to the south in North Eastern , the treatment of a regional German Australian population was very different indeed. German Australian settlers first arrived in north eastern Victoria in substantial numbers from South Australia in the 1870s. They selected land under the provisions of the second grant act. They brought with them their German language schools, their Lutheran faith and the community structure associated with South Australia’s German settlements. They settled mainly in the lower reaches of the and Mitta valley systems near the townships of , and although they also settled in other parts of the region, from and Rutherglen to the upper Murray. By 1914, the sense of community that had underpinned their initial settlement had begun to break down. They had intermarried with the non- German community and had begun to Anglicise their Christian names. German

179 Imaginary Homelands language schools, like the one at Baranduda, had closed down, local families preferring to send their children to the local state school.10 German Australians occupied important positions within the local community. They acted as justices of the peace, they served on shire councils, they were executive members of football and racing clubs and some had become prominent in local business. They were also found on both sides of the regional political divide. The Political Labor Council, the Liberal League and the People’s Party boasted German Australian members. The process of assimilation, then, had been substantial although they were still recognised locally as being ‘German’, rather like other groups were recognised as being ‘Irish’ or ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’. At the outbreak of war in 1914, both the federal member of parliament for the region, John , and the regional press actively promoted a clear differentiation between Germany and the German Australians living in their midst. As Moloney remarked: ‘They were not responsible for the war, and they should treat them kindly.’11 It was an admirable sentiment, but could it last? The first inkling of how the war had affected the regional perceptions of the German Australian population came in May 1915, just as the news of the landing at Gallipoli was breaking. Reinhold Rau appeared in the Wodonga court. Rau, who had arrived in Australia in 1911, had been placed on parole at Hay but had left western New South Wales for north eastern Victoria, hoping to find work amongst German families in the Wodonga district. He had been found sleeping in the railway sheds. Rau had not only broken his parole but had been found on an installation designated as a secure area. The bench seemed bemused by Rau and opted to fine him 20/-. The military authorities, however, promptly interned him.12 There was little than an outside observer could fault with the region’s response to the Germans and Germany. Regional councils and the regional press backed campaigns like the one mounted by Traralgon shire to keep Peter Schmidt in internment. The ‘Hun’ had become a staple in the regional press by 1915 and the Ovens and Murray Advertiser excelled itself with a grim description of Beechworth under the heel of an occupying German army. The regional police were diligent in searching out and arresting German nationals who happened to stray into the north east although their tally was a small one — they had arrested only six by war’s end.13 And there was certainly evidence of ethnicity being used to settle old scores as Conrad Huhs, H E Kugelmann and Dr Dovaston were to discover. Huhs was a naturalised British subject, one of Rutherglen’s bakers and a borough councillor. He had also served as mayor in 1907. During his time as a councillor, he had crossed swords with the Prentice brothers, Alexander and John. Huhs was a man of strong views and a fiery temper although he had a soft spot for the local children. At the end of each trading day, he would give them the left-over pastries from his shop. Huhs was partisan about the brewing conflict in Europe and made no secret of his disappointment about the outbreak of war in 1914. The Prentice brothers brought charges of disloyal utterances against the baker, alleging he claimed, ‘I will bring you down on your knees as the Germans will bring the bloody British.’ The police formally warned Huhs. Huhs, however, would not desist and he was warned a second time in January 1915 by a rather irate local constabulary. It is difficult to tell how Huhs fared for the rest of the war. Police reports refer to locals tormenting the baker although whether this was due solely to his ethnicity or to an incident in 1914 when, in a fit of rage, he almost killed a horse by beating it savagely

180 Rural Society around the head, is not clear. An anonymous letter appeared in the Rutherglen Sun, suggesting that the campaign to remove Germans from municipal councils mounted in 1916 by the Daily Mirror was of relevance to Huhs although Huhs had retired from municipal politics. Local oral tradition holds that flags decorating the Huhs’ house were torn down by a couple of local lads, but Huhs did not come to the attention of intelligence again until much later in the war. In 1918, the baker was accosted by a drunken recruiting sergeant stationed at Albury who accused him of disloyalty. Huhs was offended but claimed, perhaps ambiguously, that he was loyal ‘to this country and not any other’. Fisticuffs were averted when the sergeant’s two military companions dragged him from the shop. Huhs demanded an inquiry which proved that the sergeant had been in the wrong. He launched legal proceedings and the hapless sergeant was quickly transferred from Albury to Sydney. What remains intriguing about Huhs was the simple fact that he was never interned and he was never placed on parole. Huhs irritated local police, one even suspected him of disloyalty, but his behaviour, as far as they were concerned did not warrant any further action.14 The Kugelmann case was bizarre from beginning to end. South Australian born, Kugelmann had moved to where his professional life first attracted attention. He was a famous herbalist: after all, what concoctions could a herbalist produce to poison Melbourne’s water supply? In 1912, Kugelmann had purchased the estate on the banks of the . The previous owner had been content to let neighbours hunt on the estate or cross it to swim in the Murray River, but not Kugelmann. Perhaps he wished to protect the irrigation plant he built after buying the estate: perhaps he lacked the broad tolerance of the estate’s previous owner when it came to the recreational pursuits of his neighbours. With the outbreak of war, however, Kugelmann’s anti-social nature and the power plant meant only one thing — disloyalty. The plant was being used to send wireless signals to submarines lurking off the Australian coast: the estate was being used to store arms for the Germans at Walla Walla (‘many mysterious heavy cases’ had been delivered to the estate); and it housed a field gun to be used for shelling the railway line. No less than four official complaints were made, one by an area militia officer, the other three by a neighbour, F W D Kelly. The police investigated the charges and Intelligence even sent one of their own in 1918. They found nothing beyond an irrigation plant doing what it was supposed to do and an employee, a German national, who became decidedly ‘antibritish’ when he had had a few too many. The investigating officer reported, Kugelmann ‘apparently does not bear the reputation of being disloyal in this district’. He added almost wistfully, ‘but at the same time there is a good deal of suspicion’.15 If the defence department had been relying on the local police and Kelly to intern the herbalist they were sorely disappointed. If the Kugelmann case was bizarre, the controversy surrounding Wilward Edwin Dovaston bordered on the ridiculous. Dovaston was a doctor who had emigrated from Britain with his wife in 1914. On the way to Australia, they struck up a friendship with naturalised German Australian, Tichard Bunder. Bunder was a widower. Bunder helped the Dovastons to find accommodation in Melbourne and the Dovastons stayed in touch as they sought a practice in Victoria. They finally settled on Rutherglen in 1915. They dismissed the maid and chauffeur who had worked for the previous incumbent. Unwisely, they did not inform the two that the reason was a shortage of money. But they did invite their friend from Melbourne to

181 Imaginary Homelands visit. In early 1916, two anonymous letters were delivered to Intelligence headquarters claiming that the Dovastons secretly entertained ‘Germans’ at home. Mrs Dovaston had deserted her husband, it was further claimed, travelling to Europe as the lover of a German count. She had tried to disguise her identity by using her maiden name and travelling second class. Any further information could be obtained by placing an advertisement in the missing friends column in the Argus which read: ‘Patriot send Address. Defence’. The police came knocking on the Dovaston’s door. Mrs Dovaston had returned in the interim. The Dovastons were evasive during the interview which prompted a second. By this stage, the Dovastons were furious. Dr Dovaston stated bluntly that the two servants had been dismissed because he did not have the funds to employ them, not because he wished to keep secrets from his neighbours. Bunder’s visit was simply repaying a favour. Mrs Dovaston had gone to England for business reasons and had travelled second class under her maiden name because the Dovastons had no wish for the ‘inquisitive people of Rutherglen’ to ‘have the satisfaction’ of seeing her listed with second class passengers. (Obviously, there they had blundered). Dovaston was convinced that the letters had been sent to undermine his new practice. Intelligence retired from the fray, deeply embarrassed. It is impossible to shake the suspicion that the anonymous letters were connected with the maid and the chauffeur. One of the letters was hand written. But Dovaston may have also been correct in suggesting that his competition in Rutherglen had played a part: the second letter was type written.16 The culprit may well have been fellow medico John Harris. Harris had been keen to search out the disloyalists in the region from the war’s outbreak. During the 1916 conscription campaign he would claim that the region’s Roman Catholics were deeply disloyal and only conscription would force them to fulfill their patriotic obligations.17 The loss of work by one man to a ‘German’ was an occasional cause of complaint but never amounted to much beyond the complaint being made in the first instance. In fact, local courts sided with the ‘German’ involved, as Wodonga’s John Fulford discovered. Fulford had become involved in an argument with August Frederick Schliebs when Schliebs won a local council contract. Fulford called Schliebs a ‘half- breed German bastard’, Schliebs responded by claiming that the Germans ‘are better than you are’. Fulford closed the argument by punching Schliebs in the nose. It was an expensive expression of patriotism as Fulford discovered when the case came to court. He was fined a total of £5.18 Fulford was not the only man to discover that the use of the war to settle a personal score would fail in the north east. In 1914, an intriguing report appeared in the Yackandandah Times about a brawl between a ‘German soldier’ and Constable Benjamin Coad at Kiewa. The paper gave no details of the fight, nor did it name the ‘soldier’, but there is little doubt that the man concerned was Fred Bartel. Bartel was given a light fine for both the assault and that old standby employed by the police in 1914, damages to the constable’s uniform.19 Bartel was the son of one of the South Australian immigrants who had arrived in the region during the 1870s and was third generation Australian born. It seems that Coad was an unforgiving man because in 1915 he was asked by headquarters to investigate a charge that Bartel was disloyal and had no right to belong to the Kiewa rifle club. A disloyal ‘German’ who had been given the responsibility of looking after the club’s guns represented a grave security threat indeed. The president of the rifle club was completely bewildered by the allegations.

182 Rural Society

Bartel was not only Australian born but his wife was Australian born and Bartel was ‘ready to do his part in defending his home and that of his children’. He also had cousins serving overseas. However, he agreed to put the suggestion that Bartel be sacked from the club to the membership as whole. It proved to be a disappointing meeting for the anonymous person who had made the allegations. The club membership was as bewildered as its president and all spoke in favour of Bartel as a loyal Australian.20 Bartel kept the club’s guns under his control for the duration of the war. As with Dovaston, it is difficult to shake the suspicion that the original complaints had been instigated by spite, in this case on the part of Coad. Reports on the loyalty of eight men were requested by police headquarters during the war. All eight were naturalised British subjects. One happened to be the head of ’s local committee charged with arranging the farewells and welcome homes for district volunteers. In every case, police reports recommended that no action be taken.21 A total of fifteen people were placed on parole in the region between 1914 and 1918. All were German nationals and all but one were elderly or in their late middle age. No resident of the region was forcibly interned between 1914 and 1918 and there was only one case of voluntary internment: in 1918 Emil Lewerenz went into camp because he could no longer make a living as a small scale miner.22 Claims that local German Australians were disloyal filed by Melbourne detectives received short shrift from the local constabulary. A Melbourne detective’s report that Adolph Bremer was not only disloyal but owned an automatic rifle and ran a secret workshop was scornfully dismissed by the Wodonga police. Bremer was a naturalised citizen who had lived in the town for forty years. His secret workshop was an old shed where he was packing up an old steam car. His rifle was hardly a state of the art automatic weapon and he had used it for years for hunting. The police had no intention of taking it from him.23 In many ways, the police reports reflected a prevailing sentiment in the region: if the dreaded ‘Hun’ was a neighbour then he was vigorously defended. Peter Paul Krumbach and Paul Simpfendorfer, for example, both selected land against the letter of the regulations after local land boards supported their applications.24 The differentiation between the ‘Hun’ of propaganda and a well-known neighbour was also evident in the response of local councils to demands to curtail the civil liberties and rights of German Australians. When the Australian Citizens’ Committee, for example, sought endorsement for its call to intern all aliens over the age of fifteen (whether naturalised or not), the two councils with the largest ‘German’ populations (Yackandandah and Wodonga) ignored the matter entirely. Beechworth supported the motion with one amendment: the naturalisation component was struck out. The Wannon shire council’s call for in 1916 to disenfranchise all enemy aliens and their children was amended to remove the children’s clause in Rutherglen, Yackandandah and Towong shires. Wodonga refused to grace the proposal with formal discussion.25 Only the Yackandandah shire council switched tack in late 1916 and endorsed the campaign by the Graphic to dismiss all German Australians from municipal bodies. John Nolan, the editor of the Yackandandah Times acidly suggested that council acquiescence was due to the fact that no German Australians were serving on the council and councillors had been worn down by the persistent badgering of Councillor Clutterbuck. As the only councillor with a son at the front he saw himself as a natural leader in matters patriotic. Nolan saw the decision as a betrayal of Australians of German heritage fighting at the front.26 It was John Hodge, the Beechworth shire councillor, who summed up prevailing opinion when

183 Imaginary Homelands he spoke against the Wannon resolution seeking to disenfranchise all enemy aliens. The district’s German Australians were ‘honorable men’ with sons at the front. How could the vote be taken from these families whilst other Australians were ‘denouncing King and Country’ yet still had the right to vote, he asked.27 Hodge had touched on an issue that lay at the heart of regional notions of loyalty and disloyalty. There was ample evidence of enlistments from regional German Australian families: the Puddephatts at Baranduda, for example, who lost one son at Gallipoli, another in France and Fred Bartel’s cousin, Henry, who enlisted and returned with an English bride. The Muellers from Granya sent four men to war. August Schliebs, who had borne the brunt of Fulford’s spite, enlisted with his son in 1916.28 Jacob Hoffmann, a veteran of the American civil war, saw three of his five sons go to war in Europe. One, William, was killed in action. Another, Alfred, was repatriated from Gallipoli and played a major part in the 1916 recruiting campaign and the pro-conscription campaigns in the region.29 And although there were German Australian families who did not send their sons to war, there were also non-German Australian families who had no volunteers in the AIF. This careful sense of differentiation, however, was not recognised in Melbourne. One of the regulations (section 9) governing the 1916 conscription campaign required electoral officials to put aside the ballots cast by those of ‘enemy origin’ whose loyalty might be doubted. In Wodonga, eighty-nine votes were set aside and their names were listed for inspection in the local police station for voters to inspect and challenge. No objections or challenges were made and the votes were allowed to stand.30 The regulations governing the 1917 conscription referendum were more draconian. Any voter born in a belligerent country could not vote, irrespective of their citizenship. Nor could their children. Under these provisions, the MLC for the north east province was barred from voting. One hundred and eighty-two votes were set aside in the region. Ninety-two were disqualified, not because of objections lodged by those within the electorate but because the voters concerned could not provide evidence of their birthplace.31 This regulation was to find a bitter fruit in Rutherglen. In July 1917, the state parliamentary recruiting committee ran a special campaign to raise new volunteers. In every town across Victoria, the names of men who had volunteered in 1914 were pasted on public notice boards. These men had now served for 1000 days and the campaign made a powerful appeal for volunteers to allow these men home leave. Rutherglen gave the campaign special attention. One of the men listed came from a local German Australian family. His father was German born but had died in 1910. His mother was Australian born. In October, the soldier was killed in action. In December his mother voted in the referendum but his siblings were barred. Like their dead brother, they were the sons of a man born in a belligerent country. The editor of the local paper, Harry Drenen, voiced his disgust at the impact the regulation had had on a patriotic family. 18 Just as ethnicity was no bar to enlistments nor was it a bar to participation in the regional patriotic movement. Albert and Rudolph Schlink were leaders in Wodonga’s patriotic movement. Albert, a storekeeper, founded the town’s patriotic fund and served on the recruiting committee. His wife was president of the Wodonga branch of the Red Cross. Rudolph was the local doctor who examined local volunteers. Melbourne’s medical officers criticised him for being too lenient in declaring men fit for service in the AIF Albert’s and Rudolph’s brothers, however, did not fare as well. Herbert Schlink was the senior medical officer at Liverpool. He resigned after his

184 Rural Society loyalty was questioned in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. Although exonerated by a parliamentary inquiry, he refused to return to his commission. Charles Schlink was in Germany in 1914 completing his medical degree. He was interned by the authorities as an enemy alien and did not return to Australia until 1919.32 The Schlinks were not unique. Beechworth’s Arnold Imhoff, for example, was a member of the PLC, sporting clubs, the town band and the ANA He served on the recruiting committee but resigned in the aftermath of the first conscription referendum. He left Beechworth in 1918 and was given a farewell by fifty-eight people (with fourteen apologies): the guests included men who were leaders in the town’s patriotic movement.33 The most striking example, though, of a regional capacity to differentiate between the ‘Hun’ of propaganda and a German Australian well known by the local community was provided by Arthur Otto Sachse. Sachse was Australian born. His father had fled to Australia in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions in Saxony. Sachse was elected as the member for the north east province in Victoria’s Legislative Council in 1892. He was an effective member and held several ministerial posts before the war. Sachse toured his electorate supporting the recruiting meetings in 1915 and 1916 and was re-elected, unopposed, as the member for the north east province in the May elections of 1916. He promoted the ‘yes’ case on public platforms during the conscription campaign in 1916. He could not vote, however, in the second referendum held in 1917. In 1918, he was appointed as chair of committees. His opponents for the position sought his dismissal from the post on the grounds that he had lied about his father’s place of birth. Sachse had always claimed his father was born in Paris. A select committee was appointed to examine the allegations. The committee found that Sachse’s father had been born in Halle, a Saxon town transferred to Prussia in 1815. But it recommended that the member for the north east province remain as chair of committees. Politically, Sachse was an open target for the regional press. Not one editorial was printed demanding he step down as the member for the north east province. Ironically, perhaps, it was Rutherglen, the town that had seen the Huhs, Dovaston and Kugelmann controversies, that reflected regional opinion. At its peace celebrations, the cup awarded for the winner of the foot race was dedicated as the Sachse Cup. Sachse died in 1920, still the member for the north east province.34 It would be foolish to suggest that the north east was free of the xenophobic jibes directed against German Australians recorded elsewhere in Australia. Fulford would have hardly been unique. Joseph Peter Schultz claimed that anti-German sentiment had led to him being kicked out of the Albury Battery in 1915 (although when Schultz made his claim he was doing his best to avoid the call-up in 1916 and thought that his ethnicity may well bring him exemption).35 One branch of the Mueller clan in Granya unofficially changed their name to Miller during the war.36 Lewerenz may well have been forced into camp by local hostility at Mitta Mitta although if it did exist it did not force the two other Germans on parole at Mitta to follow suit. Yet the evidence suggests that there was a broad tolerance for the region’s German Australians between 1914 and 1918, and local German Australians could rely on local support (where it might be effective) whenever they ran foul of the war precautions act. It was a far cry from the social climate in Walla Walla just over the border. Part of the explanation for the north east’s response to its German Australians may lie in the simple fact that the region’s German Australian population was small

185 Imaginary Homelands in number. In the shires where they constituted a recognisable group (Wodonga, Yackandandah and Towong), they made up less than fifteen per cent of the population.37 As Michael McKernan has argued, the potential for disruption and sabotage by German Australians was limited indeed and German Australians had shown little inclination to follow the war lords of the fatherland.38 Part of the explanation may also lie in the fact that the region’s German Australians had broadly assimilated into the surrounding community, a situation similar to that identified by Ina Bertrand in Wannon.39 They were found on both sides of the political fence, they occupied positions as shire councillors, they were members of the ANA, they enlisted to fight in the war. This was clearly reflected in votes withheld under the regulations governing the conscription vote held in 1917. Of the ninety votes allowed to stand, 49 voted yes, 41 voted no. The region’s German Australians, then, were very much a part of their community, a community they had done much to create and shape. And, unlike metropolitan communities, where distance and sheer numbers allowed stereotypes to gain a hold, the ‘German’ in the north east was not a faceless citizen: he or she was a neighbour, a friend, an old school mate or a relative. One question, however, remains. Was the north east, rather than Walla Walla, unique? Jenny Stock in her study of South Australia’s German Australians had anticipated Fischer’s study of German Australians in the nation as a whole.40 Yet Anne Longmire found an unexpected level of tolerance for local German Australians in her history of Dimboola shire.41 Only further regional studies will tell, but the comparison of Walla Walla and north eastern Victoria suggests that attitudes towards, and the treatment of, German Australians between 1914 and 1918 is a more complex issue than the literature currently acknowledges.

Notes on pages 237-239

186 Share Farming and the Development of the Dairy Industry in New South Wales 1890-1940

Rob Castle and Jim Hagan

This article assesses the role of share farming in the NSW dairy industry until the second world war. It examines the origins of the industry and the effects of the ‘Dairy Revolution’ on the production of milk, cream and butter in the context of the NSW government’s policy of ‘closer settlement’. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of share farming for both landlords and share farmers and traces some of the social and economic consequences for the industry and the people involved. In doing so it offers a new explanation for the expansion of the industry and the problems that later developed. Few historians have written on share farming. Dunsdorfs considers its influence, but only in the wheat industry. 1 On writing about the impact of dairying on family life in Victoria, Lake makes only passing reference to it.2 Davidson examines the dairying industry during the Depression, and argued that its expansion occurred as beef and sheep zone farmers changed over.3 He does not consider the role of share farming, and for that reason we find his explanation deficient. We argue that share farming was crucial to the expansion of the dairy industry as the means whereby those with little or no capital entered it. In times of prosperity, dairying ‘on shares’ offered a modest prosperity; in depression, it offered subsistence and an alternative to the dole. After 1890 dairying spread rapidly in New South Wales, assisted mainly by changes in technology and land legislation and the development of overseas markets. Initially dairying developed through owner occupation, but, by 1916, share farming was sufficiently established and its consequences enough appreciated to attract the attention of a royal commission, and subsequently, to prompt ameliorating legislation in the Rural Tenants’ Improvements Act 1916.4 It was the subject of a select committee in 1920-1 and further legislation in 1941, when it was estimated that at least 36 per cent of dairy farms in coastal New South Wales were operated by share.6 We argue that share farming is the key to explaining the dynamics of the dairy industry, especially after the first world war. It explains the expansion of the industry despite many years of low farm incomes, and failing prices during the Depression of the 1930s.7

The Dairy Industry and the ‘Dairy Revolution’

The dairy industry in New South Wales about 1890 consisted of three parts: suburban dairymen who sold raw milk directly to household consumers; dairymen whose farms were close enough to Sydney to allow them to send raw milk for re-sale by city agent; and farmers who lived beyond the transportable range of raw milk, and therefore converted their produce into butter or cheese. The first group survived into the 1930s, but they were a dying race. In 1886 investigations of an outbreak of fever at Leichhardt revealed that the local dairyman’s water supply was the Notes to pp 10–16

Rural Society John McQuilton

1 Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, Nelson, West Melbourne, 1980, chapter 7. 2 Gerhardt Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Home Front Experience in Australia, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1989. See also Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, vol 11, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1989 (1936), Marilyn Lake, A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War 1, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1975, Ray Evans, Loyalty and Disloyalty: Social Conflict on the Queensland Home Front 1914-1918, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987, Joan Beaumont (ed.), Australia’s War 1914- 1918, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1995 and J W Selleck, ‘”The trouble with my looking glass”: a study of the attitudes of Australians towards Germans during the Great War’, Journal of Australian Studies, 6, 1980, pp 2-25, John McQuilton, ‘A shire at war: Yackandandah 1914-1918’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, 11, October 1987, pp 3-13, John McQuilton, ‘Yackandandah and World War 1’, in R L Heathcote (ed.), The Australian Experience: Essays in Australian Land Settlement and Resource Management, Longman Cheshire and the International Geographical Union, Melbourne, 1988, pp 209-330. 3 Fischer covers Walla Walla in Fischer, op. cit., pp 132-4, 311, 313. The following account draws on Fischer and accounts printed in the regional newspapers which covered the incident in some detail. 4 Ovens and Muray Advertiser, 28 November 1914, 8 March 1916. 5 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 14 August 1915. 6 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 8 March 1916. 7 Upper Murray and Mitta Herald, 4 April 1918, 18 April 1918, 6 June 1918, Rutherglen Sun, 26 April 1918. 8 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 28 January 1920, 7 February 1920, 21 February 1920, Upper Murray and Mitta Herald, 22 January 1920, Federal Standard, 30 January 1920. The federal member for Hume was John Parker Moloney. In 1914, however, he was the member for Indi. 9 Albury Evening News, 8 February 1920. 10 Information courtesy of Ms Jan Schubert. 11 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 14 October 1914. 12 Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 7 May 1915, Australian Archives Series MP 16/1, Intelligence Section Records, Item 1918/406, All Aliens Interned (hereafter AA MP 16/1, item number and description). 13 AA MP 16/1, 1918/406, All Aliens Interned, Federal Standard, 4 December 1914, Upper Murray and Mitta Herald, 11 February 1915, 18 February 1915, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 23 March 1916, 24 April 1918. 14 AA MP 16/1, 1915/3/1439, Councellor [sic] Huhs Baker Rutherglen, Rutherglen Sun, 13 March 1903. 15 AA MP 16/1, 1914/8/830, H E Kugelmann ‘Gorramaddra [sic] Estate on Murray River near Rutherglen’. 16 AA MP 16/1, 1916/196, Dr M [sic] E Dovaston Rutherglen. 17 Rutherglen Sun, 24 October 1916. Despite his public patriotism, Harris himself had deferred enlisting until 1917 when he felt ‘strong financially strong enough’ to accept the commission he was offered. Rutherglen Sun, 31 October 1917.

237 Notes to pp 31–48

18 Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 20 August 1915. 19 Yackandandah Times, 13 August 1914. The Victoria Police had been using damages to a uniform as a standby charge since the 1860s. The bench might dismiss charges of resisting arrest because of force employed by the police, but a damaged uniform always brought a conviction. Ned Kelly, for example, was fined L2/5/- for damages to Trooper Fitzpatrick’s uniform in 1877 after he had been arrested in somewhat controversial circumstances. (See John McQuilton, The Kelly Outbreak: the Geographical Dimensions of Social Banditry, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1979, p 83.) 20 AA MP 16/1, 1915/3/990, Kiewa Rifle Club, Bartel. 21 Public Record Office of Victoria, Register of Inward Correspondence Chief Commissioner of Police, VPRS Item 94, files 1061, 10991, 11496, 11649, 11651, 11665, 12109, 12110, 12278, 1263, 16355. 22 AA MP 16/1, 1918/406, All Aliens Interned. 23 AA MP 16/1, 1915/3/727, Adolph Bremmer Wodonga. 24 AA MP 16/1, 1918/165, Peter Paul Krumbach Bright, AA MP 16/1, 1918/165, Simpfendorfer, Paul August Yackandandah. 25 Beechworth United Shire Council Minutes, 2 June 1916, Rutherglen Sun, 8 September 1916, Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 15 September 1916, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 2 September 1916, 6 September 1916. 26 Yackandandah Times, 7 September 1916. Nolan had already defended a Yackandandah business man accused of disloyalty arguing that the Australian born were Australian. Clutterbuck ran as a candidate for Benambra in the state elections in 1920, standing on his record as a patriot, a temperance man and one who had helped break the ‘General Strike’ in 1917 by loading ships in Port Melbourne. He did so poorly at the polls that he lost his deposit. (See Yackandandah Times, 8 July 1915, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 29 October 1920.) 27 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 6 September 1916. 28 Australian Archives Series B2455, Personnel Dossiers for First Australian Imperial Force Members, 3122 Henry Ernest Bartel, 3383 Frederick August Schliebs, 305 Frederick Joseph Schliebs, Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 30 November 1916, R Burns, ‘“Here’s to Wallaby Jack”: a Social History of Granya’, Community Publication, Albury, 1997, p 107, Esther Temple and David Lloyd, A History of the Kiewa Valley, Kiewa Valley Historical Society, Kiewa, 1989, p 35. 29 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 May 1916, 1 July 1916, 30 September 1916, 7 October 1916, 10 March 1917, 31 July 1917, Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1914, Subdivision of Beechworth. 30 Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 30 November 1916. 31 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 9 January 1918, Alpine Observer, 11 January 1918, Rutherglen Sun, 26 February 1918. 32 Rutherglen Sun, 27 July 1917, 9 October 1917. 28 December 1917. Drenen did not name the family but the Rutherglen names printed in the paper in July and the honour roll printed in the paper at the end of 1914 made it easy to identify the soldier concerned. He was John William Schwarer. 33 Australian Archives Series A2023 Prime Minister’s Department, Item A20/4/70, Demobilsation of Captain H H Schlink, Series SP 1714/1, New South Wales Investigation Branch, Item N60688, Dr Herbert Henry Schlink, Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Indi 1914, Subdivision of Wodonga, H C Jones, Wodonga and Towong Times, 18 September 1914, 2 July 1915, 16 July 1915, 23 July 1915, 8 October 1915, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 February 1917, Wodonga Yesterday, Uncle Bens, Wodonga, 1980, plates 51 and 103. 34 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 10 May 1916, 1 July 1916, 30 September 1916, 7 October 1916, 10 March 1917, 21 July 1918, Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Indi 1914, Subdivision of Beechworth. 35 Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 16 July 1916, 10 March 1918, Rutherglen Sun, 20 May 1916, 22 February 1918, 26 February 1918, 1 March 1918, 19 August 1918, 30 July 1920, Alpine Observer, 26 May 1916, 30 July 1920, Federal Standard, 30 July 1920. 36 Wodonga and Towong Sentinel, 10 November 1916. 37 Burns, op. cit., p 107. 38 The figure can only be approximate but was reached by using Table 7, Religions of the Population in each Municipality, Commonwealth of Australia Census, 1901, and using the Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Indi, 1914 where family names were used as a guide to ethnicity. The census figures identified six per cent of the population as Lutheran in Wodonga, two per cent in

238 Notes to pp 10–16

Yackandandah. The electoral rolls for the Wodonga, Yackandandah, Tallangatta and Beechworth subdivisions yielded a range from fifteen per cent in Wodonga to five per cent in Beechworth. 39 McKernan, op. cit., p 150. 40 Ina Bertrand, ‘The Victorian country vote in the conscription referendums of 1916 and 1917: the case of the Wannon Electorate’, Labour History, 26, 1974, p 30. 41 Jenny T Stock, ‘South Australia’s “German” vote in World War 1’, Journal of Politics and History, 28, 2, 1982, pp 250-65. 42 Anne Longmire, Nine Creeks to Albacutya: a History of the Shire of Dimboola, Shire of Dimboola and Hargreen Publishing Company, North Melbourne, 1985, chapter 6.

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