Biography

The following biography is the work of the late Dean Saegenschnitter, who collected and compiled ‘Before and After’, a Family History of the Saegenschnitter descendants of Auguste Emilie Lydia Becker and Carl Friedrich Gustav Saegenschnitter.

Permission was given by Deans’ family to publish the biographies which he called ‘Backgrounds’.

Early Years

I was born on the 20th August 1937, in Nurioopta. and Baptised at Salem Lutheran Church, Penrice on September 12th. 1937, by the late Pastor F. J. Lehmann. My Sponsors being Gustav Saegenschnitter, Gertie Saegenschnitter and Flora Henske. My parents were members at Penrice until 1949. For Sunday School we went to Nurioopta. I started my education at the Nurioopta Primary in 1944, riding a bike there and back, I finished at Nurioopta in 1949, when Dad sold the property at Moppa we then moved to Ebenzer.

Ebenezer

In 1950 I went to Neukirch Lutheran School to finish year 7. After moving to Ebenzer the Family joined St. Johns Lutheran Church, Ebenzer. In 1950 I had confirmation lessons at Light Pass, riding my bike every Saturday morning. This instruction was combined with the Light Pass class. I was Confirmed at Ebenzer Church on the 19th November 1950 with two other children.

In 1951 I commenced High School at Nurioopta, riding my bike 4 miles to get there. Finally left school at the end of that year.

Family Care

In 1952 I did some grape-picking for neighbours, and in May of that year started working for the Spanagel family, looking after their family while the mother had a new baby, staying there till 1955, and then moved to Brinkworth to help two other families, also at Blyth. In 1958 moved to Nurioopta to help another family.

Nursing

In September, 1958 I started nursing at Eudunda Hospital, after completing 2 years, I then transferred to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, but only staying for 7 months. In October 1961 I started nursing at the Tanunda Rest Home as a Nurses Aid.

Marriage and Farming

While at Eudunda I got to know Dennis Schulz, and on 9th February 1963 we were married in Langmeil Lutheran Church, Tanunda. Dennis and I now lived on a farm at Hamden, and there we milked cows, had fowls, pigs, and as well Dennis did some cropping. The dairy was a 10 unit walk through style, milking 20-30 jersey cows. At that time we were selling the cream, and the separated milk was fed to the pigs. Dennis would buy sucker pigs from the local markets and feed them up to baconer stage, before selling them.

The Dairy

A few years later we changed to selling the milk, so we then increased our dairy herd, at that time milk was transported in cans, this was collected on the road side by 8.30 a.m. by truck. In Augast 1971-72 we went into bulk milk, the milk was held in a vat with 2000 litre holding capacity. The milk was collected every second day by a tanker. At this stage we were milking between 80-90 cows.

In 1980 Dennis and the boys started building a herring bone dairy, this took a few years to build, as they did all their own work. At this stage we had a mixture of Jersey & Friesian cows. At the same time we had 1000 fowls which were housed in cages, keeping the eggs in a cooling fridge, as the eggs were only collected weekly. We sold the fowls in 1980 and then increased our dairy herd.

In 1975 we built a new house on the farm, in it our second son Richard now lives. A new dairy was built in 2001. which is a herring bone rapid release, milking 100 cows an hour. Richard intends to milk 140-150 cows.

Retirement and our Family

In 1995 Dennis and I had our semi-retired home built on our property not far from the farm.

Dennis still helps on the farm.
Our first son, Allan has a farm out east of Eudunda at Neales Flat, there he has pigs and does cropping. Our only daughter, Karen, lives at Para Vista, while the youngest son is a bricklayer and with his wife Julie live in Brisbane.

We hope to do a bit more travelling, mainly to see more of Australia.

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© ‘Before and After’

by Dean Saegenschnitter