FoLA Public Meeting, Thursday 29 February 2024

Church Stumps and Four Children’s Graves: Headington Hill, Qld

Speaker: Jennifer Stehn

$5 Donation

Held at Immanuel Lutheran Church, North Adelaide

LIVESTREAM on FoLA YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@friendsoflutheranarchives9644/live

Across Australia, there are remnants of small communities that no longer exist. People who pass by these sites today often don’t know of the community that once thrived there, of the people, their lives and why they disappeared. Everywhere, the land is layered with multiple lives. Local historians uncover the stories of past communities and connect them to the bigger picture – helping at times to change the big picture.

Jennifer Stehn has been interested in history all her life, reading it, dissecting it, writing about it – but never uncovering it, until now.

Twelve years ago, the Stehn family included the site of the St Peter’s Lutheran Church, Headington Hill, Queensland, as part of reunion celebrations. Jennifer wrote the family history, The Fred and Alma Story, that was launched the following year. Since then, a small, and ever-expanding group, has adopted and cared for this acre of land, surrounded by farmland looking west across the Darling Downs. All that remains of the past are the 47 wooden stumps of the church and four children’s graves. But now there is a vibrant Headington Hill Heritage Acre Association (Inc) whose members regularly visit for working bees, picnics, reunions – or just stop by for a cup of tank water and feel the presence of the past. Jennifer’s recent book, One Acre of History, tells the story of the people, the pastors, establishing and dismantling the church, and the present-day association caring for the site. A complete set of minutes of the small congregation, mostly in German, was valuable source material for this story. The world the minutes meticulously document, from 1900 to 1941, is gone – the church, the farming community, the connections with the German culture. But the threads into lives before and after are there for us to pick up and to help make sense of who we are now.

Jennifer Stehn grew up on a farm at Headington Hill, Queensland. She went to Adelaide to attend the University of Adelaide and Lutheran Teachers College. She had an extensive career in education, first as a classroom teacher, then as a deputy principal and principal. She worked for many years in curriculum development at state and national levels, remaining always committed to the incorporation of social justice perspectives in teaching and learning.