By Mark Schuster (St Ives, NSW)
During the mid to late Nineteenth Century, many German adventurers, naturalists and scientists came in quest of ‘green treasure’ in the Land Down Under – seeking new and unique plant and animal species on the great southern continent.
Perhaps the exploits of the great German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt inspired many of these adventurers, but whatever, they came – and many stayed, although their specimens and scientific findings were often transported to the ‘Vaterland’. The list of those who came is both large and stunning, including a number of notable personages, many of whom are still remembered and have been the subject of recent studies. Some of these scientific adventurers from Germany are listed below:
• Amalie Dietrich – intrepid collector of specimens for the Godefrey Museum in the 1860s. Amalie left her comfortable home in Germany and collected in southern, central and northern Queensland and a few books have documented her extraordinary ‘collecting’ adventures in very harsh conditions and in lonely places.
• Ludwig Leichhardt – the legendary explorer who vanished with his exploration party somewhere in northern Australia was also an accomplished naturalist and scientist – recording many plants and animals to add to the storehouse of Australian natural history.
• Hermannn Beckler – accomplished naturalist who was treated badly and resigned from the ill-fated and legendary Burke and Wills expedition. He had previously been a medical doctor at Warwick in southern Queensland.
• Gerrard Krefft – the talented and controversial director of the Australian Museum in the 1860s-1870s who described many Australian animals including the Queensland Lungfish, Neoceratodus forsterii. Author of The Snakes of Australia and The Mammals of Australia he had bitter fights with the Australian Museum board and was actually forcibly ejected from the central Sydney museum on his chair and thrown onto the street by two thugs. Gerrard Krefft left behind a young family and died both heartbroken and a pauper.
• ‘Baron’ Ferdinand von Mueller – in many ways the founding father of Australian botany in Victoria and an expert on the Australian eucalypts. He led a long life advancing scientific botany and our colonial knowledge of the vast floral diversity of south eastern Australia.
• Richard Semon – a protégé and student of the brilliant German zoologist and evolutionist Ernst Haeckel. Professor Semon came and lived for a period to the Burnett district of southern Queensland to study and document the ontogeny and development cycle of the living fossil, the Queensland Lungfish, Neoceratodus forsterii.
• William Bauerlein – 1840-1917, who was a botanical collector in eastern Australia and New Guinea. He supplied many specimens to Ferdinand von Mueller and wrote a small booklet on his New Guinea expedition entitled ‘The Voyage of the Bonito’. He had both Grevillia and Acacia species named in his honour.
• Carl Heinrich Hartmann – pioneer horticulturist, botanical collector and philosopher who developed an extensive botanic gardens in Toowoomba. He also made two botanical collecting expeditions to New Guinea in 1885 and 1887, the later resulting in his untimely death from ‘fever’ on his return to Queensland. The beautiful native orchid Sarcochilus hartmanni is named in his honour.
However there was one German naturalist who spent many decades observing, collecting and writing of the natural wonders of our country whose life and even public knowledge of his life and journeys is still cloaked in obscurity. It is now time to bring this amazing man back to public knowledge and celebrate a truly remarkable life. Hermann Lau is not well known as a famous Australian naturalist or scientist, but he was actually far more than more talented than just being a scientist. Author, naturalist, composer and musician – these were just a few of his diverse talents.
For instance his detailed observations of the life habits of the secretive platypus, then little known, are given below in an article published in the regional Victorian newspaper the Mount Alexander Mail on Wednesday 22 June 1881.
THE PLATYPUS
The following interesting notes concerning the platypus are sent to the. Queenslander by Mr Herman Lau:- “I lately went on an expedition to the Severn River with the intention of patiently investigating for my own satisfaction the peculiar habits of the platypus. Of eighteen specimens (which I procured only three were females, and these only came out of their under-ground burrows after their males had been shot. The entrance to the burrow is always under water but turn upwards is soon taken until above water level, but it then descends again. At the end is a space scooped out large enough to house at least two pair, and this nest is lined with rootlets, and dried grass. These water-moles appear to be to a certain extent gregarious, or else the young keep with their parents until quite grown to maturity. A little before sunrise and sunset they leave their burrows in search of food, which consists of minute bivalves; these they are often seen scraping off submerged logs. Having two formidable grinders at the back of their mouths they can crack these, shells,. and the food thus prepared is, by the aid of two horny kind of teeth situated on the back part, of the tongue, placed in two pouches, one on either side of the cheeks, and thus laden the animals make for their burrows, giving this food to their females, and also storing some up for the summer season.” Mr Lau states it as a fact that during the summer time they are as a rule never to be seen; that, contrary to all other animals, which when dormant choose the winter in which to lie up, the platypus chooses the summer. In the month of August two hairless blind young are born who receive their nourishment of milk which oozes out through fine apertures in the skin, under which, along the flank, is a curiously-formed milk-gland, so situated that when pressed by the feet of the mother the milk is forced out. As, the little one cannot appear the first season before the summer intervenes I consider this the reason why no remarkably small ones have ever been seen. In spring moulting takes place, but it is chiefly the silvery hairs on the under-side that are cast. Only the. males have spurs on the hind feet these spurs are perforated, and a gland containing a clear watery fluid is found underneath. This substance I have heard is poisonous. The length of those I have shot average 1 foot 10 inches for the male, and 1 foot 6 inches for the female. Just over the very small black eyes open the ears, which run in the form of a tube under the skin and over the head – a provision evidently for excluding the water. No actual stomach is visible; the food, exceedingly finely digested, passes simply, through the intestine. These little animals are most expert swimmers, and seem quit at ease even against a rapid stream. Out of the water never saw them, but fancy that when they have to migrate through waterholes drying up they do so at night. The skin is valuable for its fur; it is to be hoped that this will not lead to the animals extinction.”
Although he investigated the natural history of many Australian animals, the majority of his observations were of our remarkable woodland and rainforest avifauna – possibly the first detailed natural history and life history observations made of many of our unique bird species.
For decades I had come across ‘snippets’ of his remarkable life and became fascinated enough to attempt to go ‘in search of Professor Lau’. Being myself a long-term Queensland naturalist since I was a boy and bush musician playing German-Queensland music on the old squeezebox also gave me more reason to undertake this quest.
Perhaps the first inkling of his amazing story comes from the comprehensive history of the Bunya Mountains, northwest of Toowoomba. For me the Bunya Mountains, whose natural wonders I have enjoyed for nearly three decades, are a source of spiritual enrichment and the mountains with their beautiful subtropical rainforests certainly replenish my soul. Author Ray Humphrys chronicles the indigenous and European history of the home of the unique Bunya Pine, Araucaria bidwillii, closely related to the Monkey Puzzle tree in Patagonia. In his book Bonyi Bonyi, the section on the early discovery of the Bunya Mountains, Ray gives a profile of the early ‘wanderer’ Hermann Lau. From 1865 to at least 1868 his tent was pitched in the jungles of southern Queensland from Cunningham’s Gap to the Bunyas. However, as this article will illustrate, Hermann was a long-term resident of the eastern Australian bushlands and spent more time ‘in the bush’ than any other German naturalist or visiting scientist.
At that time Hermann wandered the scrubs of the Bunyas and adjacent areas he was studying the nests of the Yellow-throated and Large-billed Scrub Wrens (Sericornis citreogularis and S. magnirostris). His poetic allusions to the Yellow Shrike Robin (today known as the Eastern Yellow Robin, Eopsaltria australis) give a glimpse of his life and character. He wrote: “It is early morning, just as the dawn is approaching. Lying half awake, half dreaming, in my lonely tent close behind the palm world of Cooyar scrub, I hear a fine, equal, oft repeated note in the thicket, as if heralding the golden sun, and which fills my heart with thankfulness to my great creator. The notes emanate from this dear little bird, which sings its psalm of praise to its Maker at early dawn.”
His writings truly convey his humorous sentiments, whatever the situation. For example:
“I shall relate an adventure which nearly deprived me of my life had not the all-protecting hand of Providence averted such a calamity. One day in the month of November, being very hot, I went to a sand ridge near Tummaville cattle station, belonging to Yandilla, 12 miles to the south of it, in search of Bee Bird’s (Rainbow Bee Eater, Merops ornatus) eggs. Seeing two of the birds on a bush, I soon detected their homestead. I managed to procure a stiff stick for opening the passage and worked it into the nest for distance of three feet. Thinking that I had reached the bottom, I reached in. As I did so, I felt something slipping in my hand: my grasp suggested young birds. The second time I grasped the touch was cold. It struck me an iguana may have been present in the nest, as I had previously seen an iguana coming out of another nest with a young Bee Bird in its mouth. So I withdrew my hand. Well, again working the stick to the end, I perceived something got hold of the point, and by gradually extracting the stick, beheld to my great horror a brown snake five feet long – one of the most venomous of its kind – savagely biting the point. I dragged it to the entrance by its teeth and quickly despatched the arch-enemy, thanking my God for the release of so great a danger. Finding myself full of nervousness, I hastened home to allay such a feeling by drinking a glass of brandy and water.”
Hermann was the son of Johann Friedrich Lau (1775-1856), who served as pastor in both Soerup (1821) and Gluecksburg (1827-45). Although we do not know his year of birth, Hermann Lau married Elisabeth Toosbuey, and they had 2 children. Where he grew up both towns he would have resided in are today located in the province of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Over hundreds of years this area has alternated between German and Danish control – depending on the winners of each successive war. His writing of his autobiography Vier Jahre in Australien: Selbsterlebnisse und Reisebilder aus der Colonie New-South-Wales (written in German language) does show his homeland affinities could have been more closely aligned with Germany rather than Denmark.
It is known that ‘this’ Hermann Lau was in New South Wales 1854-59, 1860-62 in Hamburg, and a Hermann Lau resided during 1862-1863 in Grafton, New South Wales. His whereabouts 1862-92 were considered unknown, though a Mr. H. Lau departed Sydney for Europe in March 1893. From 1893 until his death in 1904 he lived in Gluecksburg.
A major aim of my search for ‘Professor Lau’ is to fill in those ‘missing years’ of his adventurous life – those spanning from 1862-1892 – a period of three decades, and to ascertain as to whether he was the same man who wrote of his adventures in southern New South Wales in the 1850s.
Hermann Lau’s published account of his ‘first wanderings’ in the great southern land in Hamburg, Germany in 1860. Entitled Vier Jahre in Australien: Selbsterlebnisse und Reisebilder aus der Colonie New-South-Wales, today this book is only known from two surviving copies – one held by the John Oxley Library in Brisbane. In 1991 literary historian John Fletcher produced an amended but shortened translation of this early work. Hermann Lau and his sojourns (1854-1859) in Sydney, Goulburn, Braidwood, Araluen, Moruya and Shoalhaven (Sydney: Book Collectors’ Society of Australia, 1991) gives us a perfect insight into the early life of Hermann Lau and his wanderings in south eastern Australia.
Hermann Lau first arrived in Australia on 26th November 1854. His profession in Germany was as a musician. We do know he spent four years wandering the south coast and southern highlands of New South Wales from Goulburn in the Southern Tablelands to Broulee on the New South Wales south coast, spending time around newly established goldfields communities and pioneering timber towns such as Braidwood, Araluen, Moruya and the Shoalhaven districts – where he provided he provided musical entertainment, repaired instruments and sought out aspects of natural history and delighted in travelling the many isolated bush regions of southern New South Wales and meeting with country folk and new settlers. He often commented on meeting either Danish or German fellow countrymen on his lonely bush wanderings.
We definitely know details of Hermann Lau’s return to Germany in the 1850s. In the summarised and meticulous translation of his early work by John Fletcher, the author stated:
‘At Christmas 1858, Lau received two letters from home. His father was dead. His brother Hugo was dead. Overwhelmed with grief, racked with homesickness, Lau resolved to return to Germany ‘(pp. 274-276, Fletcher). After a short sojourn in Sydney, he booked his passage to London on the Waterloo. He went on board on Wednesday 22 June 1859 and the ship sailed on the same day (297). The introduction to his amazing book Vier Jahre in Australien: Selbsterlebnisse und Reisebilder aus der Colonie New-South-Wales was written in Hamburg 1860.
Now comes the really interesting and ‘detective’ part of the search. As previously mentioned, Ray Humphrys stated that a German named Hermann Lau was roaming the scrubs of the Bunya Mountains in the years 1865 till at least 1868. Was this man the same man who had roamed southern New South Wales and wrote the marvellous account of his four years of travelling? It does coincidental if they were two separate people, however Hermann Lau was not an uncommon name in that stage of German history – and I do know of another Hermann Lau, who was a ‘carrier’ from Meringandan, north of Toowoomba.
Sometimes things just fall into place – like the pieces of a jigsaw coming together. For many years I had heard about the out of print two-volume work by Melbourne ornithologist Archibald James (A J) Campbell. Still considered the most comprehensive work on Australian birds and their eggs and nests, Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds, many definitive clues and answers to the mystery of Hermann Lau can be found. Throughout the massive tomes are frequent references and paragraphs written by a Hermann Lau – who is quoted as being a ‘dear friend’, ornithological co-worker and long-term correspondent with AJ Campbell. His diary notes, virtually all from the scrubs and country on the Darling Downs and further southwest, range from 1863 until 1892 – a period of at least twenty nine years spent in the Queensland bush.
Hermann Lau (‘The Professor’) seated at front at Pine Mountain in 1887
There are four specific quotes (by Lau) in Campbell’s treatise that are keys to enlighten the situation, leaving no doubt that the Hermann Lau who wrote of his sojourns in southern New South Wales was the same man who wandered the scrubs, forests and woodlands of southern Queensland at a later date These quotes (from A J Campbell’s work) are given below:
Mr. Lau writes, of the White-shafted Fantail. A nest containing two roundish eggs was taken at Cunningham’s Gap, in the Toowoomba Range, 1876. The first nest I found, however, was in 1856, at Ulladulla, New South Wales. ”
Mr Hermann Lau writes : Mock Regent Bird — I first saw it at Goulburn, New South Wales, 1855 then again at Pike’s Creek, Queensland, twenty miles south-west of Warroo.
The quote from Campbell’s tomes that really provides irrefutable evidence is the following:
‘In more northern latitudes we have the notes left in MS by our good observer, Mr Hermann Lau, ‘Welcome Swallow’ — “ One of the first birds to meet me on the shores of Australia on 26th November, 1854, after a long voyage and always awakens within me, whenever I see the bird, home recollections of the warmest kind.”
This illustrates that our ‘Queensland’ Hermann Lau was the one and same who first came to New South Wales for his first colonial stint.
A very probable record illustrating his return from Germany, after a sojourn in Grafton (NSW) and his journey to his new home in Queensland is illustrated by the following quote, again cited in Campbell:
“Mr. Hermann Lau tells a pleasant little incident in connection with the Spotted Ground Bird. He says “On my way from Tenterfield (New South Wales) to Warwick (Queensland), in the month of December, 1863, my dog (a pointer) flushed such a bird from, I believe, a resting log, and when examining the spot, I found its nest on the ground close to the log, containing two beautiful eggs in an advanced state of incubation . The nest was loosely framed of dry grass. ”
We know that a Hermann Lau was resident in Grafton and an active member of the large German community on the Clarence River from April 1862 (see the concert review mentioned earlier from Clarence and Richmond Examiner of 8th April 1862) until at least late August 1862 (as recorded in the Sud Australische Zeitung of Wednesday 3 September 1862 – see below) and it could be that he left Grafton to travel north to Queensland, via Tenterfield in December of 1863.
His musicality is related from one of the many newspaper articles which gave details of concerts in regional Australia in past times. For instance the Clarence and Richmond Examiner of 8th April 1862 gives details of a concert at the School of Arts in Grafton, northern New South Wales:
The “novelty,” and if we may judge from the tumultuous applause of the audience, the “hit” of the evening’s entertainment, was Mr. Lau’s exhibition of skill in playing the German accordion, and we were really surprised, to see how much can, be made of so homely an instrument. The addition of bells, an invention of Mr. Lau’s, had a very pleasing and exhilarating effect – especially in the “Remembrances of New South Wales” composed by the performer.
In addition, the Clarence and Richmond Examiner of 17 June 1862 stated that in June 1862 a ‘German Ball’ was held at Tattersall’s Hotel to celebrate “the victory gained over the French by the Germans towards the end of the last century.” The press reported that the ball was well supported, between 60 and 70 people attending “with dancing being kept up till dawn of day”. A Herr Hermann Lau was recorded as supplying music on the ‘bell accordian’.
There is a reference in A J Campbell’s tome which cites Hermann Lau as collecting in the Bunya Mountains, southern Queensland – as shown below:
I give Mr. Lau’s interesting notes of this bird near its northern limit in the sub-tropical scrub of South Queensland, ‘Geocichla lunulate is an inhabitant of the gloomy cedar scrub along the sea coast, resorting near water and always hoping on the ground seeking among the moist debris for its food. Its colour resembles the European Song Thrush. The nest is not unlike that of the (home) Black Bird, and is situated in the first and thick fork of a tree richly bedecked with moss, and the outside covering being formed of the same material. The nest is not so easily detected, and only the bird flying from it betrays the convenient site. The lining consists of rootlets and dark fibre, abundantly to be found in such localities. The eggs also resemble those of the Black Bird. They number two or three – Bunya Mountains, December, 1856.’
However, as his wanderings in southern New South Wales were very well documented in his published work (during the period 1854 – 1858), and as Professor Lau frequented the Bunya Mountains at later dates, I consider that the date of December 1856 to be incorrect for his adventures at that locality.
The listing below – with date and place of his natural history observations made by Hermann Lau (all from A J Campbell’s monumental work), shows us the extent of his travels throughout inland southern Queensland. In my work as a ranger with the Queensland parks and Wildlife Service I also regularly visit many of the localities where he made his detailed observations on the avifauna.
1854 26th November Arrival in Australia – long voyage
1855 Goulburn (NSW)
1856 Ulladulla (NSW)
1863 December Walking from Tenterfield (NSW) to Warwick (QLD)
1864 January Dalrymple Creek, Allora (QLD)
1864 January Dalrymple Creek, Allora (QLD)
1865 Yandilla (QLD)
1865 December Bunya Mtns (QLD)
1867 November Yandilla (QLD)
1868 October Ellangowan (QLD)
1868 Tummaville (QLD)
1868 October Tummaville (QLD)
1869 October Warroo (QLD)
1869 October Pike’s Creek (QLD)
1873 September Warroo (QLD)
1874 September Yandilla (QLD)
1874 Whetstone (QLD)
1874 December Whetstone (QLD)
1874 September Darling Downs (QLD)
1874 October Western Creek (QLD)
1875 November Highfields (QLD)
1876 Cunningham’s Gap (QLD)
1876 October Cunningham’s Gap (QLD)
1877 October Yandilla (QLD)
1878 November Gowrie Junction (QLD)
1879 September Warroo (QLD)
1879 October Warroo (QLD)
1880 Severn River (QLD)
1880 October Inglewood (QLD)
1880 Mount MacIntyre watershed (QLD)
1883 October Cooyar (QLD)
1883 November Bunya Mtns (QLD)
1884 August Tummaville (QLD)
1885 October Maidenhead, Severn River (QLD)
1886 November Cunningham’s Gap (QLD)
1887 January Bunya Mtns/Cunningham’s Gap? (QLD)
1892 11th August Yandilla (QLD)
The map below illustrates these varied locations where he observed and collected specimens, as well as his ‘bases’ of Yandilla and Warroo:
Map showing both Yandilla and Warroo (bases) and collecting localities in southern Queensland
The ‘Professor’ had used both Yandilla and Warroo as his base for his natural history explorations from his arrival in Queensland in 1863 until his departure for Germany sometime after August 1892 – a period of nearly 30 years.
His long-term residence at Yandilla may not have been out of the ordinary for travellers and ‘colonial men of experience’ in those days as Oscar de Satge (1901 )in his Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter stated: “I gladly accepted an offer made me by Mr Ralph Gore, the resident partner, to help amongst the cattle, joining two very excellent young fellows already there in the bachelor establishment of “The Cottage”, at Yandilla, where I spent a couple of useful years of “Colonial Experience” happily enough – the years 1856 and 1857. Yandilla was even in those days one of the most improved and comfortable stations on the famous Darling Downs”. Maybe ‘The Professor’ was able to stay on a very long-term basis at “The Cottage” to further his natural history explorations with a solid home base to work from. From the number of photographs taken with the Gore family and other families at Yandilla, it would seem that Hermann Lau was a much loved character and accepted member of the Yandilla establishment, as can be seen from the many photos he appears in with family members. In addition an illustrated ‘cartoon’ depicts ‘The Professor’ asking Dr Hodgkinson whether the large leg bone he is holding is that of a moa (extinct bird) or of ‘de bullock’!
Hermann Lau (on left) with Dr Hodgkinson and Gore family members
Dr Hodgkinson and ‘Professor’ Lau examining a large leg bone.
However, his association with Warroo station is not known, but a few observations are of interest. Warroo was owned by the well-known German squatter Frederick John Bracker. He arrived from Mecklenburg, Germany in 1829 and was a noted wool grower. Originally purchasing and developing Rosenthal (near Warwick), he later purchased the 30,000 acre Warroo run in 1848. His wool breeding and sheep breeding genetic developments became his trademark until his death in 1870. Warroo was owned by the Bracker family until 1912. Such was Fred Bracker’s skills with merino breeding that he used to say that he could grow wool even on rams’ horns! With common German origins it would seem likely that with Hermann’s extensive wanderings in the Warroo vicinity (1869, 1873 and 1879) it would seem very likely that Hermann would have met up with Fred Bracker and the two Germans may have made a friendship or pact which saw Hermann based at Warroo when his wanderings were well south of the Yandilla region.
Even though Hermann had a number of expeditions to the greener subtropical rainforest areas of the northern and eastern Downs in search of jungle birds (e.g. Bunya Mountains, Cooyar, Highfields, Cunninghams Gap), much of his extensive fieldwork was in the drier woodlands and forests of the southern and western Darling Downs – making both Yandilla and Warroo, on the Southern Downs, ideal bases for his wanderings.
His contribution to the wealth of Queensland’s natural history knowledge is little known and has gone unacknowledged for more than a century. However, this brief article does show his large commitment to discovering the life stories of our many unique animals, particularly the birdlife. His wanderings were amazingly extensive, as noted in the previous Table (of collecting localities and data) and it is even more amazing that his efforts largely went unchronicled. Only A J Campbell’s Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds gives some record of his contributions to our ‘green knowledge’.
It is hoped that further information on this early German naturalist and explorer will come to light and his efforts be fully appreciated.
The Professor after leaving Queensland in 1892 resided in northern Germany for more than a decade and he died in the Schleswig-Holstein area of northern Germany on 27th May 1904. The item below, “Death of an old Toowoomba Identity”, from the Darling Downs Gazette of September 1904, was relayed from Mrs Gore, then residing in Southport, but previously who had owned Yandilla homestead for many decades – when Hermann Lau was resident.
PLEASE NOTE: All the photographs (made available courtesy of Grant Uebergang, noted historian and farmer from Yandilla) are taken from his associations with the Gore family from Yandilla).
Thank You for this wonderful article