The Strehlows’ epic journey to Horseshoe Bend
October 1922: Finke River, Central Australia. Fifty-year-old Carl Strehlow, a pastor at Hermannsburg Mission, is ill. Prayer won’t help, nor will calls to Adelaide. It soon becomes apparent to the local Arrernte (or Aranda) people, Carl’s wife, Frieda, and the youngest of their six children, 14-year-old Theodor, that drastic action is required to save the pastor.
This is a story that might have been forgotten, if not for the superhuman, almost saint-like qualities of Carl Strehlow, who was suffering from pleurisy and dropsy (oedema) when he was strapped to an upholstered chair and carried through the desert, with Theodor travelling behind on a dray in a desperate attempt to save his father. Theodor went on to document this pilgrimage in what became an Australian literary classic, the 1969 Journey to Horsehoe Bend, which was re-released in 2016.
Between and within cultures: Carl and Theodor Strehlow
Carl Strehlow began his stint as pastor and superintendent in 1896 at Hermannsburg
