THE DUX FAMILY – EARLY CRABBERS AND OYSTERMEN

With Keith Farnsworth

Johann Carl Gustav Dux, known as “Gus”, was born in West Prussia, on 1st June 1852.  Johann worked as a seaman, jumped ship in Cooktown, N.Q., and then worked his way down the coast until he arrived at German Station, now known as Nundah (a suburb of Brisbane).

Johann married at the age of 20 to Wilhemine Rose, 24 Years, from Grunhage, West Prussia.  When she died at the age of 28, he married Bertha Lange, age 17 years, from Weinsdorf, West Prussia.  Their first child, Friedrich Carl August Dux, known as “Augie”, was born on 2nd August 1878.

Gustav and Bertha Dux

Dux Creek on Bribie Island was named after Gus, who eventually settled in what is now known as Dux Street, Caboolture. At the time, Dux Street ran right down to the Caboolture River, and it was from here that Gus did his fishing, crabbing and oystering, culling oysters from oyster banks at Pumicestone Passage, north of the Caboolture River, and on Bribie Island. It was a long hard pull by rowboat from Caboolture down the Caboolture River to Bribie Island for Gus, so he would camp overnight when he worked his oyster banks.

William, another of Gus’s sons, carried on his father’s business, and was known locally as Billy, the crab-man.

In the early 1900s Augie, Gus’s eldest son, moved to southern Moreton Bay where he worked as an oysterman eventually gaining employment with the Moreton Bay Oyster Company based at Currigee on South Stradbroke Island. He married Lillian O’Connell of Currigee in 1905. In 1910, Augie and his family moved to Labrador where they rented a house until he and the boys had built a bark hut from local timbers. They moved into the hut in 1918.

Dux family home c1918, Broad Street, Labrador. The house made of saplings and bark, with a hardwood floor was demolished and replaced in 1929 with a more substantial residence. Timbers of the 1918 building were recycled in the hut on South Stradbroke Island.

 When this bark hut was demolished in about 1930 to make way for a more substantial house, the timber was used to construct a hut and jetty on South Stradbroke Island. This hut, with some alterations, is now Heritage Listed as Dux Hut. 

Dux Hut today- remains of jetty in foreground

The oyster bank, which Augie and some of his sons worked, still shows on some maps as Dux Oyster Bank. The family retained the licence to this bank (#122) until 1957.

At Labrador, the sports field across the road from where the bark hut and Dux family home, (still held by some of Augie’s descendants), was named Dux Oval many years ago.

Extract from Queensland’s German Connections