Man of the land

After our quick look at Hermann Lassig and his business career, let’s try to find out what land he owned and when – in particular, whether he owned a cane farm during the period of South Sea Islander labour.

Hermann Lassig (front row, far left) at the Bundaberg Show, June 1907. Although, I know you’re all looking at the dude in the cowboy hat at the far right… (Australian Town & Country Journal, 12 June 1907, p. 27, via Trove)

Now, I said last time that Hermann moved from Maryborough to Bundaberg “at some point.” That’s because the details of exactly when are a bit sketchy, considering I’m piecing things together mostly from official records and newspaper articles.

However, there is an intriguing mention on page 61 of Neville Rackemann’s history of the (now-defunct) Gooburrum Shire Council, Gooburrum 1886-1986. The context is a farewell function given to pioneers of the region, E.C. Zahn and his wife:

H. Lassig spoke of meeting Mr Zahn in 1881, when, ‘The Gooburrum then was scrub, with a track cut through, and Mr Zahn was one of its pioneers.’ He went on to praise Zahn for the leading role he had played in the establishment of the North Coast Sports Club. (North Coast was later named Moore Park.)

1881! That’s 7 years before he married Mary Ann Seeds, which is the next earliest reference I have.

Mr Rackemann also records that Hermann “took up land”, probably on Rosedale Road – which is enticingly close to the Carlton property from where the bell comes. So did he own a cane farm at this stage?

I cannot say for sure, but I think it’s unlikely. Land selection under the Sugar and Coffee Regulations 1864 is recorded in the Queensland State Archives, and the name Lassig doesn’t show up there. Nor does it show up in other lists of land selectors I’ve seen, such as in the Gooburrum book.

But this shouldn’t be a surprise. Early sugar plantations were massive, labour-intensive operations, where the crop was grown, harvested and processed on the one property. It was only as transportation improved and technology enabled large, mechanised, central mills, that small, family-run farms became viable.

So it seems quite improbable that the 18-year-old son of German immigrant farm workers had the capital to set up such a large enterprise, let alone import labour from the Pacific Islands. More likely, he worked to save up money that he then put into starting his butcher business.

And according to Rackemann, many of the new immigrants on smaller blocks grew other, more manageable crops: “Maize was the first crop grown along with some arrowroot that was usually planted by German migrants.” (p. 60)

There’s a big gap till the next official location record I’ve found, which is from the 1903 Electoral Roll. It lists Hermann as a butcher living with Mary Ann at Gavan Street, North Bundaberg. I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s actually Gavin Street, which is the current spelling.

He’s still listed at Gavan Street in the 1905 Electoral Roll, but that same year he also bought the 210 acre (85 ha) sugar plantation Seaview, in Woongarra near Bargara (The Brisbane Courier, 23 August 1905, p. 6).

Although he sold Seaview two years later for between £4000 and £5000 (The Brisbane Courier, 18 April 1907, p. 2), this does overlap with the end of the Pacific labour trade. So this is quite possibly one of the clues we’re looking for.

After that, he moved to a different kind of farming, purchasing the much larger Yarrol Station on the Upper Burnett, northwest of Mount Perry (The Brisbane Courier, 17 October 1908, p. 5).

Yarrol Station and homestead, showing the grass for grazing. The date is unknown, but probably about 1890 because there’s another photo with that date (John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland)

Yarrol was described as comprising “45 square miles (117 sq km) of leasehold, and 24 square miles (62 sq km) under occupation license, together with a grazing farm of 4600 acres (1862 ha).” It also included “2000 head of shorthorn cattle and sixty horses.” So, definitely not a cane farm.

Hermann owned Yarrol until 1917-18 (The Farmer and Settler, 8 February 1918, p. 3). But being such a long way from anywhere, including his butcher shops, it’s unlikely he and his family actually lived there.

Instead, it’s around this time that they moved to the Carlton property, on Moore Park Road. Hermann is recorded as living there in the Electoral Rolls for 1913 and 1925, and both list his occupation as “grazier”. Which would be odd, if Carlton was indeed a cane farm; but then that could be referring to his main source of income being cattle on the Yarrol Station.

Either way, he appears to have remained at Carlton until “leaving to reside in another part of the district” in 1927 (The Brisbane Courier, 9 May 1927, p. 23). That would seem to be the beachside settlement of Moore Park, 15 km north of Bundaberg.

From The Burnett and Isis Pictorial, Richards & Kingdon, Bundaberg, 1927, collection of Centre for the Government of Queensland (via Queensland Places)

Although whenever I’ve gone there I’ve been stung by sand whipped up by strong winds, I guess it’s not too bad a place to retire when you’re, what, 64? And to this day, there’s a Lassig Street named in Hermann’s honour.

Of all of these properties, Seaview seems the most likely to have used South Sea Islander labour – given the timeframe involved.

But what about the bell that started this investigation? Didn’t it supposedly come from Carlton?

Let’s face it, despite all the records of where he lived, Hermann was clearly a man who had a number of things going on at once. It’s quite likely his ownership of Carlton overlapped with some of the other enterprises listed here.

I guess it’s back to the Queensland land records to try to find out…

Map showing the locations of Hermann Lassig’s properties, at Gavin St North Bundaberg, Seaview plantation near Bargara, Yarrol Station near Mt Perry, Carlton on Moore Park Rd, and Moore Park itself (via Google Maps – click to embiggen)

The butcher of Bundaberg

Time to get back to our story now, and find out more about my great-grandfather, Hermann Rudolph Lassig, who was best known in Bundaberg as a successful butcher (sorry to disappoint those who thought the title of this post meant he was a serial killer… Although really, that’s nothing to apologise for).

Hermann was born about 1863 (the exact date isn’t known) in the village of Gerswalde in north-east Germany.

His parents were Ferdinand Frederick William Lassig (1833-1891) and Wilhelmine Dorothea Jahnke (1833-1920). Ferdinand’s occupation is recorded as Landmann, which translates as ‘farmer’ or ‘peasant’.

In 1874, Ferdinand and Wilhelmina brought Hermann and his five brothers and sisters to Australia, arriving in Brisbane on the Herschel on 16 July of that year. The family moved to Maryborough, which is 110 km south of Bundaberg, but was founded 20 years earlier. They were among the first farmers on Island Plantation, and Ferdinand ran the local Baptist church.

At some point though, Hermann moved to the rapidly growing settlement of Bundaberg. We know this because it was there, on 20 June 1888, when he was around 25 years old, that he married Mary Ann Seeds.

Portraits of Hermann Rudolph and Mary Ann Lassig, formerly Seeds, ca 1890

Mary Ann, who turned 22 the very next day, was the daughter of English domestic servant Mary Ann Kingsman and Northern Irish sailor, pilot (the nautical kind) and deserter George Seeds.

She and Hermann settled in Gavan Street, North Bundaberg. Together, they had eight children, of whom six survived to adulthood, and one of which was my grandfather, Harold David Lassig.

It was also in North Bundaberg that Hermann started his career as a butcher. In February 1889, he and his brother William, who was eight twelve years younger, established a butcher shop called ‘Live & Let Live’.

They soon had branches across town, including one at the corner of George and Targo Streets, and others as far away as Mt Perry and Childers.

Delivery carts outside H.R. Lassig’s butcher shop in Childers, ca 1913 (Childers Historical Society, via Picture Bundaberg)

Yours truly outside the same shop in North St, Childers, ca 2012. Alas, it’s no longer in the family name, nor is it in the meat business anymore.

It appears to be on the strength of his butchery that Hermann became a successful local businessman, and he branched out into other ventures as well.

In 1920 he led a consortium that built the Olympia Airdome, an open-air picture theatre. In 1956 it was remodelled as the Olympia Theatre, then the Crest Cinema in 1973, the Moncrieff Theatre in 1986, and in 2011 the grander name of Moncrieff Entertainment Centre. Although it’s still pretty much a theatre.

Builders putting a roof on the Olympia Airdome, as seen from Buss Park (Lois Cottel, via Picture Bundaberg)

Today’s Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, also seen from Buss Park. This picture is taken from a report on vandals attacking the gardens, hence the damaged plants (Bundaberg Regional Council)

Screened at its opening night on 4 April 1920 was the Charlie Chaplin film Sunnyside, along with Borrowed Clothes, starring Mildred Harris (Charlie Chaplin’s wife), The Cry of the Weak, starring Fanny Ward, and A Fight for Millions, by William Duncan.

(As part of my aforementioned musical career, I played at both the closing of the Crest and the re-opening of the Moncrieff. I can report that the movies played on those occasions were respectively Children of a Lesser God and Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home. Only one of those won an Academy Award.)

At one point Hermann also owned the Jubilee Skating Rink in Bourbong St – surely a sensible investment in sub-tropical Queensland – and this was later sold to Doug Rattray, who in 1926 turned it into the Paramount Theatre (now defunct).

Hermann had many other business interests, including racehorses and gold mines, but of course he also owned farms.

It’s the farms that are most relevant to our investigation, so in my next post I’ll put aside theatres, ice skating rinks and gold mines, and look at what land he owned and when.