Dinner with Strehlow

 

 

Yes I am guilty, guilty of Googling my own name. Aren’t we all? When I typed the five letters of my name in that rectangular box many years ago, I can remember being disappointed. Nothing much appeared in regards to myself but there was an artist with my name, a famous soccer player and a really old photo of a couple of dudes with stern looking, bearded faces. It seemed like nothing important to me at the time.

 

I was wrong!



The stern looking dudes I first saw on the net.
Photo taken in the Alice Springs Library

Our first outing away from Alice Springs was to go camping at the truly spectacular Palm Valley (how did those palm trees end up in the desert?) and visited a place called Hermannsburg, about 120 km west of Alice Springs. We paid our entrance fee at the kiosk and explored  the dusty grounds of the old mission, to the tiny, old church and had a coffee at the café. We strolled into a large shed that served as a museum with the history laid out on large panels that were leaning against the walls. To my ultimate surprise - now blow me down - displayed and enlarged, was the same serious features of the photo I accidentally came across while I vainly Googled my own importance. 

‘Kempe’ It said.
 

Pastor Kempe on the info board at Hermannsburg

Kempe the most unusual name in the series of Kemp. Not the famous soccer star (Mario)Kempes or the Kemp without thrills (from Dean Kemp If you are an elderly, tragic West Coast Eagles fan) or the more common Kemper but a rare, Kempe with the E on the end.

A story right up my alley. Kempe Street in Alice Springs

It was 1877 when Adolf Hermann Kempe (born in Deuben, Saxony), a German Lutheran missionary, travelled up from Germany, Hermannsburg to start the first mission in the Northern Territory at the Finke River. It was not surprisingly named  Hermannsburg, although I would have preferred Kempe town.

Kempe house, one of the first buildings at Hemannsburg

It turns out Hermann was the protector of many of the Arrente Indigenous population when it was common practise to shoot Aboriginal men. He wrote a letter to the government complaining about the mistreatment of the Indigenous population. The Pastor is also known to have begun the first recording of the Arrente language to paper and he translated the bible into Aranda.  

The cross now reeling on top of Kempe's building 

Hermannsburg went through many peaks and troughs as life was tough at the mission with supplies taking three months to travel up by camel where drought and disease took its toll on the residents. The whole Kempe family suffered from, in those days, incurable typhoid and both Mrs Dorothee Kempe and six-year old son Ludwig, died of this horrible disease. After loosing his wife at Hermannsburg, where she is laid to rest with her son, Hermann left with his daughter to live in South Australia. What a terrible, hard life this must have been.

Enough for anyone to question their faith.



A concrete slab and a rusty cross - no flowers

In 1894, Carl Strehlow and his wife Frieda took on the Hermannsburg mission. He continued on with the missionary work of Kempe and built the church and other buildings whilst maintaining close relationships with the Arrente. Carl Strehlow became severely ill and was transported by horse and cart from Hermannsburg to the nearest available medical help, but tragically died on the way at horseshoe bend.

Carl’s son Theo or Ted as he liked to be known, wrote a riveting recount of this trip in a book called 'Journey to Horseshoe Bend'. It is an in-depth look at Indigenous connections to the land, a historical insight at our pastoral past and a direct reliving of the final days of his father's life.



This photo was taken around Boggy Hole and is on route to Horseshoe Bend

Ted became an anthropologist, came back to the region and with the help of his fluent Arrenda  created the hugely controversial collection of sacred Aboriginal artifacts and recordings of elders speaking and singing about their secret men's business. 700 artifacts and 14 kilometres of film to be exact. They are now stored, but in the main, but not exhibited in the Strehlow Research Centre at the Museum of Central Australia in Alice Springs. This collection is now the property of the Arrente people.

Some weeks after our discovery of my Kempe name-sake, I was speaking to the owner of the Temple Bar Caravan Park - a grand old lady named Mona, who gets around the park in a golf buggy whilst cracking jokes. You know that Mona is around by the sound of a squeezy horn she uses to let you know the mail has arrived. The horn sounds like a donkey that has just started puberty. In one of the conversations with Mona the Owner, she opened up about the work she had done at the Hermannsburg mission when she was 16. “Do you know Carl Strehlow's grandson, John, is staying here in our park?” she said.





The bell at the old Hermannsburg church

My hair was standing up straight on goose-pimpled skin. John Strehlow, grandson of Carl Strehlow, son of Ted lives here - only a few doors down?

At the first possible opportunity I invited John over for dinner. It turns out that John (see opening photo) is the most fascinating gentlemen in his own right and brimming with information about this region and his family. He has written a historical biography about his grandmother Frieda Keysser, who married and accompanied Carl Strehlow to Hermannsburg. A new book is being written only a hundred metres from where I sit and write this blog.

 

Dear reader, can you see that there are some questions that need to be asked  right here?

What are the forces that brought the modern-day, living Strehlow and Kempe together? Is this one of those dismissible coincidences that just appear to happen in life or is this a more mysterious, unexplained chain of events that add to the magic of the red centre?

As a self-indulgent Googler, I would love to know  where I fit in amongst all these regional identities and tough first settlers of the Northern Territory. Have I inadvertently  tripped over a distant relative and followed that man almost subconsciously to the centre of Australia, as far away from Germany and Holland (my country of origin) as you can get?

Am I related to the German missionary Hermann Kempe?

I think I just felt my brain explode.

Grey Bits

This is a rich vein of local history and a bloggers paradise that I have stumbled upon.  Anyone who knows the history of Strehlow's family knows that I have only started with the tip of the termite hill and have done their story little justice.

John Strehlow's book is called ‘The Tale of Frieda Keysser’ and can be purchased from Amazon.

A great read

Just like John Strehlow, both Carl Strehlow and Ted Strehlow (John's father) are accomplished authors. I used a fair bit of information from their books.





The old version of Ted's book I borrowed from Mona.

I have read a short but very interesting translation of the diary of A H Kempe and drawn some information from it to help me describe Kempe’s achievements. It was called 'From Joiners Bench to Pulpit'.

Thanks to the library staff for helping me out with the archives and for making me feel like a celebrity after my name was recognised. Shame though - they didn't ask me for an autograph!


A huge 'thank you' to John Strehlow for inspiring me no end, for his generosity and the direct window into the past.