Australian Dictionary of Biography

Johann Christian Simon Handt (1794-1863), missionary and Protestant minister, was born at Aken-on-the-Elbe, Saxony, Germany. He began life as a tailor, but in 1822 entered the Basle Mission Institute, and he was ordained at Auggen, Baden, in May 1827. In December, under the auspices of the Basle Mission, he began work at Free Town, Sierra Leone, and next year moved to Liberia. In 1829 he was reported to have left the society and gone to Cape Mount to start an independent mission. In 1830 he returned to England and was appointed by the Church Missionary Society as a missionary to the Australian Aboriginals.

Handt sailed from Portsmouth as chaplain of the convict transport Eleanor and arrived in Sydney on 25 June 1831. On 4 July 1832 he married Mary (1804-1844), eldest daughter of the missionary, William Crook, and sometime schoolteacher in Tahiti and Parramatta. With Rev. William Watson, Handt was prepared for duty by Rev. Samuel Marsden and sent to Wellington Valley, about 250 miles (402 km) north-west of Sydney, to commence a mission station which received a government subsidy of £500 a year. Progress was slow and Handt moved to Sydney in July 1836. He was sent to found a Church Missionary Society station at Moreton Bay and, after he arrived there in May 1837, ministered to the two or three hundred Aboriginals in the area without much success. He was also appointed chaplain to the penal station, where he used the Anglican Prayer Book and was encouraged by the response among the prisoners. When most of the convicts were removed in 1839 Handt continued as official protector of Aboriginals, and co-operated with the German missionaries under Karl Schmidt and Christopher Eipper at Nundah. In 1841 and 1842 he reported pessimistically on the Aboriginals; but although the Church Missionary Society in Sydney ordered him to Wellington Valley, he remained as chaplain at Moreton Bay despite the antagonism of the commandant, Lieutenant Owen Gorman, whom he censured for 'highly immoral conduct'. He continued to officiate in the 'church', a room over the gaol, until the penal settlement was closed in May 1842. Next year the government gave him £100 to enable him to return to Sydney, where he served as pastor to a small Lutheran congregation. Soon afterwards Rev. John Dunmore Lang placed him in charge of a small 'voluntary' Presbyterian group at Balmain. Here Handt remained for a year, and then pioneered the Presbyterian cause in the Berrima district. In 1850 he was admitted to membership of Lang's Synod of New South Wales.

At the height of the gold fever Handt moved to Victoria and was received into the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church at Portland in January 1853, but soon broke with them as they thought him 'unprincipled'. He then returned to association with the Church of England and held official appointment as a hospital and prison chaplain at Geelong until his death on 7 July 1863. He was buried at Germantown by the Lutheran settlers to whom he had often preached.

Handt was scholarly but too temperamental and impulsive to retain a settled ministry. Through his missionary work he made some progress with the translation of native dialects and diligently tried to teach the Aboriginals the rudiments of Christian doctrine and morality. Some of his techniques were ill conceived, particularly the attempt to conform nomadic Aboriginals to European customs and dress, and despite honourable efforts his missionary work left no direct permanent results. Handt is credited with having introduced pineapples into Queensland: suckers from his Brisbane garden were given to the Nundah mission and distributed thence throughout the district.

♦♦  This article was substantially revised on 15 June 2017