The Arcade, downtown Adelaide
Beginning here a ramp-up toward our departure for Australia on Saturday the 15th, the beginning of a two-week expedition that concludes with attendance at the biennial conference of the New Zealand Historical Association, in Auckland, but only after a research venture in South Australia, and specifically the Barossa region. We travel first to South Australia, landing in Adelaide, and after visiting repositories there, proceed inland to the Barossa. We will be about 30 hours in transit Fargo to Adelaide, the long leg being 16 1/2 hours San Francisco to Melbourne.
This junket resumes a line of research just begun pre-COVID, as we contemplated investigation of a suite of topics along the continental transect from Adelaide on the southern coast to Darwin on the northern. This is a historic line, from the exploratory privations of John McDouall Stuart to the luxurious passages of modern tourists on the Ghan railway. Much to talk about along the way, but a particular story we intend to investigate begins with this stone Lutheran church in the Barossa.
Bethany Lutheran Church, Tanunda, South Australia
German-speaking Prussians colonized the Barossa in the 1840s and worshiped here. They established thrifty farms and impressive vineyards. And they felt inspired to carry their religion inland to the Arrernte people, in the central desert. More than a decade ago, curiously strolling the Bethany Church compound, we encountered a monument.
The monument connects Bethany Church to Ntaria, site of the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg. This year the congregants of Bethany celebrate the 150th anniversary of the epic trek, waterhole to waterhole, of the missionaries driving two thousand sheep overland and carrying the Gospel with them. Two Sundays from now, we will worship with them at Bethany. We know we are pursuing a narrative that is, given the critical sensitivities of scholars and the public alike in the twenty-first century, fraught with controversary, but we proceed in good faith.
Dr. K and I expect to blog our progress and discoveries here. Thanksgiving for us, this year, will be in our hearts, as we will observe it coincident with the opening of the NZHA in Auckland.
