Waldau Village

It was Christmas Eve, 1860. The year Max von Schramm had opened his school in the Waldau church. As an end to the school year, the Lutheran congregation had agreed to hold a tea meeting and Christmas celebration. Women of the church had visited families to obtain gifts and food for the festival. English friends had been invited.

(Courtesy Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society)

Aumann's Landscape and Garden Supplies is a familiar landmark a little upstream along the Yarra at Eltham.

Have you ever pondered the Germanic origins of "Aumann" - as in the Aumunn's businesses in Eltham & Warrandyte?

The South Australia German settlements in the Adelaide Hills, the Barossa Valley and mid-Yorke Peninsula are well-known.

Their Lutheran churches, attended by e.g. Shultz, Linke, Gutske, Dutschske, Giesecke, Weidenbach, Thiele, Schramm, Wutke families, remain as small testaments to early settlement in Australia.

There was a well-organised immigration program to bring skilled German agricultural workers to Victoria also.

Just to our east is evidence of an early German settlement named Waldau Village, in Doncaster East.

"Waldau" means "clearing in the forest in their German.

JOHANNE CAROLINE AUMANN

February 6th, 1834 Profen, Silesia, Prussia

December 10th, 1921 Balwyn, Victoria

December 12th, 1921 Kew Cemetery, Victoria‌‌

"Caroline spoke German all her life and only knew a few phrases of English. Living as she did in the close knit German community of Waldau there was little need to learn English. To help her when English speaking visitors arrived at her home she had several suitable English phrases listed on the back of the door. Thus she was able to greet visitors with “Good Morning”; “How are you”; “Come in” and so on."

The German immigrants introduced the German tradition of the Christmas tree to Australia. Theodor Müller, who became the poet of Victoria's German community, later described in a magazine in Germany how the Melbourne German Association (Deutscher Verein) put up "the first German Christmas tree under the skies of the Southern Cross" at Christmas time in 1850 for the enjoyment of the children of the city. This tradition became popular with the British colonists.

The first significant German immigration began in 1849 when the first large groups of immigrants arrived in ships from Hamburg.

At the time there was a shortage of agricultural workers in Victoria, and in addition, people who wished to establish vineyards were not able to get skilled vine workers from Britain.

Leading figures in Melbourne saw how successful the immigration of Germans in South Australia was, and were keen to encourage immigrants to come from Germany to Victoria.

The suburb of Thomastown has German heritage too - for a time it was called New Mecklenburg.

Very interesting bit of social history going back 100 or so years.

It is prompted by Nilss supplying the reference to Frau Aumunn.

How long will it take for us to accept the Somalis, the Nigerians, the Khmer as being interesting additions to - and part of - our society?

Oh, and those First Nations people who claim 60,000 years continuous occupancy of these lands?