Journey to Horseshoe Bend

by Theodor Strehlow

Journey to Horseshoe Bend was first published in 1969 and has been out of print for almost forty years. An Australian literary classic, it was written by TGH (Ted) Strehlow, author of the monumental Songs of Central Australia. It describes the final days of his father, Pastor Carl Strehlow, head of the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg, as they travel, with Aboriginal companions, in extreme heat, along the dry riverbed of the Finke River, to the nearest railhead in search of medical assistance. They never reach help: the journey ends at Horseshoe Bend, with Pastor Strehlow's death. Ted Strehlow grew up with Aborigines on the mission, and his knowledge of their customs and stories was unique. The book combines this knowledge, with a detailed awareness of the landscape and its sacred places, the battles that have been fought there, the lonely outposts of white settlement, and of the Biblical resonances of their own journey through this desert setting.

Genres: History, Australia, Nonfiction

368 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journey to Horseshoe Bendis a spellbinding book. The arresting cover photo of a lonely grave in an arid vista of Australia’s Red Centre, gives some clue to the story within, but it also symbolises so much more. To our 21st century eyes, the grave with its Christian iconography seems incongruous: that land has been indigenous country since time immemorial. What is that grave doing there in that barren landscape?

Journey to Horseshoe Bend is the astonishing tale of an epic journey taken by the Lutheran missionary Carl Strehlow in 1922. Travelling upright in a chair on the back of a horse-drawn buggy, and accompanied by his fourteen-year-old son Theo in a van drawn by donkeys, Strehlow and his wife Frieda Keysser struggled for twelve days in the relentless heat across the dry bed of the Finke River in Central Australia to get medical help. A doctor was driving up to Oodnadatta and they were hoping to meet up with him via Horseshoe Bend, 250km miles away from the mission at Hermannsburg (130-odd km southwest of Alice Springs). They never did reach help: after 28 years of devoted outback service in the most remote parts of the country, Carl Strehlow died at Horseshoe Bend, leaving his wife and child penniless and dependent on the goodwill of the Lutheran community and the stoic folk of the outback.

Years later, T.G.H. (Theo a.k.a. Ted) Strehlow who was traumatised by these events from his boyhood, chronicled each day’s journey across the unforgiving landscape. There are four elements to his story: the journey with all its trials and tribulations; the history of the pastoral industry and the mission at Hermannsburg; Aboriginal myths and legends about the landscape over which they move; and Biblical stories, notably the story of Job, who was chosen by the Old Testament God to suffer innumerable sufferings as a test of his faith. As the reader follows the trail, the narration becomes more and more engaging, because none of it can be taken at face value. T.G.H. has an axe to grind against the Lutherans that (he thought) had failed to help and could have saved his father’s life; he makes dubious claims that the local Aranda (Arrente/Arrarnta) people had given his father sacred knowledge usually given only to the initiated; and he offers an account of his father’s innermost religious doubts and fears, which he could not possibly have known. And although he is honest about massacres of the indigenous people, and admits to the widespread practice of child removal when white men fathered daughters to indigenous women who they used as of right, T.G.H. has a Eurocentric view of missionary activity and dispossession, believing that development of indigenous land was appropriate and that spreading a foreign religion was God’s work.

Despite – or perhaps because of – these flaws, this classic of Australian literary history is utterly compelling to read.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2016/03/05/jo...

[Roger Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book very slowly and carefully. It's not one to trifle with and I was surprised that it was quite a hit when first published many years ago. It is full of deep aboriginal lore (Strehlow was an eminent linguist and anthropologist) and so is quite hard going in places. The story of his fathers death is epic in its tragedy. This book is a must for anyone hoping for a deeper understanding of Australia's history of settlement and black-white relations and contains many insight that run counter to current assumptions about the matters that it discusses. Highly recommended also, if you can find it, is the documentary entitled "Mr. Strehlow's Films"; a great supplement to this unique book.

[Anne Fenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting reading although it involves the suffering and death of the author’s famous father, Lutheran missionary and indigenous culture researcher AG Strehlow. Occurring in 1927, the very ill man needs to travel across central Australia for help. The author writes this years afterwards. Indigenous beliefs about the land they cross form part of the account. Valuable reading about our history.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging recollection of the scenes and experience.

[Trevor Schaefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prof. Strehlow writes in his dedication, "This book has been written to commemorate my father, The Reverend Carl Strehlow, who dedicated his life to the welfare of the Aranda people, and to express my gratitude to the dark and white folk of Central Australia who helped him on his last journey." It was published in 1969, but tells the story of his father's final journey down the Finke River from the Hermannsburg Mission in 1922. This journey ended in the death of the father at Horseshoe Bend, and it was seared in the memory of 14-year-old Theo, his youngest son, who accompanied him. The book breathes the trauma of that journey, but also the love of Theo for the land in which he was born, which he shared with the Aranda people, who called it Altjira, the Eternal Land. This is a classic of Australian storytelling and well worth reading as an introduction to that harsh and beautiful country.

[Simon Pockley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike Aranda Traditions, this is a coherent, and quintessentially Australian story about failure - one of the great Australian stories. It is dominated by the image of the fatally ill Lutheran missionary, Carl Strehlow, strapped into an easy chair wired on to a donkey-drawn buggy, gasping in pain as (for 12 days) it creaks and crashes over difficult terrain. Bob Buck asked for the chair when Strehlow died. We last see it on its way back to Henbury Station- whatever happened to it?

The journey proceeds through a landscape of memory, where history, myth, and topography are intimately interwoven. Weather and fire have roles; and an older narrator protects his younger self by referring to his fourteen year-old self in the third person. It is a story not just about the death of a deeply religious father who appears to lose faith as he becomes totally absorbed in his pain, but about the loss of a way of life as well as the death of an indigenous people and their culture. This is a story that perhaps only T.G.H Strehlow could have told. As Phillip Jones observes in his Afterword, Strehlow is an insider. Not only was he born in this country but he grew-up speaking its language, Aranda.

Í think I saw more people here last time,' she remarked to Elliot at the breakfast table; 'there don't seem to be many left now.' 'You're right there,' Elliot replied. 'That Spanish influenza did it three years ago. The blacks here died like flies, and it was the same everywhere, all the way down to Oodnadatta.' (p.209)

The portrayal of an innate decency and generosity of spirit among the hardened white frontier landholders who go out of their way to help the Lutheran Pastor may well be intended to highlight Lutheran meanness. But we glimpse the legendary Bob Buck at Henbury Station a hard man in a now, almost mythical, frontier world. Characters like Mrs Elliot, Butler, and Breaden, also seem larger than life and, to return to failure, serve to embody that Australian spirit of resignation that nothing lasts.

The vanished vehicle had suddenly come to seem to him like a token of the vanity of man's hopes - a symbol of the utter futility of all human endeavours...(p.277)

T.G.H. Strehlow successfully manages to integrate the progress of this fatal journey with Aboriginal ancestral stories arising from features in the landscape through which they travel. The result is a richly textured narrative that feels to have mythological significance.

Phillip Jones insightful Afterword traces the difficult journey of the book from draft to publication. For all the editorial suggestions that Strehlow rejected, I can't help but feel that the complexities of his non-cooperative attitude may well have given this book its flawed human edge. Where else in Australian literature is there a white man with Strehlow's remarkable Indigenous perspective who failed so comprehensively to create a bridge between white and black cultures?

[Will L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this after hiking the Larapinta trail — the stories and descriptions of the Australian outback, especially the stories of the Aranda people, inspired me to read this book.

The hard toiling journey that Strehlow took to Horseshoe Bend in the harsh uncompromising desert makes you really feel for him. His internal struggle with his faith as he comes to terms with the end of his life also makes for an engaging tale.

Overall this gave me a better understanding of the conflict between indigenous people and pastoralists in the early 1900s, as well as the connection to land that the Aranda people have had.

[Donald Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story.