On 18 October 2019, Queensland State Archives with the Griffith University Harry Gentle Resource Centre presented a seminar by Dr Annemarie McLaren titled Peopling Place: Transcribing Sources for Brisbane’s Zion Hill Mission.

A large audience, including descendants of the founding German missionaries, heard Annemarie discuss some of her initial findings from transcribing pages of documents held in the J D Lang papers at the Mitchell Library in New South Wales. Of special interest were the diary entries describing cross-cultural encounters with the Indigenous population. Aboriginal names for now familiar landmarks have been documented.

In transcribing these documents, Annemarie’s project seeks to make the rich texture of the people and places more accessible, and so facilitate further research into this early period of Brisbane’s history