Chapter 7.2 – German Charlie

German Charlie an identity at Pinnaroo

When my father, Maynard O’Connor Snr died in 1995, among his belongings was a little book called “German Charlie, Man of the Mallee,” by Marilyn Foster-Holmes.

On page 19 and 20 of that little book I found a mention of my father and his association with “German Charlie.” It reads:

“Mick’ AA Phillips arrived in Pinnaroo in 1911 and left in 1920. He worked as a blacksmith for Koch and Sharrad and remembered ‘German Charlie’ well during the years 1915-1917. Mick writes: ‘On particular hot summer days, me and some cobbers,DOOLEY O’CONNOR, Edgar Mobbs, Ginger Mobbs and a fella called Danny something or other and possibly others, liked to chip in threepence (about 2 cents each) to buy a flagon of beer which cost ninepence (about eight cents) in those days. If ‘old German’ as we always called him was hanging around he would sidle up and patiently wait to be noticed. We always invited him to share the flagon, which he happily did.”

My father used to tell me many stories about ‘German Charlie’ and so I think his story warrants a place in my family’s history.

Fay’s Dad Maynard O’Connor

As a young man of 20, German Charlie, or Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm von Worthman, as was his birth-name, arrived in Pinnaroo in the Murray Mallee east of Adelaide, South Australia. He was born on the 28th July 1887 and lived at various times in Holstein, Hanover and Hamburg Germany. He is obviously named after Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia and the von in his name suggests that he came from an aristocratic or at least a ‘good’ family, but being the younger son, would not have inherited his father’s estate. He arrived in Pinnaroo in 1907 and lived for many years at a campsite he made in Parr’s Scrub near the Pinnaroo racecourse.

In my father’s diary he makes mention of ‘German Charlie’. He wrote, ‘There was a machine called a stripper which had a comb ranging from 6ft to 10 ft wide. We were out cleaning wheat one day when there was a thunderstorm with lightning and rain. We all got in the stripper out of the rain. There was a chap with us we used to call ‘German Charlie,’ the only name we ever knew him by. He was one of the last of the district’s bullock team drivers. While the lightning was around he would not get in the stripper because of the possibility of being struck by lightning, but went and lay on his stomach on the ground in the rain.’

German Charlie lived for 63 years in Pinnaroo and his eccentricities endeared him to the town. Every town has its colorful characters and Pinnaroo’s was ‘German Charlie.’

Today I am going to Pinnaroo to learn more about ‘German Charlie’ and his history. It is Saturday 13th June 1955. In 1955 I was 16 years of age and on this weekend my mum and dad and my friend Nancy King and I were travelling to Pinnaroo to stay for the weekend with my dad’s friends, the Wurfel family who had a farm just outside of Pinnaroo.

Dad drove us first to Geranium where all the Wurfel boys were playing a football match for Parilla Well against a team Dad called ‘United.’ We watched the play and shouted ourselves hoarse barracking for the Wurfel’s team, Parilla Well and when they won by 2.2 goals we were all delighted. After the match Nancy and I drove in the Wurfel’s car for the remaining 46 miles to the farm. Ken, Max and Keith Wurfel were in the front seat and Ian Wurfel, Nancy and I sat in the back. We arrived in time for dinner and afterwards Nancy and I had great fun playing ‘hide and seek’ with torches out in the scrub with the boys.

The next day, Sunday, was free and I asked the boys if they would drop me off in the town so that I could go for a walk and have a look at the ‘sights’ of the town. Ken drove me in and said he would meet me in two hours time outside the general store.

I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I knew that a girl called Marilyn Foster (later her married name would be Foster-Holmes) was also on holiday in Pinnaroo, staying with her aunt and uncle, Wyn and Bert Bailey. I walked along the Railway Terrace South, hoping that I would see her somewhere there, and there she was, walking with Wyn and coming my way.

I noticed that on the other side of the street and also walking toward me was ‘German Charlie.’ He had his head down and his hands clasped behind his back. When he saw the three of us standing on the footpath watching him, he began casting quick nervous glances towards us and then hastily turned and marched off back along the street in the direction from which he had come.I turned to Maralyn and her Aunt Wyn.

“What a strange fellow he is! Do you know him? I asked Wyn and Marilyn who had paused to watch “German Charlie,” as he beat his hasty retreat.

“Yes, we do, said Wyn, that’s ‘German Charlie.’ He’s quite an identity in our township and is almost like part of the town’s heritage.”

“What does he do in the town, does he have a job at all?” I asked.

“He drives a bullock team and works around on the farms, anywhere where he can find work.”

“And where does he live?” I asked.

“He lives in a humpy in Parr’s scrub.”

“Par’s scrub? ” I asked, “and  where is that?”

“It is an area of scrub land owned by the council and it is on the Adelaide to Murrayville road on the south east corner of the town and not far from Main street. Sometimes it is called the ‘The Whoopee Scrub.’”

“I should introduce myself. My name is Fay O’Connor and I am staying with the Wurfel’s on their farm this weekend.”

“Pleased to meet you, Fay, my name is Marilyn Foster and this is my Aunty Wyn and I too am just here for the weekend.” We chatted for a moment or two and then I suggested that we go to the general store and buy some lemonade and find a place to sit and chat. They agreed and so we walked to the store and ordered lemonade and then sat on a nearby council bench to drink our drinks in the shade of a tall gum tree.

“So Wyn, what can you tell me about German Charlie?”

“’German Charlie’ seems always to have been an identity at Pinnaroo, but he probably first came here around 1907-1910. Pinnaroo was a very small town at that time, probably only about 30 families living on farms and in the township.The railway had only just been opened up and Pinnaroo had just been misnamed, as it turned out,  ‘the Land of Promise.’”

“It certainly was mis-named! Both sides of my family, the Dangerfield’s and the O’Connor’s had farms near Pinnaroo in those early years and certainly for the O’Connor’s it proved to be anything but ‘a land of promise.’ So what did Charlie do when he came to Pinnaroo?”

“In the early days there were many friendly folk of German origin for Charlie to speak to in his own language and he was treated very hospitably by them. At first he was as well-groomed as any young man in the district. Mr and Mrs Kraehenbuehl say that he fell in love with one of their daughters and courted her but when she refused his advances he was greatly affected by this rejection. One thing their daughter does remember from that time is that ‘German Charlie’ told her that whilst he was in Germany he had witnessed the collapse of a building in which a loved one was trapped.”

“How sad. When did Charlie start to become a recluse,” I asked.

”When he realized that the girl he loved did not love him, he became very despondent and after that he moved his campsite to Parr’s Scrub near the Pinnaroo racecourse.

“What sort of work did German Charlie do in those days?”

“He did general farm work for anyone who wanted to hire him. One family he worked for was the Forrest family.  After he had finished a job for them he would come to the back door to be paid and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake, but he would never come inside. He would only ever sit in the open to eat. When no-one was around he used to have a shower out in the open. Our grandma Forrest says she once saw him running around the racecourse wearing nothing more than an old horse collar!

Sometime between 1908 and 1911, German Charlie purchased a bullock team from Dick Edwards. He obviously didn’t know too much about bullocks at that time because when his team got bogged in sand north of Pinnaroo, German Charlie rode in on a horse to buy a packet of cartridges. He told Dick Edwards he was going to shoot the bullocks because they were no good to him bogged in the sand. Dick Edwards, laughed at him and went back with Charlie to where the bullocks were. He gave his whip a couple of good cracks and away went the team! ‘German Charlie’ hadn’t known that the cracking sound of the whip would get them hauling and out of the sand.

“He was lucky that he met up with Dick Edwards wasn’t he? before he shot all his team. What sort of work did Charlie do with his bullocks?”

“To clear the land, the farmers would hire a bullocky such as ‘German Charlie’ to scrub-roll their land. Sometimes the bullocks would fall and get ‘staked’ by spring-back mallee. When Gundy Billing was only 12, he says that he saw Charlie lift a staked bullock shoulder high to remove a stake then place the bullock gently back on the ground. Whether that’s true or not, who knows. German Charlie’s doings have become part of the “myths and legends” of  Pinnaroo, so it is hard to know what is true and what is not. At any rate, he must have been very fit and strong if he was able to do that. Charlie treated his bullocks like pets and although he had a whip he only used it for its sound, not to whip the bullocks.

“Did Charlie have any family in Australia? Was there anyone who cared or worried about him from home in Germany?”

“No, but he used to write to his family back in Germany. I don’t think he used to tell them his true situation in Australia. The story goes that his family became worried about his welfare and sent his sister out to Australia to check on him. She arrived; a refined and stylish lady, who was absolutely broken-hearted when she found her brother had been living in such straitened circumstances. From then on, Charlie withdrew even more from society. Year by year he became more eccentric and more reclusive. Eventually, he sold his bullock team but kept one bullock as a pet. This pet bullock gave him a lot of grief when it was always getting into people’s gardens and trampling them.”

“Did Charlie talk to anyone much?”

“Not much. Charlie didn’t like talking to people and would only speak if someone spoke to him first. If he needed something, like kerosene for his lantern, he would go over to Park Motors and hold up the lantern and call ‘Mister, Mister.’ Someone would notice him and then fill it for him for a token fee. He did seem quite fond of kids and would open up to a child as he would not do with an adult. He would talk to children around a campfire about the stars and seemed to be quite knowledgeable about them.”

“What did he do about washing and cleaning his clothes and such?”

“Dave Westphalen told me that ‘German Charlie’ used to come to his dad’s blacksmith shop every morning and jump in a large tank full of water that dad used for fast cooling of smithy tools. He would jump in the nuddy, have a quick swim and that was his bath for the day. To wash his clothes he would build a huge fire and boil his clothes in two big tubs. He trudged to and fro between tap and tubs carrying buckets of water until the final rinse. When he was satisfied that his washing was clean enough he would hang it all out on the surrounding bushes and dry it all in the sun. He spent a lot of time patching and re-patching his garments.”

“Did he live always at the campsite in Parr’s scrub?

“When he was working somewhere on a farm a long way away from his campsite, he would set up a campsite wherever he was working, but he usually came back to his old camp when he could. During the 1930s, however, when times were bad, some homeless families joined Charlie and camped near to his campsite in Parr’s scrub. Charlie didn’t cope very well with that so he moved out and only returned when they had all moved on.

There is a story that Cora Austin tells. One particularly cold winter she knitted a jumper for Charlie and left it in a box at his campsite. Two weeks later the jumper was still where she had left it. Cora took the jumper home, washed it, crumpled it and sat on it whilst she drove to his campsite and left the jumper in its ‘used’ state near his campsite. This time he wore it, but with the sleeves cut out. He used the sleeves on his legs as leg-warmers.”

“Have you ever managed to take any photos of German Charlie, Wyn?”

“I once waited for hours in Eudunda Farmer’s lane where I knew he came to shop but some sixth sense must have alerted him to the fact that I had a camera with me, so he simply didn’t show. The one time I did manage to get a photo of him it was completely unplanned. He was standing against a wall when Sam Billing approached him and I aimed and clicked and got a perfect photo. I managed to get a photo of his humpy on another occasion when he was away, but that is all. I’m glad to have those for history’s sake.”

“Do the townsfolk treat Charlie well?”

“Yes, they do, in fact most are quite fond of Charlie and although he keeps very much to himself, they keep watch over him and his well-being, particularly as he is getting older. Dick McKenzie tried to get a pension for Charlie, but he wouldn’t sign the papers. In the end the council agreed to pay him to be ‘caretaker of Parr’s Scrub’ and that helps him get by.”

“Well, Fay, we have to go now, but it has been really nice to meet you. Give our regards to the Wurfel’s and maybe we will see you again next time you come to Pinnaroo.”

“Yes, that would be great. Thanks for telling me Charlie’s story and I have really enjoyed spending time with you. Here’s Ken Wurfel now to pick me up and take me back to the farm.”

I climbed into Ken’s car and we drove back to the farm and as we drove I thought about the book I knew that Marilyn Foster-Holmes would one day write about Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm von Worthmann, ‘German Charlie, Man of the Mallee.’ ‘German Charlie’ was born 28th July 1887 and would die at Pinnaroo Soldiers Memorial Hospital on 8th Feb 1970, aged 82 years having lived 62 of his 82 years in crude bush humpies on the fringe of Pinnaroo South Australia.