ABSTRACT
In 1852 Adolf Heinrich Friedrich Bartels visited the Ballarat goldfields and had a brief fling at digging for gold, before he realised that the establishment of an agency for fodder, grain and mining implements would provide for a more reliable income. Trade was so good that he expanded his agency by importing a full range of goods, especially furniture from Germany and the USA. One of the early wine entrepreneurs in Australia was Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Luther, a descendant of Martin Luther. In the light of Germany’s age-old beer brewing tradition it is not surprising that Central Europeans contributed greatly to the development of brewing in Australia. The history of German consular representation in Australia goes back to the years 1839 and 1840 respectively when the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Bremen made their first consular appointments. The lacklustre nature of German–Australian trade relations changed during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
