Spon Schafferius
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Julius Albert Schafferius (1901 - 1958)

Julius Albert (Spon) Schafferius
Born in Plainland, Queensland, Australiamap
Ancestors ancestors
Husband of — married 17 Oct 1925 in Plainland, Queensland, Australiamap
Descendants descendants
Father of , , [private son (1930s - unknown)], [private daughter (1930s - unknown)], , [private son (1940s - unknown)], [private daughter (1940s - unknown)] and [private daughter (1940s - unknown)]
Died at age 57 in Wondai, Queensland, Australiamap
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Profile last modified | Created 10 Oct 2016
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Contents

Biography

Queensland flag
Spon Schafferius was born in Queensland, Australia
Spon Schafferius has Prussian Roots.
This profile is part of the Schafferius Name Study.

Julius Albert Schafferius was born on 19 May 1901 in Plainland, Queensland, Australia. He was the son of Julius Wilhelm Schafferius and Margaretha (Funk) Schafferius. [1] [2] [3]

He married Maria Auguste Newman on 17 Oct 1925 in Plainland, Queensland, Australia. Spon and Mary were married at her father's home by Minister Charles Palethorpe of the Methodist Church. Spon was listed as a farmer and Mary as performing home duties. The witnesses were Ellen Steffens and Oskar Schafferius. [4] [5]

Julius was known as "Spon" and Marie known as Mary. Spon left the family farm at Plainland at age 16. He worked for a while at Rannes, west of Rockhampton, with is brother-in-law on a brigalow/pear block. His movements for some years thereafter are obscure bit it is believed that he worked with a travelling rodeo for a while. Spon had a reputation as a rough rider.

He also spent some time on the new railway line, Sydney to Brisbane, working near Kyogle. He worked for his future father-in-law Robert Newman, farming near Glenore Grove. Apparently he stayed with him for some time after marrying Mary.

About 1928 they worked on a dairy farm at Woodford where they remained for 6 years. The depression ended that job and they moved to Murgon where others of the family had settled. They got work dairying and general farming on "Angels Farm". The farm was about 1.5 miles from Murgon School where Allan and Colin were enrolled. They pay was 10 pounds per month and this was increase to 12 pounds as the depression declined. Of course, home eggs, milk, poultry and vegetables were free. It was a tough time for the family though as kids kept coming every two years. Spon and Mary stayed there for 12 years and then bought a cream run and a house in Perkins Street Murgon. They lived there until Spon's death. Mary remained in the house until she died over 20 years later.

Spon died in Wondai District Hospital of liver failure on 28 August 1959. He was buried the following day at Murgon Cemetery. [6] [3] [7] [3] [8] [9]

Young Julius Takes A Fall

A couple of memories about my father Julius (Spon), son of Julius, the youngest of the three Schafferius emigrants who came with their mother and step-father Karl Leitzau. The family was German speakers, of course, but when the older kids started to go to school, they were taught English and this language became more used as they grew up. So when young Julius was a child, the German language was not being used so much at home or socially, although I believe it was used at church services. However, in Laidley at that time (young Julius was born in 1901) a School for German Language was available on Saturdays. To this the Schafferius “young ’uns” were sent. My Dad had a few years of this tuition before it was stopped with the advent of the 1914-18 war. The language was declared verboten and pro German activity forcibly frowned upon. Anyone suspected of pro German feelings would have his place "inspected" and any incriminating paraphernalia - pictures of Kaiser Wilhelm etc - were confiscated. So after the war the Deutsch that our oldies used was more than somewhat bastardised, due to lack of use as well as the adoption of colloquial words and local idiom. Spon used a bit of German when addressing us kids as we grew up. It was mostly sprinkled amongst Australian adjectives used to chastise and berate us: bloody dummkopf, or nukmitz. The regular card games he played with other German descendants were also times when bits and pieces of German, mostly profane and derogatory would issue forth. By and large, though, German usage was not common.

After the Second World War Australia took in the Deutsch. Some of these were based at the Forestry near Murgon and the old man used to eavesdrop on them. One time one of the “Balts” (which was the common name used for the refugees from the Baltic States) caught the old man listening in and demanded of him, ‘Sprechen zie Deutsch?’ He quickly answered, ‘No I don’t know a word of it,’ thereby making a liar of himself.

After Spon had departed the Laidley scene at age sixteen, having run foul of his father’s temper and stockwhip, he went to his older married sister, Laura, in the Wowan/Barnes district where she and her husband Bill Engel had a prickly pear block. Brumbies were there in numbers and Spon trapped and broke in a very flashy black stallion that he loved to show off when he went to town.

One Saturday morning he was riding from the blacksmith’s shop where he’d just had the stallion freshly shod, up to the pub, which meant that he had to ride the horse over the new railway level crossing. This was a “first” for the horse who pranced and danced as he got closer to it. Spon was relishing the fancy display when suddenly the stallion’s front feet came down together on the slippery rail and splayed, one each way. Spon was ignominiously tipped on to the dusty road.

Now, most bushmen of that era had to be the best at everything and hated to be shown up. They all had a great need to be the best at riding, or running, or fighting, or working their dogs, or anything else that could be construed as competition or display. I can well imagine that that public fall hurt my young lair of a father in more ways than one.

by Colin Schafferius [10]

Young Julius Leaves Home

When my father, young Julius, (AKA Spon) turned 16, he believed that birthday gave him some free rein regarding his father’s heavy-handed restrictions. He was to learn how false that belief was, as a result of one Sunday visit to his uncle, twelve miles away. Really it was his cousin, female, not her father, who attracted him.

When he arrived home an hour late for milking time, his father was in a mood worse than foul, and ambushed him with a stock whip as he was unsaddling his horse. Although tired from having just ridden hard, the horse pulled away from the whip’s crack on my dad’s back nearby, breaking the reins and inflaming more anger in his father whose impeccable horsemanship never allowed tying up by the reins.

In the confusion, my dad was cunning enough to slide beneath the wagonette parked under a bark lean-to next to the harness room. Here he would escape the break-away horse and his father’s whip, he thought. Not so. His father dropped the stock whip and grabbed the long-handled buggy whip from the seat of the wagonette. Poking the long handle through the spokes of the wheels, he proceeded to pummel the ribs and any other available parts of my dad’s anatomy.

Now this whip had been hand-crafted by my grandfather who was typical of bush craftsmen of workmanship which boiled over into a sort of tradition. Some things were good enough to skite about. According to my dad, it was a pretty good whip.

Now young Spon, cowering under the wagonette, was getting this Turks Head jabbed repeatedly against his body. He said it really hurt so, in desperation, he grabbed the Turks Head and hung on. His father reeled and swung on the whip end, but nonetheless looked like winning the tug of war. Then my dad created an angle with the handle against one of the spokes. His father trust his blucher boot against the wheel for added purchase and grimly held on. That’s when that good bit of Crow’s Ash broke. Well, my dear old dad departed the scene in record time. Fortunately he was athletically put together whilst his father was somewhat stumpy. He wasn’t in the race, anyway, for he had fallen flat on his back when the handle broke.

Spon sat out in the bush till after dark, pondering his position. He know where his horse would be, broken reins and all, so he scouted for a clear coast, snuck his saddle from the harness room, fixed the bridle and rode off.

That’s how my dear old dad came to run away from home when he was 16. He didn’t return till 4 long years later.

by Colin Schafferius [11]

A Rather Knotty Problem

Good cattle working dogs were a necessity in the early days of the small dairy farmer. His property was not yet fenced into smaller paddocks so the dairy herd usually had a run of a couple of miles, especially during the daylight hours. Most dairymen had a night paddock smaller and close by for quick access to the milking yards. A good dog could fetch in the cows on command, thus saving hours and legs for the farmer. Of course, most dairymen skited that his dog was the best and never missed a chance to extol its virtues with a ‘true’ story demonstrating its ability. There were no working cattle dog trials in those days, so the stories of superiority could not be verified.

My father Spon had many ‘best’ dogs during my youth but none better than the stumpy-tailed blue bitch he called Plum. Actually she was given to my older brother when she was just six weeks old and, having travelled five hours in the tray of a buggy with only a lick of water, was desperate for milk when she arrived. She was such a cute little thing that Mum allowed my brother to give her nearly all of the milk in the enamel billy which should have gone towards the bread pudding for dinner. So her empty gut distended until it was quite round and, being coloured blue, she was stuck with the name Plum.

Pretty soon her abilities started to surface and before she was six months of age, the old man could skite that she was the best ever. According to him, she could mind the milkers strip-grazing in the big lucerne patch and fetch them out after forty minutes so they didn’t bloat. She could go way back two miles and bring in all the milkers, every time. He also said that she could bring in a clean-skin killer from across Barambah Creek, if he ever got short of meat. He didn’t advertise this ability very much, though there were quite a few dairymen living on our side of Barambah Creek who were never meat hungry: the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement had 52,000 acres carrying Herefords on the other side. Like most bushmen in that era, my dad always tried to portray himself as a ‘hard old bugger’, and on the surface treated his animals quite roughly. For instance, a dog had to be belted twice every day and fed only once every two days. Not so with Plum, though she was only too well aware that she was second to the old fellow in the pecking order. Occasionally she got special titbits such as the fat- soaked skewers from the rolled roast. We didn’t often have ‘butcher’s meat’ and the roast was more often a ‘station’ roast from our own kills. No doubt if Plum could have had a choice, she would have opted for the station roast with the bone coming her way, not just the skewer and string from the rolled roast. The roasts were always special Sunday dinners (mid- day) and had a bit of ritual about them; the dear old dad at the head of the table, with his pet butcher's knife, doing the carving. Because the knife was well used, it had grown a ‘heel’ at the handle end of the blade from years of sharpening. My father used to extract the skewers and pull the strings from the roast by ‘pinching’ them between his thumb and the knife’s ‘heel’. Then with a call of, ‘Here, Plum,’ he’d flick them through the window of the semi-detached kitchen close by his chair, where we had our meals. Plum, ever alert, always camped in the right place at the convenient time.

There was one aspect of this arrangement with his dog that the old fellow hadn’t read right: the digestibility of the string. Actually, technology had got ahead of him. How was he to know that even the butcher had gone modern with his synthetic string? It was Okay for the dog’s gut to process the old flax and hemp but this new ‘last forever’ stuff she couldn’t handle.

We were heading off to do some ring barking one morning after milking when the old fellow was alerted to the dog’s string problem. Walking along the tracks towards the timber, he noticed Plum dragging her backside and whining with an occasional snap with her fangs towards her rear end. So Plum was ordered to ‘come here’ and then ‘roll over’. Sure enough there was the evidence - about six inches of it actually, extruding from her backside. Now our butcher tied his roasts with individual wraps, each one knotted. Some used only one longer length of string, with a series of half-hitches. So when the string was cut and pulled from our roasts prior to carving, a knot was always near one end of each string. There was no knot visible on that which was hanging from our dog.

Now Spon usually had a quick fix for most situations. He ordered Plum to sit so the end of the string lay conveniently on the ground alongside her stumpy tail. On this bit of string he planted his blucher boot and promptly ordered Plum to ‘go way back’, as if he needed her to fetch in the cows. That smart dog just sat and looked up at him. I thought it was because she knew that knot was inside her. Afterwards I realised that she was really querying the order, because she’d only just put the cows out after morning milking. The old man reacted in his normal fashion: a couple of choice descriptive words about her pedigree issued from his hard mouth, with again 'go way back’ on the end of them. By now Plum dog knew she didn’t have a choice, so she bounded off from a standing (or sitting, to be exact) start into a gallop. However, she didn’t get a yard away before she’d doubled back, snapping, snarling and yelping, seeking somehow to allay the pain of the exit of the knot.

Of course Plum’s reaction lasted only a short while. But the dear old dad had chuckles rolling out of him for many days afterwards. Humour, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

by Colin Schafferius [12]

Julius WIeld the Whip

My father (Julius Jnr AKA Spon) was a whip man. He was not unusual in that era, the 20’s and 30’s, between the wars. The whip was a way to self-esteem in the minds of these emerging pioneers. Results satisfy; and, for my dad, cows, horses, dogs and kids were the victims of that gratification. He had two whips, a stock whip and a yard whip that was a good three feet shorter than the stock whip. The yard whip was easier to use and much more effective in confined spaces. Some of the old whip men also had buggy whips with longer handles.

I knew two men who had table whips. These whips were shorter, lighter versions of the stock whip and they were a source of pride to their owners who had plaited and balanced them perfectly for use amongst the kids at the table. The whip was coiled and hung over the high back of the carver’s chair where it remained between meals. Its shorter handle could be put into action very quickly because the grip reached just to hand at the top edge of the arm rest. Part of the ritual each meal was the uncoiling of the whip as the head of the house sat down. It was then read for use if needed. At the end of the meal, after all the kids had departed, having each one asked, “May I leave the table, please” , the whip was duly recoiled. My old man didn’t quite go for the table whip. He did, however, believe that us kids needed a tough up now and then, and this anecdote tells of one such time.

It was October, storm season coming on. Spon was grubbing lantana which was, at that time, just starting to infiltrate good pastures and being recognised as a pest. His day consisted of rising at 5am, getting in the 40 or so milkers from the night paddock, milking them by hand, putting the milk through the separator and then feeding the pigs. All this before breakfast, the body sustained by a billy of his black coffee. Zutz he called it, a word of his making I think, with no English equivalent. After breakfast his horse was saddled, a snack put into his saddle bag, and the whip - stock whip this time - coiled around his shoulders. He then mounted up to ride the mile or two to where the lantana was to be worked. His topped-up billy of zutz was handed up to him by Mum, with an assurance that he’d be home with the milkers by 4 and a call to the dog, Plum, he headed off.

In those days, before the advent of sophisticated irrigation and knowledge of water conservation, the weather was ever a concern to farmers and my dad was always reading the weather. This October day showed signs of storms brewing. Before he’s left, however, he’d remarked that it was a bit early for good rainstorms and it would probably be one of those useless thunder and lightning things. He also believed that October storms were without rain if they occurred early in the afternoon. This day his predictions were all wrong. It rained about 1.30. Beautiful downpour. The old man got sopping wet and, of course, was very cranky that his predictions had failed.

My brother and I were caught in the rain as well, but at 5 and 7 years of age, we loved the excuse to get wet. We were out of sight of the house by about 120 yards and didn’t hear Mum calling for us when the storm started. She didn’t know where we were. When the old man arrived home, we were lost, according to Mum. This, of course, raised his ire considerably, not being able to get out of the rain and dry off and change. He dropped his zutz billy and swung round at the canter, heading to the cow-yard where he thought we might be. He always used to call us with a very loud whistle and he employed this as he cantered on. When we realised what strife we were in (and in for), he’s gone a bit past the pig-sties. By the time he spotted us, we were making fast and slippery tracks for the house, while he was positioned on the wrong side of the action. He opted to go the bottom side of the pig-sty, through the gully. Meanwhile, we were closing fast on the house, Mum and safety, with my brother, 2 years older, leading by a few yards. Well, the dear old dad did a Bill Roycroft on that gully. He fairly flew over it and closed the gap to my behind just years before I reached the wash-house door. He managed to get two stripes on to me as his old horse came to a magnificent sliding halt.

Mum put the big round washing tub in front of the stove and my brother and I were scrubbed clean, and my cuts dressed with Rawleigh’s Zambuk.

This episode sticks in my mind for two reasons (other than the two stripes). For the first time I saw tears in my mother’s eyes. And I remember the emotions written on my father’s face as he rode away, after the chase and the sliding halt. Grim satisfaction and pride, not because he’d dealt out his sort of justice, but rather that his abilities had been tested and found very adequate.

by Colin Schafferius [13]

Sources

  1. Queensland Birth registration: Julius Albert Schafferius Birth date: 19/05/1901 Mother's name: Margarettie Funk Father/parent's name: Julius Wilhelm Schafferius Queensland Birth Registration 1901/C/8635
  2. The Schafferius Story p88, Kerry Atkins 2001
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Schafferius Story p119, Kerry Atkins 2001
  4. Queensland Marriage registration: Maria Auguste Newman Marriage date: 17/10/1925 Spouse's name: Julius Albert Schafferius Queensland Marriage Registration 1925/C/3309
  5. Marriage Notice: "The witnesses were Ellen Steffens and Oskar Schafferius." "Ellen" is a younger sister of Spon's wife "Mary". Her husband was John (Jack) Steffens. It gets confusing with the large numbers of children in families, and the way they swapped the order of Christian names! - Greg Haack communication
  6. FindAGrave: Julius Albert Schafferius - Born: 19 May 1901; Died: 28 Aug 1958; Cemetery: Murgon Cemetery Murgon, South Burnett Region, Queensland, Australia; Find A Grave: Memorial #118270519 accessed: 20 May 2022
  7. Queensland Death registration: Julius Albert Schafferius Death date: 28/08/1958 Mother's name: Margaretha Funk Father/parent's name: Julius Wilhelm Queensland Death Registration 1958/C/3662
  8. The Schafferius Story p120, Kerry Atkins 2001
  9. The Schafferius Story p121, Kerry Atkins 2001
  10. The Schafferius Story p152, Kerry Atkins 2001
  11. The Schafferius Story p155, Kerry Atkins 2001, Colin Schafferius
  12. The Schafferius Story p157, Kerry Atkins 2001, Colin Schafferius
  13. The Schafferius Story p164, Kerry Atkins 2001, Colin Schafferius




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It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Spon by comparing test results with other carriers of his Y-chromosome or his mother's mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Spon:

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