Eudundan-German-Lutheran-Women 1904-1914
‘There were only seven houses in Eudunda – one hotel, our store, a saddler, bootmaker, smithy, miller and a butcher… we had often said jokingly “Wait ’til the railway to Eudunda is finished”, but we really didn’t believe it would come to pass. Now there was life in Eudunda and all kinds of rabble found its way there”
Emilie Appelt started writing a diary in 1904, carefully setting down daily events, intimate thoughts and cherished wishes. The then fifty-two-year-old had already had an extraordinary life. Now, her diary would become the most valuable historic record of early Eudunda.
Writing across ten tumultuous years at the turn of the twentieth century, Emilie witnessed the changing fortunes of a rural commercial hub until the eve of World War One, a seismic event that would transform her town. Her diary records a community on the precipice of change, a world now lost to us.
In this new edition of Emilie Appelt’s diary, historian Samuel Doering charts the various facets – personal, political, cultural, social, religious – that punctuates Emilie’s diary. From everyday routine to ghastly accidents, and from intimate personal confessions to the cogs of change in religious and political spheres, Emilie’s diary tells a rounded story of life in Eudunda a century ago
Profound and personal in equal measure, The Diary of Emilie Appelt is an outstanding record of the daily life of an ethnically-German Lutheran woman in the bustling South Australian town of Eudunda
Edited by Samuel Doering
Translated by Vida Hoopmann
