by Denise Sutherland
Excerpted, with permission, from an article by Denise Sutherland, Australian Science Archives Project. The original article, with more information, can be found on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/ bsparcs/exhib/dietrich/
Amalie Dietrich was a German naturalist who helped introduce Australia's natural wonders to Europe. She spent nearly ten years (1863-1872) in the barely-settled wilds of northern Queensland, collecting for the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg, Germany. 26 May 1996 marked the 175th anniversary of her birth.
Amalie Nelle was born in 1821 into a working-class family in the Saxon village Siebenlehn, at a time when scientists were generally upper-class, well educated and male. In 1846 she married Wilhelm August Salomo Dietrich, a frustrated doctor who had been forced into pharmacy by family circumstances. He and Amalie planned to earn their living as professional naturalists by selling their specimens to museums and collectors. Wilhelm taught Amalie a great deal about collecting, but she had also learnt much about natural remedies from her mother. For many years the Dietrichs worked in this field, collecting around Europe. They had one daughter, Charitas, born in 1848.
In 1861, after her marriage failed, Amalie had to make an independent living for herself and her daughter. She was determined to continue in her favourite profession, and soon was offered her first salaried job as a field collector by the shipping magnate Johann Caesar VI Godeffroy (1818-1885). He had ships travelling regularly to the South Pacific, and decided to start a museum, stocked with the ethnographic and biological treasures that his captains collected during their voyages. It was a difficult era for a woman to undertake such a venture, especially in a male-dominated field and facing the unknown dangers of the Australian bush. She arrived at the Brisbane River entrance to Moreton Bay on 7 August 1863, having spent 81 days on Godeffroy's ship La Rochelle. Her new job allowed her to send Charitas to an expensive boarding school, giving her child the education she never received - but it was hard for Amalie to leave her 15-year-old only child for ten years.
Travelling around the bush with a horse and cart to carry her equipment and provisions, and a small boat, Amalie Dietrich was an unusual, solitary figure. Botany was her greatest love, but anything living was fair game - fungi, algae, ferns, seaweeds, grasses, tree woods, sea-slugs, fish, corals, birds, marsupials, spiders, insects, amphibians and reptiles. She also collected Aboriginal artifacts. In 1866 she became the first person to collect a taipan snake. Her Australian bird collection is probably the largest ever collected by a single person.
Amalie also made the first significant collection of Australian spiders. This collection was the basis for what is still the major reference work on Australian spiders. For all her specimens, she was requested to collect 30-40 items of each species.
After collecting, she would start the work of preparation, drying, pressing, skinning, preserving, labelling and packaging all her samples for shipment back to Germany. Occasionally she had help from one or two German assistants. On the whole, she worked and lived frugally and alone - an outsider. It was hard for her to learn English, and she lived in remote villages, socialising with German settlers and spending days out in the bush.
During her time in Queensland, Dietrich collected in many different areas. Initially she was in Brisbane (around Moreton Bay) for a few years, and then briefly in Gladstone . By February 1866 she was in Rockhampton. In 1867 she lived in Mackay, and then was at Lake Elphinstone in 1868, where she spent an enjoyable time living with a German family.
Amalie's longest and most northern stay was in Bowen, where she lived from 1870 until the end of 1872. Here she had the most enjoyable time of her whole Australian experience. She had learnt English, and had more friends. She set up a small zoo, as Godeffroy was interested in importing live animals, and this proved a welcome interest. Her favourite was a tame white-breasted sea eagle Aquila audax. She took him back to Hamburg with her, where she donated him to the Zoological Gardens.
Godeffroy kept the best of Amalie's collections for his museum, and sold the duplicates to other museums and collectors. Many of Dietrich's samples are still the type specimens for those species. Australian specimens were still rare in Europe, and Amalie's shipments were eagerly awaited by European scientists. At last they were able to fully study and classify the entirely new flora and fauna of Australia. They were indebted to Dietrich, and praised her work and bravery. She won awards, and several species were named after her, such as the wasp Nortonia amaliae and the wattle Acacia dietrichiana. Her Australian timber collection won a gold medal in Hamburg. Dietrich was recalled to Germany in late 1872.
As a field collector, Dietrich published nothing in her own name, and there remain only a few footnotes in scientific papers referring to her work. However, the real triumph of her life - her collections - remain in museums around Europe, a fitting memorial to such an accomplished naturalist.