A settlement very similar to that of the Danes at East Poowong was a Swedish group settlement at Emerald» Because this settlement is the only known purely Swedish farming group in Australia, it deserves close
attention. The following paragraphs present the story of a Swedish pioneer settler, Carl Axel Nobelius, both to give some understanding on how a group of Swedish settlers gathered around a single pioneer and to indicate the kind of contribution a Scandinavian settler could make to Australian industry.
C.A. Nobelius was born in 1850 at Tampere, Finland, of Swedish 3
parents, and arrived in Australia in February 1871» Where he lived in Sweden is difficult to ascertain; the most reliable information comes from his marriage announcement in 1877 giving his native place as Gefle
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(nowadays Gavle), Sweden. As a lad he had been trained as a nurseryman, and when he reached Melbourne he soon found employment in the nurseries of South Yarra and Toorak. Being ambitious to have a place of his own Nobelius found that the red soils of the Dandenong Ranges were specially suitable for making good rooting systems in fruit trees. He took up a large area of heavily timbered land at Emerald, on the northern slope facing Warburton, then miles from any transport service.
He was a handsome man, tall, strong and very athletic, a hard and faithful worker. He worked well at the nurseries in
1
Lyng, Emigrantnoveller og Skitser (Emigrant Short Stories and Sketches), Melbourne 1901, pp.100-105; the quotation from Lyng, Scandinavians in Australasia, p»42; the best description is M.C.L» Hansen, "Pioneers of the Danish Settlement at East Poowong", The Land of the Lyre Bird; A Story of Early Settlement in the Great Forest of South Gippsland, Melbourne 1920, pp.385-389; also Lyng, "Scandinavian Settlement in Australia", Norden, 937, 18 March 1933, p.7; and Lyng, Scandinavians in Australia, New Zealand, p 26.
2
Christmas, p»224. 3
V i c . N a t ., 1894. Most literary sources, to be quoted later, give birthplace and year of arrival incorrectly.
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Melbourne all the week, and then boarded the midday train on Saturday for Narre Warren. He would walk the sixteen miles to Emerald, over a rough and hilly bush track. He cleared patch after patch of the heavily timbered land, walking back the sixteen miles to Narre Warren on Sunday night to catch the return train ^
Gradually the hillsides were cleared and burned off, 'and by 1880 Nobelius could make his home there and open up a nursery.
At first it was a matter of rearing seedling fruit-trees for known customers, but he was led into experimenting with European trees that give good shade in summer. Part of his place was turned into an acclimatisation garden, a sort of
laboratory. In the hot little townships growing up in the north, there was need for trees of leafy foliage that would absorb the dust. To the shire councils of such places came circulars from the nursery at Emerald, telling what could be supplied in the way of 'ornamental1 trees that would give shade in summer, and let the sun through in winter.2
Thus Nobelius, being a true pioneer, established a great organization that was then the finest fruit tree nursery in the
Commonwealth. He was one of the best known figures in early Emerald and virtually 'uncrowned king' of the district. It may justly be said that he placed Emerald on the map, for in its hey-day, around the turn of the century, his nursery provided employment for virtually all local
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residents. Under the name 'Gembrook Nurseries' Nobelius traded with South Africa, South America, India, New Zealand, Japan, Europe etc. In 1903 he advertised one million trees for sale. In 1908 he bought 600 acres on the Tamar River in Tasmania, where he planted 40,000 fruit trees, thereby creating the largest one-block privately-owned orchard in the
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world. When the industry was at its height in 1914 the stock amounted
1
Edward E, Pescott, "The Pioneers of Horticulture in Victoria", The Victorian Historical Magazine, XVIII, February 1940, p.13,
2
Nettie Palmer, The Dandenongs, Melbourne 1953, pp,35-36, 3
Helen Coulson, Story of the Dandenongs, 1838-1958, Melbourne 1959, p „224 o
4
Lyng, Scandinavians in Australia, New Zealand, pp.31-32, Also Coulson, p.225, relates that "The nursery (at Emerald) became the largest in the Southern Hemisphere", See also Holmes, "The Influence of Foreign
to two million trees covering 450 acres, and during the war years this increased considerably„
Nobelius' business collapsed during World War I when it was
impossible to export stock. When the nursery was sold after his death in 1921 in accordance with the terms of his will, the property was bought by a syndicate of businessmen and the nursery was later sold to A.M. Nicholas, who in turn sold it to C.L, Nobelius. The latter retained the nursery until its sale to S, Linton and Son of Clayton in 1955.^
The importance of C.A, Nobelius - in addition to being a pioneer of the Australian fruitgrowing industry - lies in the fact that around him gathered the only known Swedish farming group settlement in Australia. Even an Australian source relates of G.F. Rydberg, "one of three Swedes who came to Emerald 70 years ago to assist Nobelius in clearing his
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land". The Swedish settlement was, however, larger, and from
contemporary pages of the Norden it appears that by the 1920s a dozen 3
Swedish families had settled there.
In addition to these group settlements there were other batches of Scandinavian settlers, as in the Corumburra district where a number, mostly miners from Campbell's Creek, settled down as farmers. But
generally the Scandinavians interspersed amongst the general population of Victoria and soon became absorbed into it, Even in the few group settlements assimilation was quick. At East Poowong the English language and customs were prominent by the 1890s; the Danish language was used only as a curiosity, the older children understanding it but using it 4 reluctantly, and while the Divine Service was conducted in English, Another contemporary observer reported that the Danish, German and English languages were used in religious meetings,^ indicating that the 1
Coulson, p,226„
2
Ibid,, p ,225. 3
"Makarna Westlund's Guldbrollop" (Spouses Westlund's Golden Wedding), Norden, 661, 29 April 1922, p.4.
4
Lyng, Emigrantnoveller, p,98= 5
H L Hansen, "The Danish Settlement", Kirketidende (Church News, a short term Scandinavian-Australian religious paper), 9, 7 October 1898, p. 130
transition was under way, and when Lyng visited the colony in 1925 all the Danish he found left were a few person's names.'*'
While the Danes preferred goldfields and later often settled on the land many Swedes and Norwegians preferred Melbourne and they were more numerously engaged in shipping than the Danes. In general, the
Scandinavians in Victoria consisted of two elements: on the one hand the Danes, mainly deriving from the goldrush period and often with peasant background and an inclination for close settlements; on the other hand the more dispersed Swedes and Norwegians, often with a seafaring
background, whose main immigration took place in the 1880s (when their number more than doubled in a decade) and with few co-national women. The few Scandinavian females, especially the Swedes and Norwegians, preferred Melbourne and its suburbs while the Danish women were more
scattered with their menfolk in rural areas
In the late nineteenth century Finnish settlers were obviously not numerous in Victoria; in 1881 there were only five Russian-born males engaged in shipping, the major occupation of the first Finns in
Australia. Their 'seaman' immigration pattern followed closely that of the Swedes and Norwegians. The Victorian census of 1901 did, somewhat unusually, show Finns separately, revealing 74 males and 3 females born
in Finland, but it must be borne in mind that whenever Australian censuses before 1921 enumerated the Finns separately as in this census and in Queensland in 1886 and 1901, other Finns may have reported themselves as Russians.
Scandinavian Life in Victoria
Information about social life of Scandinavians in Victoria during this period is scarce. A Scandinavian society in Melbourne was stated to have existed for a time in the 1870s; Lyng had only heard of it and did not know many details. Consequently in his early works he considered that a Scandinavian society founded in 1880 was the first one in
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