Hi List I was recently given some old family photos and documents and found a few newspaper articles that I thought the list would find interesting. Some of them don't have dates on them but this one does. The Courier Mail - Friday Nov 8 1963 Our first free settlers were German - 125 years ago they came as a Lutheran Mission by Douglas Rose In Brisbane on Sunday, Lutherans will be commemorating the arrival of their first missionaries in Australia 125 years ago. But what they really will be marking is the foundation of free settlement and the birth of the State of Queensland. In 1938, while soldiers were still guarding , flogging, and hanging convicts in and around Queens Street, 11 Families of German Lutherans moved into 650 acres granted them at Nundah, as our first free settlers, two years ahead of the official start of the Moreton Bay Colony. The Lutherans probably didn't see it in that light - they came here as missionaries. Dr. Lang It wasn't their fault that their work never prospered; other white settlers' marauding of the native as the country opened up quickly after 1840 drove their intended congregations out of existence. It was that outstanding figure in our early history, the REV. DR. JOHN DUNMORE LANG, the Scotsman who was the leader of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, who brought the Lutherans here. Dr.Lang felt a great need for evangelisation among the aboriginals, and when in Europe in 1836 - 37, he persuaded the British Government to back such a mission financially. Then Dr. Lang went to Germany, where he persuaded the REV. JOHANNES EVANGELISTA GOSSNER, founder of the famous Gossner Missionary Society of Berlin to provide the missionaries. No one in Scotland had wanted to try, not had the English. But Pastor Gossner did. He believed the best way to start was to establish a colony of earnest Christians, farmers, and artisans, and settle it in the midst of the heathen. So it was that in mid 1838 there arrived in the Moreton Bay Colony (still purely a military-run convict prison camp) our first free settlers, some of whom have had their names perpetuated in the names of major roads and otherwise. They were PETER NIQUET (mason), AUGUST RODE (cabinetmaker), LEOPOLD ZILLMAN (blacksmith), GOTTFRIED HAUSSMANN (farmer), WILHELM HARTENSTEIN (weaver), CARL FRANZ (tailor), GOTTFRIED WAGNER (shoemaker), AUGUST OLBRECHT (shoemaker), LUDWIG DOEGE (gardener), MORITZ SCHNEIDER (medical missionary), and two ordained ministers, the REV. WILLIAM SCHMIDT and the REV. CHRISTOPH EIPPER. The governor of New South Wales granted the mission one square mile of land, set on either side of a creek, and about six miles north of the Brisbane prison village. We know the area as NUNDAH. The missionaries named the creek KEDRON BROOK. And they named the rise on which they built their huts ZION'S HILL. Hard Time The Courier Mail in a leading article on the occasion of the centenary of their arrival, in 1938, said that from this square mile at Zion's Hill granted to our first free settlers there eventually grew the whole State of Queensland. The little settlement was not the easiest place in which to live. The missionaries experienced many difficulties and underwent serious privations as they tried to put their colony on its feet. Providing the basic necessities of life was their number one problem. Explorer DR. LUDWIG LEICHARDT called in on the mission in 1943, and this extract from one of his letters to a friend gives a clear picture of the situation as he found it: "The philanthropist could never find a purer and better nucleus for a colony than these seven families of the missionaries; they are themselves excellent, tolerably well educated men, industrious, with industrious wives. "They have 22 children though very young, yet educated with the greatest care - the most obedient, the least troublesome children I have seen in this colony or elsewhere. "If the Governor was in any way a man of more comprehensive views, and if he considered the moral influence of such a little colony on the surrounding settlers, he would not grudge them the few acres of land which they are at present in possession of - he would grant it to them for the five years of suffering through which they had to pass. 'Too kind' "The missionaries have converted no blackfellows to Christianity; but they have commenced a friendly intercourse with the savage children of the bush, and have shown to them the white-fellow in his best colour. "They were always kind, perhaps, too kind; for they threatened without executing their threatenings and the blackfellows knew well that it was only gammon." But this evident goodwill of which LEICHARDT wrote did not survive much past the arrival of the general influx of free immigrants once normal free settlement was permitted from 1840. The tribes moved farther out and there were constant clashes between the aboriginals and the white settlers, who were moving into and taking over their traditional tribal hunting grounds. The Government subsidies were withdrawn from the work in 1844, and this really marked the beginning of the end. A number of the original missionaries left. PASTOR EIPPER went in 1844 to join the Presbyterian Church in Braidwood, NSW., and PASTOR SCHMIDT left the following year to become a missionary in Samoa. The laymen tried to make a go of it. They bought small farms in the area and established themselves (and some of their descendants still live in the area). Keenness HAUSSMANN and NIQUET persevered with missionary work among the aboriginals until 1848, when they went south for training for the ministry under DR. LANG (but they were ordained as Lutheran Clergy). Despite the setbacks, the Zion's Hill band were enthusiastic about their new country. As early as the first year there were suggestions that more missionaries should be brought out, but even after German Station (as the British settlers dubbed it) had given up its work among the natives, the Lutherans were writing back home to families and friends. It was largely through their recommendations that bands of Lutheran settlers came out to Queensland, and elsewhere in Australia. Their attempts at evangelisation led to some of the earliest exploration around Brisbane, supplementing the military surveys of the convict settlement (which had about 1000 people in it when the Germans arrived). There were explorations at the back of Redcliffe, in the Bunya Mountains, in the Wide Bay district, and so on. Attempts were made to live among the aboriginal tribes at Humpy Bong (the Germans called it Umpie-boang), Toorbul, and elsewhere. The first party of 1838 was reinforced in 1844 by other GOSSNER missionaries, but they found it most difficult to make contact with the nomadic, and by then fearful (spears and nulla nullas were no match against rifles) aboriginals, whose tribal lands were being taken away. GOSSNER sent out 27 missionaries and their families in our earliest years, and although the results were not what were expected, their settlement in Queensland bore great fruit. Among the congregation which were started or served by GOSSNER missionaries were NUNDAH, NORTH BRISBANE, SOUTH BRISBANE, IPSWICH, TOOWOOMBA, BEENLEIGH, HIGHFIELDS, MARYBOROUGH, MERINGANDAN, WESTBROOK, AUBIGNY, GOOMBUNGEE, GLENCOE, MACKAY, KIRCHEIM, MINDEN, and ROCKHAMPTON. The Zion's Hill settlers did build a small church almost as soon as they settled, but they formed no lasting local congregation at Nundah. In 1856 there is a record of a Lutheran congregation being organised at Zion's Hill, with a PASTOR C. GERLER being placed in charge. Bickering However, there's no evidence to think it lasted long. The big trouble was lack of organisation of the Lutherans as a whole, and internal bickerings. That's why, although the first Lutherans arrived in the Nundah area in 1838, it is only now that the centenary of the first continuing congregation at Nundah is being observed. This is of St Paul's Nundah, which was founded, as far as the old German records show, in 1863. Regards Faye Queensland Australia