The Barossa is not just a place. For over a hundred years, it has been more than that – a way of life, an attitude of mind, a quality of spirit. It has been labour and music, church festival and vintage, worship, and the ringing of bells.
Nobody born within earshot of that deep-toned tolling can ever forget the sound; it wrings the air, a sweet-sad note of joy and sorrow, a pain-joy, birth-marriage-death note as mellow as autumn sunlight. Out of the past, out of Silesian history, out of Lutheran conviction, it wells and flows over the Sunday valley.
The steeples dot the land. They spire upwards from the trees and vineyards, fields and clusters of buildings, like postcard pictures from the Rhine: Langmeil and Tabor, Ebenezer and Light Pass, Gnadenfrei, Bethany, Gruenberg, and a dozen more. And in the little steep-gabled churches that stand in the shadows of the towers much of the character of the Valley has been shaped and nurtured.
Not that the German heritage is the only component of the Barossa. Far from it. Some of the great wineries, some of the finest rural and commercial enterprises have been the work of others. From early times, there was a leavening of English, Scottish, and Irish in its community life, and of Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic among its worshippers. But for three generations, the predominant spirit of the Valley was German. Language, customs, religion, food, and dress were transplanted whole and remained largely undiluted. Only in fairly recent times has change finally eroded the old patterns of family and communal life. Sons and daughters have left home, have followed different vocations, have married "foreigners," have ceased to speak Barossa Deutsch-that, that quaintly inbred and hybrid language evolved from a century of linguistic isolation. Industry, too, has started to gnaw at the peripheries: cement works, marble quarries, and gravel pits desecrate the landscape with dust and din.
Geographically, the Valley, forty miles north-east of Adelaide, is not large, roughly twenty miles long and eight wide. Despite marginal undulations, it has a unity of structure. And it certainly has a beauty all its own. Seen from Mengler's Hill, it is a cradle, a coolamon, a generous German sausage, a halved bottle with its bottom upturned near Truro and its neck corked by Lyndoch. And with the green vineyards below and the mauve-blue hills to north and south, it is always a kind of Eden to those who know it.
Correctly, the name is Barrosa, the Hill of Roses, so named by Colonel William Light after the site of one of the battles of the Peninsular War; but by a draughtsman's mistake, the name was misspelt on an early map and the error has been allowed to stand. Historically, therefore, the hills are Barrosa and the Valley at its southern extremity is Lynedoch Vale, again named by Light (after a friend who fought beside him in the Peninsular War) and again misspelt.
RELATED STORY History of the Barossa Valley
The advent of the Germans is a well-known story. Harried by religious persecution at home, led in their migration by Pastor August Ludwig Christian Kavel, and befriended by George Fife Angas, they began arriving in South Australia from 1838 onwards. The first German settlement in the Valley occurred in 1842 at Bethany (sometimes loosely referred to in early statements as Neuschlesien-New Silesia). It consisted of twenty-eight Lutheran families. A year later the settlement at Langmeil, from which Tanunda was to grow, was established a few miles away on the Para River, and from then on new groups and congregations began to dot the area. The proliferation of small churches, sometimes within slingshot of one another, sprang from various causes: argument and schism among themselves, the structure of their society back home, the advent of new shiploads or "waves" of migrants who settled as separate entities near their colleagues.
Most of these first settlers came from peasant stock. The pattern of daily life, customs, food, dress, houses, and festivals therefore followed strongly traditional lines. Birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, death-the main moments in the cycle of life were recorded carefully in the big black family Bible, which was generously provided with space for such entries, and which was read sonorously by the head of the house after every meal. Weddings, especially, were cause for prolonged celebration, preceded by tin-kettling and Federschleissen (communal stripping of feathers for the bridal mattress) and followed by gargantuan feasting. Brides wore black, as did mourners at funerals. Coffins were borne shoulder-high on a Totenbahre (funeral bier) by six bearers, and the whole procession was led to the graveside by a boy carrying a black wooden cross.
Dress was stern and conservative, language sober, festivals mainly religious. Food was distinctively "Continental" by English standards: Sauerkraut and Sauer Gurken, Quarkkuchen and Quark Stinkerkäse, home-made bread in rotund Stollen, Pfannkuchen, Streuselkuchen and Honigkuchen, and an incredible range of sausages. The killing of livestock for food, especially of steers and pigs, was often a community enterprise. On the Schlachtentag (slaughtering day) there was an inordinate stoking of fires and bubbling of cauldrons. For the sausage-makers the animal's stomach and intestines ("runners") were flushed wholeheartedly with salt water and filled from a bin of sausage meat prepared and flavoured by the women, according to the nature of the sausage and the taste of the makers. It was high art. Mettwurst, Blutwurst, Bratwurst, and Leberwurst all went their way to the smokehouse or cellar with the Speck (bacon) and Schinken (ham).
Farm buildings were usually grouped around a yard-the house, sheds, stables, barn, and sties enclosing a kind of keep. The smoke-house usually adjoined the kitchen, and the bake-oven was a low igloo with a small door above or to the side of the kitchen fireplace. To this day, some of the old smokehouse walls remain as brown as varnish from a century of smoke fires (wet sawdust or damp wood chips) necessary for curing bacons, hams, and smoked sausages.
Walls of houses and sheds were of timber and daub or stone and pug; roofs were of thatch. Hand-cut roofing beams, lintels, and door-frames can still be seen in some of the old buildings, although lime mortar, galvanised iron, and sawn timber came into use as the settlers' resources increased. Underground tanks with domed concrete roofs like heavy pill-boxes remain too, some of their hand-pumps still in use. There is still one near the vestry door at Ebenezer Church, with a concrete step so carefully placed that water falling from the pump just misses the edge. Members wanting a drink could not be expected to splash their boots before the service.
Farm implements were distinctive. The ubiquitous German wagon served as everything-family coach, hay cart, heavy transport, caravan, grape carrier, water cart, hearse, wedding chaise. It was impossible to imagine a family without one. Single-furrow hand ploughs, rollers fashioned from cylindrical tree trunks, scythes, winnowing forks, hoes, and garden tools were also universal. Seed was broadcast by hand and the sower walked stolidly up the furrow with the rhythm of centuries in his tread. The harvest was cut by scythe- a remarkable skill that brought the blade flashing within an inch of the ground, and laid out the swathe as neatly as a ruled line. Among many of the farmers its use continued long after Ridley's invention of the stripper. Indeed, innovation and change tended to be mistrusted; even in the twentieth century, electricity, mechanical equipment, banks, radio, and refrigeration were accepted very slowly and with misgiving.
In the towns similar traditions prevailed. Tanunda has happily preserved some of its old buildings, especially around the Ziegenmarkt (popularly called Billygoat Square). Here examples of early cottage design-thick walls, open beams, lime plaster-still remain, along with underground tank, hand pump, and the general pattern of the village market place. Town environment also allowed a more diverse social life in clubs and groups. Although the Barossa appears to have produced fewer Schutzenverbände (rifle-shooting clubs) than some of the other German settlements, it developed a reputation for music, singing, and marching, and at one time supported a renowned tea garden and skittle alley on the outskirts of Tanunda. Even today a skittle club still flourishes in the town.
Individual eccentricities occasionally lightened the general tone of serious purpose and dour toil that marked the settlements. On New Year's Eve high spirited fellows hurried the old year out-especially if it had been a bad one-with the roar of double-barrelled blunderbusses. Old grandfather Braunack of Gomersal is reputed to have risen at four o'clock every morning and roused his family with a blast on a ram's horn loud enough to wake the sleeping and the dead. There were practical jokes, too, that fill the memories of the old people even now.
But for all that, entertainment in the Valley lay mainly in music and song. The Tanunda Liedertafel is almost as old as the town itself. A singing society, (lieder for songs, tafel for table) it was established in 1861 in the ancient round-the-table tradition of song, talk, and good fellowship. Coming from a background of community music-making and home entertainment, the early German singers transplanted the custom to South Australia where it has continued unbroken ever since the oldest Liedertafel in Australia.
Characteristically, the first members expected discipline. The inaugural constitution of 1861 laid down fines for unpunctuality (threepence if fifteen minutes late, sixpence if thirty) and a sixpenny penalty for leaving before ten o'clock. Membership was an honour and it still is.
In its long history the Liedertafel has established a fine reputation for quality of singing and generosity of spirit. It has given concerts charity in most parts of the State. and aided innumerable appeals. It has broadcast programmes frequently on radio and, more recently, on television. But most of all one likes to picture its members as men who meet simply for the love of music-making and companionship. In an age beset by pressure-pack music and instant entertainment, of the second-hand and the second-rate in admass civilisation, it is good to preserve the joy of a common creative endeavour, and the genuine search after quality, which still characterises the Liedertafel. Whether in rehearsal of a difficult concert song or in relaxed conversation during the break that follows, there is nothing ersatz here.
In the musical tradition of German family life men sang or played or did both. The Tanunda Town Band was formed a year earlier than the Liedertafel, and it has functioned effectively ever since. Frequently father, son, and grandson served it in turn as sheet music and instruments were passed down from generation to generation.
The first Tanunda Band Competitions were held in October 1910, bands from nearby Nuriootpa, and from Freeling just beyond the Valley to the north-west, taking part. The competitions lapsed during the First World War, but were resumed in 1920 and became famous throughout Australia. Every November, large numbers of bands and spectators flocked to Tanunda, not only from the Valley (although Marananga, Nuriootpa, and Angaston gave stern competition) but from Adelaide and cities interstate
A child's eye view of those days between the two World Wars was one of brass and glory: rows of marching legs seemingly glued together and moving with the unbelievable precision of dozens of pairs of scissors, shattering tuckets of trumpets like triumphant onslaughts on the walls of Jericho, huge tubas grunting along with a kind of elephantine exuberance, the passionate involvement of the spectators, the spit and polish of boots and brass, the splendour of caps, braid, and epaulets, the excruciating erectness of the band masters shrilling piercingly on huge silver whistles inscribed "Acme Thunderer," and semaphoring with arms as rigid as railway signals, and the spectacular mass performances on the Tanunda oval where the bands marched and counter-marched in tight squares as if Wellington and Blücher were deploying their forces for a new Waterloo.
But it was all superbly done-quality of music sought after no less than precision of movement. And today the tradition remains unbroken still.
But music went beyond Liedertafel and Town Band in community life. It was an integral part of worship, an expression of faith. From the pastor's liturgical chant to the congregation's lusty singing of the hymns, from the metallic accompaniment of brass instruments in church to the choral mellowness of pipe organ and choir, music and religion went hand in hand. It buttressed faith, provided defence in adversity, especially through the conviction of the old hymns -the solid assurance of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, the triumphant gratitude of Nun danket alle Gott.
Church services had their own ritual characteristics-some of them strange and contradictory to outside observers. Congregations sat for hymns, stood for prayers-the male and female components fiercely segregated on opposite sides of the aisle. And outside the church, before and after services, the men sat on their heels like elders of the tribe, in profound discussion of the vital issues confronting mankind: crops and weather, soil and stubble, yields and prices, tools and labour. Although the Barossa grew no boree logs, it certainly had its counterparts of the Hanrahans and Nelsons.
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Text by Colin Thiele from Barossa Valley Sketchbook - Rigby 1968
Photos by Roderick Eime and as credited
