Klaus Scharrer, 98, the last surviving Jennings German carpenter living in Canberra, with his wife Rosa, 94, at their Queanbeyan home. Photo: Naziya Alvi.
Klaus Scharrer is 98, turns 99 in December, and until only a few years ago still made things from timber.
One of the last things he made was a display cabinet for the German Club’s 70th anniversary five years ago.
It is a fitting bookend to a working life that began on the other side of the world and brought him to Canberra at 25, with the skills of a German carpenter and little idea of what would happen next.
That was in 1951. Canberra needed houses. Klaus was one of 150 young German tradesmen AV Jennings recruited to help build them.
He can still tell you exactly when he arrived: 10 December. He remembers the five-week voyage, the room at Ainslie Hostel and houses arriving in pieces, their walls ready to be stood up.
He didn’t have any grand plan to make Australia home. “I had no plans.”
Almost 75 years later, Klaus is still here — the last surviving Jennings German living in Canberra.
Sitting beside him is Rosa, 94, the woman who followed him from Munich in 1957 and began married life with him in a timber garage in Queanbeyan.
Between them, they remember a Canberra that sounds almost unimaginable now. “There was nothing here,” Rosa said.
There was Government House and Old Parliament House. Civic was tiny, with a cinema and little else. On Sundays, almost everything closed. In summer, they could head to the Cotter River for a swim and barely see another person.
Rosa could hardly speak English. Klaus owned a block of land but couldn’t afford to build a house on it. Yet neither talks about those years as particularly hard.
Rosa remembers open spaces, warm weather and strangers who said hello.
Their story is, in many ways, about how a place becomes home without anyone deciding that it will.
For Klaus, it began with a £125 block of dirt. By 1953, he had left Jennings for a better-paying job at a Queanbeyan joinery when a Russian colleague who spoke German pointed to the vacant land next to his own.
The block cost £125. Klaus didn’t have the money, but he could pay it off gradually — whatever he could manage each month.
So he bought it. It was a small decision that changed the course of his life. He had arrived in Australia unsure whether he would stay. Now he owned a piece of it.
With help from fellow German carpenters, he built a timber garage on the block. In the next few years he saved enough to travel back to Europe.
But Australia was no longer a place he could simply leave behind. “I had a block of land here,” he said. “I had a garage.”
Upon returning to Germany, Klaus stopped in Munich to visit an old friend from Jennings. His friend’s sister, Rosa, was also there.
It was carnival time, and Klaus and Rosa went to a dance. About three months later, they were married. Rosa had long been curious about the country that had taken her brother halfway around the world.
“I just wanted to go and see the world,” she said. “That was my dream when my brother left.”
When she arrived in Australia in 1957, her husband didn’t have a conventional home waiting for her. He had the garage. There was a bed-sitting area, kitchen bench, table and stove. There was no sewer connection and the toilet was outside.
But they had land, and they knew how to build. Their house came together gradually.
“Every so often we bought a bag of cement,” Klaus said.
He did the brickwork and stonework himself and, naturally, the carpentry. That was how many young German tradesmen established themselves. After spending their working days building for others, they helped each other put up homes, doing everything from window frames and interiors to painting and brickwork.
Rosa had arrived with almost no English, and one of her first teachers was the greengrocer across the road. She pointed at what she wanted, and he gave her the word. “One lettuce.”
The next time, she knew how to ask for lettuce. Then came cucumber, apples and the everyday vocabulary of her new country.
She read newspapers, listened to people and learnt from neighbours and their children. Today, the shift is complete: Rosa and Klaus speak mostly in English, even at home and with their family.
Soon Rosa was travelling from Queanbeyan to Manuka to work as a tailor. She made men’s suits, and Canberra’s diplomatic community became part of her clientele.
“I made suits for all the embassies,” she said.
She remembers one diplomat ordering suit after suit – about 10 during his posting.
Australia also felt less formal than the Germany she knew. There, Rosa remembers, people generally waited to be introduced before greeting one another. Here, strangers said hello.
“Everybody talks to you. Wherever you go, you say hello, I say hello.”
The space struck her too.
In Munich, she remembers a life largely lived in flats. Here, a young carpenter without much money could buy a block and build a house bit by bit.
Soon they built the house that welcomed their daughter in 1961. Their son followed in 1963.
For Klaus, work rarely ended at knock-off time.
Rosa remembers him and his mates coming home about 5 pm, eating, then heading out again around 6 for contract jobs that could keep them working until 10.
In 1978, after securing a major ABC contract, he established K&R Scharrer Joinery. The business began in a workshop of about 100 sqm and eventually grew into a 600 sqm factory employing five people.
He retired in 1994. Canberra, meanwhile, refused to stand still. The open spaces filled with suburbs. Civic grew. Roads became busier.
Rosa sometimes misses the old one. “You could go out to the Cotter River, and you didn’t see a soul,” she said.
“I liked it better then than what I do now when I go to Canberra. There’s … traffic everywhere.”
Germany remained part of their lives. They went back many times to see family, and the Scharrer family crest still has a place in their home.
But they never moved back. Rosa didn’t miss six-month-long German winters. She liked Canberra’s weather, its space and the easy friendliness she had noticed from the beginning.
For Klaus, the answer was similarly uncomplicated.
“Life is easier here,” he said.
Over the years, Klaus kept track of families of his friends and fellow carpenters who had made the same unlikely journey.
But time gradually thinned their numbers.
Klaus is now the last surviving Jennings German still living in Canberra. He believes another survivor may be living elsewhere in Australia.
On 10 December, 75 years to the day since his group arrived, he plans to gather with descendants of the men who made that journey with him.
And Klaus, almost 99, will be the living link to the young carpenters who arrived with their tools and two-year contracts, not knowing how much of their lives would ultimately be built here.
Have you lived in Canberra for more than 50 years? We’d love to hear your story. Email us at nalvi@region.com.au.
