Site 3: Schreiner Green

This site is one of the most utilised places on the property and enjoyed by around 40,000 guests of Sevenhill every year. This lawn was where the first orchards were planted on the Sevenhill property.

This area has been named in honour of one of Sevenhill’s most influential figures, Joannes Schreiner, the first Jesuit Winemaker.  He arrived in Australia in April 1850, with Br Georg Sadler, shortly after Fr Kranewitter, who arrived in the Clare Valley on 20^th December 1848. Fr Kranewitter accompanied as chaplain a group of Silesian migrants, led by Franz and Fransiska Weikert, all the way from Prussia in Europe to the Clare Valley in South Australia. 

1848, known as the ‘Year of Revolutions’, found the Jesuits evicted from Austria and other places throughout Europe. Their expulsion occurred at a time when German immigrants were being actively sought and recruited for the new colony in South Australia. The Weikerts, fearing increasing religious oppression from state authorities, decided to form a party of travellers and migrate to a place of greater religious freedom and opportunity. They wanted a chaplain to accompany them. Fransiska Weikert approached the Archbishop of Munich, but he indicated that he had no priests available and directed them to the Jesuit Provincial, Fr Pierling SJ who, once he had obtained permission from the Jesuit General in Rome, called for volunteers for the mission to Australia. Ordained priest for only a few weeks, Father Aloysius Kranewitter volunteered, alongside Father Maximilian Klinkowstroem, to sail with 146 Silesian migrants seeking a fresh start in the New World.

On December 8th, 1848, the ship Alfred  landed in Adelaide. In an account of his final days on the Alfred, Fr Kranewitter writes:

                “On the 4^th of December, we heard the cry, ‘Land! Land! And could you describe the emotions in the hearts of all of us at the cry?  It was Kangaroo Island that lay straight in front of us.  On the 5^th of December we lay in the Outer Harbour of Adelaide… We reached Adelaide on the 8^th of December, having left Hamburg on the 15^th of August.

At four o’clock, Father Klinkowstroem and I, Mr. Weikert and three other of our company stood on Australian soil; in front lay a broad stretch of deep sea and behind was a plain bounded by hills covered with green trees stretching right across in bow shape from side to side.  The first thing we noted was the sand with its mussels and cockles, and the plant life all new and unknown to us.  Not a shrub, plant nor tree like those of home, except perhaps the red stock-gill-flower that grew wild in the sand ridges”.

Tensions and diagreements on the long voyage caused the group to split, and with Father Klinkowstroem in ill health, Father Kranewitter and the Weikert family were sent north by the Bishop to establish a Catholic presence.

Living with the Weikert family, Father Kranewitter worked as both priest and farmer, earning money to begin building a centre for Catholicism in the mid-north. On January 28, 1851, this came to fruition, with 100 acres of land, then known variously as ‘Open Range’ or ‘Open Ranges’, being purchased initially. The Jesuit dream was to build a miniature Rome, so the creek on the property was named the Tiber and the property was called Sevenhill, alluding to the seven hills of Rome.

In March of the same year, Brother Schreiner, blacksmith, farmer, and soon-to-be winemaker, began building the first house, a humble thatch-and-clay offering just to the left and in front of what is now the steps of the entrance to the church

This property signifies far more than the physical buildings we see today; it is the birthplace of the Society of Jesus in Australia, from which, in time, 27 schools and 34 churches were established. The Sevenhill Centre became a hub for the Mid North priests, who from here covered more than 25,000 square miles, from Morgan to Blinman, Wallaroo to Port Augusta, and down the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln.