German Missionaries in Australia

 

 

Locating a mission site

 

After the Lake Boga mission was abandoned, the Moravian Rev. J. F. W. Spieseke spent a year in Europe during which he was ordained, and together with Rev. August Hagenauer arrived back in Melbourne on 20 May 1858 to form another mission. They were joyfully greeted by some friends of the Lake Boga mission.¹ Governor Sir Henry Barkly (appointed November 1856) proposed to locate the new mission somewhere in the Wimmera district.²

The Wimmera had been subject to an intensive land rush in the 1840s. During that decade at least 160 Aboriginal people had been killed in fifteen violent incidents.³ Indigenous attacks were mostly directed towards the massive flocks of sheep. From one flock of 3,300 sheep 1,300 were lost to Aboriginal attack in February 1844, and one old man was found guilty of stealing 600 sheep and sentenced for life to Norfolk Island where 'whenever he mentioned the Grampians [Gariwerd] [he] invariably cried from thought of home.'⁴ Still, despite the massive number of livestock introduced, the Wimmera was one of the 'least settled' districts of Victoria and well north of the Ballarat gold fever.⁵

At the forefront of the advancing settlers had been the Belgian Horatio Ellermann⁶, entering the Lake Hindmarsh area in 1846 as a teenager, where he and his companions built a hut 'planned in such a way that we could shoot from all sides through port-holes, with sliding doors.'⁷ His wife Anne Ellermann was conducting a school for Aboriginal children at Antwerp station in the 1850s and her brother William Westgarth, an early Port Phillip settler, was actively recruiting German settlers and had been corresponding since the 1840s with Herrnhut about the possibility of Moravian missionaries in the region.⁸ Peter La Trobe as the Secretary of the London Moravian Society had briefed Governor Barkly⁹ who therefore was aware that Ellermann and Westgarth may act as mission friends in the Wimmera.¹⁰

 

Spieseke and Hagenauer inspected three proposed sites in an arduous journey on foot, two near Horsham with hostile settler neighbours, and one closer to Lake Hindmarsh. They were repeatedly advised to see Ellerman, which they finally did on 20 December 1858. Ellerman showed them a limestone ridge with a shepherd's hut, twelve miles downstream from the emerging township of Dimboola, nestled into a bend on the Wimmera River on the Antwerp lease. Jane Lydon's book title Fantastic Dreaming refers to a statement about the choice of this location:

 

'It may appear like fantastic dreaming, but it seemed to us almost as if we could see in spirit, the rows of cottages, the Church, the school, the fields and gardens, and the poor blacks flocking to hear the word of Life’.¹¹

 

A 'fantastic dreaming' is almost palpable on the Ebenezer Mission road.

Source: Regina Ganter 2012

 

The missionaries had chosen a very spiritual place, where up to a hundred people gathered several times a year. Its local name was something like 'banji-bunag'.¹² The local people were Wergaia speakers of the Wotjobaluk group. Nearby Lake Hindmarsh was a convergence of dreaming tracks and trading paths, what ethnographer Alfred Howitt later called a 'trading centre'.¹³ While living at Antwerp station the missionaries began to engage Aboriginal people (presumably those already associated with the mission-friendly pastoralists) to clear land and build a log hut and took possession on 2 May 1859.¹⁴ Ebenezer mission was named after a biblical stone memorial marking the end of a war between the Israelites and the Philistines (1 Samuel 7:12). Perhaps the missionaries knew that the site was already burdened with a history of black war (see below).

 

Networks

 

Jensz points out that the first Aboriginal response to the mission is somewhat hazy. The mission site was occupied by twelve Aboriginal people (perhaps working as shepherds) when Spieseke and Hagenauer inspected it in late 1858, and old Charley and young Boney were particularly helpful in settling the missionaries.¹⁵ A Boney and Tommy had also helped Spieseke at Lake Boga to build fences¹⁶ and the owner of Gannawarra station, who had assisted Spieseke and Täger to set up Lake Boga mission, had by now settled near Mount William in the Grampians and was ' overjoyed to see Spieseke again'.¹⁷ It is quite possible that the Indigenous men who first collaborated with the missionaries were not local traditional owners, and may have been assigned by their pastoral employers to assist the missionaries.

The two Moravian missionaries tried hard to maintain good relations with neighbours. They visited surrounding stations, such as Scott's Station at Warracknabeal to preach to white and Aboriginal workers, and as Jensz observes, such surrounding families were part of the social circle of the missionaries also.¹⁸ Some of these donated a few sheep, horses and cows to form the nucleus of the herds that would be their only source of self-generated income, since the land was useless for agriculture. The missionaries declined an offer of a flock of sheep from the government for fear that the government would claim any income deriving from the stock.

The Herrnhut Mission Society required that a lease was secured before they would consent to sending out mission brides¹⁹, and the two missionaries became disillusioned with the difficulty of formally reserving a site. Spieseke wrote that seven months of 'tedious' negotiations with the government over land proved 'fruitless'²⁰ and Hagenauer wrote that after fourteen months in the country 'We still have no land! And when will we receive it?'²¹ Finally three square miles were gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve on their chosen site.

In Melbourne the interdenominational Victorian Association in aid of Mission to the Aborigines of Australia rallied to the support of the mission. ²² The Anglican Rev. S. Lloyd Chase was its president and among its thirteen members were the Bishop of Melbourne and the editor of a Lutheran mission newsletter Rev. Matthias Goethe. The personal expenses of the missionaries were borne by the mission board in Herrnhut but the missionaries did not receive any wages, and Spieseke emphatically stated 'We cannot make a sixpence'. With pointed reference to the elegant carriages and well-stocked jewellery shops in Melbourne, and the fine homestead, marvellous goldfields and flourishing agriculture he had seen on his way from Lake Hindmarsh, he asked the Melbourne committee to take over this expense from the Herrnhut mission board.²³ (However in 1867 the Melbourne committee had just spent all its funds on the failed Kopperamanna mission on Coopers' Creek.)

 

This special place

The two missionaries had already begun to teach in January 1858, starting with three boys who went by the nicknames Boney (later Daniel), his brother Talliho (later Timothy) and Corny. Hagenauer tried to acquire both English and the local indigenous language (presumably Wergaia) by teaching these boys, who attended his first church service together with Corny's brother and Corny’s father Dowler on 23 January 1859. A few weeks later four more boys joined the school, by early February there were 22 attending church and at the end of March, sixty Aboriginal people came. Alas, they had apparently assembled for the corroboree they afterwards held at this place, after which everyone disappeared again.

A trickle of three arrived back at Easter (Boney, Brown and Jacky-Jacky) and in June 1859 three more young men arrived, including Pepper, who was to become the pillar and hope of this mission. Pepper and two companions set about building a bark hut and furnished it with three beds, a table and a fireplace. This became the first of three founding stories of the mission. Pepper shared his hut with Boney (Daniel) and was considered 'a clever young man', like his brother Charley (Phillip) who was 'the best English speaker among the natives'.²⁴ Clearly these men, who described themselves as brothers and who already had adopted English names, had some considerable exposure to white settlers, but as Pepper said, none of these settlers had ever spoken to them about Christ and such things before, and Pepper was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

In late August 1859 the crowd swelled again to eighty Aborigines, but Hagenauer's pride was dented again when afterwards they had another corroboree and he realised that they hadn't all come to hear him preach.²⁵ He tried to stop the celebration but was rebuffed with the claim that it was actually held in his honour. The next day almost everyone was gone again until September.²⁶

If there were willing workers nearby, the two missionaries asserted their presence by allocating work and food to them. They described how one made breakfast while the other went to the camps in the morning to allocate the day's work. Anyone who was too sick to work was eligible for half rations, the workers received full rations, others nothing. Then it was breakfast, 8 am mass in the open air, with hymns, scriptural lessons, and prayers. Then one of the two missionaries conducted school for young men and supervised the women, while the other supervised the men's work gangs, until the midday meal in common, and after 2pm hunting to get the evening meal, followed by evening service. From the reports it sounded like a fully operational mission. However, the mission was often deserted as Indigenous people were not permanently resident.

Pepper also asserted his presence. He was 'a lively lad about 17 years of age'²⁷ and had become 'assistant teacher' to a class fluctuating from one to fourteen, on some days conducting the school by himself. Young Pepper was gaining a leading position at the interstices between two spiritual worlds.

At the next corroboree gathering Hagenauer asserted that there was to be no more celebrating, this ground now belonged to Christ. Tensions quickly developed. An exacerbating factor was that without consulting the local people, Hagenauer had accepted a young man from the south-west 'on probation'. In response the Aborigines boycotted the church service on 26 September and instructed the schoolboys to move out from their allocated hut. Hagenauer soon realised that he had offended the Wergaia and observed that they were preparing for a battle with him. He and Spieseke locked themselves in the mission house and were intuning 'Rock of Ages' when Ellermann materialised on the mission and the 'extraordinary ferment' on the mission subsided as Ellerman took Pepper and some other boys into their bark hut 'where they prayed earnestly' and Hagenauer 'hastened to join them'. By 15 November 1859 everyone had left again save Pepper and two others (Corny and Teddy).²⁸ It may be presumed that station owner Ellermann arrived with a firearm and some of his workers.

One year into the experiment, Hagenauer already felt that it did not compare well to mission efforts elsewhere in the world. There were so many quarrels between different tribes, and the missionaries relied on Ellerman's influence to prevent violence.²⁹ In November 1859 the mission was deserted again save Pepper and Boney, and Spieseke noted that Pepper was the only one who had never deserted them since they arrived.³⁰

Things changed when Pepper had a conversion experience on Tuesday 17 January 1860. After helping to translate the story of the Good Shepherd, and immersing himself in this special spiritual place by the river, he told Spieseke:

'last night I could have cried aloud before I went down to the river to fetch some water; and I have thought and thought - I have thought about how our Saviour that night went into the garden [of Gethsemane], and prayed there till the sweat came down from him like drops of blood, and that for me.'³¹

 

Spieseke was deeply moved and related the incident to Hagenauer and Ellermann who arrived at the mission the next day. It was a touching experience for all of them. This was precisely what the missionaries wanted Aboriginal people to understand - that the Saviour redeemed them with his blood - and here was Pepper putting this theology into his own words: 'and that for me'.³² This was the second foundational story of Ebenezer mission. Pepper was now accepted as a Christian and he and Boney went to the Upper Regions (20 kilometers upstream) to conduct prayer meetings and recruit several more Aboriginal people to the mission, including Pepper's mother. The mission population soon swelled to about sixty, with 40 or 50 people sitting down at night to listen to Pepper's gospel. Pepper no longer participated in any corroborees.

A few months later came another epiphany with an intriguing story that knits together the limestone ridge by the river on which the mission was built, missionary mythology and Wotjobaluk history. The occasion was a discussion between Hagenauer, Nathaniel Pepper, Boney, Talliho, Mark and Corny, in the course of which they made a connection between a violent settler attack on the site of the mission sixteen years earlier, in 1846, and a published narrative by Rev. Chase about the orphan boy William Wimmera. The 'Willie Wimmera' of Chase's story was (rightly or wrongly) identified as a boy Ellermann took from the attack into custody but later lost out of sight. The young men were sure that the published story matched their own experience, and showed Hagenauer exactly where this boy's mother had been shot. Perhaps now the missionaries would understand why corroborees had to be held here.

It must have been an electrifying moment when a story based on written paper came alive in the lived experience of Hagenauer's listeners. It must have massively increased their respect for book knowledge and for the ability to read, and the early success of schooling may have been largely due to this incident. Kenny suspects that Hagenauer' standing as a knowledge bearer must have also increased.³³ The reinscription of the mission site as a former warzone and the reconciliation of history, myth and place, were powerful building blocks in the spiritual aspirations of the missionaries. This became the third founding story of the mission, often re-told.³⁴

 

First Fruit - Nathanael Pepper

 

The notion of 'first fruit' - the first baptisms in a mission region - was extremely important in Moravian missiology, always considered a breakthrough that facilitated the conversion of others. Nathanael Pepper had marked himself out as an ally of the missionaries from the beginning - he built the first hut, he engaged with the gospel, he preached and composed sacred songs. Pepper became assistant teacher and indigenous assistant missionary even before his baptism, which became a grand affair on 12 August 1860. It was celebrated together with the consecration of the wooden chapel funded by a Horsham committee and in the presence of more than 150 people including the Rev. Chase from Melbourne. Pepper became the first known Aboriginal Christian in Victoria and such an early success, after just over a year in the Wimmera, poured oil on the fire of the Moravian evangelists and reconfirmed the already considerable reputation of Moravians among mission societies.

 

Government in action

 

The Moravian success also catapulted the Victorian government into some action. A Central Board for Aborigines (CBA)³⁵ was established in 1861, the year that Aboriginal people saved the life of John King, the only surviving member of the Burke and Wills expedition. There was now keen competition with the Lutherans to 'do something for' the people at Coopers' Creek, and the Moravians had good ammunition. Spieseke presented Nathanael Pepper to the mission association's general meeting in Melbourne in June 1862, which was chaired by Governor Sir Henry Barkly and was to decide on an extension of the Moravian mission work. The CBA blocked a first application for a mission station at Coopers Creek in 1863,³⁶ but despite this rebuff, four new Moravian Brethren arrived in November 1864 destined for an inland mission at Coopers Creek (Kopperamanna).

The CBA on its part began to survey and re-organise the existing four Aboriginal stations in the State, and established a list of nearly 50 'honorary correspondents', which pointedly did not include missionaries. Ellermann became the CBA's 'local expert' for the Lake Hindmarsh region (rather than Spieseke). However, Hagenauer was invited to participate in a commission of inquiry in 1862, which resulted in appointing Hagenauer to inspect all mission stations regularly.³⁷ The CBA refused to subsidise any denominational missions other than through handouts, and persisted (until 1876) in calling the Moravian mission 'Lake Hindmarsh' rather than by its biblical name of Ebenezer.³⁸

Spieseke's 1867 report diplomatically acknowledged that the government was giving 'some support' in the shape of 'some food' and 'some clothing', but of course more than a little food and clothing was needed - 'they want crockery, kitchen utensils, lamps, shoe brushes, candlesticks, etc.'³⁹ The Victorian Association in aid of Mission to the Aborigines of Australia raised around £250 per year for Ebenezer in 1867.⁴⁰ The government material grant was valued at £500, and other neighbours donated building materials to the mission. The financial affairs of the mission looked good.

 

Ebenezer in 1861

Source: Mission 21 Record ID impa-m42353 Reference QQ-30.020.0078. Copyright held by Mission 21. May not be copied from this website.

  

 

Spieseke's Ebenezer

 

In 1861 brides arrived for Spieseke and Hagenauer. Spieseke went to Melbourne to marry Christina J. Fricke (29 May 1861) and the following month Hagenauer, barely recovered from serious over-exertion, went to Melbourne to marry C. Louise Knobloch (15 June 1861). Many near the mission had been so sick that Hagenauer grimly predicted that ‘the whole race will soon be no more’.

Nathanael Pepper was by now conducting services in the vernacular and drawing large crowds by preaching and psalm singing. Talliho wanted to follow Pepper and also obtain baptism, and the two brought in more people to the mission (Talliho was baptised in December 1863.). The Lutheran mission paper reported that the Ebenezer residents had a particular talent for drawing and enjoyed composing little songs or hymns and set them to a very monotonous melody. One of these songs was

 

Winya wallo neango mamamorek! Kakum bangung yereru Wurruwin parrin Kaledia!

How near is my great Father! His Spirit came in me. Make plain the way! Great thy glory!41

 

Spieseke gave the impression that this was a Christian hymn. However it used a key term pre-existing in Aboriginal mythology which in 1854 Spieseke rendered as 'mamammurack' (the devil), in 1860 as 'Mahman=mu=rok' (the father of all), and in 1867 'Mahmamorack' (the father of all). The song follows a very traditional rhythm, and the translation of 'Kaledia!' as 'great thy glory' seems very liberal.⁴² Clearly the 'little songs of monotonous melody' were more than a translation of newly imported Christian ideas.

 

The Ebenezer cell was now ready for fission, and the Board recalled Hagenauer to start another mission in Gippsland (Ramahyuck). Rev. Job Francis (age 22) arrived at Ebenezer in November 1861 to replace Hagenauer and witnessing the sorrow expressed by Ebenezer residents at Hagenauer's departure in December 1861 he wrote that they were singing his death mourning song and ‘they are much attached to him, and I think there are but few who would not do anything he wished'. At the final prayer meeting ‘not a few of the black faces were moistened with tears’.⁴³

Rev. Francis took over the school and, so important in Moravian culture, the choir, giving their first public performance at a burial in April 1862. Spieseke had gone to Melbourne for the birth of his first child, so Francis reported from Ebenezer that the building of native huts and a few larger structures including a sturdy storehouse and a dormitory was underway with the roof shingles donated by Scott of Waracknabeal. A government ration station offered an alternative at Dimboola, where, moreover, a grog shanty opened in 1861, and seasonal work was offered by several surrounding properties. In April 1862 everyone was working for Mr. Scott, and only Nathanael and three children were left behind at Ebenezer. Nathanael's brother Tommy (Light) died at the mission, leaving his much younger widow Kitty. Light had been denied baptism because in his youth he had murdered a white man.⁴⁴

With the support of government and friends the mission was financially strong and attractive. Spieseke reported that 'our people come twice a day clean and orderly to divine service'.⁴⁵ The 950-strong sheep flock was possibly getting overtaxed by killing ten head a week, more than its natural increase.⁴⁶ But in fact the mission population was wildly fluctuating. Still, Ebenezer was held up (even in Queensland) as a model of success, while Spieseke modestly stated that ‘the Lord has given us favour in the sight of men, so that I think they sometimes make too much of us and our poor endeavours’.⁴⁷ After all, every praise of Ebenezer was also an implied criticism of the failure of others, and Hagenauer was still trying to find a site for the Gippsland mission (Ramahyuck).

Job Francis was a native English speaker and a carpenter, fulfilling the desiderata expressed by the Moravian director La Trobe in London and by Spieseke. But as a bachelor he felt exposed to insinuations at the mission and in the neighbourhood. The Herrnhut elders felt that he was too young to marry and declined his requests for a bride, so he engaged himself to a young woman from the district. As a result he had to leave the mission and the service of the Moravian church.⁴⁸

He was replaced with Adolf Hartmann, who arrived at Ebenezer with his wife Mary (aka Polly) on 7 May 1864. Within a couple of weeks of their arrival the mission was once again deserted and the Spiesekes left on a lengthy tour around the district. This meant that Hartmann had to milk the cows, fetch water and tend the sheep. The Hartmanns also kept conducting some semblance of a school with between four and eight women in the female class and four turning up regularly in the male class - the baptised Philip (Pepper), Timothy (Talliho), Daniel (Boney), and Matthew, occasionally joined by Buppass, Albert and Tony. ⁴⁹

The first Christian wedding on the mission was between Nathanael Pepper and Rachel Wardekan who had been sent in 1862 all the way from Mrs. Anne Camfield's institution at King George Sound in Western Australia for this purpose. Spieseke obtained a licence as marriage celebrant and H.E. and J. E. Ellermann were the groomsmen and their daughters the bridesmaids. The Peppers subsequently took on the management of a boarding house for Aboriginal children, with four children already in residence. Rachel quickly became a domestic pillar of the mission. She soon began to teach Sunday school⁵⁰ and during the second half of 1863, when Mrs. Spieseke was too feeble, Rachel looked after that household, too.⁵¹ Nathanael was building a house for his aged parents (his mother Linna died in 1870) and this Aboriginal Christian couple was in every way an inspiration and proof of success. (Rachel herself fell ill and died in hospital at age 23 on 19 May 1869.)⁵²

Other arranged Christian marriages followed⁵³, between Timothy and Susannah in 1863 and Phillip and Rebecca. Both these young men had already been partnered before: in 1864 Hartmann had observed that Phillip (aka Charley) had 'a violent temper' often quarrelling with his heathen wife,⁵⁴ and in 1868 he recorded the death of the baby of Timothy and Topsy.⁵⁵

A travelling Baptist evangelist selling Spurgeon’s Sermons, who stayed at Ellermann's homestead in 1864, was most surprised at what he encountered there. Joseph Jewell Westwood said that Pepper was the first Christian Aboriginal person he had ever encountered, and

'Brother Ellerman introduced me to Matthew, Daniel, and other converted Blacks who, flinging down their tools, came forward to welcome us and shake hands. Several of them offered a short prayer while we were all standing together upon the grass, ourselves uniting with them. I gave also a few words of exhortation and we concluded with singing the doxology.'⁵⁶

 

The Baptist was invited to dine at the mission with Spieseke and Hartmann and their wives and a few other guests in the hall of the large mission house, and afterwards attended the mission church.⁵⁷

The circle of activity gradually widened. The visiting bible vendor gave Polly Hartmann the idea that she, too, could sell bible tracts to the transient white workers in the region.⁵⁸ By October 1864 her husband was able to report that Polly was holding sewing classes so that the mission women were now making their own clothes. Phillip's wife Rebecca was in every way 'exemplary'.⁵⁹ Phillip and Rebecca occupied two rooms in the large mission house.⁶⁰ Moreover, the four 'native assistants' were occasionally conducting services. Hartmann observed that Phillip had 'a more open disposition' and was more 'argumentative' in style than Nathanael, who was more 'effusive' with the love of the Saviour. Regarding the school, Hartmann felt that the 'mental capacity of the pupils is small' - some were able to add but not subtract. The mature students did not have English and were trying to learn reading and writing in a language they hardly knew. The ability to read from the Bible was particularly valued, and this goal inspired the perseverance of the older students.

'All look upon it as a great privilege to be able to read in the Bible, and we let them advance to this as son as they can spell words of two syllables. They then receive a Bible of their own and this forms a salutary incitement to persevering labour.'⁶¹

 

'Nathanael could 'read with tolerable fluency' but had little talent for teaching others. ⁶² Nevertheless in 1865 Spieseke achieved the approval of a small stipend of £12 per annum for Nathanael and Phillip as missionary assistants.⁶³

In 1866 Adolf and Polly Hartmann were touring the stations during the shearing season, travelling to the South Australian border (McLeod's station, about 100 kilometers west of Antwerp) to preach and to recruit children and adults for the Ebenezer mission and also to gather language material at nearby Lake Hindmarsh.⁶⁴ During this time Carl Kramer spent some time at Ebenezer before proceeding with an inland mission. Leaving Ebenezer in August 1866 Kramer took Daniel (Boney - baptised on 15 December 1863⁶⁵) with him to accompany the missionaries. Boney could have been a powerful ally at Coopers Creek, but he died shortly afterwards in Adelaide hospital without making it to the new mission, which failed.⁶⁶

A long drought had just broken and in February 1867 Hartmann installed a windmill so that the orchards could be irrigated, while some mission residents were buying their own pumps to irrigate their garden patches growing grapevines, watermelons, apricots, peaches, rock melons, and other fruit and vegetables.⁶⁷ The daily routine commenced with assembly in church after breakfast, some singing accompanied by Polly Hartmann on the harmonium brought from Europe, scriptural readings, then a short service, and ended the same way, with an evening service before dark. The Lord's Supper was held only every four weeks. On Sundays the service started at 11.00, with Sunday School in the afternoon. The Hartmanns divided the school between them, in the morning for boys and in the afternoon for the girls, who learned sewing and knitting. The average attendance in 1867 was twenty-one.⁶⁸ Six of these were mixed descendants, and the mixed population was growing, turning around the population decline that was evident at the commencement of the mission less than ten years before.⁶⁹

The village now had 24 log cabins, which had either a pine floor or matting, some of the rooms were rendered others lined with bags and papered over. Matthew started to build himself a two-room stone cottage, and Nathanael was also building yet another new house for himself when Louse Hagenauer came for a visit in 1868. She recruited Nathanael, already widowed, to accompany her to Ramahyuck, and Rebecca and Phillip took over the boarding house at Ebenezer.⁷⁰

The Hartmanns also left. Sr. Hartmann's health had been very poor for several months, with a condition she referred to a nervous weakness. In late 1870 she was sent to Ramahyuck for a change of climate, and they both returned to Europe in 1872. ⁷¹

Heinrich Stähle and his pregnant young Swiss wife Marie Magdalene arrived at Ebenezer in May 1872. His early letters portray him as a proper greenhorn but full of self-deprecating humour.⁷² He was devastated when his young wife died in childbirth on 16 October 1872 and the baby also died four weeks later. Stähle left the Moravian church in 1874 and later worked at Lake Condah mission where he became known as strict disciplinarian.

Ebenezer now looked like little village dotted with cottages each with their small parlour and bedroom. But the cemetery next to the church was also growing, and in clear view of the village. As Rev. Bill Edwards observes, 'Death was ever present at Ebenezer.' In 1870 Paul, Matthew and Timothy died, and also Jungunjinanuke (aka Dick-a-Dick) who had been part of the Aboriginal cricket team that toured England in 1868.⁷³ Altogether about 150 Aboriginal people were buried at Ebenezer, most of them in unmarked graves. Edwards speculates that this was to respect the Aboriginal avoidance of the names of the recently deceased. Edwards also observes that the Moravian tradition of slab graves gave way to upright memorial stones.⁷⁴

Rebecca and Phillip Pepper, the second 'model family' of Ebenezer also passed away within a few years. In 1870 Phillip lost his mother Linna and his thirteen-year old daughter Alice Pepper, and he himself died in 1873.⁷⁵ Rebecca still ran the boarding house, but fell ill soon after the funeral and by September 1874 she, too had passed away, having arranged her last will in favour of several of the boarding house girls. She had also put some money aside to build a railing around her husband's grave. ‘He was my best friend, he brought me to Jesus’.⁷⁶

 

The graves of Phillip and his daughter Alice Pepper, next to the church at Ebenezer
Source: Regina Ganter 2012

 

The foundation stone for a substantial new church was laid in April 1874, by the Rev. Ellermann, the supportive mission neighbour who had himself been ordained in January 1866 and was now leaving the Wimmera to minister at Lismore parish. The church, with its high steeple and belfry, was consecrated on 1 January 1875 and cost £230

But the high point of Ebenezer mission had already passed with the death of so many of its first Aboriginal Christians - Tommy (1862) Boney (1866), Rachel (1869), Phillip (1873), Rebecca (1874), and also Nathanael at Ramahyuck (7 March 1877). The strain of running the mission affected Spieseke's health. Carl Kramer, now married to Sr. Emilie Beyer, was posted back to Ebenezer in March 1876 to assist. Spieseke succumbed to illness at age 56 on 24 June 1877. The Aboriginal men walked to Dimboola to buy a coffin at their own expense for their beloved teacher, and his headstone was erected near the church.⁷⁷ The mission reports barely mentioned him during his seventeen years at Ebenezer, at that time the longest service record among the Moravian missionaries in Australia.

 

Sunset

Ebenezer had by now lost its 'model mission' gloss. Kramer was alone in charge of the mission (there are no further details about his wife), and giving evidence to a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Conditions in 1877, he wanted more land for the mission's sheep, greater powers to prevent adults from leaving the mission and to control their cash earnings, and to conduct the school as a mission school rather than under the Education Department, because he felt the public school curriculum was too demanding for the children. This was a very different assessment from that made by Spieseke and Hagenauer in the early years of the mission. When Paul and Amalie Bogisch arrived in 1877 to assist Kramer the growth period was over. Even to a casual visitor in 1878 it was evident that this was a dying mission: 'the cemetery speaks volumes' about its imminent demise, and several people had moved off the mission 'to become self-sufficient'. There were few children at school and only a few people employed on the mission.⁷⁸

To boost the number of residents Kramer and Hagenauer (acting for the BPA), explored the upper Murray 'to induce the blacks to settle on missions' in 1879.⁷⁹ As a result the mission population increased to over one hundred, but it also meant that some mission residents did not belong and wanted to leave.⁸⁰

A sunset clause on the Victorian missions was introduced with the Aboriginal Protection Act in 1887,⁸¹ requiring all mixed descendants to leave the missions and reserves within seven years. Two of its Christian couples left Ebenezer straight away and the flock dwindled away over the next few years. Victorian missions were now destined to become geriatric wards without intake.

After Kramer's death in February 1891 Bogisch and his second wife, too, were left to manage the mission without other Moravian staff. Its public school was staffed with departmental teachers (first Miss McDonnell, later Miss Hale and Miss Tyre) with an attendance of about twelve pupils including children of nearby settlers. Bogisch reluctantly provided some information to Hamilton Mathews, who visited in 1898 and interviewed mission residents Henry Fenton and his wife Kitty McLeod.⁸²

After his death in 1903 the mission was given up and the land made available for selection in 1904. The Herrnhut mission board requested that the cemetery and church be preserved, so only a small parcel of land was reserved to allow some old Aboriginal people to remain on the mission land.

 

‘Mission Station Dimboola’, by David Syme and Co. Melbourne, 1882.	‘Moravian Mission House Blacks Station, Dimboola’ by Samuel Hartley Roberts, 19 February 1885.
Source: Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, Accession Nr. IAN22/03/82/36	Source:Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, Accession Nr.H93.456/2

 

 

 

Ebenezer today

 

The former mission is now uninhabited and surrounded by private property which includes the former kitchen and maid's quarters. The intervening years and the continuing importance of the site are best described by Jane Lydon.⁸³ For many years mission descendants lived at the surrounding townships of Dimboola, Antwerp and Nhill and the church grounds were maintained by the Immanuel Lutheran church at Arkone. The site became National Trust property in 1968, and in 2013 it became the first ever National Trust property to be handed back to traditional owners.⁸⁴ According to Lydon, Ebenezer has become one of the most researched mission sites in Victoria.

 

Major published works on Ebenezer:

(in descending chronological order)

Felicity Jensz, German Moravian Missionaries in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1848–1908: Influential Strangers, Brill, Leiden, 2010: 145–146

Jane Lydon, Fantastic Dreaming: the archaeology of an Aboriginal mission, Altamra Press, Maryland, 2009.

Felicity Jensz, ‘Imperial critics: Moravian missionaries in the British colonial world’, in Evangelists of Empire? Missionaries in Colonial History, Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruickshank, Andrew Brown-May and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre, Melbourne, 2008.

Robert Kenny, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper & the Ruptured World. Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2007.

Jane Lydon, Bruno David, Zvonkica Stanin 'Archaeological investigation of the former Ebenezer mission, Victoria: Stage II' Report prepared for Aboriginal Affairs Victoria and Heritage Victoria, 2007.

William Edwards, Moravian Aboriginal Missions in Australia 1850 – 1919, Uniting Church Historical Society, Adelaide, 1999.

Felicity Jensz, 'The Moravian-run Ebenezer mission station in North-Western Victoria: a German perspective' M.A. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999.

Marie Hansen Fels, A History of the Ebenezer Mission, Occasional Report No 51, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, Melbourne, 1998.

Bryce Raworth and David Rhodes, Former Ebenezer Mission Reserve – Site Conservation and Management Plan 2. Du Cros and Associates – Archaeological and Heritage Consultants, Melbourne, 1997.

S. Robertson, The Bell Sounds Pleasantly: Ebenezer Mission Station, Luther Rose Publications, Doncaster, 1992.

Phillip Pepper and Tess de Araugo, You Are What You Make Yourself To Be: the story of a Victorian Aboriginal family 1842-1980, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1980.

M. F. Christie, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835-86, University of Sydney Press, Sydney, 1979.

Aldo Massola, Aboriginal Mission Stations in Victoria: Yelta, Ebenezer, Ramahyuck, Lake Condah, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1970.

A. B. Werner, Early Mission Work at Antwerp Victoria, Trustees of Ebenezer Mission Station, Dimboola [1959] 1970.

 

Staff associated with Ebenezer

 

(Listed in order of service at Ebenezer, German speakers with surnames in bold)

Rev. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Spieseke, May 1859 - June 1877

Rev. Friedrich August Hagenauer, May 1859 - December 1861

Christina Johanna Spieseke neé Fricke, May 1861 - ?

Louise Hagenauer née Knobloch, May 1861 - December 1861

Rev. Carl Kramer, 1866, and March 1876 - circa 1888

Rev. Job Francis ca. December 1861 - ca. 1864

Rev. Adolf Hartmann, May 1864 - 1872

Mary (Polly) Hartmann née Hines, May 1864 - 1870

Rachel Pepper née Wardekan⁸⁵ (b? - 19 May 1869), boarding house matron 1862- 1869, was sent from Anne Camfield's in Albany

Nathanael (or Nathaniel) Pepper (ca. 1843 - 1877), assistant teacher from 1859, paid missionary assistant from 1865, left for Ramahyuck in 1868

Phillip Pepper (aka Charley) (b? - 1873), paid missionary assistant from 1865, boarding house manager 1868-1873 died 11 August 1873, grave at Ebenezer

Rebecca Pepper (b? - 1874) boarding house matron 1868 - 1874 was sent from Anne Camfield's in Albany

Rev. Heinrich Stähle (aka Stoehle, Staehle, Stahle) (1840-1915) for a short while from May 1872

Marie Magdalene Stähle née Stamm (1850 - 1872) May to October 1872

Emilie Kramer née Beyer 1876-?

Rev. Paul Bogisch (1845 - 1903) 1877 - 1903

Amalie Bogisch née Jindra 1877 - 1888