The arrival in SA of the earliest large numbers of refugee German Lutherans in four ships towards the end of 1838 is well-known.  These people formed the first permanent German settlements in the state - Hahndorf and Klemzig.  However, these were not the first German colonists to come to SA.

Through political and trade links with the various German states, South Australia’s main colonising body, the SA Company, had been hiring German labourers and professional people to go with the main groups of British colonists setting off for the new colony from February 1836.  Indeed, the recruitment of Germans had progressed so well, that the Company selected a German confidential secretary for its colonial headquarters, to go out on the first emigrant vessel - the Duke of York.

This person was Daniel Schreyvogel, who worked first in Kingscote and then in Adelaide for Samuel Stephens and David McLaren, the first SA Company local Managers.  Mr Schreyvogel acted as interpreter between the Germans and the British officials, and conducted the necessary record keeping involving the SA Company’s German employees.

Over a dozen single German men arrived in SA during late 1836 and early 1837 'to work the quarries of stone and lime and procure additional supplies of water from artesian wells’.  This group also included Johann Menge, the eccentric mineralogist, who made SAs first discoveries of mineral wealth and pointed out the state’s suitability for winemaking.  In October 1837, the ship Solway anchored in Nepean Bay, off Kangaroo Island.  On board were 47 more Germans, amongst them seven married couples and their families.  For FW Kleemann and his four children, the arrival was difficult indeed.  After suffering poor health for most of the voyage, Mrs Kleemann died of pneumonia on 14 October 1837, several days before the ship berthed.  Considerately, the captain agreed to keep her corpse on board and allow it burial on land in the new Kingscote cemetery.  The grieving husband planted a mulberry tree near the spot (not in the cemetery as has so often been claimed), the first fruit tree planted in SA.  This tree still survives.

Unfortunately, too many quarrels and other difficulties soon broke out between the SA Company officers and the Germans.  Manager David McLaren informed headquarters in London that he absolutely refused to encourage any more Germans to settle in the young colony; this resolve was to cause unwelcome tension when the first considerable numbers of Germans who had no direct links with the SA Company arrived in late 1838.

Of the approximately sixty isolated Germans who came to SA in 1836-1837, most joined up with their countrymen in the newly-established German settlements near Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley in due course.  Several of these pioneer German colonists helped Colonel Light in the surveying of Adelaide and surrounding farm land.  Most names have been forgotten, although in his time, FW Kleinschmidt became respected as a brewer and benefactor in Lobethal, in addition to the pioneering investigations (already mentioned) which Johann Menge carried out for the colony at large.  Only Johann Gramp achieved present day instant recognition with the establishment of Gramp’s winery at Rowlands Flat in the Barossa Valley.

Reg Butler - Hahndorf  18 April 1995