German Missionaries in Australia

 

 

The site of the former Ramahyuck Mission in Gippsland is shown by location marker (A). Source: Google Maps
The shores of Lake Wellington at the former mission site Source: Regina Ganter	Part of the former mission site Source: Regina Ganter
Most of the graves in the Ramahyuck cemetery have disappeared Source: Regina Ganter	The grave of Nathaniel Pepper at Ramahyuck Source: Regina Ganter

 

Choosing a mission site

 

After the spectacular success at Ebenezer mission, the Victorian government agreed to a new mission field in Gippsland. This region was coming under increased pressure of settlement. It was becoming the granary of Victoria and was also attracting much attention for its mineral reserves of gold, silver copper, zinc and tin. In 1858 the Methodist Rev. John Bulmer began to plan a Church of England Mission in the region, which opened at Lake Tyers in 1862.

 

Meanwhile, the Moravian missionary Friedrich Hagenauer from Ebenezer went in search for a mission site on behalf of the Presbyterian Church with an exploratory journey from July to August 1861. In December 1861, after the Moravian Elders had consented to his plan, the Hagenauers left Ebenezer for Gippsland.¹

 

Hagenauer at first settled at Green Hills near the township of Maffra in 1862, where his Aboriginal helpers stripped 500 sheets of bark to build huts, but after protests from neighbouring settlers the government resumed the mission land in 1863.² Hagenauer moved his mission to the Avon River near Lake Wellington and again local opposition delayed the approval.³ Finally 2,356 acres were gazetted on 9 June 1863 on the shores of Lake Wellington next to Strathfieldsaye property.

 

The name for the mission, perched on a hill above the lake, derived from a suggestion by the Presbyterian Rev. A. J. Campbell, the convenor of the Aboriginal Mission Board from Geelong. The Hebrew location name Ramah, meaning ‘heights’ appears several times in the Bible, and the suffix –yuck, meaning ‘belonging to us’, was adopted from the Kurnai language.⁴

 

In March 1863 Nathanael Pepper’s wife Rachel died at Ebenezer, and he relocated to Ramahyuck to assist Hagenauer with preaching and teaching. This greatly helped the new mission to get off the ground. Another Aboriginal man who joined the mission in its earliest phase was James Fitchett, described as a man from the Tarra tribe whom Hagenauer had found begging at Port Albert during his exploratory journey in 1861.⁵

 

Building up the mission

 

The men built a store room and mission house, and a large two-roomed bark hut with a 7-meter long verandah. By 1864 Hagenauer was able to report a steady population of 32 people, occasionally swelling to 130, and 18 attending Hagenauer’s school classes.

 

At the end of 1864 reinforcements came in the form of two of the Moravian missionaries newly arrived from Germany and destined for the inland mission (later Kopperamanna). Julius Kühn stayed at Ramahyuck only a few months before leaving for Yorke Peninsula, whereas Wilhelm Kramer stayed for a year and a half as school teacher before setting off to Coopers Creek in mid-1866.

 

In 1865 the mission reported 42 residents, occasionally swelling to 196 people from five tribal groups, although the mission premises still only included a weatherboard mission house, a sick house, a school house, a bark hut for four young men, another two-roomed house for a family and a hut for another family. The other residents stayed in tents and bush shelters.

 

During Kramer’s time at the mission ‘Charlie and Jemy’ (presumably Charles Jacob and James Fitchett) helped to construct a chapel under Hagenauer’s direction.⁶ The church was consecrated on 18 March 1866 by Rev. Campbell, and at the same time the ‘first fruit’ was claimed at Ramahyuck with the baptism of James Fitchett as James Mathew in the presence of 200 people. This foundational event was a year after John Green at Coranderrk had baptized William Barak (24 February 1865). During the remainder of 1866 John Green at Coranderrk and Hagenauer at Ramahyuck each claimed two more converts.

 

The second baptism at the mission took place in October 1866. Charles Jacob was to be married to Caroline, one of the two young women sent from Mrs. Camfield’s home at King George Sound (an arrangement that had been trialled at Ebenezer) but both women fell ill and died at Melbourne hospital before reaching Ramahyuck.⁷

 

At the end of the year 1866 the Christmas celebration was marked with another adult baptism⁸ and – since no local women had been converted - five more young Christian women arrived from Mrs. Camfield’s in June 1867: the girls Emily Peters (later Brindle), and Elizabeth and Ada Flower, and the somewhat older Rhoda Toby and Nora White. On 12 July 1867 Nora and Rhoda’s double wedding was held before a gathering of 200 white guests and 60 Aboriginal residents and guests, with public addresses from the President of the Victorian Association in aid of missions to the Aborigines of Australia Rev. Chase of Melbourne, and local supporters like Mr. Serjeant of Sale, Mr. Roberts of Stratford, and others.⁹ The guests arrived in 47 buggies and all had to be ferried across to the mission, and some stayed overnight. The Rev. Spence Login from Sale conducted the ceremony.¹⁰ The event was announced and reported in the newspapers.

 

One of these young women from Mrs. Camfield’s, Elizabeth Flower (1851-1895) had been schooled in Sydney, spoke French, and also came to play an important role at Ramahyuck. She was put on a teacher’s salary to replace Kramer, conducted school for about 13 children, and played the newly acquired harmonium (which was paid from Hagenauer’s private funds), as she had done at Albany. Anne Camfield had hoped that Bessie would marry a missionary, but the only unmarried missionary at Ramahyuck, Kramer, had already left (and would at any rate be allocated a Moravian bride) and Hagenauer prevented Bessie from marrying a white labourer. Instead he arranged her marriage to a mixed descendant from Ebenezer mission. Donald Cameron was baptized at Ramahyuck, constructed the boarding house, and on 4 November 1868 married Bessie. The two supervised the new boarding house with a salary of £30 per year until about 1879.¹¹

 

With the departure of teacher Kramer, Hagenauer wanted to ‘bring the school under the Board of Education’ with a government-funded teacher (this did not eventuate until five years later, in 1871).¹² He also began working more closely with the Protection Board (BPA, established in 1869).

 

By mid-1867 thirteen of the 76 mission residents had been baptized. The mission settlement now had fifteen buildings surrounding the church, several plots of garden and fields had been allocated to mission residents, and arrowroot fields provided some income, though never enough to be self-supporting. Hagenauer’s intrusion into personal lives caused much tension and several women walked off the mission in 1868.¹³

 

Kramer re-joined Ramahyuck around May 1868 and married the Moravian Sister Emilie Beyer there on 13 October 1868.¹⁴ The Kramers stayed for seven years until they were posted to Ebenezer in March 1876. Kramer’s replacement, August Hahn and his English wife Mary Ellinor née Clemens arrived on 9 January 1876, and stayed for four years, during which Mary Hahn (daughter of the prominent British Moravian Gottfried Clemens) directed the girls’ boarding house.¹⁵

 

During this time Nathaniel Pepper married 16-year old Louise Arbuckle from the Bratowoloong on 17 February 1870 with whom he had three sons and one daughter, though he was already emaciated with consumption. Pepper died at Ramahyuck on 7 March 1877 of lung disease. In his dying days he sent ‘affectionate and grateful greetings’ to the Spiesekes, Hartmann and Kramer at Ebenezer, and ‘sent for every inhabitant to come to his bedside’ to take their leave.¹⁶

 

When Hahn quit the mission and the Moravian church in January 1880, this left the Hagenauers as the only missionaries on the station for over twenty years until the mission closed, during which time it was taken increasingly into the ambit of the Protection Board, and was staffed with a succession of government teachers. Both Kramer and Hahn had considerable tension with Hagenauer, and the government teachers also often disagreed with his policies. ¹⁷

 

Mission discipline

 

Hagenauer had a reputation for his harsh, even ‘despotic’, control of the lives of mission residents: ‘his word was law’.¹⁸ Though his rhetoric clearly distinguished between civilizing and Christianising, in practice he suppressed tribal law and customs. Jean Court writes that he made mission residents ‘burn all native weapons on arrival’ and ‘set out to destroy aboriginal culture’.¹⁹ He forbade corroborees at Ramahyuck on at least three occasions during the 1880s. This led to tensions with the ethnographer Alfred Howitt from Sale, who pre-arranged staged corroborees conducted partly in English to coincide with his visits in 1883 and 1884.²⁰

 

Part of the assimilation process was the bestowal of Christian and Surnames. Phillip Pepper [Jr.], born in 1907 just before the mission closed, published a book of reminiscences where he recalls that:

 

‘At Ramahyuck, Rev. Hagenauer used to have what he called Naming Days. All the Aborigines would stand out in the square and Rev. Hagenauer would ask if they had a name they wanted to use, a white name, and if they hadn’t made up their mind about one, he’d give them the name of a settler, sometimes the man they had worked for. One lot took Rev. Chase’s name, others took rev. Kramer’s, he was the missionary fella there, and of course old Billy Login had taken Rev. Login’s name a long time ago. Rev. Login was a minister at Sale.²¹

 

Aboriginal women at Ramahyuck considered an organized walk-off several times.²² Even Bessy Flower, who had played an important part in establishing the mission in the 1860s, moved off the mission as her relationship with Hagenauer deteriorated.²³ The marriages Hagenauer arranged were not necessarily welcome, and sometimes violated traditional law. At the widely attended double wedding in 1867, according to the memoirs of Jessie Harrison, one of the brides was ‘very reluctant’.²⁴ In another incident, objections were raised by Elders against a ‘wrong marriage’, and to silence their resistance, Hagenauer arranged a public show with the captain of the supply steamer, who arrived in full uniform and with flying colours, and read out the statement: ‘Joe loves Polly, and Polly loves Joe, I am commanded by the white Queen to say that they are to be married.’ The couple was married the same day.²⁵

 

'Weiberraub im Gypsland' (Wife-stealing in Gippsland)

Source: Mission 21 Record ID impa-m42355 Reference QQ-30.020.0080. Copyright held by Mission 21. May not be copied from this website.

 

Visitors at Ramahyuck

 

Hagenauer always welcomed white visitors to the mission, which became a point of sightseeing interest and a holiday destination, particularly after a train station opened at Sale in 1877. The mission choir raised money through concerts and the mission library held 400 volumes.²⁶ A community oven built in 1883 like a German village oven turned out fresh bread.²⁷ Sunday services were often attended by neighbouring settlers²⁸ and the Ramahyuck Visitors' Book²⁹ gives ample testimony that the mission was often visited. Some of these were clearly official visitors who commented that they were 'much pleased with the order and ventilation of homes', 'very much pleased with the station's work', or found 'all in excellent order'. But many of the entries show social calls, stating as the 'object of visit': 'to see the Natives', to 'visit the Natives', 'to visit the mission', and the visitors' book gives a glimpse of the circle of mission friends and the mission acting as a place of recuperation. Louise Hagenauer not only looked after her nine children, but after the visitors as well, according to Franz Barfus, who enjoyed a 'substantial repast' prepared by this 'kind and intelligent lady' in 1882, which was blessed with 'Komm Herr Jesu sei unser Gast und segne was Du bescheret hast'.³⁰ Johannes and Clara Heyer, at the end of a two-week holiday in Ramahyuck, stated as the object of their visit (24 September 1895):

 

'To see all my friends once more before leaving for the New Hebrides. I have spent many a holiday here, a lovely time enjoyed myself exceedingly. Whatever befalls us of difficulties and trials, it will be a great encouragement to think of the great work in Ramahyuck, and to look forward in hope to the time when a similar victory for Christ will be won on our island'.

 

A. Pelham Chase³¹, 'late of Cambridge University' wrote that he 'constantly observed the behaviour of the Blacks themselves and was much pleased with it on all occasions'. Some friends known to the Hagenauers from Ebenezer visited from the Wimmera, such as Robert and Margaret Hamilton (1883), and the mission’s former school-teacher Thomas Baillie with his wife Elly also visited from Toorak. Rev. Edwin Brown, destined shortly for Weipa mission on Cape York Peninsula wrote on 4 January 1896 'Love, patience and continued hard work has under God's blessing wrought wonders. Truly the Lords hand is not hardened that it cannot wave, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear'.

 

The pioneer of Queensland missions, 72-year old Rev. John Hausmann was in Melbourne to undergo a colloquium orthodoxiae and wrote:

 

This mission station is like a miracle and serves the praise of the Lord. I am cheered by the school, it can hold its own with any state school. The children write in a beautiful hand and were able to correctly answer any question I directed to them about our holy religion. The great advantage of this school is that the Bible is always taught here. The Lord's word is here realised that 'the first will be the last, and the last will be the first'. The children at this school know more about religion that many of the children of the old Christendom, where there are many who know hardly anything about religion. Praised be the name of the Lord for the mercy he has shown these people. Read in German

 

Some notable visitors included Anthony Trollope, who had a generally poor opinion of mission activity, which he thought was 'not worth the candle'³² and the wife of the State governor, Lady Bowen and her four daughters (17-22 December 1878) who were all 'very pleased with all we have seen'. Barfus gives a vivid impression of how visitors arrived at the mission, by buggy from Sale, to the river inlet at Lake Wellington, where they would ‘cooee’ until a ferry boat from the mission came to pick them up, and take them to the river bank opposite to enter the mission grounds through its lovely garden.³³

 

Government control

 

The mission school did come under the Board of Education around 1870/71, and during an 1873 inspection that school obtained a result of 100% in the public examinations.³⁴ At the time of an inspection in 1881, the school-teacher was Thomas Bailley instructing 47 pupils including five Hagenauer children. Two of the latter failed the examination given that day, but the reports on the school were generally glowing with praise often topped the State’s examination.³⁵ Louise Hagenauer gave singing lessons and Mrs. Baillie gave sewing lessons. The mission had various lay helpers including Miss Seymour (teacher in 1898) Mrs. Harm, Mr. Hardie, and Mr. Hastings, who appear in the diaries of Ellie Hagenauer in the 1890s.³⁶

 

By 1885 Hagenauer had begun working more closely with the government, and the mission had been brought much more closely under the scrutiny of the Aboriginal Protection Board (BPA), reporting annually to the Victorian parliament, receiving regular visits from the Inspector-General, and receiving Aboriginal people forcibly removed by the police.

 

That year Hagenauer toured Queensland to explore the possibility of opening another mission there, and during his absence from Ramahyuck his eldest son Johnannes was in charge of the farm and station, which employed Aboriginal residents working for cash, and his eldest daughter Mary stood in for his ‘government part’ (presumably report writing and accountancy).³⁷ Barbara Arden, an Aboriginal Christian, supervised the orphanage, and Connelly, a mixed descendant, was overseer of the farm. The following year, in 1886, a legislative reform which Hagenauer helped to formulate³⁸, depleted the Victorian missions of their mixed-descent population, in particular of the able-bodied young men.

 

During the 1880s the health of mission residents was deteriorating with several cases of consumption, and a prolonged drought caused crop failures. The mortality rate no longer looked as promising as in the early years – in 1885 seven children died and three were born. The school results also declined.³⁹ In 1893 a measles epidemic struck down many residents. Louise Hagenauer and her daughters often nursed the sick, and the mission was occasionally visited by doctors from nearby towns.⁴⁰

 

When Hagenauer became Secretary of the BPA at the end of 1889 with a government salary and an office in Melbourne, his son Gustav became acting manager. The number of children had dropped to such a level that the school was re-classified as a half-time school (until 1892) and the government teacher had to also teach at the nearby Perry Bridge state school.

 

By 1894 Hagenauer felt that his Christian mission (‘salvation, conversion and preaching the gospel’) had been basically achieved. The children attended Sunday morning prayer meetings and Sunday school in the afternoon, and during weekdays assembled every morning at 8am in the church for religious instruction. The Sunday mass was still often attended by neighbouring settlers, and occasionally the church was crowded, with up to forty Christians lining up to receive Holy Communion. The government teacher Miss R. Evans instructed 28 children in the school, which included lessons in singing and sewing. The mission residents were employed on farm and garden work and housed in cottages with allocated garden plots, and ‘some of these are kept in the very best manner and are real pictures of home comfort and contentment’.⁴¹ Though Hagenauer felt that ‘the past year was one of the best in our 37 years of mission service’, in fact the mission population had not grown in the last three decades: Hagenauer still reported only between 76 and 82 residents, with 6 births and 4 deaths in 1893/94. A government salary of £100 for the mission manager was granted in 1893 (Hagenauer’s salary from the Presbyterian church was more than £300⁴²) but in fact the mission was struggling to survive and there was already talk of closing the mission altogether. In August 1894 part of the mission reserve was allocated to the Council for Agricultural Education as an experimental farm.⁴³

 

In 1900 the mission reported 68 residents with only nine children at school. The mission school was closed in May 1901 and the children transferred to Perry Bridge school. In 1902 the government subsidy for Ramahyuck was £619, which works out to 3 or 4 pennies per head per day, and heavily subsidized by the church. Mr. Cameron, a member of the Aborigines Board, had observed in 1896 that the government stations were much better funded than the missions: Framlingham was subsidized at £10 and Coranderrk at £8 per head, compared with Lake Condah at £7, Ebenezer at £6 6s, Ramahyuck at £6, and Lake Tyers at £5 per head of resident.⁴⁴

 

By the end of 1904 only 35 mission residents remained and the mission was formally closed. Hagenauer resigned from the ABP in 1906 and returned to the property he had bought next to the mission that was now managed by his son Johannes. In March 1908 the remaining residents were transferred to Lake Tyers, and the church bell was sent to the Presbyterian mission at Mapoon. Hagenauer, called ‘Moogan’ (father) died in 1910 at Sale and his wife Louise, called ‘Yacken’ (mother) died soon afterwards.⁴⁵ Despite his ‘despotic’ governance, there are still Aboriginal voices acknowledging the mission effort at Ramahyuck:

 

‘Only for the missionaries there wouldn't be so many Aborigines walking around today. They're the ones that saved the day for us. Our people were finished before the mission men came. … Old Hagenauer took them sick ones in and gave them medicine and food too. And they learnt to be Christian. Their tribal business was messed up before that.’⁴⁶

 

 

Diese Missionsstation ist wie ein Wunder und gereicht die Arbeiten zur Ehre des Herrn. Ich freue mich über die Schule, sie kann sich mit allen State schools messen. Die Kinder schreiben eine schöne Hand: auch konnten sie jede Frage richtig beantworten, die ich in Bezug unserer heiligen Religion an sie richtete.

Darinnen hat die Schule einen grossen Vorzug dass die Bibel immer gelehrt wird. Hier geht des Herrn Wort in Erfüllung: die ersten werden die Letzten und die letzten die Ersten sein. Die Kinder dieser Schule haben mehr Religion wie viele alte Christenkinder, denn es gibt viele die fast gar nichts über Religion wissen. Der Name des Herrn sei gepriesen für seine Gnade an diesem Volk.

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