The Early Germans in Australia and Yugambeh Relations

Do you know the story of the first Australian-Germans and their history with Yugambeh people?

Meet Pastor Gottfried Haussmann (pictured right), born on 24 October 1811 at Zecklin, Saxony and a butcher by trade living in Frankfurt/Oder. He and five others formed the Gossner mission institute and were part of the first group sent out by Gossner, through the mediation of J.D. Lang to pioneer the Zion Hill mission at Moreton Bay.

The group arrived in Brisbane in April 1838. While the London Missionary Society encouraged crop production in the Pacific, Hausmann picked up on this idea with a mission on the banks of the Albert River at Eagleby south of Brisbane. He named it - Bethesda.

In 1866 this initiative was the lonely beacon of missionary endeavour in the young colony of Queensland, the first to be established since responsible government in 1859. The inflow of Germans into the Logan area in the 1860s aided Hausmann's establishments. Reminiscences from one of the first German immigrants in the Logan district depict a relatively conciliatory coexistence with the Yugambeh

"We had the Logan tribe frequently camped close at hand, near the present Lutheran Parsonage, Bethania, and we often went on full-moon nights to enjoy their corroberies … Although some of the more intelligent often and emphatically challenged the white man’s right to encroach on their lands and destroy their forests, and with them, their means of livelihood, we were never molested by them other than by begging."

While active in the Bethesda Mission Pastor Haussmann taught Bilin Bilin, a “well-known and well-respected” indigenous man in the Logan district, to read and write. Bilin Bilin was also known as Jackey Jackey, Kawae Kawae, Jack Logan, or King of the Logan and Pimpama. Hausmann expressed the hope that ‘Jacky’ might become his ‘first fruit’, the first baptismal candidate in Queensland. Born in the early 1800s, Bilin Bilin (meaning 'many parrots”' became a leader of the Yugambeh people in about 1863, and in 1875 was given a 'king plate' which stated that he was 'King of the Logan and Pimpama'. Bilin Bilin was a diplomat who 'demanded equality of wages for his people' and fair terms of trade, being credited with aiding the survival of the early explorers and settlers to the Logan district.

Bilin charged Lutheran Missionary Haussman, 5 shillings per week to sit and discuss religion with the tribe. The tribe cleared 10 acres of land at the rate of £1 per acre. While Surveyor Roberts had to plead for additional funding because he had to pay Bilin's people to ‘hump’ his supplies over Tamborine Mtn.

Mrs Haussmann bore a daughter, Maria Jane in 1839 who went on to marry a fellow German, George Appel. Their son John George Appel (pictured left), the grandson of Haussmann, went on to become a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, representing Albert - Appel played a key role in the preservation of the Burleigh Bora Ring from attempts at destruction, having it gazetted as a reserve (Reserve 782) by the Nerang Shire Council in 1913 in order to stop the site from being divided into housing allotments.