Barossa Valley - the "cream of South Australia"

Adelaide's founder, Colonel William Light, gave the Barossa its name. He journeyed into the area in 1837 and named the "Barrossa Ranges" after the site in Spain of a British victory over the French earlier in the century. A clerical mistake quickly reduced this to "Barossa".

German scientist Johannes Menge looked into the valley in 1839 and declared that this was the "cream of South Australia". With astonishing foresight, he called it "New Silesia" and saw it as a place for "flourishing vineyards and orchards and fields of corn".

[Menge, a dramatically eccentric man, was originally employed by the South Australian Company as a geologist. The ultra conservative General Manager of the company, David McLaren, could not cope with Menge and fired him. Interestingly, McLaren's name is remembered in McLaren Vale, South Australia's second major vine-growing area.]

Menge's enthusiasm so inspired Charles Flaxman, the personal representative of George Fife Angas, the man behind the scheme that established South Australia, that he promptly bought 28,000 acres of the valley on Angas's behalf - almost bankrupting the company.

Meanwhile, in the Silesian area of Prussia, members of the Old Lutheran Church, faced persecution from a directive of King Frederick William III that there should be only one Protestant church. Pastor August Kavel, one of their leaders, went to London to seek help from Angas. It was a shrewd move. Angas, as a noted dissenter, was genuinely moved. As an entrepreneur, he also knew the effect hundreds of dogged, hard working and peaceful German immigrants would have on the new colony. He lent them the money to make the voyage.

Some 200 arrived in 1838. Hundreds more followed. By 1842, some families had moved to the Barossa Valley, first to Bethany and then to Langmeil, later given the Aboriginal name for a waterhole, "Tanunda".

Gottfried Kaesler, a shoemaker, was 36 years old when he, his second wife, daughter and son, arrived in South Australia aboard the Patell on September 18, 1845. He built a cottage at Bethany and when it burned down some months later, moved to Langmeil, where over years he and his sons made hay and planted fruit trees - and vines.

The German settlers were good farmers and had been growing vines for centuries. But this was a completely new country, with a different climate and different soils. They planted dozens of varieties to see what grew best. Shiraz and Grenache flourished. They had a high sugar content and, importantly, could be grown dry and still survive the blistering summers.

The knowledge quickly spread back to Silesia where new migrants carefully selected cuttings which preceded the phylloxera pest that was to destroy the vineyards in Australia's eastern States.

The settlers moved out wider in the valley, leasing back much of Angas's 28,000 acres. One of them, Johann Carl Schultz took up a portion of Section 122, along the road to Angas Park, later to be known as Nuriootpa, another Aboriginal name. It comprised 60 acres and one rood or thereabouts and was the land "which lies to the south of a line drawn from a point on the Government Road forming the westerly boundary of the said Section distant from the northwesterly corner thereof seven chains and nine links or thereabouts to a point on the easterly boundary of the said Section distant seven chains and six links or thereabouts from the easterly corner thereof."

On June 2, 1882 Schultz transferred the land to Johann Ernst Schultz, a farmer from Siegersdorf. In turn, on October 27, 1882 this Schultz transferred the land to Friedrich August Domke. Apparently none of them cleared or worked the block.