It took two men, father and son, and the passing of almost eighty years to write it: ‘Songs of Central Australia’, one the greatest non-fiction books ever written and a precursor to the revolution in attitudes towards the original inhabitants of Australia.
And the story behind the writing of Songs in Central Australia is no less remarkable than the book itself…….
In 1895 a handsome young German missionary named Carl Strehlow was sent to Australia to bring the word of God to the Australian Aborigines. He was posted to Central Australia by the Lutheran Church to take control of an abandoned mission station near todays´s Alice Springs. The name of the mission station was ´Hermansburg´ and it was one step from being reclaimed by the desert. The situation Strehlow confronted demanded more than exceptional organisational skills.
The arrival of white settlers in Central Australia in the late 19th century spelt disaster for the indigenous inhabitants, most of whom belonged to the Aranda and Loritja people. An all too wretched scenario unfolded: the pastoralists took the land and used it to graze cattle and horses and used the Aborigines’ vital water holes and billabongs for their stock; the Aborigines, denied their usual food sources, speared the cattle. The farmers then hunted the them down like vermin, shooting them on sight. They were backed by the police, some of whom were notorious murderers.
The Aborigines of Central Australia who had lived in this country for tens of thousands of years were left as a refugees in their own land. Traumatised people drifted into the mission station where Strehlow offered them rations and safety. The remnants of the Aranda and Loritja people were crowded into what was by their traditional standards, a tiny area. The Hermansburg mission station became an Ark in Central Australia – and in more ways than one. It was an island of safety for the indigenous refugees and also an Ark for the spirit of scientific enquiry – and in turn, an Ark for the birth of an idea well before its time: indigenous rights.
The Lutherans believed that the best way to spread the word of God and win converts amongst foreign peoples was to learn their language and become familiar with their culture. This was a very different approach to the other missionaries working amongst the Aborigines in Australia, who believed that their job was teach English and to ‘civilise’ and ‘educate’ the natives. Carl Strehlow proved to be an exceptional example of the Lutheran approach. An astounding linguist, he became fluent in Aranda and Loritja and compiled dictionaries and comparative grammatical studies of these languages. It was an enormous undertaking especially considering his numerous other responsibilities in running Hermansburg. His vocabularies of these languages remains the largest collection of Aboriginal words ever assembled. Strehlow was one of the few people in Australia at the time who had any interest in indigenous languages. The British trained anthropologists, imbued with racist ideas of social Darwinian superiority, did not bother learning indigenous languages preferring to use aboriginal interpreters instead.
Strehlow was the first white man to understand the importance of what today is called ‘The Dreaming’ (although he never used this term). He recorded the spiritual beliefs of the Aranda and Loritja people in immense detail. To credit indigenous people with a religion and emphasizing the crucial role which it played in their way of life, represented an enormous break with the reigning convention which held that they were incapable of embracing a religion; their beliefs instead qualified as ‘superstition’, ‘magic’ and this went together with the conviction of indigenous people being ‘savages’ and ‘uncivilised’.
Strehlow realised that the vast arid expanses of central Australia, so indiscriminate, so daunting to the British colonists, were viewed very differently by Aborigines, who knew its every geographic feature and knew where to find water and food and were never lost. Their land was their ‘church’; it was the creation of supernatural beings and was criss-cross by Dreaming Trails.
How Carl Strehlow found the time to undertake such an extensive study of indigenous culture and beliefs is a mystery. Most of his life was consumed with running the mission station, tending to the flocks of sheep and cattle, providing meals for over a hundred indigenous people, preparing services and music for the Sunday services – and battling against those who lobbied to have the mission station closed down. .
Carl was supported by his wife Frieda, a woman who was not only as dynamic and hard working as her husband but also one of the first feminist pioneers in Australia. She was 19 years old when she travelled to Central Australia to join Carl. She was as remarkable as the man she married. Frieda became a fluent speaker of Aranda and exercised great influence on the young indigenous women and girls, opposing the widespread practice of infanticide (especially the killing of twins), teaching them basic skills like sewing and mending and emphasizing the need for hygiene – daily washing, clean clothes, and so on – as well has how to raise their children using nappies. In this way she overcame the high infant mortality which had led many to assume that the Aborigines were a ‘doomed race’; convenient for the pastoralists and the racist mentality of white society in general. In the meantime, during the following years, Frieda gave birth to six children.
It’s hard for us to imagine how tough life in remote area of Central Australia must have been at a time when there was no electricity, no fans, fridges or electric lights; no roads and no motor vehicles. Besides all the hardships, there was the heat; summers were long and temperatures were consistently 40 degrees Centrigrade or above. Often working until late at night fashioning his notes into coherent text, Carl Strehow succeeded against insurmountable odds. He recorded the spiritual beliefs of the Aranda and Loritja people in immense detail. There was no room in a British colony for his ideas because challenged the entire fabric of the social Darwinian mentality. As a scientist keen to share his work with other scientists, Strehlow took the only option open to him: he began communicating with museums and anthropologists in his native land, where immediate interest in his work was shown. He sent academic articles together with ethnographic specimens to Germany; these specimens were widely distributed to museums and reputable scientists in Germany for research, classification and display. He wrote an immense work which was published in 7 separate volumes by the Ethnological Museum in Frankfurt, Germany:
‘Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in ZentralAustralien’ – ‘The Aranda and Loritja tribes of Central Australia’.
It remains to this day one of the most extensive analyses of the mythology and spiritual beliefs of an indigenous people ever written. And it was completely lost to the Australians until the late 20th century when it was translated from German and had an immediate impact amongst contemporary anthropologists.
Only one person had access to this knowledge and this was Carl and Frieda’s youngest son Theodore or as he was commonly known ‘Ted’.
Despite being naturalized Australian citizens, it was never the Strehlows intention to stay at Hermansburg indefinitely. After serving the Lutheran church, they were planning to eventually retire to their homeland: to a wet, green land, replete with rivers and lakes and forests and villages. In 1911 they returned for a visit and took their children with them, five of which were left with relatives so that they could get a good schooling – something well-nigh impossible in Central Australia (most farmers in outback Australia sent their children to schools in Adelaide and Melbourne). Ted Strehlow, the youngest of the six children, was three years old and too young to be left behind with the other children. He accompanied his parents back to Hermannsburg. Had their wishes been realised, Carl and Frieda’s youngest son would have been raised as a German citizen and Songs of Central Australia would not have seen the light of day.
But the turning of the great wheel of history determined otherwise.
The First World War erupted and the Strehlows found themselves marooned, cut off from their homeland and all information about their children – and having to battle the anti-German hysteria. Theirs was a lonely and harsh existence and it was only their God and their sense of duty which got them through these hard times.
In the meantime Ted Strehlow grew up under a set of circumstances which can only be described as utterly extraordinary. Separated from his five siblings and with no white playmates, all his friends were Aranda kids. Ted’s life with his Aranda friends was steeped in Aranda stories, myths, and beliefs. He grew up as a dual citizen, with a foot in two very different cultures and fluent in Aranda and German. Subjected to the stern discipline of his domineering father he was introduced to the classical European culture, anchored in ancient Greece and Rome and the music of Bach and Handel. Even as a boy, he was well aware of his father’s scientific work which in later years would mean that he had access to one the most profound investigations of indigenous languages and culture ever undertaken – decades before anyone else was even aware of them.
In 1921, Carl fell ill with dropsy. The Great Titan, a stern man imbued with the will of God and of indomitable strength, became a helpless invalid. His legs filled with liquid and became grotesquely swollen. Dropsy was a treatable complaint but he needed immediate hospitalisation. He needed to be transported as quickly as possible to Adelaide.
But how?
There were no roads.
The nearest road head was at the small town of Oodnadatta in the north of South Australia – 800 kilometres away from Hermansburg. As he became increasingly incapacitated, a doomed attempt was made to transport him to Oodnadatta on a horse drawn dray – with iron wheels and no suspension – through the deserts of Central Australia in searing summer temperatures; over rocks, through narrow canyons and across interminable stretches of sand.
After weeks of suffering, Carl Strehlow died in a galvanised iron hotel at a place called Horseshoe Bend. He was committed to the rock hard ground in a coffin made from old whisky cases. The fourteen year old Ted Strehlow had accompanied his father and mother on that terrible journey and it left him with a deep emotional scar for the rest of his life.
And what bitter sweet life that turned out to be, its crowning achievement being the publication in 1973 of ‘Songs of Central Australia’. But that is another story altogether….
The Strehlow family with the youngest child Theodore on the left directly in front of his mother. This photo was taken in Germany in 1911. Afterwards the other 5 children remained in Germany to be educated. Later when Carl and Frieda found themselves marooned in Central Australia because of the war, they regretted leaving their children behind. None of those 5 chidren ever saw their father again – and were only reunited with their mother in 1933. Ted Strehlow had very little contact with his siblings.
Carl and Frieda in the early days at Hermansburg.
Carl and Frieda celebrating their silver wedding anniversary at Hermansburg in 1920. In another two years Carl was dead.
Alice Springs at the turn of the century
The remains of the Hermansburg Mission Station today.
Carl Strehlow died in the blistering heat of a desert, a great man lost to posterity.
The sole inheritance bequeathed to his young son Theodore – or as he was known ‘Ted’ – were tens of thousands of words written in German about the language, culture and beliefs of the Aranda people of Central Australia.
It was a meagre inheritance in monetary terms; a hidden wealth for someone fluent in German and Aranda.
And for the 14 year old Ted that was given having grown up as an only child on a remote mission station and been educated by his parents – and spent his childhood with Aranda kids of his own age.
After the death of his father, Ted, accompanied by his mother Frieda travelled south to Adelaide to start a new life. Few would have predicted that Ted would adapt as successfully as he did. When he arrived in Adelaide he had never attended a school, rarely worn shoes, and never been in the company of white people. Yet he finished High School by topping the state in German, Greek and Latin and winning a scholarship to attend Adelaide University. In 1931, he gained a Masters’ degree with distinction.
He seemed destined for a solid and secure career as an academic. But the bequest of his father proved far more powerful…….
In 1932, thanks to a research grant and the support of famous anthropologist Norman Tindale, Ted returned to Central Australia, committed to continuing his father’s work. He rode by camel for thousands of kilometres collecting information about the dialects, traditions, myths and ceremonies of the Aranda. Like his father, his major informants were older and initiated men, the so called ´elders´. However, unlike his father who was working with the elders from the northern Aranda, Ted was working on a broader canvas, including informants from all the Aranda tribes. And unlike his father, a missionary, the men Ted was interviewing regarded him as one of their own. They were aware that their way of life was fast disappearing, so they entrusted Ted with information about sacred ceremonies and totemic centres which was normally kept secret. They also entrusted him with sacred ceremonial artefacts.
This journey into Central Australia was not his last. Ted Strehlow had one foot in the staid academic world of Adelaide University and another in the deserts of Central Australia. He was an opportunist, using the funds provided him to him by Adelaide University – and later the Australian National University – to continue his own research. He taught linguistics at the university when he had to, but it was never where his heart was. He was recognised as a brilliant man and one who was working in an area where few others had any knowledge. But like his father, he was a loner.
In the mid 1930’s he was delegated by the Australian government to tour Central Australia and to compile a report on the lot of the indigenous people. His report was damning. He highlighted the conditions of indigenous people working for the big pastoralists who were paid a pittance, over worked, and had to buy their clothing and food from the pastoralists at inflated prices. This was slave labour and it was widespread. In addition he lambasted the practice of removing Aboriginal children from their parents which he called ‘child theft’ and decades later became known as the ‘stolen generations’. Ted Strehlow’s detestation of the treatment of indigenous people made him a hated man amongst the whites of Central Australia – a ‘nigger lover’.
The Australian government took no action on the basis of Strehlow’s report.
When the Second World War came, Strehlow’s enemies were able to conveniently portray him as a Nazi.
These experiences led to him becoming an isolated, angry and difficult man. He was decades before his time and he was at odds with a small minded, racist British colony. In the meantime, he published academic articles and a book ‘Aranda Traditions’. These were a preparation for his great masterpiece.
In the 1950’s, Strehlow made more journeys back to Central Australia, this in a jeep. He was at once mechanic, cook, anthropologist – and film maker. He filmed Aranda ceremonies and documented sacred sites and collected more artefacts. ‘Songs of Central Australia’ was completed by the early 1960´s but was not published until 1971 due in large part to the immense amount of work involved in compiling the maps of totemic centres and proof reading an enormous text with a huge number of references.
The first time I read Songs of Central Australia it was in the summer of 2011.
I was on a visit to Adelaide on my own because my mother had had a stroke and heart attack. Anya couldn’t accompany me because her mother was dying of cancer.
In between visits to see my mother I had time on my hands. It was then that I began doing some research into ‘The Dreaming’, a much bandied around term used to refer to the beliefs of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia. It had become a politically correct term used to indicate one’s good intentions and reduced to a generalisation devoid of fact based content.
I knew about Ted Strehlow’s epic ‘Songs of Central Australia’ (though as yet I knew nothing about Carl) and had always meant to read it.
Now was the time.
It turned out to be quite a project. Songs of Central Australia’ was a hefty tome, over 600 pages long. Published in 1971, it was a rare book. The State Library of South Australia had one copy, which could only be read in a closed, high security, glassed in room. The book had to be requested beforehand and there were strict conditions regarding one’s entry into the room: no pens, bags, food or drink.
From the very first time I opened it and began reading, I realised it was one of the most profound books I had ever read. It took me completely by surprise.
In choosing a title for his book, he opted for the word ‘songs’, but he was never entirely happy with the term, because these ‘songs’ were also poems, stories and chants; their use, value and structure was many sided. He was at pains to emphasize how difficult it was to capture the full import of the Dreaming and translate it into the English language. He speculated that this was possibly the result of how different the white man’s spirituality was with its monotheistic/Judaist heritage and its distance from, if not hostility towards, the natural world.
If there was one main theme behind this immense and multi-layered work it was this: Aboriginal society was in no sense inferior to Western civilisation. Ted Strehlow recorded the songs/poems of an aboriginal people and placed them into a European cultural context as well as explaining their connection to the physical landscape. Being familiar with the famous song poems of the ancient Greeks –The Odyssey and The Iliad e.g., – he asserted that the indigenous songs were in every way comparable to those ancient classics. Whilst the form was similar, the content was different. The song poems of the gods of the ancient Greeks involved moral dilemmas and codes of right conduct. In the indigenous songs, mythological ancestors metamorphosed into the physical landscape and had to be worshipped by their living descendants in order to maintain their survival, along with that of all of the creatures and plants.
Ted Strehlow compared the songs of the Aranda, in the subtlety and complexity of their form, with the works of great European composers such as Bach and Handel. He transcribed the Aranda songs into the notes and bars used by westerners to record their music; pages of his book are filled with musical scores. He also compared the Aranda songs with the tales of the pre-industrial people of Europe and described how they addressed similar themes. At every turn, underpinning these cross cultural comparisons, was his portrayal of the Aranda songs in terms of their musical and poetic power. And he provided detailed explanations of how these songs were related to the physical landscape and all of its plants, insects and animals; its seasons and it periods of drought and rain. They were essential to the survival of the Aranda by giving them an intimacy and an understanding of their physical world, as well as providing the basis for their social system, customs and rituals; their totems and taboos.
Songs of Central Australia was – and still is – the most complete picture of an indigenous people ever written.
It was only recently when I read Ted Strehlow’s ‘Journey to Horseshoe Bend’ did I appreciate the powerful influence which his father Carl had had on his life – indeed that Ted’s magnus opum was the work of two men.
In turn I also began to appreciate how many ironies, tragedies and triumphs son and father shared. In so many ways so different, they nevertheless had so much in common: both men were as lonely as they were gifted, at odds with a world filled with intolerance and mediocrity.
When Australia’s greatest non-fiction book was published in 1971, it raised barely a ripple in the stagnant culture of a hidebound nation where racism was widespread. The changes came much later – almost three decades later – and in the meantime we lost sight of those who had presaged those changes, who had challenged the status quo and suffered the consequences.
That is an omission which cannot augur well for the contemporary dialogue about indigineous Australians. We need to know how much our society has changed and for the better.
And we need to remember those responsible for bringing about that change.
A young Ted Strehlow on his first journey back to Central Australia.
Ted Strehlow on one of his journeys during the 1950’s
The Strehlow Musuem at the outskirts of Alice Springs. Included in the museum are all the artefacts collected by Ted Strehlow in the course of his life and the original hand written notes made by Carl – as well as black and white photos of the Aborigines of Central Australia in the early years of the 20th Century whilst they were still living their traditional life.
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