Legacies of Killalpaninna

Within 25 years of their arrival, the early Lutherans in South Australia decided to set up their own mission to the Aboriginal people. This mission lasted 50 years and many Aborigines became Christians.

In the 1860s the two rival Lutheran synods in South Australia responded to the challenge to take the gospel to the people in whose land they lived. They agreed to work together in this Aboriginal mission. Unfortunately the confessional union lasted for only 10 years and so, in 1874, the Immanuel Synod alone carried on the Bethesda Mission, as it came to be known.

The first mission team left from Langmeil, Tanunda, on 9 October 1866. It comprised the missionaries Homann and Gössling, accompanied by the laymen Vogelsang and Jacob, who devoted their long lives to the mission. In January 1867 they arrived at Lake Killalpaninna, on Cooper’s Creek near Lake Eyre, and set up their station.

The missionaries threw themselves into the task of learning the Dieri language so that they could preach the gospel to the people in their own language. When the Testamenta Marra was published in 1897, it was the first translation of the whole New Testament into any Australian Aboriginal language.

A school was started in which Aboriginal children were taught to read and write in both Dieri and English. After Christian instruction many adults and children were baptised. A church was built using mud-bricks made on the site. It even had a bell-tower!

Congregations down south rallied their support for the mission with money and goods. It was a sad day when the church sold the mission in 1915 because of years of drought. The Dieri moved to stations nearby in search of work and became a scattered flock. Over the following years many Lutherans supported them as they could and some regularly visited the region to distribute aid and share the gospel.

The work of the missionaries in recording the language and customs of the people years ago has enabled their descendants today to revive the Dieri language and reclaim their identity.

Retired LCA Archivist Lyall Kupke attended the Back to Killalpaninna weekend.