Exploring the Composition of the Material Culture of German
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This article is downloaded from http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au It is the paper published as: Author: D. H. Spennemann and G. Sutherland Title: Late Nineteenth Century German Immigrant land and stock holdings in the Southern Riverina: an exploration of large-scale spatial patterns Journal: Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society ISSN: 0035-8762 Year: 2008 Volume: 94 Issue: 1 Pages: 74-90 Abstract: The paper examines the large-scale spatial patterns of settlement by German Immigrants in the Southern Riverina during the late nineteenth century. Author Address: [email protected] [email protected] URL: http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=200806640;res=APAFT http://www.rahs.org.au/publications/journal http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34755368_ITM http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/R/-?func=dbin-jump- full&object_id=9990&local_base=GEN01-CSU01 http://bonza.unilinc.edu.au:80/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000100540&local_base=L25XX CRO Number: 9990 1 Late Nineteenth Century German Immigrant land-and stock-holdings in the Southern Riverina: an exploration of large-scale spatial patterns Dirk HR Spennemann & Gaye Sutherland Manuscript submitted for publication in Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Corresponding Author: Dirk H.R. Spennemann Institute of Land, Water and Society Charles Sturt University P.O. Box 789 Albury NSW 2640 Australia e-mail [email protected] 2 Late Nineteenth Century German Immigrant land-and stock-holdings in the Southern Riverina: an exploration of large-scale spatial patterns Dirk HR Spennemann† & Gaye Sutherland‡ † Institute of Land, Water and Society and School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury NSW 2640, Australia. E-mail [email protected] ‡ HeritageFutures Australia, PO Box 6575, Shepparton Vic 3632, Australia and School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury NSW 2640, Australia. E-mail [email protected] Keywords Immigration Experience Germans—Australia, European Settlement—New South Wales Agriculture Introduction During the second part of the nineteenth century substantial numbers of German settlers left South Australia to select land in the Southern Riverina. While the German settlements formed by the new arrivals created much interest by contemporary commentators,i comparatively little has been written on them in the historical literature. Apart from Buxton‘s seminal work on the Riverina, in which he examined some of this in detail,ii discussion of the Riverina is limited to brief accounts in generalised state-specific summaries of the German presence and statistical analyses of the state-wide population.iii More recently, Pennay looked at the perception and reception of the German settlers in the Riverina during the early days of World War I.iv By comparison, there is a plethora of genealogical literature, focussing on individual families and outlining that family‘s part in the settling of the Riverina.v While the sources many times over repeat the histories of initial trek(s) from South Australia, there is little work done on the spread and persistence of German settlement in the Riverina. The aim of this paper is to investigate the German settlement in the Southern Riverina, New South Wales, between 1860 and 1914, focussing on the patterns of settlement and livestock holdings. As will be described in the subsequent overview of German immigration to Australia, German settlers arriving from south Australia formed close-knit communities held together by Lutheran Christianity as the distinguishing element. We will investigate whether this is reflected in the landscape, looking at two levels of scale: i) a regional scale considering the Southern Riverina as a whole, considering the clustering of settlements (reported here); and ii) a local scale, by examining a single parish, and examining the nature and pattern of land selection carried out (in prep). How do extended family groups take up the available land? This study forms part of a larger investigation into the nature of German immigration to Australia, and to what extent that immigration has left a tangible and recognisable imprint on the cultural heritage of the Southern Riverina. Elsewhere, we have examined the origins of the German immigrants to Australia,vi the content of immigrant guidebooksvii in order to understand what information German immigrants were exposed to prior to and after emigration to Australia. In addition, aspects of the material culture recommended to be brought on the voyage outviii as well as the extant material culture have also been addressed.ix 3 The German Immigration to Australia Australia became a popular destination for immigrants from as early as 1838 when religious persecution in Prussia spurned the first organised group migration of Lutherans to South Australia.x What was to follow was a progressive chain migration from the areas in northern and eastern Prussia,xi that was to last until the end of the nineteenth century.xii Although religious persecution as a factor in immigration was soon outweighed by political and economic reasons,xiii Lutheranism continued to be a major binding force for German migrants in Australia.xiv Lutheranism is held largely responsible for the formation of closed tight knit communities,xv and was a major factor in the survival of the German language in Australia until the beginning of World War I.xvi South Australia of all the Australian colonies had the earliest and most homogenous German communities, where clustered land selection became a major characteristic due to the religious and linguistic homogeneity of these people, the desire to replicate conditions in the homeland (Günter 1982), to uphold spiritual and moral strength,xvii and to support each other in what were extremely difficult economic conditions.xviii Land Selection by Germans In the Riverina The desire to live in homogenous communities,xix land inheritance practices,xx and the typically large size of German families,xxi culminated to instigate a second migrational wave from South Australia to the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria from the 1860s.xxii Land holdings in South Australia proved too small for sustainable croppingxxiii with Australian soils unable to cope with the type of intensive farmingxxiv that was traditional practice of German farmers in the homeland.xxv During the same period (1864-66) the whole of the inland was gripped by a drought, which in South Australia led to the drawing of Goyder‘s line, and further reduced the German settlers‘ ability to survive on the smallholdings.xxvi Such problems were further exacerbated by exorbitant land prices and increased difficulty in obtaining new land.xxvii At the same time (1861) the colonial government of New South Wales fundamentally changed the land rules.xxviii The Robertson Lands Acts, as they are colloquially called, allowed selectors the right to obtain a Crown Grant for a ‗Home Maintenance Area‘ of land without survey (‗conditional purchase) in any Crown Land, leased or unleased. The purchase conditions imposed were that ‗living areas‘ were to be between 40 and 320 acres in size size (Crown Lands Occupation Act of 1861 §13), that the selector had to pay £1 per acre with deposit of 5/- i.e. 25% of purchase price (§13) upfront with the balance of the purchase price to be paid within three years (or deferred indefinitely by paying 5% interest per annum) (§18), that the selector had to reside on the block of land selected, and had to demonstrate ‗improvements of £1 per acre minimum (§19). Such improvements commonly took the form of land clearing and fencing. As a result, the 1860s and 1870s saw a rapid uptake of lands by selectors, but also saw a range of stalling tactics employed by the graziers trying to exclude the most valuable parts of their (lease) holdings from selection (such as peacocking).xxix The Albury region had long been a settlement area for Germans, particularly farmers and wine growers from the Rhineland.xxx A petition by the German community of May 1857, for example, lists 46 names the majority of which signed as either landholders or vine dressers.xxxi The 1861 census gives a good indication of the make up of the Albury community before the changes to the land acts: there were 160 German men and 93 German women resident with the town and its municipality.xxxii The majority of these Germans had come in the late 1850s, originally brought to Australia as vine dressers.xxxiii Coming predominately from the Hesse and 4 Württemberg areas, most of them were Catholic or reformed Evangelic-Lutherans (unlike the conservative Lutherans who had come to South Australia). The first South Australian Germans to reconnoitre the Riverina and to select land in the Albury area were Johann Gottfried Scholz and Johann Gottlieb J. Diebert, who chose the area of Jindera ( ‗Dight‘s Forest‘) where they selected 320 and 100 acres respectively in May 1866.xxxiv The favourable reports of the fertile soils and undulating land that these men returned to their South Australian communities,xxxv set in train another period of chain migration as had occurred in the initial voyage to Australia.xxxvi By the end of 1866 seven parcels of land, totalling 1,470 acres had been selected by Germans. In the following year an additional 55 properties with a combined area of 7,680 acres had been selected by German settlers, while in 1868 a further 51 properties (with 4,503 acres) were