About

General

Biographer, playwright, theatre director, and set designer, John Strehlow was born in 1946 in Adelaide, South Australia into a family closely involved with Aboriginal people for three generations.

John studied Classics at Adelaide University from 1964-6, switching to Modern European and Asian History in 1967, graduating with Honours in 1969. His thesis analysed Mahatma Gandhi’s use of tradition to further the Indian independence movement. In 1989 he received a diploma in the History of the Fine and Decorative Arts from The Study Centre in London (V&A). He attended lectures and seminars run by the London-based Institute for Cultural Research from 1983 until it was wound up, and speaks fluent German, some French and a little Dutch.

From early training in music he developed an interest in theatre partly due to the Adelaide Festival of Arts so, after spending some years in business in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, in 1974 he started teaching drama in Darwin schools and writing plays for children. He began researching his grandparents’ two-volume biography, The Tale of Frieda Keysser, in earnest in 1994, publishing the first volume in 2011¹ and the second volume late in 2019².

He has recently written a play, Eliza! Eliza! The Doolittle Sequel, a provocative projection of developments into 1922 which provides an alternative to Bernard Shaw’s version of what happens to Eliza after “Pygmalion”.

Childhood and Early Life

John is the second son of TGH Strehlow and his first wife Bertha née James³, and was educated at Adelaide Boys High School from 1958–63. While at school he studied the piano and the clarinet, later switching to the organ, winning the Organ Music Society of Adelaide’s competition in 1967. At university he reviewed theatre and film for the student newspaper On Dit, and in 1967 ran the student Film Society with a friend, pioneering seasons of films by Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Fellini, Truffaut and Renoir. A magazine, Cinesa, was founded to stimulate interest in film. The Society also hosted the first film of the Australian cinematic revival, Time in Summer⁴, which was booked for Cannes in 1969.

In 1969 John spent four months in India, mostly in Calcutta, meeting Satyajit Ray, Sarbari Roy Chaudhuri, Subhas Mukherjee, Ram Kinka and, at Allahabad, Amrit Rai and others from that intellectual circle. He then spent two months travelling through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and briefly visited Hong Kong before returning to Australia where he spent two years teaching in state schools in South Australia before moving to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory in mid-1972, running a clothing shop and, in 1974, teaching drama in several Darwin schools.

Professional Training and Higher Education

BA Honours in History from the University of Adelaide (1969); his thesis “Gandhi and Tradition in Gujarat” investigated the link between Gandhi’s ideas on non-violence derived from Tolstoy and ancient traditions of non-violence in western India. In early 1971 he undertook a course in the Aboriginal language Pitjantjatjara, part of the Western Deserts Language Group, at Adelaide University under instruction by Rev. Bill Edwards: the first work on this language was done by John’s grandfather Rev. Carl Strehlow from around 1900 to 1909 but not published due to the death in 1910 of Carl’s sponsor in Germany, Baron Moritz von Leonhardi⁵. In 1988–9 John took the London Study Centre’s diploma course on the History of the Fine and Decorative Arts. Also in London he attended lectures under the auspices of the Institute for Cultural Research from 1983 until the latter was wound up. In recent years he has taken up the study of hypnotherapy through Uncommon Knowledge⁶.

Career

He taught in the South Australian state secondary system in 1970 and 1972⁷, running drama workshops and, in 1970, directing a student production of Fernando Arrabal’s The Two Executioners, at the same time pursuing his interest in Aboriginal people by establishing contact with Flinders Ranges groups. In 1971 he toured eastern and northern Australia, making contact with urban aboriginal groups in Sydney and towns on the NSW coast (Taree, Wauchope and Woodenbong), and likewise in Brisbane, Townsville and Alice Springs. From mid-1972 to 1975 he lived in the Northern Territory, for some of that period living in close contact with fringe dwellers at the Mt Nancy camp just outside Alice Springs at the same time as running a clothing business in town.

In 1974 he taught drama in Darwin⁸, writing four plays – Alloway, an original story for children which was performed by children at Berrimah Primary School and subsequently Brown’s Mart; a treatment of Don Quixote suitable for adolescents (never performed); Maaruf the Cobbler of Cairo (performed by students at Casuarina High School); and Aladdin, the latter two plays based on the stories in The Thousand and One Nights. At the end of 1974 he was awarded a grant from the Australian Schools Commission⁹ to tour live theatre and run workshops in all Northern Territory towns. In directing Aladdin he was influenced by the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s ideas on a “poor theatre” (theatre that places the emphasis on the actor’s body and its relation with the spectator and largely does away with costumes, set and music), having seen Polish companies inspired by these ideas at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. Though using simple costumes, Aladdin relied almost entirely upon dialogue, collage and carefully choreographed movement. It was performed in Darwin, Batchelor, Alice Springs, Gove (Nhulunbuy), Katherine and Tennant Creek. A variety show which included Punch and Judy as a shadow play staged with actors not puppets was performed at twelve Aboriginal settlements – Amoonguna, Areyonga, Santa Teresa, Papunya, Yuendemu, Warrabri, Roper River, Yirrkala, Rose River, Bamyili, Alyangula and Angurugu – to all age groups under a wide range of conditions. The tour lasted for six months and ended with an open air production of Macbeth at Darwin High School. The project report was at one time considered for publication.

In 1976 John travelled widely in New Guinea and Europe, writing Revolution’s Sons, a play about the anti-Vietnam War protest movement while living in Paris. In 1977 he re-formed the theatre group in Adelaide as an ensemble under the name Triad Stage Alliance, mounting a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream¹⁰ then touring Aladdin to South Australian schools to a total of 55,000 primary school pupils. By now some of the ensemble members had studied classical mime at Flinders University under Madame Zora Semberova, formerly prima ballerina of the Czech Ballet, who stayed on in Australia after the Russian crackdown on the Prague Spring. In 1978 John wrote Ali Baba which toured South Australia, receiving a little support from the SA Arts Development Unit and reaching 60,000 children. John staged Twelfth Night for the 1978 Adelaide Festival of Arts, followed by Revolution’s Sons later that year. A poetry dramatisation, The Elusive Reality, was toured to secondary schools to enhance appreciation of poetry. Also in 1978 John wrote The Slaying of the Dragon King based on a Chinese political fable by Wang T’ieh; it was selected for a season of new writing in Adelaide but not performed there since that same year the company made its international debut at the Edinburgh Festival with its highly acclaimed, movement-based An Arabian Nights Spectacular¹¹ comprising Aladdin and Ali Baba. The Elusive Reality was also performed and received positive reviews. In his review of Aladdin and Ali Baba in The Scotsman of 8 September 1978, Sandy Neilson said it employed “some of the most controlled and imaginative ensemble work it has ever been my pleasure to witness… Even one empty seat during this extraordinary piece of theatre constitutes a criminal waste.” This success was in part due to the instruction in mime learned from Semberova, who had studied under Marcel Marceau in Paris.

This was the first Australian company to perform on the Edinburgh Fringe. Winning a Fringe First¹² and critical acclaim from the Scottish and international press, with segments broadcast on ITV and BBC radio and television, Aladdin and Ali Baba were subsequently toured through Europe¹³ and the UK for the 1979 Year of the Child, with a week at festivals in each of Wales¹⁴, Belgium and Germany. It ran for two weeks at the Roundhouse Downstairs in London and in 1979 and 1980 each play was booked for a week by the Unicorn Children’s Theatre based at London’s Arts Theatre. 

In 1979, John wrote Seven Faces of Sindbad, a dramatisation of the Thousand and One Nights story, intended to appeal equally to adults and children. Each of Sindbad’s seven voyages was given a different stylistic treatment. There was no scenery, the actors were dressed only in tights plus a top for the one actress, the only props were five low platforms which were moved around during the performance, and six wooden sticks, one for each actor. There were no lighting effects and no recorded sound. With these rigorous means and some basic chanting the actors created the violent storms, shipwrecks, whales, man-eating pythons, attacks by apes and so on of the original story. With financial assistance from the South Australian Arts Development Unit it was rehearsed in Perugia in Italy and premiered at the Edinburgh Festival where it won John a second Fringe First and was recommended for the Best of the Fringe at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London by nine separate observers. Relying heavily on classical mime and choreographed movement additional to the dialogue, it was given high praise by the critics. “Seven Faces of Sindbad is a triumph of imaginative conception and execution – an enthralling spectacle for both adults and children,” Sally Magnusson wrote in The Scotsman on 21 August 1979. Despite its immense critical success the production was plagued by ill luck: one of its Edinburgh venues was known by a different name to the locals so many of the audience were unable to find it, it was rejected by Brian Rix for the Shaftesbury season without him seeing it, and a tour scheduled by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust for South Australia was cancelled for reasons unknown shortly before the company was due to return to Adelaide. The play was considered for production by BBC Television but their experts concluded it would require too many expensive costumes and sets! Notwithstanding, the play was kept in repertoire for four years, touring extensively to the Continent (Holland, Germany, Italy and Belgium)  – “crême de la crême” according to the Rotterdams Nieuwsblad of 18 January 1980, “two hours of pure magic” said Soir Bruxelles on 15 October 1980 after its performance in Liège. The bad luck continued: the day before its Heidelberg appearance the only ferry strike in sixty years was announced: the tiny set was sent on ahead while the cast were booked on to a plane which broke down in Belfast so never reached London, and although they managed to find seats on a British Airways flight they arrived in Frankfurt at the time they were due to appear on stage in Heidelberg almost 90 kms away so the performance went up almost an hour late after a 100 mph dash by taxi along the motorway. Half of the audience had already gone home by then but those who stayed were given a right royal performance: “ . . . completely magical and brilliant theatre. Power, quickness, abundance in language and storytelling, mime and absorbed exactitude, precision in dance and movement, the ability to transform themselves with a gesture, faultless brilliance in performance. Acting artistry of rare brightness. A touch of the  highwire; what the seven members of this group so rightly winning many international awards brought to fulfilment was theatre without speculation, without ‘ifs and buts,’ ” said the Rhein-Neckar Zeitung in its review of 17 May 1980, “Baghdad Seven Times There and Back”.

If events before Heidelberg were unlucky, what followed was worse: for the 1982 Festival of Rome Sindbad was staged in a tent theatre. On the night of the performance a thunderstorm with great crashes of thunder and lightning strikes accompanied by torrential rain knocked out the power for the whole suburb so with an emergency generator roaring outside the cast had to carry on as if all was normal though the audience was barely able to hear a word. Sindbad toured around Britain to ecstatic reviews: “a magical show, played with energetic and assured expertise . . . Triad deserve a salute,” said The Guardian, 13 Oct. 1982. It was performed at London’s Arts Theatre for a week in 1981, and at Jacksons Lane in 1982, but it never recovered its costs so in 1983, after a successful week’s tour in Holland, with great regret the play was given its last performance at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury to yet another rapturous reception and the ensemble which had brought it to life was disbanded, to be replaced by a traditional company performing well-known classics of English theatre in innovative productions.

The impetus for this was a successful production of Macbeth premiered in Edinburgh in 1980. Mounted partly in response to financial difficulties, it won wide critical acclaim, commencing with Allen Wright, the leading drama critic for The Scotsman newspaper: “…the main interest lies in the interpretation of Macbeth himself. He is played by David Clisby as a darkly elegant and studious figure, more obsessed with witchcraft than passionately enamoured of his wife.”¹⁵ Other reviewers agreed: “This is an excellent production,” said the Festival Times, Edinburgh 20 August 1980; “John Strehlow’s Triad has rare style. Its intelligent interpretation of Macbeth brought out new dimensions in Shakespeare’s inexhaustible text,” proclaimed the Times Educational Supplement, August 1980. German critics were equally enthusiastic: “Ausdruckskraft kam aus der Vitalität der Darsteller, sowie aus der sprachlichen Präzision, mit der die Blankverse an die Zuhörer kamen,” said the Rhein-Neckar Zeitung of 11 November 1980; “Macbeth . . . auf die Füße gestellt,” proclaimed the Darmstädter Echo on 26 November 1980. Unlike Sindbad the production had many sold-out performances in an extensive tour of Britain, Holland, Germany and Belgium, enabling the ensemble to continue operating. It was revived in 1982 and toured the UK and the Continent for six months to audiences totalling many tens of thousands, both general public as well as students (adolescents or of mature age) learning English as a foreign language.

In 1981 The Slaying of the Dragon King was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival after rehearsing in Florence. With colourful costumes, Chinese gongs, stylised ensemble movement and tight dialogue, it told the story of how the Chinese Communist Revolution came to a remote village controlled by corrupt Confucian headman Zodiac Mah and his assistant Inky Nob. When the crops failed due to drought, Zodiac urged the villagers to pray for rain instead of irrigating. The production received excellent reviews, playing to full houses during the Festival and winning John a third Fringe First: It was listed in ‘6 of the Best’ on the Fringe: “With much bashing of gongs and a minimum of props, Triad present a delightful parable of life in a post-revolutionary Chinese village, the backwater of Mah’s Bend.” said The Scotsman of 21 August 1981. “The tale itself is so strong because it is so basic – old traditions versus new ideology,” said The Glasgow Herald on 20 November 1981, “But even as the old ways are rejected, they are also celebrated. The production reverberates with movement and colour. Tai chi-style gestures are cleverly choreographed into dances (performed with swagger and precision), gongs tinkle and boom dramatically while the cast switch, at the drop of a coolie hat, from one role to another. Damyn Lodge’s whipper-snapper selling peanuts, her garrulous old peasant and her snivelling young wife are full of pithy character, while David Clisby’s scheming, greedy mandarin is every inch the wily oriental gentleman.” Unlike Australia, where intelligent interest in China was already considerable and growing, outside the Festival interest in the play was slight so it only toured to a handful of venues in the UK – Canterbury (Marlowe), Rotherham (Studio), Dundee (Bonar Hall), Glasgow (The Third Eye), Torrington (Plough Theatre), Washington (Arts Centre), and London (Jacksons Lane and Cockpit Theatre). In Europe it appeared in Rotterdam (Theater Zuidplein), Amsterdam (de Meervaart), Haarlem (Stadsschouwburg), Arnhem (Schouwburg), Utrecht (de Blauwe Zaal), Groningen (Schouwburg), Heidelberg (Städtische Bühnen), Stuttgart (Städtische Bühnen), and Florence (Teatro Tenda). It was not revived after it had completed its touring commitments.

Since 1978 John has been based permanently in London¹⁶ producing innovative productions of Shakespeare’s plays and established modern British classics for general public audiences. By 2012 he had directed and toured over 50 professional productions (including four of the plays he had written and directed himself) to more than 300 theatres in the UK, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland as part of their scheduled programs, as well as to festivals in Italy (Cuneo, Asti, Florence and Rome).

Playwright and Biographer

He began by writing plays firstly for children and young people, and then for adult audiences, starting with Don Quixote (1974) and then the Arabian Nights stories Maaruf the Cobbler of Cairo (1974), Aladdin (1974), Ali Baba (1977), and lastly Seven Faces of Sindbad (1979)¹⁷. In 1976 he wrote a contemporary play Revolution’s Sons which was premiered in Adelaide in 1978¹⁸. In 1978 without any official funding he brought the first Australian company to the Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland, where they won a Fringe First for An Arabian Nights Spectacular, comprising Aladdin and Ali Baba; these plays and Sindbad (which won a Fringe First in 1979) were later performed in London at the Arts Theatre under the auspices of the Unicorn Children’s Theatre. In 1979, as part of the International Year of the Child the company toured southern Wales, Belgium, and performed at festivals in Darmstadt, Bonn, Lübeck, and Dortmund. In subsequent years they performed at festivals in Holland (Amsterdam’s Festival of Fools/Théatre des Nations)) and Italy (Cuneo, Asti, Florence and Rome), and in the UK at Brighton. The Slaying of the Dragon King was written in 1978 and premiered in Edinburgh in 1981. In 2022 he wrote Eliza! Eliza! The Doolittle Sequel extrapolating a very different future from that proposed by Shaw after the events in Pygmalion (not yet produced).

In 1994 John commenced writing a double biography of his grandparents, The Tale of Frieda Keysser, a task which lasted until 2019, a total of 25 years and entailed much searching through back issues of defunct magazines and archives strewn across Australia, Germany, the UK and America.

John has written for newspapers and magazines including the Strehlow Research Centre’s Occasional Papers, given interviews for radio¹⁹ and television, and has advised a number of authors as well as directors of institutions holding material relating to Australian Aborigines. In August 2000 he contributed to the documentary Mr Strehlow’s Films directed by Hart Cohen, based around the work of his father Prof. T.G.H. Strehlow who recorded Central Australian Aboriginal culture.

Later Career as a Stage Director

After winning his third Fringe First for The Slaying of the Dragon King (1981) but finding no market for it, John gave up writing for the stage, basing the company in London and specialising in Shakespeare’s plays and modern British classics, touring them in the UK and the Continent for the next 31 years to more than 300 theatres in Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. Productions have consisted of plays by Shakespeare (Macbeth, Hamlet²⁰, Twelfth Night²¹, Romeo and Juliet²², The Tempest²³, A Midsummer Night’s Dream²⁴, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing²⁵, Anthony and Cleopatra²⁶, The Taming of the Shrew²⁷ and The Merchant of Venice²⁸) alternated with modern classics including The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)²⁹, An Inspector Calls (J.B. Priestley)³⁰, Blithe Spirit and Private Lives (Noel Coward)³¹, Look Back in Anger (John Osborne)³², The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)³³, Black Comedy and Equus (Peter Shaffer)³⁴, Pygmalion (Bernard Shaw)³⁵, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead³⁶ and The Real Inspector Hound³⁷ (Tom Stoppard), Relatively Speaking³⁸ and Time and Time Again (Alan Ayckbourn), The Caretaker (Harold Pinter)³⁹, I Ought to be in Pictures (Neil Simon)⁴⁰ and Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure at Sir Arthur Sullivan’s by Tim Heath.

John has worked as a freelance director: in Australia – Tony Strachan’s Harlequin Shuffle for the Stage Company in Adelaide in 1985, and in Germany – Michael Cadman’s I thought I heard a Cuckoo forWhite Horse Theatre (1987), and in German, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Der Kaufmann von Venedig) at the ETA Hoffmann Theater in Bamberg⁴¹ in 2007.

Contact with Aboriginal Groups

Apart from family background, private investigations among Aboriginal people at Quorn, Hawker and Copley in South Australia’s far north, as well as contact with urban people in Sydney, Brisbane and elsewhere in the late 1960s and early 1970s, John’s interest in contemporary aboriginal developments was sparked by that educational project funded by the Australian Schools Commission to tour a number of settlements in the Northern Territory in 1975. Since then he has maintained contact with traditional Aboriginal people and many people involved with developments whom he met during that period, particularly in Central Australia⁴². These include mainstream politicians and activists, academics, mission workers, Land Rights lawyers, descendants of the original community formed by Carl and Frieda Strehlow at Ntaria, artists, authors, as well as persons generally interested in the evolution of black/white relationships in Australia.

Biographer: The Tale of Frieda Keysser

Family background played a large part in John choosing to write about this topic. His father, Prof. TGH Strehlow, recorded secret-sacred ceremonies in Central Australia for over thirty years while his grandfather, Rev. Carl Strehlow, collaborated with fellow-missionary JG Reuther at Bethesda Mission in South Australia on the first ever complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri) of 1897 before moving to Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia where he stayed from 1894 to 1922, producing definitive vocabularies and grammars of the Aranda and Loritja languages (not published in his lifetime) as well as a major anthropological tract Die Aranda- und Loritja-Staemme in Zentral–Australien (The Aranda and Loritja Tribes of Central Australia). His curiosity about his grandparents Carl and Frieda Strehlow was spurred by John learning of the existence of Frieda’s diaries in Berlin, and the realisation that her personal record of life on the Australian frontier during the late 1890s and early 20th century was part of a much larger, mysterious past, about which little was known beyond hearsay and family legend. He also started to question certain widely accepted views he found in academic writings which did not accord with his own findings based on a very wide store of documented original data, so from 1994 he worked on what became a major historical double biography of missionary, anthropologist and linguist Carl Strehlow and his wife Frieda Keysser, both of whom played a key role in ending the extermination of the aboriginal population of Central Australia which followed closely behind white settlement and the establishing of cattle stations which monopolised the scarce water supplies in this largely desert country. Researching in 86 archives in the UK, US, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Australia, John was initially assisted financially by the Institute of Community Studies in London (1991) through Lord Michael Young and subsequently by official and private supporters listed below. The biography was completed in 2019.

In July and November 1995 articles by him about the biography were published in the The Adelaide Review. He wrote the entry for Harry Hillier in The Australian Dictionary of Biography (Supplement) and for the Strehlows in Josie Petrick’s The History of Alice Springs Through Landmarks and Street Names. He has given interviews on television and radio in the UK, Germany, Holland and Australia. In 2000 he appeared in Hart Cohen’s documentary Mr Strehlow’s Films for SBS Television, subsequently shown at festivals in Durham and Florence.

In September 2002 he gave a paper “Shifting Focus – TGH Strehlow and the Carl Strehlow Legacy” at an international conference in Alice Springs called Tradition in the Midst of Change. A major paper “Re-appraising Carl Strehlow through the Spencer-Strehlow Debate” was published by the Strehlow Research Centre in Occasional Paper 3 in 2004. In 2014 he organised the seminar Where Do we Go from Here? at the Araluen Centre, as a consequence of which the Friends of the Strehlow Research Centre was set up to defend and further the work of the SRC in Alice Springs.

The biography proper was initially funded by a grant from the History Awards Committee of the Northern Territory in 1994 with the backing of Prof. David Carment of the Northern Territory University in Darwin, followed by a grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in 1996–97 with the support of Prof. John Mulvaney of the Australian National University in Canberra⁴³. The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust contributed financially to his work in 2001. John was later assisted by private sponsors Alan and Maria Meyers, Helen Miller, James Hagan, Glen Auricht, Peter Latz and, most generously of all, Lorenzo Ferrari in London. Publication of Volume II of the biography was funded by Mission EineWelt of Neuendettelsau through the efforts of Dr Gernot Fugmann, Dr Traugott Farnbacher, Dr Hanns Hoerschelmann and Dr Thomas Paulsteiner. In addition to using the better known archival sources in Britain, Germany and Australia, John conducted an exhaustive investigation of government records, police records, official and private letters, contemporary newspaper articles, as well as material from family sources not available to the general public, in particular Frieda’s personal diaries.

Although much had been written about Carl, almost nothing had been written about Frieda; virtually no serious research had been conducted on either person because at least sixty percent of the relevant sources were handwritten in German, so were simply ignored even when they were readily available. Instead, information from Carl’s great rival Prof. Baldwin Spencer of Melbourne University was recycled again and again as so often happens in these instances. Much of this was simply disinformation fabricated to discredit Carl’s work in the eyes of a naive international readership lacking any first-hand experience of Australia or its indigenous population. This factor necessitated a major reappraisal which had not been part of John’s original intention, with the result that the biography took on new dimensions as it sought to set the record straight in many areas and incorporate essential new information on a very large scale, in particular ensuring that the context in which these two lives were lived was given due weight, not just quickly passed over to avoid casting doubt on pre-existing theories as had happened so often before. From start to finish, work on the biography itself took 25 years.

Further information about The Tale of Frieda Keysser

Volume I covers Frieda’s family background and early life as well as Carl’s early life and training, how the couple met, his and JG Reuther’s work on the first complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri), and the first crucial years at Hermannsburg, during which Carl begins researching the languages, beliefs and customs of the Western Aranda and the Loritja, culminating in his monumental Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien which lays the foundation for his son TGH Strehlow’s work. Baron Moritz von Leonhardi of Gross Karben in Germany becomes Carl’s sponsor for its publication by the Frankfurt Völkermuseum. In the process of writing it Carl questions certain aspects of Spencer and Gillen’s famous work The Native Tribes of Central Australia, fuelling a debate in London which runs for a number of years⁴⁴. Frieda meanwhile sets to work solving the problems of infant mortality and social breakdown resultant on the switch by the Aranda from living as hunter-gatherers to a settled way of life, inadvertently challenging Spencer and Gillen’s key doctrine that Australia’s entire aboriginal population is  ‘doomed’⁴⁵. Volume I ends with the family’s return to Germany in 1910 without any firm intention of coming back.

Volume I was published in 2011 and launched at the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs by Prof. Marcia Langton of Monash University on 1 December of that year. Its publication drew much comment from persons interested in the topic of Australia’s relationship with its Aboriginal peoples.

The Hon. Alison Anderson, Member for Macdonnell in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, announced its publication in the House on 30 November 2011 and remarks made by her are recorded in Hansard, from which the following is taken: “I applaud John Strehlow for the enormous amount of detailed research which has grown into this work. I hope it corrects some of the misunderstanding and misinformation that has been spread over the years about the relationship between the missionaries and the Aranda people. I am the product of grandparents who lived with the missionaries, and for that I am thankful. The missionaries left us with our culture, songs and history intact. They gave us the opportunity to understand and learn about the new world with which we had come into contact . . . For those of us who grew up with missionary history in Central Australia, there is never a bad word said about the missionaries . . . This book provides a lesson for anthropologists, past and present. Anthropologists always need to be careful about assumptions they make, especially since there is often no-one except their peers who check their work. This book calls into question many things that have been written earlier about Hermannsburg . . . I congratulate Mr Strehlow on the completion of a thorough documentation of a piece of our shared history in Central Australia. I hope and pray that this book helps correct the negative portrayals of the Lutheran missionaries put forward over the years.” After launching the book in South Australia on 12 February 2012 at the Australian Lutheran College in Adelaide, on 21 February 2012 she made a second speech along similar lines which is also in Hansard.

Lyall Kupke, archivist at the Lutheran Archives in Adelaide, reporting on the Adelaide launch in FoLA (Friends of the Lutheran Archives) News, February 2012, said: “I believe that this book will make a very important contribution to the history of this country and to the understanding of indigenous affairs in our land, in addition to improving our appreciation of the role of Lutheran missions in Australia.”

Reviewing Volume I in The Weekend Australian of 11 February 2012, Nicolas Rothwell described it as “an indispensable contribution to the literature of remote, indigenous Australia . . . Biography. History. Cultural investigation, Strehlow’s Tale is all these things, but it would not be truly Strehlovian if it were not, at its heart, a story of exile, displacement and return, an evocation in words of the Inland, its hard, serried paragraphs sheltering abrupt passages of romantic lyric force . . . This book is a written incarnation of country, the desert in the mind, the same landscape Carl Strehlow found waiting for him when, barely twenty, fresh from his Franconian seminary training he was transferred to the Centre, to the world of the Aranda. It was the beginning of a love affair, a strange obsession that forms the key theme of this narrative. The Aranda living with him at Hermannsburg became the heart of his life. He mastered their language in its finest details. They were part of him and he would never be fully at ease within his mind again . . .”

In The Monthly, April 2012 Prof. Peter Sutton wrote: “For all its gritty attention to detail, the book has a heroic largeness of spirit, a kind of opulence of time and space and credible personalities that is so often missing from what is written by scholars of the past and from the bush. It is like the Red Centre itself.” 

Prof. Maurice Schild in The Lutheran Theological Journal, August 2012 wrote: “The Tale of Frieda Keysser is a superb achievement, and an important cultural event. It may well promote respect on several fronts. It comes as an antidote to much popular as well as academic derogatory parlance on missions and the mark they’ve left. At the same time it offers balm for the still hurting and abused image of Australia’s Aboriginal people – and it does them honour. It also honours ordinary faithful people of the time: ‘this handful of Lutheran families’ who undertook ‘what the State of South Australia could or would not, the care and nurture of those tribes broken by white settlement.’ ” 

Dr Lois Zweck OAM wrote in Lutheran Women, August 2012: “John Strehlow’s book offers us illuminating insights into the beginnings of Aboriginal mission in this country, the often under-rated work of the first Hermannsburg missionaries, the world of Neuendettelsau and its seminary, and the South Australian Lutheran community that supported the mission. But above all, by highlighting Frieda’s perspective and portraying the everyday occurrences of life at Hermannsburg in such depth, The Tale of Frieda Keysser offers a new understanding of the difficulties, tensions and disappointments, but also the patient and painstaking achievements of the men and women on the missions. I cannot imagine a better monument to them.”

Volume II starts with Carl and Frieda’s time in Germany from late August 1910 to November 1911, with Carl making a lecture tour of German mission societies in Lower Franconia and, in January 1911, addressing packed houses at the Frankfurt Museum for the local Anthropological Society. Leonhardi’s sudden death in October 1910 leaves Carl’s book without an editor. Its linguistic researches are cut by Prof. Bernhard Hagen and F.C.A. Sarg of the Frankfurt Museum who take over publication, neither of whom have any interest or competence in that field, but the success of the Frankfurt lectures means that the work continues to be published in sections under a variety of editors, albeit very slowly, with Section V only appearing in 1920. At the end of 1911 Carl, Frieda and their youngest son Theo return to Australia when the chairman of the Mission Board, Rev. Kaibel, after making a series of ill-conceived changes to the way the Mission is run, begs them to return to restore order.

Meanwhile, still smarting from Carl’s criticisms of his and Gillen’s work, while Carl is away Baldwin Spencer arranges for damning reports on Hermannsburg to appear in the southern press so the Commonwealth Government will resume the Mission. He wants to set up an orphanage for half-caste children in its place as part of the program known today as ‘The Stolen Generation’. Alarmed by what is happening, the Aranda population write letters to Carl begging him and Frieda to come back. Frieda is overwhelmed with guilt about leaving the five other children in Germany.

World War 1 offers Spencer the chance to push through his scheme for Hermannsburg but persons high up in Australian government circles like Administrator John Anderson Gilruth in Darwin, backed by Police Sergeant Robert Stott in Alice Springs, oppose this and the Mission survives⁴⁶. Frieda’s work with the mothers and children means its population is growing. As the war progresses, Carl uses the censorship of his letters to communicate directly with government ministers and, sensing that the Lutherans are losing the will to carry on their missions, through Harry Hillier opens up dealings with Bishop Gilbert White to see if the Anglicans are willing to take over if Hermannsburg is abandoned. Fortunately the Mission is not given up by the Lutherans, yet when the war ends, no successor for Carl can be found, so he delays his return to Germany until 1923. His own health is now failing. Having secured Hermannsburg’s future with Administrator Urquhart at the end of July 1922, on 10 October he sets off south to reach a doctor but dies at Horseshoe Bend Station halfway to the railhead 400 miles away on 20 October, leaving Frieda to carry on south with young Theo on her own.

Volume II was published late in 2019 and launched by former Administrator Ted Egan AO at The Residency, Alice Springs, on 17 December 2019 and again in Darwin at the Northern Territory Library on 31 October 2020⁴⁷. In his speech Ted said John had “contributed monumentally to the historic records of the Northern Territory by accessing the crucially important diaries of his grandmother in Germany . . . We now have first-hand reminiscences of the pioneering days at Hermannsburg through the eyes of a totally Christian woman, a point of view previously unknown. There’s so much in John’s work based on his grandmother’s diaries that will be of benefit to all scholars . . . you deserve our congratulations for devoting the majority of your life to this important task.” Articles by Amos Aikman appeared in The Australian⁴⁸ on 10 November 2020 and by Jasmine Burke in the Centralian Advocate on 30 October 2020⁴⁹. The complete work was comprehensively reviewed by Dr. Hartwig F. Harms in the Zeitschrift für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 90. Jahrgang 2021. “But this is far more than the biography of Frieda Strehlow née Keysser, missionary wife in Hermannsburg in Australia from 1995 to 1922, even if she is of course one of the main players. It is also not an historical treatment of the contribution of Carl and Frieda Strehlow to mission work in the Australian Hermannsburg, as the subtitle leads one to assume, although there is much about Carl Strehlow’s mission principles and successes. It is also not a documentation of his ethnological studies, even though ethnological research and Carl Strehlow’s differences with Baldwin Spencer, then the most influential anthropologist in Australia, take up much space. It is all of these things together and still more: an exciting tapestry of family, mission and historical details with illuminating excursions into the cultural anthropology of the era – provocative, enriching, it makes you think. For mission scientists, anthropologists and all for whom Aborigines and the question about the ‘right’ stance towards them is close to the heart, of the greatest interest.”⁵⁰

References

¹ Reviewed by Nicolas Rothwell, The Weekend Australian, 11 February 2012; by Prof. Maurice Schild, Lutheran Theological Journal, August 2012; by Dr Peter Sutton, The Monthly, April 2012; by Dr Lois Zweck, Lutheran Women, August 2012; by Prof. Regina Ganter, Aboriginal History, 2012; by Gary Clark, Quadrant, April 2012.

² See Amos Aykman’s articles in The Australian, 10 November 2020, “125-year secret to restore grandad’s name” p. 6 and “False Witness” p. 12. See also Jasmine Burke’s “John Follows Family Mission” in the Alice Springs Advocate, 30 October 2020 p. 33. Hartwig F. Harms’s review “Mission und Ethnologie” appeared in the Zeitschrift für Bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 90. Jahrgang 2021. 

³ C.A. Starke, Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, Genealogisches Handbuch Bürgerlicher Familien, Allgemeiner Bd. 38 (Keyßer) p. 195. 

⁴ en.m.wikipedia.org for 1968.

⁵ See The Tale of Frieda Keysser (Volume I) Illustration VII/4&5 and (Volume II) pp. 85-8. See also Anna Kenny, Carl Strehlow’s 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary (2018, Canberra).

⁶ Diploma in the Rewind Technique, October 2011; in How to Give Up Smoking, February 2022.

⁷ In 1970 he taught at Daws Road High School in Adelaide, in 1972 at Elizabeth West High School.

⁸ Taught at Larrakeya Primary School, Jingili Primary School, Berrimah Primary School, and Casuarina High School.

⁹ Australian Schools Commission Grant No. 95/5013.

¹⁰ Reviewed Harold Tideman, The Advertiser, 25 February 1977 p. 24, “Dream acted with vitality.”

¹¹ Reviewed Sandy Neilson, The Scotsman, 8 Sept. 1978: “…some of the most controlled and imaginative ensemble work it has ever been my pleasure to witness… Even one empty seat during this extraordinary piece of theatre constitutes a criminal waste.” (Aladdin and Ali Baba)

¹² See Adelaide’s Sunday Mail, 1 Oct. 1978.

¹³ Reviewed Jaap Koopmans, Rotterdams Nieuwsblad, 18 Jan. 1980: “It is almost scandalous to praise English artistry to the skies – I have no intention of doing that – but in this case I must admit it is a presentation that is ultimately satisfying.”

¹⁴ Wales 79, Bonn Festival for the International Year of the Child, see John Kirby’s “Triumph for Triad” in Adelaide’s Sunday Mail, 13 May 1979.

¹⁵ Allen Wright, The Scotsman, 18 August 1980.

¹⁶ See Anne Morley Priestman’s article “Bold Course for Triad” in The Stage and Television Today, 18 March 1982.

¹⁷ “Seven Faces of Sindbad is a triumph of imaginative conception and execution – an enthralling spectacle for both adults and children.” Sally Magnusson, The Scotsman, 21 Aug. 1979; “a magical show, played with energetic and assured expertise . . . Triad deserve a salute.” The Guardian, 13 Oct. 1982; “crême de la crême” Rotterdams Nieuwsblad, 18 Jan. 1980; “two hours of pure magic” Soir Bruxelles, 15 Oct. 1980.

¹⁸ Performed at the Scott Theatre in Adelaide in 1978.

¹⁹ Interviewed in German for Eins zu Eins on Bayrischer Rundfunk, 11 April 2014.

²⁰ “Hamlet as I like it.” Weston & Woodspring Evening Post, 1 Nov. 1983; “. . . a very subtle production. I for one will return to a Triad production.” The Stage, London, 15 Dec. 1983.

²¹ “Was ihr wollt (Twelfth Night) war offensichtlich genau das, was das Wuppertaler Publikum wollte. Unter der Leitung von John Strehlow spielte das britische Ensemble in englischer Sprache und brachte den variantenreichen Stil Shakespeares zur Geltung.” WZ General-Anzeiger, 18 Nov. 1985; “ein Verwirrspiel ohne Gleichen . . . Viola grandios gespielt von Sarah Clive . . . Malvolio hervorragend gespielt von Peter Kenny . . . eine sehr gelungene Inszenierung.” Fränkischer Tag, 19 Nov. 1997.

²² “It comes across as energetic, clean and somehow – given the minefields of cliché – fresh.” The Scotsman, 25 Sept. 1984; “. . . brought out the macabre, always lurking in the Elizabethan mind, but also Shakespeare’s ebullient wit, never so bawdy as in Romeo and Juliet, and the supreme lyrical beauty of his verse.” Liverpool Daily Post, 26 Nov. 1984.

²³ “ein Ensemblespiel, das geradezu Neid erregt . . . ein Theaterabend, der aus allen möglichen Klischees herausfällt.” Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 26 Nov. 1981; “a concept of majestic and conclusive tragedy, suspended between land and sky, between poetry and magic.” La Stampa (Italy), 11 March 1982.

²⁴ “Vermutlich hätte Shakespeare selbst Freude an dieser eigenwilligen Interpretation gehabt.” Lüdenscheider Nachrichten, 17 Oct. 1986.

²⁵ “Biting repartee in the original English . . . By now director John Strehlow and his company are an integral part of our experience of foreign language theatre.” Wolfenbütteler Zeitung, 26 Oct. 1992.

²⁶ “With Debbie Radcliffe as Cleopatra and Martin Waller as Mark Antony, Strehlow had two tried and tested Shakespeare experts at his disposal. Debbie Radcliffe pulled out all the stops of the feminine arts of seduction . . .” Wolfenbütteler Zeitung, 7 Nov. 1993.

²⁷ “Die Triad Theatre Company . . . brauchte keine Viertelstunde, um das Publikum zu lautloser Aufmerksamkeit und – je nachdem – herzhaftem Gelächter und Szenenapplaus zu bringen.” Wolfenbütteler Zeitung, 22 Oct. 1988.

²⁸ “ein spannender Rechtsfall inmitten einer reizvollen Liebesgeschichte”, Braunschweiger Zeitung, 24 Oct. 1987. In 2007 John successfully staged an experimental German production of this play in the ETA Theater in Bamberg using a cast consisting half of English and half of German actors, see review in Fränkischer Tag, 12 March 2007.

 ²⁹ “Die Darsteller wurden stürmisch gefeiert . . . Thank you and goodbye . . . we hope to see you again.” Braunschweiger Zeitung, 25 Oct. 1995.

³⁰ “The performers are soloists as well as ensemble members. They all have excellent diction and their artistry, as well as the choreography, is first-rate.” Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger, 25 Oct. 1985.

³¹ “The English theatre company under John Strehlow’s direction knows how to serve up the comic material to the audience with style.” Südkurier, 13 Nov. 2003.

³² “Mit dem Darsteller des Jimmy steht und fällt eine Aufführung dieses Drama. Kevin Scully füllt diese Rolle voll aus.” Main Post, 16 Nov. 1989.

³³ “Disturbing, painful and poignant, this production is a haunting elegy for the death of the family, as relevant now as it was then.” Camden New Journal, 10 Dec. 1998; “jugendlich schwungvoll, ironisch verfremdend . . . der lang anhaltende Applaus beweist den Erfolg.” Schwäbische Zeitung, 21 Jan. 1999.

³⁴ “John Strehlow’s production turns into something memorable and moving . . . the horses’ masks are the same haunting wire frame affairs as used in the original production, and the whole piece is imaginatively directed . . . a great play done justice.” Time Out, 20 Jan. 1993; “a powerful and compelling production” What’s On, 13 Jan. 1993; “Standing ovations für die New Triad Company, für John Strehlows Inszenierung” Nordwest Zeitung, 8 Feb. 1993.

³⁵ “the play was a delight”, Northwest Evening Mail 2 Feb. 1991; “ein rundum erfreulicher Theaterabend – in Cockney”, Braunschweiger Zeitung, 16 Feb. 1991; “John Strehlow . . . brillierte mit einer spritzigen und witzigen Aufführung.” Braunschweiger Zeitung, 22 Jan. 1994; “Ein gelungener Abend, voller witzigen Ideen, und voll komödiantischer Bravour.” Fränkischer Tag, 14 Jan. 1994; “Jonathan Rigby shone as the cynical and arrogant Henry Higgins, revelling in his cultured cursing, while his opposite Debbie Radcliffe playing Eliza Doolittle transformed herself expertly from Cockney lass to lady.” Nord-West Zeitung (Oldenburg), 16 Feb. 1994.

³⁶ “Cool, chiselled, and delicate as an ice sculpture, this is a refined production of a great play.” Time Out, 15 Jan. 1992; “eine pikante Mischung aus burleskem Spaß, grotesker Situationskomik und tragikomischer Verflechtung mit hehren Themen abendländischer Metaphysik.” Braunschweiger Zeitung, 18 Feb. 1992.

³⁷ Looking at both plays (Hound and Black Comedy) together, what impresses is the great ability of the actors to transform themselves. None of them can be recognised in the second piece . . . the play builds to become an absurd comedy with loud gunshots.” Schwäbische Zeitung, 24 Oct. 2000.

³⁸ “The actors took visible pleasure in their roles in this classic but timeless play about mistaken identities, and under the direction of John Strehlow, in every scene of this ‘outrageous comedy’ they were able to act out their entire comic talent with no holds barred, to the delight of the audience.” Schweinfurter Tagblatt, 26 Nov. 2000.

³⁹ “With Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, John Strehlow’s New Triad Theatre Company gave the overwhelmingly student audience a real treat.” Schwäbische Zeitung, 12 Nov. 2001.

⁴⁰ “John Strehlow directed the comedy very sensitively; deep feelings become visible without false sentimentality yet at the same time there is much to smile about.” Schwäbische Zeitung, 6 Nov. 2002.

⁴¹ Reviewed Fränkischer Tag, 13 Jan. 2007.

⁴² See the Hon. Alison Anderson, Member for Macdonnell’s speech in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly on 30 Nov. 2011, recorded in Hansard. 

⁴³ Project No. 95/5013.

⁴⁴ See Tale of Frieda Keysser (Volume I) pp. 770–76 for the commencement of Carl’s involvement in this debate.

⁴⁵ See for example John Mulvaney with Alison Petch and Howard Morphy, My Dear Spencer (Melbourne, 1997) pp. 269 & 270, Letter 58, F.J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer, 15 Nov. 1899.

⁴⁶ See The Tale of Frieda Keysser Volume II pp. 438–41. Gilruth’s original letter is in the National Archives of Australia, A3, 1918/1007.

⁴⁷ See footnote 2 above.

⁴⁸ “125-year secret to restore grandad’s name” p. 6 and “False Witness” p. 12.

⁴⁹ “John Follows Family Mission” p. 33.

⁵⁰ pp. 184-5.