For Sale

 

For orders, download an order form and post to us with a cheque or money order. Alternatively, call us on (03) 9464 5062.

 

 

Westgarthtown, A History and Guide

 

This revised and enlarged 44 page edition was published by The Friends of Westgarthtown and launched in November 2004. It includes 12 colour pages in which Ziebell’s, Graff’s, Siebel’s, Maltzahn’s and Wuchatsch’s farmhouses and the Thomastown Lutheran Church and cemetery are featured.

 

Price: $7.50 (plus $2.50 packaging & postage)

 

From Hamburg to Hobsons Bay by Tom Darragh and Robert Wuchatsch

 

This book, published in 1999, covers the beginnings of German emigration to Victoria, including the significant contribution made by William Westgarth; the reactions of some of the 700-800 pre-Separation emigrants to their new homeland; and the names of many of those passengers who arrived aboard the Godeffroy, Wappaus, Dockenhuden and Emmy in 1849 and the Pribislaw and Alfred in 1850.

 

Included in the book are English translations of a collection of letters written back to Germany by nine Victorian German and Wendish settlers, along with a small book written by the Wend Carl Traugott Hoehne, a Pribislaw passenger who returned to Germany in 1852. Hoehne’s book, about his emigration experiences, was published in 1853.

 

Price: $45.00 (plus $10.00 packaging & postage)

 

Lamplight and Bluestones by John Borrack

 

The artist John Borrack is a great great grandson of Christian and Sophia Ziebell who established the farm known as “The Pines” in 1851 at Westgarthtown. In this book, John Borrack recalls his childhood visits to his grandparents Carl Alfred and Dorothea Ziebell at Westgarthtown from the 1930s to the 1950s. The author combines photographs, drawings, poetry and prose to flesh out the skeletons of surviving buildings and landscapes and bring the past to life.

 

Borrack wonderfully evokes a less technologically sophisticated, but in many ways, a far richer era. His book brings to life the simplicity, self sufficiency and ingenuity of the German settlers, whether in orchard, garden, kitchen or forge.

 

Price: $20.00 (plus $7.50 packaging & postage)

 

 

The House That Christian Built by Janet Hubbard

 

Janet Hubbard’s comprehensive history of the Ziebell family, published in 2007. As well as being essential reading for all Ziebell family descendants, relatives and friends, The House That Christian Built will also be of interest to anyone wishing to learn more about the history of German settlement at Thomastown and Victoria in general.

 

The book, of 220 pages, is profusely illustrated and covers the Ziebell family’s origins in Germany; their long journey to Australia in 1849-50 aboard the Pribislaw; and settlement at Westgarthtown.

 

Price: $25.00 (plus $8.10 packaging & postage)

 

 

A German Church in the Garden of God edited by Herbert Mees

 

The definitive history of the German Lutheran Trinity Church, East Melbourne. This book provides an insight into the life of German-speaking immigrants to Victoria and Australia. This 700 page book is profusely illustrated with over 350 photographs, lithographs, maps and other documents, including lists of early Church members. Also included is a 25 page section on the Thomastown (Westgarthtown) Lutheran Church.

 

Price: $75.00 (plus $10.00 packaging & postage)

 

 

Baron Von Mueller's German Melbourne

 

Published papers from the Plenty Valley Arts Inc.’s fifth annual conference held at the State Library of Victoria on 17 April 1999. Contains papers by Rod W. Home (Emigrants or Scientific Travellers? Ferdinand Mueller and Georg Neumayer between Germany and Australia); Sara Maroske (Germans at the Melbourne Botanic Garden and Herbarium); Raoul F. Middelmann (Portraits of Pastors Goethe and Herlitz: From Revolution to Establishment?); Robert N. Wuchatsch (From Hamburg to Hobsons Bay); Terence Lane (Emil Todt, A German Sculptor in Melbourne); Thomas A. Darragh (The Deutsche Vereine of Victoria in the Nineteenth Century); Ellen Mitchell (Carl Kahler in Melbourne 1885-1890: His Patrons, the Press and some of his Paintings); and Walter Struve (Nineteenth Century German Melbourne on Display: Musings of a Curator).

 

Price: $10.00 (plus $3.00 packaging & postage)

 

Heimat Melbourne
Heimat Melbourne; A History of the German-Speaking Community of Melbourne – 1855-1865
by Volkhard Wehner

 

This comprehensive history of the German-speaking community of Melbourne in the very early life of the Colony of Victoria offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of the enormous contribution made to Victoria, and in particular to Melbourne, by German-speaking immigrants. Further detail is available at the author's website

 

Price: $35.00 (plus $10.00 packaging & postage)

 

Further Reading

 

Each of these books provide valuable information related to Westgarthtown and German immigration in Victoria.

 

Westgarthtown: the German settlement at Thomastown by Robert Wuchatsch

 

Detailed history of Westgarthtown.

Westgarthtown German Language Heritage Trail

 

Teaching aid.

The Cultural Landscape of the Plenty Valley edited by Lucy Grace Ellem

 

Contains papers delivered at Plenty Valley Arts Inc.’s first annual conference held at City of Whittlesea Municipal Offices on 21 May 1995, three of which relate to Westgarthtown. These are by Geoffrey Borrack (Romancing the Stone); John Borrack (Memories of Painters and Painting in the Plenty Valley); and Robert Wuchatsch (The Plenty Valley – An Historical Perspective).

 

A Community Portrait: Lifetimes in the City of Whittlesea by Robert Pascoe

 

Based on oral histories conducted in the City of Whittlesea from 1998-2001, including interviews with Westgarthtown descendants.

Maria Karsten's 1999 Calendar with Recipes

 

 

Trinity Church Perpetual Calendar

 

 

 

 

 

 

Web site design by Léon Borrack

 

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