In 1981 Paul Albrecht, the son of F.W. Albrecht who took over the Mission after Strehlow’s death, wrote about his own return to Hermannsburg in 1947 after a year of schooling in Adelaide: ‘I remember returning to Hermannsburg after my first year at Immanuel College – a Lutheran co-ed boarding school in Adelaide – to suddenly realise I was white, whereas most of the people at Hermannsburg were dark brown in colour! It came as a shock. It is not as though I was or had been colour blind, and now someone suddenly told me the facts of life. It was simply that I had been unaware in any social sense that the colour of my skin was different from that of the other people among whom I had grown up. It was a strange awakening.’ (P. Albrecht,1)
Like Strehlow, Paul Albrecht was born in Hermannsburg (1932). He spoke fluent Arrernte and German. As with Strehlow, Albrecht lays claim to a particular kind of Aboriginality, having been cared for largely by an Aboriginal woman who came to be his ‘other mother’ (P. Albrecht,2). He writes: ‘Incidently it is through her that I am related to many Aboriginal people and my place in Aboriginal society has been determined.’ (P. Albrecht,2) Paul’s sister, Minna, also recalls her impressions of leaving Hermannsburg and going to boarding school in Adelaide at the age of 12: ‘It was terrible, just terrible, and it was an extremely regimented boarding school in those days. It was awful. You went in January and you came home in December. There were no phones. And I had to wear shoes! I’d never worn shoes in my life. We used to just wear sandals [at home] sometimes. We had to wear sandals to church – my mother wouldn’t let us go barefoot to church – but other than that we went barefoot. In summer, it was so hot that you would stand in one bit of shade and look where the next bit of shade was before you took off across the sand because it would burn your feet. But you wouldn’t be so soft as to put your sandals on. It was a sort of point of pride. ‘…As kids we just roamed around. We had a marvellous time. There were just all thse kids who played together, the older ones looked after the younger ones. And then we had school lessons…’ (M.Albrecht in Brown, p 17)
References: Minna Albrecht’s account in Shirley Brown’ Chatting With Centralians: A Recorded History of Thirty Centralians, Historical Society of the Northern Territory, Casuarina, 1998 P.G.E. Albrecht, ‘Hermannsburg A meeting Place of Cultures: Personal Reflections’ in ‘Nungalinya Occasional Bulletin’, no 14, March 1981, pp 1-14
Mrs Ida Standley was the matron of the Bungalow, a corrugated iron shed on Parsons Street in Alice Springs which was designed to house part Aboriginal women and their children. Standley arrived in Alice Springs from South Australia in 1914 having taught at various stations and schools across the state. Originally appointed to instruct children of European families, she soon expanded her duties to include the education of part Aboriginal children for whom she created a special afternoon class. It was this passion for a more expansive education system that led to her appointment as the matron of The Bungalow.
The Bungalow was built in Alice Springs in 1914 during the prospecting days. As Judy Robinson writes: ‘ A number of disappointed miners, perhaps having no home to which to return and unwilling to face the road back, drifted into the settlement or headed towards other prospecting possibilities and some of them left behind Aboriginal concubines and part-coloured children. Without any means of support or anywhere to live, it was a problem the townspeople solved in the only way possible. They banded together in 1914 and constructed a large tin dwelling behind the Stuart Arms Hotel. As it nearly approximated a bungalow-type residence it was soon referred to as ‘the Bungalow’. Sometimes children were simply left there while their mothers went back to their former lives. This wasn’t as heartless as it would appear. Their part-coloured children were not wanted tribally because they were considered ‘wrong skin’ and as such a threat to generations of careful reproduction. They were a contamination. There were instances of such children being ritually disposed of. [check] ‘The few Aboriginal women who stayed were given employment sweeping floors, attending to hotel laundry and watering local gardens in return for food and clothing…It was a satisfactory solution for all concerned until the children reached their early teens and their proximity to the hotel was deemed inappropriate. Nubile youngsters and boozing bachelors were an obvious recipe for disaster. In 1928 the ‘Bungalow’ was removed to an attractive out-of-town site at Jay Creek some miles west of the town, where it remained for many years.’
Reference: Judy Robinson, Bushman of the Red Heart, Central Queensland University Press, 1999, p 13-14
It is likely that this refers to Immanuel College which opened in North Adelaide in 1923. Also see T.G Obst, 'Hands move on : Immanuel College North Adelaide, 1923-1942', Adelaide, SA : Immanuel College, 1998
• Of the Painted Cliffs and surrounding territory, Baldwin Spencer wrote: ‘The eastern side of the Finke is bounded by a remarkable series of hills, of which the main one, Engoordina, gives its name to the place. The colour is striking. The lower part, for fifty or sixty feet, consists of greenish or deep red-brown shales, above which lies a hundred feet of sandstone, pink and white and cream in colour, with a dark, siliceous capping. Looking south from the hills above the station, in the middle of the horseshoe loop, the river, with its broad bed of white sand, is seen sweeping round to the west across the scrub-covered flats, where its course is marked by a dark line of gum trees. Sand-hills, deep red in colour, stretch back behind the cliffs that rise abruptly from its eastern bank.’ REFERENCE: Baldwin Spencer, Wanderings in Wild Australia, vol 1, Macmillan and Co, Ltd, London, 1928, p 52
The Land of Altjira, the Land of Eternity
n his study of Aranda culture, R.H. Mathews, states that there is the belief in Aranda culture that souls go to ‘laia, a mythical lake situated north of Hermannsburg, on whose shores the souls live, eating fruit and other good food, which is found there in abundance.’ There is another version, he writes, told by a Rev L. Schulze, where ‘he says the ltana, ghost, goes away to the tmara altjiri, or place where the mother of the dead person was born’ (p. 148). According to Matthews, ‘Altjira means anything mysterious or which has been handed down from unknown times; or something which a native cannot understand or account for. Tmara means a camp, and in an extended sense also signifies the district in which a native dwells. Tmara altjira may be translated as the dwelling-place of one’s people, right back to the mythical past’ (p. 148).
REFERENCE
R.H. Mathews, ‘Notes on the Arranda Tribe’, reprinted from "Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S.Wales", Vol XLI, read before the Royal Society of N.S.Wales, November 6, 1907, pp 146-163
