Next meeting. Thursday 22nd May 2025, 7.30 pm, Immanuel Lutheran Church, 139 Archer Street, North Adelaide. Talking Together: Schürmann’s

Mission Diary, Adelaide and Port Lincoln 1838-45. Speaker: Greg Lockwood $5 donation, supper, all welcome.

LIVESTREAM on FoLA YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@friendsoflutheranarchives9644/live

On his first day ashore in Adelaide, Schürmann remarked on the vivacity of the Aboriginal people, noting: If you meet up with a group, their immediate question is: ‘Your name?’ If you answer, they make their comments accompanied with jokes and laughter. Living among the Kaurna on the Native Location, Schürmann’s familiarity with their culture grows as he plants gardens, attends a funeral, joins a hunt, records their speech, teaches, and preaches.

In Port Lincoln he begins anew with the Barngarla, speaking fire-light with a group of 9 old men, none of whom wore a shred of clothing. Schürmann defends the embattled Barngarla in tense times, learns, teaches, and preserves their language too in his Parnkalla dictionary.

Dr Greg Lockwood, retired ALC lecturer and Schürmann descendant, presents moments from his new complete translation of the diary, to be released by Wakefield Press in May: Schürmann’s Tagebuch: the diary of a German Lutheran missionary in early South Australia.