German Missionaries in Australia

The engineering of La Trobe

The role of Charles La Trobe in recruiting Moravians to Victoria has often been remarked. He was the superintendent for the Port Phillip district from 1839 and when the colony of Victoria was declared in 1851, its first Lieutenant Governor. He became quickly disappointed with George Augustus Robinson's management of the Protectorate. Ian Clark describes the clashes of style between La Trobe and Robinson. La Trobe found Robinson's reports unnecessarily long-winded, his style pretentious and his system overly complex. La Trobe wanted a series of protection stations in the State and to remove Aborigines from Melbourne, and greater attention to medical needs, and would have liked to have someone like Dr. Matthew Moorhouse, the Chief Protector in South Australia, to administer the Protectorate. La Trobe began to try to shape the protection system to his designs by first taking the Protectorate under his direct supervision (early 1840) and suggesting ways of reducing Robinson's responsibilities, rank and pay (September 1841). He suggested to Governor George Gipps to devise a completely different system (March 1842) and replaced two assistant protectors with medical officers (1843), and instructed Robinson to select a further site on the Tyntynder pastoral run (near Swan Hill) as an Aboriginal station in 1846. In 1848 there were still only three Aboriginal establishments at the Goulburn River, Loddon River, and Mount Rouse, and La Trobe took the opportunity of a change in governorship from Gipps to Fitzroy to have a select committee determine that the protectorate had failed and should be disbanded. ¹

Charles La Trobe was able to initiate a quick response from the London mission board of the Moravians through his close family connections (see Moravians in Britain).  By the end of August 1849 two German Moravians, Rev. A. F. C. Täger and Friedrich Wilhelm Spieseke, departed for London to go to Melbourne, where they arrived in February 1850.

Powering La Trobe's concern with Aboriginal inhabitants was the erection of a separate colony in the Port Phillip area, bowing to the pressure of the increasing number of free settlers clamouring for an end to transportation, for civil government, and for land to settle. The Californian experience in 1849 demonstrated the global magnetic appeal of gold fever. Knowledge of the presence of gold had been suppressed since the 1820s in order not to destabilise the New South Wales convict colony. An independent colony of free settlers on the other hand, would greatly benefit from news of gold, so on the eve of the separation of a new colony, bounties for gold discoveries were offered. The German physician Dr. Georg Bruhn confirmed the presence of gold on the station of Donald Cameron in the Clunes area in March 1850, and these finds were made public in January 1851. Weeks later the American Edward Hargraves followed up with a significant find at Lewis Pond creek (a tributary of the Macquarie River) to claim the £10,000 bounty of the NSW Commissioner for Crown Lands. In June gold finds on the Turon River (near Bathurst) were publicised and it was now a race between New South Wales and the embryonic colony of Victoria to gain the international attention of immigrants. On 9 June 1851 La Trobe formed a Gold Discovery Committee that offered a £200 reward for significant gold field finds within 200 miles of Melbourne. On 1st July 1851 the colony of Victoria was formally erected, and on the same day its first marketable gold field was declared on Creswick's Creek, a tributary of the Loddon River at Clunes. Within weeks further fields were declared at Ophir and Ballarat. Superbly timed, the rush was on, with missionaries on standby.

A slow start

La Trobe had visited Campbell's Gannawarra² Station near Lake Boga in January 1850 and had already determined on this location for the new mission. He personally supervised Täger and Spieseke, who arrived in February 1850, and first directed them to spend the winter at the Loddon River Aboriginal station, still managed by the former assistant protector Parker, near what was about to become the gold-rich border of Victoria and NSW. They left Melbourne on 11 April and stayed at the Loddon until 7 June 1850, receiving a visit from the mission friend Rev. Chase. They then proceeded to Gannawarra Station, where they remained until January 1851 before making their first excursion to Lake Boga, located in the country of the Wemba Wemba people.³ According to Blake they were suffering from sore eyes and other illnesses.⁴ In April 1851 some crown land was set aside, and in June 1851 they attended a large meeting of support in Melbourne.⁵ They began to build a hut at the mission site but heavy flooding interrupted the work and they retreated to Gannawarra again until late August. They finally took possession of the Lake Boga site on 21 October 1851, after almost two years in the country.⁶

The missionaries were allocated 363 acres of crown land for a mission station within a 25 square mile Aboriginal reserve. Their patron La Trobe tendered his resignation in December 1852 and was replaced in 1854. As a final gesture of support he offered a flock of sheep, which the missionaries declined fear that any proceeds would be claimed back by the government.⁷

Meanwhile the population of Victoria was soaring and the gold-rush began to drain local labour to the already existing and potential new goldfields. By mid-1851 there was already a shortage of labour on the pastoral stations. The settlers surrounding the mission had been using Aboriginal labour without much supervision and rather resented the interference. They spread malicious rumours about the missionaries and warned Aboriginal people that once they entered onto a mission they would not be allowed to leave again.⁸

For the first two or three years, according to Chase, the Aboriginal people avoided the mission.⁹ Spieseke explained that Lake Boga had been a major gathering site for the Wemba Wemba until a few years ago, when several Whites had been murdered there and one Aboriginal man had been captured by police.¹⁰ Since then the camp had been abandoned.¹¹ Still, gradually some Aboriginal people tried out these newcomers as their bosses and performed work them to erect a station.¹² According to Moravian sources Aboriginal women also asked for protection, being 'sick of constantly being 'lent out'.¹³ Eventually some families took up residence at the mission. The missionaries carted in garden soil and began to grow food. They acquired the local language and had up to 120 Aboriginal people at the station. A third Brother, Paul Hansen, joined them in early 1854.¹⁴

The most promising first contact was with a man called Bonaparte, who had much experience with Whites and had been on a cattle drive to Melbourne, and assisted the missionaries in learning the language. In February 1854 Bonaparte and another man were killed by police near Campbell's station for a crime committed by someone else. Spieseke's cynicism about the colonial government was edited out of his published report in the Missionsblatt, as Jensz points out.¹⁵

Defending the mission

The gold-rush brought an unforeseen volume of traffic to pass by Lake Boga, and itinerants as well as stock herds were crossing the mission reserve on a 'summer road' to Swan Hill, an alternative route to the 'winter road'. The missionaries engaged Aboriginal workers (including Hamilton, Tommy and Boney) to build a fence in early 1855, but a neighbour, JP Keene, pulled it down before it was completed. Täger appealed to local magistrate but gained no support because the thoroughfare had been in use for about ten years and could therefore possibly be claimed under Common Law as being in traditional use.¹⁶ The missionaries claimed that the summer road was quite unnecessary as an alternative route because it was no shorter than the winter road and less reliably passable. Meanwhile even the police helped themselves to produce from the exposed mission garden. In 1855 the mission land was surveyed in readiness for sale on the grounds of pre-emptive right of two locals, one of them the JP Keene. The missionaries were confounded. They had been given a chart to show their proposed settlement and proposed site of cultivation and had assumed that the land had been declared for their use. But apparently not. The extension of the original reserve was still only 'proposed'.

Täger left for Melbourne to settle the issue, and in his absence the police began to dismantle the fence acting on the authority of the Commissioner for Crown Lands. He was kept waiting in Melbourne for nine weeks, while the Surveyor General was absent und unable to settle the dispute. It was felt that the Germans were 'unacquainted with English laws and customs and the importance of right of way'.¹⁷ However some neighbours, including Mr. Beveridge of Tyntynder supported the missionaries' claim, as did the Rev. Chase in Melbourne, both of them presumably acquainted with English laws and customs.

Packing up

Täger fell ill while in Melbourne and ran out of patience. He drew a ‘personal lot’ (drawing lots was an important Moravian instrument to reach difficult or controversial decisions) and then returned to Lake Boga on 16 May 1856 and announced its abandonment. On 27 May the three packed up two ox-wagons and left for Melbourne.¹⁸ Bishop Perry of Melbourne remonstrated them for abandoning the mission and sought to dissuade them from leaving but undeterred they arrived back in London on 9 December 1856. The Moravian Mission Board considered that they had exceeded the powers entrusted to them in closing the mission and that they had failed in their exhibition of meekness, patience and hopefulness.¹⁹

A compilation of sources by the Rev. Lloyd Chase tried to reconstruct the problems of the mission to demonstrate that 'they deserve our sympathy'.²⁰ They attached the chart given to the missionaries to prove their claims, since 'so long as this chart exits, there will be no room left in men's minds to doubt the just claims of the Missionaries as regards a reserve of 25 square miles'. This chart was not reprinted together with the remainder of the report in the government papers. With La Trobe gone, the Victorian government's support had completely dissipated. An Aboriginal Protection Board was formed in 1860 and encouraged Anglican mission activity (see also Lake Condah).

According to Jensz, the Moravians needed to distance themselves from this failure, which could possibly affect their world-wide reputation as a leading successful mission society, so Täger became the scape-goat.²¹ The other two were exonerated, and were able to claim later that they had not agreed with the decision of their superior Täger to abandon the mission.²² Täger was excluded from the next Moravian expedition to Victoria to form Ebenezer mission, where Spieseke was put in charge.