The first winemaker in Australia - Philip Schaefer

This is the first part of our new series about stories from the NSW State Library. Louise Anemaat is the director of the library and information services at the prestigious institution, where many documents relating to our Australian history is stored in vast archives. She came to our studios to chat about some examples of German collections in the library. In this episode we start with the adventurous story of Philip Schaeffer, who set off in 1790 on the ship “Guardian” and finally arrived a year later, after a disastrous shipwreck at the Cape of Good Hope with the second fleet. He was one of the very first free immigrants to the new colony and received 57 hectares of land in Parramatta, where he established the first vineyard in Australia.

Thomas Watling, nördliche Sicht auf Sydney Cove 1794, State Library of NSW Source: Wiki Commons

Louise Anemaat: Executive Director, Library and Information Services and Dixson Librarian

Her native language is English, her second language is Dutch, and then she also speaks French and German - and is very proficient in both of them. She joins us at SBS German for a series of stories about the German collections within the NSW State Library. Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about the early days, like this story about Philip Schaefer, one of the first free settlers in the new colony, who arrived in 1790, about the "Kleine Wiener Theater", set up by Jewish refugees in the 1930s, about the "enemy aliens", the Germans who were put into internment camps during WW1 and whose diaries can be found in the library, and many other stories.

Louise Anemaat, State Library of NSW Source: State Library of NSW