Two portraits of early Queenslanders were digitised recently, adding context to the story of Nundah’s Zion Hill Mission, also known as the German Mission Station.
The first portrait is of Franz Joseph August Rode, who was one of the 13 German missionaries who arrived in Moreton Bay in 1838 to establish a settlement at Zion’s Hill, seven miles from Brisbane at Nundah. According to Librarian Dianne Byrne, missionaries were to be proficient in both theological studies and in the mechanical arts, since at the time, it was believed that an understanding of the arts of civilized life would assist in the communication of Christian knowledge.
Rode was a lay missionary who had been born on 18 July 1811 in Prussia and at the age of 15 was apprenticed for five years to a cabinetmaker in Breslau. He then worked as a craftsman before joining a group of young men studying for missionary service under Pastor Goszner in Berlin before arriving in Australia.
The second portrait is a companion to the portrait of Franz Rode. According to information held in State Library, both works were executed in Hong Kong from photographs sent back there by Chich Ton, a Brisbane merchant. The portraits are in fact overpainted photographs.
Catherine Cottle – Digital Collections Curator, State Library of Queensland