Friedrich Gerstäcker - Australia: A German Traveller in the Age of Gold

Wakefield Press

Friedrich Gerstcker was born in Hamburg in 1816. Inspired by the writing of Daniel Defoe, he set off for America in 1837 intending to become a farmer, and sent his mother a diary of his adventures. He returned to Germany in 1843 to discover that his mother had been publishing his diaries in a periodical to great popularity, and so his career as a best-selling writer began.

Over the course of his adventurous life Gerstcker travelled to both the Americas, Tahiti, Indonesia, Egypt, and Australia. His trips were funded by a fruitful relationship with his publisher, and his considerable output was devoured by a legion of devoted readers, making Gerstcker a household name for many years.

Friedrich Gerstcker died in 1872, suffering a stroke while preparing for a trip to Asia.

Editor Peter Monteath, a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, teaches History in the School of International Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide. His recent books include POW: Australian Prisoners of War in Hitlers Reich , Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose (with Valerie Munt), Interned: Torrens Island 19141915 (with Mandy Paul and Rebecca Martin), and the edited collection Germans: Travellers, Settlers and their Descendants in South Australia.

Friedrich Gerstcker, c. 1850
Photographic portrait by Bertha Wehnert
[Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, F/2672/2003]

Wakefield Press

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First published 2016

This edition published 2016

Translation by Peter Monteath, Aileen Ohlendorf, Harald Ohlendorf, Lois Zweck, Judith Wilson, Storm Graham, Thomas Kruckemeyer

Copyright Peter Monteath, 2016

All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

Cover designed by Liz Nicholson, designBITE

Ebook conversion by Clinton Ellicott, Wakefield Press

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Gerstcker, Friedrich, 18161872, author.

Title:

Australia: a German traveller in the age of gold /
Friedrich Gerstcker; edited by Peter Monteath.

ISBN: 978 1 74305 463 5 (ebook: epub).

Subjects:

Gerstcker, Friedrich, 18161872Travel.

Voyages around the world.

AustraliaDescription and travel18511900.

Other Creators/Contributors: Monteath, Peter, editor.

Dewey Number: 910.4

Wakefield Press thanks Coriole Vineyards for their continued support.

Preface

In late March of 1851, Friedrich Gerstcker, the most illustrious and prolific of Germanys travel writers, set foot in Australia. Over the preceding two years Gerstcker had gathered enough experiences to keep his pen busy for years to come. He had sailed from Hamburg to South America, crossed the Andes, made his way to California, witnessed the madness of the gold rushes, and ventured across the Pacific.

In Australia there was to be no letting up; his desire for fresh adventure could not be quenched. From Sydney he took a mail coach to Albury, where in a feat of astonishing ingenuity he fashioned his own canoe to take him down the Murray. When his canoe sank, he travelled on foot to Adelaide and the Barossa Valley, where he was eager to check on how his countrymen had made their new lives in the Antipodes. Back on the east coast, he witnessed wide-eyed the outbreak of the Australian version of gold fever. Not until his vessel picked its way through the treacherous rocks and shoals of the Torres Strait did he finally leave Australiaand with it its multiple perils, delights and curiosities. He would never return.