Names
Australian Placenames of German Background
Germantown & Freeburgh, Victoria
Germantown is a locality 12km east of Bright in the 'High Country' in the north-east of Victoria. Freeburgh is a hamlet 8km south-east of Bright.
The names of Germantown and of Freeburgh have their origins with two German miners who came to the area in the 19th century. Heinrich Traulsen (born in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany in 1836, and arrived in Sydney in 1851), and Ferdinand Blumner (left Germany and arrived at Port Phillip in 1853) worked together on goldfields in NSW. In 1856 they went to the place in north-eastern Victoria that became Bright. They found gold on the Ovens River “at the mouth of German Creek, named after them”.[1]
The Ovens and Murray Advertiser first mentioned Germantown (also spelled German Town in the early years) on 13 May 1859. Traulsen and Blumner both became respected citizens of the area around Bright.
Placename sign: Germantown, High Country, Victoria
The hamlet of Freeburgh is not far from Germantown and was apparently named after Freiburg in Germany. Leslie Blake wrote in his book about place names in Victoria that Freeburgh was "named after Frieburg in Germany by a miner of German origins."[2] ‘Frieburg’ is almost certainly a spelling mistake. It is not clear which Freiburg in Germany was the namesake. The best-known German city with the name Freiburg is Freiburg im Breisgau, a beautiful city in Germany’s south-west in the Black Forest, not far from the borders with France and Switzerland. However, as Heinrich Traulsen was from Schleswig-Holstein in the north of Germany, it is perhaps possible that Freeburgh was named after the village Freiburg an der Elbe, on the south-west bank of the Elbe River. Opposite this Freiburg on the other side of the Elbe is Schleswig-Holstein.
This Freiburg, Freiburg an der Elbe, is part of the joint community of Nordkehdingen.
Placename sign: Freeburgh, High Country, Victoria
Another possible origin of the name Freeburgh could be Fredeburg, a village in Schleswig-Holstein in the north of Germany, about 22km south of the city of Lübeck ... Heinrich Traulsen came from Schleswig-Holstein. The German pronunciation of Fredeburg is not very different to ‘Freeburgh’.
It seems the Ovens and Murray Advertiser first mentioned Freeburgh on 2 March 1865, and on 1/10/1869 an official post office opened in Freeburgh (it closed one hundred years later in 1969).[3]
Other Germans were in the area. The Ovens & Murray Advertiser of 15 March 1862 mentions a dispute between Georg Holstein and Christian Brenckman about the Lisbon gold reef at Germantown.
♦ Notes:
1. Lloyd & Nunn (1987), p.11.
2. Blake, Les. (1976). Place names of Victoria. Adelaide: Rigby. p.101
3. "Post Office List". Opening and Closing Dates. Phoenix Auctions. (Search result *Freeburgh*). Retrieved 02 February 2023 / Government of Victoria. (1871, March 31st). Report on the Post Office and Telegraph Department for the year 1870. General Post Office, Melbourne. p.34
♦ References:
Kaufman, Rob. (2004). Alpine Shire Heritage Study – research notes. Personal communication, May 2004.
Lloyd, B. E. & Nunn, Kathy. (1987). Bright gold : the story of the people and the gold of Bright and Wandiligong. Brighton East (Victoria): Histec Publications.