Dr Henry Backhaus
Of all the Priests involved in the early phase of European settlement of the Campaspe Valley, perhaps none are more famous than Dr Henry Backhaus.1 He was born in 1812 in Paderborn, a regional town in the north of Germany and studied for the priesthood in Rome, where he was ordained in 1836. He then spent some years in missionary work in India before coming to Australia in 1846. After spending some time in Sydney and Adelaide, he came to Melbourne and almost immediately offered to minister on the Victorian goldfields.
On his way north, he stopped off at Kyneton and there baptised several children. Some accounts suggest that he also celebrated Mass but this is uncertain. He certainly did celebrate Mass under canvas at Forest Creek (Castlemaine). Backhaus initially travelled back and forth between Bendigo, Forest Creek and Kyneton before settling permanently in the tent city of Sandhurst in the Spring of 1852; where, by 1853, he had erected a slab and canvas Mass tent, near the site of the current St Kilian’s Church.
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for the first four years on the goldfields, Dr Backhaus lived in a tent and during this time he presided over some 600 baptisms, 150 funerals and sixty marriages. By dint of his personality and his open attitude to other faiths, he soon became something of a celebrity on the goldfields. He involved himself in public affairs and made friends with many prominent officials.
However, he had one curious trait – an apparent dislike of sharing his ministry on the goldfields with several curates who were sent to help him This eventually led to conflict with the Vicar General (Dr Fitzpatrick) in Melbourne and the upshot was that Backhaus announced his ‘irrevocable resignation in June of 1863.
The whole of Sandhurst Town seems to have turned out to wish him well on his departure and he was given a farewell banquet. After spending four years abroad, mainly in his native city of Paderborn in Germany, he was invited to return to Bendigo, an invitation he accepted.
From the point of view of this history of churches in the Campaspe Valley, Dr Backhaus’s greatest contribution was undoubtedly in his shrewd land dealings. His motivation here was given in letters to the Vicar General where he stated that his acquisitions were ‘for the sake of Catholics in Sandhurst’ and ‘to further the interests of religion in this quarter and encourage a permanent settlement of Catholics in all these vicinities’.
By 1875 his holdings in Victoria comprised sixty three lots in the business district of Bendigo, 26 in suburban areas and 150 allotments (involving 40 farms) totalling 8911 acres. Many of the churches we discuss in this book were built on land purchased by Dr Backhaus. He may not have lived within the Campaspe Valley proper, but his influence certainly stretched from Kyneton in the south to Echuca in the north.
In mid 1874, the Diocese of Sandhurst was established and Bishop Martin Crane installed. Very soon a certain tension developed between the two men, unsurprising given their totally different backgrounds and personalities. Things came to a head in 1881 and Backhaus again left Bendigo. He died in September 1882 and is buried at St Kilian’s in Bendigo.
Only in the last fifty years or so has Dr Backhaus been properly recognised for his extraordinary contribution to Catholicism in the Diocese of Sandhurst and beyond. Certainly, the great Sacred heart Cathedral in Bendigo could not have been built without the financial resources of the Backhaus Estate. Today, the Paderborn Cross (an ancient cross unearthed in Paderborn) has become a central symbol of the Diocese of Sandhurst.
- A detailed biography has been written by Nolan, M. 2008, The Enterprising Life of Dr Henry Backhaus, Bendigo Pioneer,. Privately published. ↩︎
