Coat of Arms Tirol, Austria
Carl Wilhelm Kreiner, the paternal great grandfather of Ronald Erle Grainer, was born in the central European country of Austria on 12th January 1819 [0a]
The birth place of Carl is given in Cairns Historical Society document 17855 as “Canington Austria [Karten]”. However a Wikipedia article indicates “Karnten” is merely the German pronunciation of “ Carinthia” the southernmost Austrian state [of nine such divisions] A Google search for ‘Canington” only brings up locations in Western Australian or Canada.
Carl married Alouisa [nee Largar] on an unknown date sometime around 1835 at an unknown location that seems most likely to have been Kematen in the the Western Austrian state of Tirol the birth place of their four children, Aloisa jr [1847], Simon [1849], Carl jr [1851] and Fritz aka Frank] [1853]. [0b]
Grainer family legends say Carl came from a gypsy racial background and his occupation was generally believed to have been that of a carpenter a trade apparently followed by Carl's eldest male child Samuel up to the last working period of his life.
The birth years given for the Grainer children may not be accurate as official documents are not reproduced on the family history web sites which are currently the only source of information.
In his 1913 statutory declaration for Australian citizenship Samuel Grainer [previously Simon Kreiner] gave 26th October 1846 as his birth date and what appears to be "Klackenford" Austria as his birth place. This may be a mishearing or misreading of "Klagenfurt" the capital of Carinthia [aka Kematen].
The Kreiners appear to have a family tradition of naming at least one of their children after a still living older member. This can create confusion for researchers especially when a newspaper article does not mention the age or middle name of the Kreiner being written about.
1855: On August 28 1855 the 6 member Carl Kreiner family boarded the 258 ton "Steinwarder" at Hamburg with 101 other passengers. The boat arrived in the South Australian port of Adelaide on 19th December 1855. [1a]
Although the Kreiner family is listed as having 6 members in the newspaper shipping notes the official records only mention Carl [41] Louise [39] Wilhelm [6] and Fritz [1].and the age given to Carl clashes with his supposed 1819 birth date.
It is possible Carl and Aloisa were attracted to this area of Australia because of the large percentage of German immigrants already settled there.
The Kreiner's first child to be born in Australia was Johann Henry Kreiner at Happy Valley on the 1st May 1957. Johann's birth was followed by Amelia at Stuart on the 22 May 1859 both birth places being suburbs of the city of Adelaide.
The circumstances for the Kreiner family at this time are not known but financial problems may have caused Carl to sell two bullocks, the property of another farmer, at a cattle yard in April 1861
It was a foolish impulsive action as he was soon arrested. On August 17 1861, the judge, taking into account his previous record of good character, only sentenced Carl to 18 months jail with hard labor. A ruling that could have been a lot worse with terrible consequences for his young family of six children as such an offence allowed for a jailing period of 8 years.
According to the Adelaide Police Gazette Carl Kreiner was due for release from the Dry Creek Stockade on 11th September 1862.
On the 6th July 1863 the Kreiner's seventh and last child Mary Beatrice was born at Reynella with the birth registered at Morphett Vale both Adelaide suburban addresses.
1864 - 1871 Another blind spot in the Kreiner story. The only known fact is sometime in this period most of the family moved, with mixed results, to Clermont in Queensland. The family name morphing into "Grainer" by the early 1870s.
According to a declaration made on his 1913 citizenship application Samuel Grainer supposedly lived in "Flagstaff" during this family relocation - it's not known if this address refers to the Victorian gold mining area of that name or Flagstaff Hill a suburb of Adelaide. However by 1870 Samuel was definitely living around Clermont with unfortunate results for all concerned as his wild colonial boy attitudes earned him a years jail for horse stealing.
Charlie and Frank Grainer did not appear to have learnt any lessons from their fathers or their elder brothers periods of incarceration. In January 1873 they were both convicted of horse stealing in the Clermont district [crime committed November 1872 - Samuel was also arrested, in December 1872, for his involvement in the act].
This time the judge was not so lenient giving each brother a sentence of four years with hard labour. As Samuel is the only Grainer mentioned in the Queensland State Archives index of prisoners sent to the severe St Helena Island Moreton Bay prison [two convictions] Frank and Charlie were probably housed in the main Brisbane jail at Petrie Terrace.
While the sentence seems excessive from a modern perspective it should be noted it was not unusual for that period. In April 2012 an Adelaide auction house offered for bidding a Beechwood Court of General Sessions ledger rescued from a incinerator. The book revealed that on 1st August 1871 at the age of 15 future Australian folk hero Ned Kelly was sentenced to three years jail with hard labour for horse stealing and receiving.
Carl meanwhile appears to have left his errant offspring to suffer the consequences of their wrong decisions and settled into a productive farming existence.
Carl's name first appears on the Clermont electoral roll of 1876 - submissions for which closed December 1875 - with an address of "Leasehold Douglas Creek".
There are no surviving electoral rolls covering the years 1869 - 1874 for the Clermont district so the Grainers may have arrived earlier then available documents indicate.
An obituary for Mary Rolfe [nee Mary Beatrice Grainer - ed] [1b] states Mary born 1863 "came to Queensland in her teens" - presumably with her birth family.
1876 Carl was praised in a Rockhampton newspaper for being the first on the local market with a splendid crop of "about a ton of peaches and a good quantity of grapes", both crops grown on his property at Sandy Creek two miles out of Clermont [2].
1877: Carl changed his Clermont electoral address - [Dec 1876 closure date - to "freehold Sandy Creek" and his electoral name to "William Carl Grainer" his son Henry having joined him with a "residence" at "Sandy Creek".
1879 Carl’s son Charlie appears to have been highly regarded by one of Northern Australia’s most prominent early explorers.
“On August 15 Logan Jack, Government geologist, led a party compromising C Grainer and J J Macdonald, two [aboriginal] boys and ten horses. It made north and west to the site on which the township of Coen was soon to be established and then to the site of future Ebagoola and back to Cooktown on Oct 3 1879 [3]
24 years later Ebagoola would be the location for the tragic end of Charlie Grainer's life.
1883: Henry Grainer left Clermont.
In 1884 Charlie moved into the Clermont district with a “residence” at Copperfield. and appeared in a local newspaper [4] praising in a guarded way the benefits of a deafness cure by one Professor George Raymond.
"I, the undersigned, desire to notify to the public of Clermont that I was under Professor George Raymond's treatment with deafness and noises in the ear of four years standing and wish to state that he has done me a considerable amount of good.
I was as "deaf as a post" (with one ear) as the saying goes before I placed myself under his treatment and now I can hear distinctly the tick of a watch with one ear and with the other ear I hope I will soon be able to hear equally as well. I can honestly testify to him being a skillful artist, and am very sorry that I could not remain a little longer under his treatment for I firmly believe if I had he would have restored to me my hearing completely.
Circumstances would not permit me to remain any longer so I really could not continue any further under his operations but Mr. Raymond has given me sufficient medicine which, if judiciously used, will probably restore to me my long lost hearing altogether. I am pretty well known so no one will find any difficulty in getting further evidence of the valuable truth of this statement, I am, Sir, etc.
CHARLES GRAINER working for Mr Rolfe, Mount Eagle Station, Clermont July 4 1884"[5]
1889: Carl moved away from Clermont leaving only Charlie living at Douglas Creek. By the 1891 electoral roll year which closed Jan 17 1891 Charlie had also left. Carl never appeared on the Clermont roll again.
1893: Carl Wilhelm Grainer died on the 13 March 1893. A Grainer family tree stated Carl died at "Mont Eagle Station West of Clermont" but it is more likely to have been "Springvale Station Mt Eagle Clermont" an address Samuel and Henry Grainer were listed at in the 1901 Queensland Post Office Directory.
1893 In the roll that closed 10th December 1892 Samuel, the first born male child of Carl and Louisa became the last of three sons to take up residence at Clermont. His location was given as “Springvale”.
1903 It is not known what disappointments Charlie Grainer experienced in his personal life between late 1890 and early 1903 and why he didn't ask for help from family or nearby mining friends. In an occupational environment not unfamiliar with acts of violent willfulness the manner of this elderly prospectors death at the Ebagoola gold field on or around Feb 3 1903 was decidedly unusual.
According to statements presented on the 12th February 1903 at the Ebagoola courthouse it appears Charlie left a note telling fellow prospectors camped alongside his tent not to go looking for him. Charlie then wandered one and a half miles North West into the Ebagoola scrub before building a cremation pyre out of scattered ground timber then after firing its edges he climbed into the center of the raft of flame and lit a stick of dynamite strapped to his forehead.
The discovery of some remain fragments a couple of days later was followed by a flurry of paragraph headlines in newspapers along the East Coast of Australia as far south as Tasmania. The obviously contributed North Queensland Register write up conveyed the shock and distress of the Ebagoola township.
"Charlie Grainer, a well known old northern miner ... was inclined to be reserved owing to being very hard of hearing but no one had ever heard him complain. He was strictly honest and a very patient and persevering prospector but of later years he has experienced a very heavy run of bad luck. No one seems to know if Charlie was short of money but if such was the case he could always have obtained from any of the business men here anything that he wanted." [6]
It appears the real motive for Charlie's death may not have been income related. His estate which eventually passed to his brother Frank was revealed to be of quite considerable value although it is not known if it consisted of non cash assets such as land title deeds.
Newspaper speculation about Charlie's death was followed by an official inquest which confirmed the no suspicious circumstances verdict - apart that is for the Wicker Man flavour of it all!
The inquest did not take into account the bad living conditions at Ebagoola at the time, the dwindling food supplies, the hostile social group interaction and the four self engineered deaths in the preceding two years as well as the regular distribution of rot gut liquor amongst miners.
There were a number of reported cases of typhoid fever due to sanitary conditions at the site. There may also have been cases of tinnitus [ringing in the ears] an overwhelming crises if it affected someone like Charlie who was already hard of hearing.
Thirteen days after the discovery of Charlie's remains "The Morning Herald" newspaper from Rockhampton published an historical feature entitled "Remarkable Horse Stealing Case" - the more widely distributed "Capricornian" re-published it on Feb 28.
This article detailed the full circumstances leading up to Charlie's previous four year jail term for horse stealing at Clermont in 1873. It is not known if he had been made aware of the stories imminent publication before his death.
The psychological effect of Charlie's actions on the extended Grainer family would have been profound but in the true spirit of the outback life went on.
Eighteen years later a member of another generation of Grainers would find himself in a front line position for offering emotional comfort to the traumatized families of a community suffering from the effects of a much larger explosion and fire.
His son would grow up to earn a reputation for "Making Tunes We Can't Forget" and the man "Who Made Britain Whistle".
One of those tunes would be the theme for the long running BBC Science Fiction TV series Dr Who. A reoccuring plot device for this program is that when a doctor "dies" there is a dramatic visual effect. Modern versions of this sequence from the death of the ninth doctor, Christopher Eccleston, onwards have eerie similarities to the events of Charlie Grainer's death in 1903.
This is especially noticeable in the images used for the departure of the tenth Doctor David Tennant.
In 1910 Charlie's older brother Samuel Grainer was still living at Clermont when his application “to occupy about twenty acres alongside his selection” was made to the Rockhampton town council on the 11th September and he may have remained in the area until at least 1913.
On Feb 1 1913 Samuel applied to become a naturalized Australian citizen giving as his previous addresses "Flagstaff 20 years" and "Clermont 40 years". This request was granted to him on 21st February 1913.
The still living members of Carl Grainer's family would have been shocked to hear that on 28th December 1916 the town, and many of the locations familiar to Carl, Samuel, Henry and Charlie such as Sirius Street and the Leo Hotel, was caught up a catastrophic flash flood fed by a cyclone.
65 people died in the deluge which left as a bizarre relic of its force three pianos stranded individually in the branches of local gum trees. An event commemorated in 1980 by the installation of a fiber glass replica of one such piano in a suitable vegetation setting.
*This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Rubyvale to Calen; back towards the coast
Samuel Grainer died in Cairns on 1st February 1917 - it is not known if he had been in Clermont for the 1916 trial by water. Samuel's occupation was given as “carpenter" and although now a naturalised Australian citizen at the time of his death he was going by the name of "Simon Krinar” [7]
References
[[0a] Frank Grainer family history document
[ob] Frank Grainer family History document
1a] South Australian Register Adelaide 20.12.1855 p2
[1b] Cairns Post 19 August 1946 p5
[2] Rockhampton Bulletin 12th December 1876 p2.
[3] “Gold of the Palmer” Central Queensland Herald, Rockhampton 19.3.1936 p61
[4] Rockhampton Morning Bulletin 21st July 1884 p6
[5] This is Carl Grainer Senior
[6] Ebagoola Notes North Queensland Register 23 March 1903 p14
[7] notice of transmission of property cp 28.8.1917 p1
[[0a] Frank Grainer family history document
[ob] Frank Grainer family History document
1a] South Australian Register Adelaide 20.12.1855 p2
[1b] Cairns Post 19 August 1946 p5
[2] Rockhampton Bulletin 12th December 1876 p2.
[3] “Gold of the Palmer” Central Queensland Herald, Rockhampton 19.3.1936 p61
[4] Rockhampton Morning Bulletin 21st July 1884 p6
[5] This is Carl Grainer Senior
[6] Ebagoola Notes North Queensland Register 23 March 1903 p14
[7] notice of transmission of property cp 28.8.1917 p1
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