The Austrian Frigate SMS Novara

and the Novara Scientific Expedition of 1857-9

including its visit to Australia 1858

Compiled by Michale Organ

with contributions from J.E. Fletcher (deceased), Georg Vladar, Dymphna Clark, G.L. McMullen and T. Darragh

Introduction and Tribute to J.E. Fletcher

A modern account of the visit to Sydney, Australia, during 1858 of the Austrian scientific expedition aboard His Imperial Majesty's (SMS) Frigate Novara begins not with the vessel itself, but with the late German scholar, historian and University of Sydney academic John E. Fletcher (1940-92). If not for this prolific bibliographer, enthusiastic researcher into and promoter of Austrian-German-Australian historical links, the Novara's visit to New South Wales between 5 November and 7 December 1858 would remain largely unknown in Australia. Therefore, it is fitting that any preface to a collection of Novara-related material - as is to be found on this Web site - should make clear the debt owed Mr Fletcher, a man who the current compiler never met, but who can only be admired for both the quantity and quality of his work. His published legacy will remain influential for many years to come, and will undoubtedly stir others on to related areas of research.

The reason for this on-going relevance/reverence is the fact that John Fletcher opened many doors to researchers interested in Australian-Germanic relations during the nineteenth century, leaving the contents therein exposed and awaiting - nay, demanding - further investigation. The Novara story is one such treasure trove which he only partially (though nevertheless substantially) revealed. Indeed, in 1988, following his own researches on the subject over the previous five year period, John Fletcher wrote, knowingly and somewhat self-effacingly:

......the full story of the Novara's visit to Sydney has yet to be put together, has yet to be told. It is a story that no historian - professional, amateur, or local - has tackled.

Of course this long-time student of German history was underestimating the value of his own contributions up to that point in time. By 1988 he had identified and studied the major published works and extant manuscripts pertaining to the Novara expedition, and had developed a deep understanding of the events surrounding its visit to Australia in 1858. Furthermore, John Fletcher must be admired for publishing the initial results of his research, and thereby encouraging others to take up the mantle of translation and investigation, rather than working entirely in isolation until 'the job is complete', which, in many cases, maybe never! It is extremely disheartening that this Australian academic did not live to share in the on-going task of further revealing this episode of colonial history, having been tragically struck down by cancer in 1992. Sad indeed that he never came to complete 'the full story,' though what he did discover and publish is nevertheless a substantial record, and a worthy introduction to the Novara episode. For this reason, the present Web site includes updated and expanded versions of the two major articles on the Novara in Australian waters, which were published by Fletcher in 1985 and 1988.

The modern elucidation of the Novara visit was initially revealed to an Australian audience during 1984, within Fletcher's John Degotardi - Printer, publisher and photographer (Sydney, 1984). Pages 37-41 of that book dealt with 'The visit of the Novara' to Sydney, within the context of the German Degotardi's role in reporting the visit within the local German-language newspapers, and in his involvement in associated festivities. The topic was more fully addressed the following year - expanded to 18 pages, and with the addition of copious endnotes - in Karl Scherzer and the Visit of the Novara to Sydney, 1858, published in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society. This work dealt with the major social events surrounding the visit, using as its focus the published and manuscript accounts of the expedition's official historiographer and ethnographer, Karl Scherzer which, by chance, reside in the Mitchell Library collection, Sydney. As a scholarly work it was evidence of the intimate knowledge Fletcher possessed of nineteenth century German-language material pertaining to Australia - a resource which still remains largely inaccessible to the non-German speaking community.

John Fletcher's work on the Novara did not end there. During 1988 he published a second article - "On unlocking a time-warp": The Novara in Sydney, November - December 1858 (19 pages, plus endnotes). It reproduced sections of the 1985 piece along with introducing much new information of a bibliographic nature, further describing various unpublished and published journals and diaries which he had discovered in the course of his research. These gave additional accounts of the vessel's stay in Sydney, from both Austrian and Australian perspectives. As a result, we were made aware of a vast amount of material of a political, economic, scientific and social nature pertaining to those 5 weeks of November - December 1858. There were journals, diaries, letters and publications by the Austrian scientists and sailors, Australian politicians and scientists, and even diary entries by young Sydney girls infatuated with the visiting foreigners. A concluding paragraph to the 1988 article went on to note:

The complete dossier of the Novara's visit to Sydney remains to be completed. Primary sources in Vienna and Trieste are yet to be sighted, evaluated, used. Further Sydney material will include diaries, official records, correspondence, personal papers, biographies and memoirs, autograph-albums, scrap-books, visitors' books, photographs, dance and theatre programmes. Only then, and not until then, will the chrysaline time-capsule, that is the Novara's stay in Australian waters, reveal once more its true iridescence.

A final, short article on the expedition's artist Joseph Selleny, adapted from Fletcher's 1988 work, appeared posthumously in the 1992 Dictionary of Australian Artists to 1870, edited by Joan Kerr. This brought to a close his published work on the Novara. It is unclear whether Fletcher was working on other Novara material at the time of his death. Further unpublished material of relevance has not been located within the John Fletcher Papers in the collection of the Fisher Library Rare Book Section, University of Sydney, however a comprehensive search has yet to be undertaken. John Fletcher was never able to carry through plans to release a populist 'picture book' account of the Novara's Sydney visit - a project he had discussed with fellow historian and student of Austrian history, Marlene Norst.

The two Fletcher articles presented on this Web site appear largely as published, with minor additions and corrections by the editor, bearing in mind the constraints originally placed upon them at the time of publication. For example, when they initially appeared as journal articles, they would have been limited to about 5000 words, thus requiring lengthy journal and published quotes or extracts to be deleted by the author. As a result, whereas in the 1985 article Fletcher refers to (but does not reproduce) descriptions of the Novara Ball and German Club dinner contained within the Sydney Morning Herald, those pieces have been included in full within this edition. John Fletcher's original short article on the artist Joseph Selleny has also been included, though substantially expanded by this author to incorporate a detailed Catalogue of Works relating to his time in the colony, with more than fifty individual works (watercolours, pencil sketches, engravings) listed.

The current editor's own interest in the Novara expedition arose out of his own researches into the art history of the Illawarra district of New South Wales during the colonial era. This research brought to light the visitation by Joseph Selleny in 1858, and also related material associated with the visit to the district by a contingent of Novara scientists and naval officers. This led on to a reading of the work of J.E. Fletcher, and to a discovery of additional material of relevance.

It should be stated at the outset that the aim of the present site is to carry on the work of John E. Fletcher in bringing to the notice of the Australian community, via bibliographic compilation, original research, and precise translation, material of relevance to Australian history. The Novara episode is of import scientifically, politically and socially - in its revelation of how the Colony was then seen by a 'foreign' (i.e. non-British) European power, and how the locals in turn viewed Austria and the Germans. Its place in the overall scheme of Austrian-Australian relations since the time of Captain Cook 1770 is briefly discussed within M.J. Norst and J. McBride's Austrians and Australians (Sydney 1988), though John Fletcher's articles give the most detailed account to date.

The surviving records of the Novara visit present us with a snapshot view of the Colony in the middle of the century, from a distinctly Austrian perspective. At the time, the Hapsburg Empire, with Vienna at its centre, was a multicultural, multilingual society, therefore on board ship were men who spoke Italian, Austrian and German dialects. In November 1858 New South Wales was still very much the satellite of Mother England, attempting to shake off the shackles of over half a century as a penal colony, and in some social turmoil as a result of the recent, and on-going, gold discoveries. It was also politically immature, though on the road to independent statehood with the implementation of a Legislative Assembly and workable local government, whilst at all times wary of foreign invasion and insecure as a nation. During the late 1850s and early 1860s, following on the Crimean War, the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria expressed this concern through the erection of coastal defences mounted with cannon, and the getting up of voluntary regiments to man them. Though forewarned of the scientific intent of the Novara expedition, the vessel itself - the largest man-of-war to enter Port Jackson up to that point in time - must have been somewhat intimidating to the colonial authorities, for a vessel such as this could have quickly disabled Fort Macquarie and the various other harbour fortifications, leaving Sydney exposed to an invading fleet.

Perhaps this paranoia, built upon the overwhelming sense of physical isolation from Mother England, may have been one of the reasons that the expedition was to some degree shunned by local authorities, and the scientific establishment in the form of the Philosophical Society failed to formally welcome the members of the scientific contingent, though reasons for these omissions were forthcoming at the time. For example, both the Governor-General (Sir William Denison) and Colonial Secretary had recently suffered family bereavements at the time of the Novara's arrival, and these were reasons given for their lack of enthusiasm shown in organising a formal welcome to the Novara and its crew. With regards to the local scientific community, many of the Church of England clergy who were strong supporters of the struggling Philosophical Society - such as the Reverends W.B. Clarke and William Woolls - were engaged in a lengthy Anglican Conference at the time of the vessel's visit, thus perhaps accounting for that body's failure to organise any official welcome. We should also remember that Austria was a Catholic nation, and the majority of the crew followed its doctrine. Mass was regularly held on board. It is therefore understandable that this staunchly British, Anglican Colony would view the Austrians somewhat cooly.

If the hospitality of the English establishment was less than it should have been, not so with regards to the local German/Austrian population. Happy to welcome their countrymen, they organised a number of festivities for the Novara complement, welcomed the officers and scientists into their homes, and, along with other sections of Sydney society, opened their doors to the visitors, no doubt happy to receive part of the more than £12,000 paid out by the ship's burser whilst in port - only a portion of which would have been spent in connection with scientific endeavour and repairs to the vessel itself. After more than a year and a half at sea, all those associated with the Novara made the most of the welcome offered by this distant British colony.

The extant published and manuscript accounts of the visit of the Novara to Sydney during 1858 therefore present a multi-faceted picture of life in the Colony at a time of much change. The Expedition itself could be seen as one of the last of its type, the culmination of a process which began with the visit of Captain Cook and the Endeavour in 1770. In the intervening years numerous English, French, and even American scientific expeditions visited the Antipodes to collect and record its many exotic treasures and strange landscape. By 1858 Australia was adopting a degree of independence - local scientific societies were coming into existence and turning the tide on the traditional notion that all scientific discovery and classification must bear a European imprimatur to be legitimate; resident naturalists, geologists and ethnographers were publishing their findings locally, and building up collections for exhibition in city museums, as opposed to shipment to England and Europe. It is telling that the Novara scientists were given only seconds from the Australian Museum collection, and were required to purchase other items on the open market. There were no longer any major `discoveries' to be made, though the Novara botanists did identify 17 new species of beetle from New South Wales.

Austria's immediate interest in Australia can be traced back to Emperor Joseph II who, after Cook's discoveries, had shown a scientific curiosity in the southern continent and, in 1788, arranged for Australian botanical specimens to be introduced into the Botanical Gardens at Schönbrunn. As part of this scheme, when a Spanish expedition arrived at Port Jackson in March 1793, it had on board the Austrian botanist T. Haenke, whose task was to collect material for the Emperor. But by far the most important of these early Austrian scientists to visit Australia was Ferdinand Bauer, reknowned botanical artist who arrived in the Colony in 1801 as part of Matthew Flinder's expedition aboard the Investigator, sketched in various parts of eastern Australia and along its coastline, before returning to England in 1805. By 1816 Emperor Franz I had likewise requested Australian plant seeds for the Schönbrunn gardens, and when botanist Carl von Hügel arrived in the Colony in 1833 he was already familiar with their taxonomy, having for many years cultivated `New Holland' plants in his own gardens, along with studying various Austrian collections.

This Austrian-Germanic interest in Australian botany was most fully realised with the arrival in Victoria of Ferdinand von Müller, who went on to become the pre-eminent `Australian' botanist of the nineteenth century. Of course this confusion over distinctions between Austria and Germany - in regards to both geographical boundaries and ethnic subdivisions - was common in the Colony throughout the period, and remains so to this day, with the Austria of 1858 now divided amongst Italy, Germany, Czechoslavakia and Russia. As a result, throughout their stay in Sydney, the members of the Novara expedition were variously referred to as 'Germans' or 'Austrians', and the ill-fated German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt was lauded as the most famous of their countrymen to have visited here.

The extensive Novara record is therefore one of social, economic, political, scientific and artistic import to the history of the Colony of New South Wales during the middle part of the nineteenth century. In order to appreciate its achievement, a selection of the published and manuscript accounts are presented to the reader within this volume. Perhaps, in the near future, such translations and compilation of sources may lead to the production of a more consolidated work on the Novara visit of 1858.

Michael Organ, 14 December 1999

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