In 1849 shiploads of immigrants from the Prussian area of Germany set sail for Melbourne, and a number of districts remain known for their early German settlers, such as Westgarthtown (now Thomastown), Northcote and Doncaster. Less well-known as a German enclave is the area of Abbotsford towards the eastern end of Victoria Street. Of the Prussian Germans who settled there in the 1850s, brickmaker and publican Robert Dehnert is arguably the longest-resident, spending around 71 years in Abbotsford until his death in 1920 at the age of 87. He is believed to have arrived in Australia in 1850 on the ill-fated Pribislaw and was naturalised in 1851. Two of his sons would remain in the family home until their own deaths in the 1950s and 1960s. He was probably also the longest-enduring brickmaker in the area. Dehnert became a well-known figure in Collingwood, involved in many aspects of local life, including a stint as a councillor. 

In the 1840s the semi-rural area by the Yarra River was largely populated by the well-to-do in substantial houses on large tracts of land. With Melbourne’s burgeoning population in the 1850s it began to appeal to industrialists reliant on a ready supply of fresh water and a convenient waste drain. Noxious industries including tanning, wool-scouring and soapmaking were established and fouled both air and water, while fumes from brickmaking kilns could be offensive and injurious to health. Flockhart Street, at the time called Brick Lane, was the centre of the brickmaking industry in Abbotsford; the survey map of 1 January 1858 shows clay pits on both sides of the street. Dehnert’s works were described in 1863 as incorporating a 70-foot drying shed and kiln.

There were a number of other brickmakers in the area, many also of German origin such as Augustus Fritsch, John Henry Strack, and William Melchior. Joseph Shirley combined brickmaking with hotelkeeping, conducting the Brickmakers Arms in Victoria Street near Brick Lane from around 1854. This was a practical combination of occupations: the hardworking brickyard employees would have been ready for an ale or two after a dusty day’s work, and some of them, single men and mainly Germans, also lodged in the hotel. 

In the 1860s Jens Schmidt took over the Brickmakers Arms until he became insolvent in 1865. Dehnert, always with an eye for a good business opportunity, bought the hotel. At this stage it was a brick building on a large site with 120 feet frontage to Victoria Street including a garden. (From time to time a newspaper advertisement would call for a man to dig the garden.) However, Dehnert was not satisfied, and by 1867 he had built a new two-storey Brickmakers Arms a little further to the west, right on the eastern corner of Brick Lane. The old hotel was purchased by Augustus Fritsch, then advertised to let as an extensive building suitable for manufacturing purposes. 

Prior to this Dehnert had married, in 1858, Marie Straube, daughter of a German family which had settled in Doncaster in 1849; the couple produced a large family of ten boys and four girls, four of whom died in infancy. Marie also assisted in the running of the hotel, advertising for cooks, housekeepers, and ‘useful girls’. 

In 1868 Dehnert was a committee member of the East Collingwood Building and Investment Society, a friendly society for home loans established by George Langridge. In 1872 he was one of the provisional directors of the proposed Provincial and Suburban Bank Ltd and would remain a director for some years, retiring before the bank’s failure in 1879. Dehnert enlarged his area of operations into brewing. In a partnership known as Forbes, Elam and Co, he bought the Star Brewery in Bedford Street/Smith Street Collingwood in 1873. In the same year architect Michael Hennessy, better known for his work on Kew mansions, designed additions to the Brickmakers Arms.

As if this was not enough, Dehnert was elected to Council in the hotly-contested 1874 election, winning 314 votes compared to his competitor Harnwell who gained 231 votes. He claimed he entered council in order to seek for Victoria Street a bridge to Kew and 'as many factories on the Yarra as possible; this would be the only way to make Collingwood a second Manchester, as the district was naturally formed for industrial establishments' (The Observer, 6 August 1874). Thinking that all was going well with the brewery business, in September 1875 he dissolved the partnership and became a single proprietor, but it seems he had bitten off more than he could chew. He became insolvent in 1876. Despite intensive questioning about some suspicious financial transactions—he seemed to have quickly transferred various properties and sums of money to other people including his wife—he was finally granted an unconditional discharge in November 1877, having paid his debtors five shillings in the pound. To meet his commitments not only was the brewery sold but also the Brickmakers Arms; before long Dehnert re-purchased the hotel and owned it until his death. In the meantime, he retired from council in November 1876. 

Brickmaking in the early to mid-nineteenth century was carried out on a small scale, but technological changes led to larger production units and larger brickmakers began to dominate. Abbotsford brickmakers retired or moved to other areas; Dehnert was the exception, gradually buying up the operations of other small operators until he owned approximately six acres around Flockhart Street.  As his clay pits were exhausted, he arranged for Collingwood Council to use the holes for tipping household and street refuse; this lead to frequent complaints as it was reported that he did not, as promised, take care to cover the refuse to avoid a malodourous reek. Even Peter Nettleton, wool scourer, and Henry Walker, soap and candle maker, complained of the stench despite their own noxious industries. His last drying shed and brick kiln can be seen on the 1901 MMBW Detail Plan, while a large clay pit on the eastern side is labelled as ‘being filled in’.

Around 1890 the German Tivoli Club set up its clubrooms  on an extensive site at the eastern corner of Walmer Street, very close to the hotel, although there is no concrete evidence either way whether the Dehnerts frequented the Club. There was considerable anti-German sentiment during both world wars; an episode of fisticuffs between two Dehnert sons and a man trespassing on their land was headlined in a newspaper ‘Huns attack Englishman’, while at the start of World War II the Tivoli Club rooms were taken over by the Federal Government..

Dehnert died in 1920, still owner and publican of the Brickmakers Arms, although two of his sons had been performing most of the daily running of the pub. In 1922 his properties and those of Marie, with the exception of the family home at 603 Victoria Street, were for sale. The new owners changed the hotel’s name to the Terminus Hotel. Thus, one of the last vestiges of the area’s connections with brickmaking disappeared, although perhaps there is evidence, if we only knew where to look: in 1874 a letter writer to The Herald asserted that 'there is scarcely a house built in Collingwood that Dehnert's bricks are not used'.  Moreover, it was not the last of the Dehnerts, as sons Alfred and Hermann and daughter Marie remained in the family home, on the western corner of Flockhart Street. Marie eventually moved elsewhere but the boys stayed. Alfred was a keen cricketer in his youth and became the president of the Collingwood Cricket Club.

When Alfred died in 1954 leaving an estate worth over £60,000, the story of the £1 per week ‘pension’ he left for the care of his faithful dog Bob must have struck a chord with editors around Australia, being syndicated in at least 16 newspapers.  Hermann remained at the house, called Heimat or Heimath (home/homeland) until his death in 1965. It was demolished in 1988.

http://www.germanaustralia.com/e/victoria.htm  

https://www.wendishheritage.org.au/articles/the-184950-voyage-to-australia-by-the-pribislaw/

Barrett, The inner suburbs

Municipal Roll of Ratepayers, East Collingwood, adopted 12 March 1860

 https://collingwoodhs.org.au/participate/walks-talks/from-skipping-girl-to-abbotsford-cool-2012/

Trove list: https://trove.nla.gov.au/list/69683

emelbourne: Quarries and Brickmaking

https://www.wendishheritage.org.au/research/who-are-the-wends/

Darragh, T. A., Wuchatsch, R., & Wendish Heritage Society Australia. (1999). From Hamburg to Hobson’s Bay: German emigration to Port Phillip (Australia Felix) 1848-51.

MMBW Detail Plan 1305

Collingwood Trades Cricket club with Alfred Dehnert