"I am in the middle of breaking camp and travelling further north to Makay [sic]... You would not believe what it looks like here! Birds, marsupials, shells, corals, insects and plants. A lot is still waiting to be skinned and preserved, through this all kinds of living animals are scrambling around between my feet. I still have to look through the plants, you know that when the stalks are not dry they go mouldy, and they have to make a long trip! My fingers are itching to work..." (2)

A German Naturalist Godeffroy and his Museum An Unexplored Wilderness European Recognition

Return to Germany Amalie Dietrich's Equipment Teachers' Unit

(1) Portrait of Amalie Dietrich on her 60th birthday, drawn by Christian Wilhelm Allers, 1881. Held in photo archives of the Museum Für Völkerkunde Zu Leipzig, cited in Ray Sumner, A Woman in the Wilderness, The Story of Amalie Dietrich in Australia, NSW University Press, Kensington, 1993

(2) Letter from Amalie Dietrich to her daughter Charitas Bischoff, Letter 4, Rockhampton, 2 February 1866, cited in Ray Sumner, A Woman in the Wilderness, The Story of Amalie Dietrich in Australia, NSW University Press, Kensington, 1993, p.122