The floods of 1918 and 1921 had a devastating impact on the Hermannsburg Mission, as evidence by Bob Buck and Otto Tschirn's photographs. Carl Strehlow and H.A Heinrich also wrote about the floods in their yearly reports which were published in the Lutheran Herald. Of the 1921 flood Strehlow wrote: ‘On the 24. February the rain started; first light rains fell; afterwards heavier showers set in and in the morning of 3 March the biggest flood since 26 years came down in the Finke. The water rose continually, till the rushing flood in the Finke River broke the dam in a few minutes, on which the Station blacks had worked for months and months. Afterwards the wild waters rushed into our Station gardens and took great parts of the surrounding brush fence away without doing much damage to the gardens themselves. But higher and higher rose the unruly waters till they took Mr. Heinrichs (sic) garden on the opposite bank of the Finke right away. Having completed this work of destruction the waters seemed to be satisfied; they fell just as quick as they had risen and in the evening the Finke was running in his old bed again. What a glorious sight it was to see a stream nearly half a mile wide, with very high waves passing the station […] About 24 natives had to work about 3 months with pick and shovel and scoop to renovate the dams dividing the Finke and Sandy Creek, that the big flood destroyed in a few minutes. In June we got heavy rains and floods again so that the whole amount of rains from July 1 1920 til June 1921 was about 30 inches and the Finke has ran now continually near the station for over one year – which has never happened since I have been in this country.’ (Strehlow, 102) Heinrich's account, meanwhile, is with reference to the aftermath of the great flood which destroyed his garden: ‘How desolate, torn and tattered appearance the dear old Finke presented after the floodwaters had subsided; banks torn away, trees uprooted and rubbish, mud and slit everywhere.’ (Heinrich,
REFERENCES: H. A. Heinrich, ‘Finke Mission’, Lutheran Herald, April 10, 1922 C. Strehlow, ‘Finke Mision’, Lutheran Herald, March 27, 1922
