JOHANNES REUTHER (1861 - 1913)
Johannes
Reuther played a key role in the preservation of Dieri mythology:
"One
of the nations of the Central Lakes region is the Dieri people who occupy the Lake Eyre basin,
whose past glory is symbolised in their remarkable carvings, called toas. These
finely crafted objects were both ornamental and practical: a carved length of
timber, usually 15 to 45 centimetres long, sharpened at one end.
The Dieri lived in one of the world's toughest regions: a long summer with
temperatures as high as 50 C, followed by short, freezing winters. The
landscape is dominated by stony plains, sand hills, dry saltpans and lakes.
Every few decades Lake Eyre would fill with water, but mostly the Dieri would
rely on the waterholes of Cooper Creek and the underground cisterns in the
Simpson Desert. In their eyes, they lived in a vast garden, with familiar and
sacred places, plentiful supplies of food and an invisible culture that only
they could see.
The Lake Eyre people spoke a dozen languages, and many of them added German and
English when a Lutheran mission was established at Lake
Killalpaninna. The languages and boundaries of the people were established in
the Mura, or Dreamtime. The saga tells how the heroes of the Mura, the
muramuras, came out of the earth and talked to the people in their own
language. But whenever they went into a new nation, they were always able to
speak the local language. The tradition is continued today and Dieri people are
able to speak many languages.
There was a great deal of intermarriage among the peoples of Lake Eyre and a
child was expected to take on the language of his father, although this
tradition was not always followed.
The resistance to European encroachment and the scourge of imported diseases
all but wiped out the Dieri people. In fact the Dieri who guided the first
Europeans to the area were shot, simply for 'knowing too much about them'.
Much of the heritage of the people would have been lost without the work of
Bavarian-born Johann George Reuther, who came to Dieri country as a Lutheran
missionary and stayed to show the world their genius as sculptors. He collected
some four hundred toas that were used by the Dieri as direction
posts and location finders. A toa indicates a particular locality according to
its topographical character: its shape is the place name reference, colours
indicate the location of a camp and its geographic features.
Toas were used to tell a traveller whether the people were still in that
settlement or had moved on, and to where they had gone. A toa would also be stuck
in the ground in one of the unoccupied dwellings, to protect it from wind and
weather, and provide helpful information to visiting friends.
Toas have a bewildering range of forms, including birds' feathers, lizard's
feet, human hair, netting, tools and wood. Others show carved representations
of boomerangs, wooden bowls, geographical features and parts of human and
animal bodies. Other toas bear painted designs, without any carved, moulded or
attached objects. The most complex toas have been found around Lake Gregory,
and are made of several different materials. Desert mulga was preferred, though
gypsum was also used. The most popular colours were red, black and yellow, the
components of the modern Aboriginal national flag, which was designed by a South
Australian."
From: D. Stewart (ed.) Burnum Burnum’s Aboriginal Australia: A Traveller’s
Guide (1988)
