Paul Foelsche

Paul Foelsche, ISO (30 March 1831 – 31 January 1914) was a South Australian police officer and photographer born in Germany, remembered for his work in the Northern Territory of Australia from 1870 to 1904.

He was born Paul Heinrich Matthias Fölsche in Moorburg, Germany on the south bank of the river Elbe near Hamburg. His mother died when he was quite young; his father, a ropemaker, married again and had another six children. At seventeen he enlisted in the Prussian cavalry which was fighting Denmark over ownership of the Schleswig-Holstein region to the north, learning the use of weapons and becoming a proficient horseman and gunsmith.

On 22 June 1854 he left Hamburg for Australia on the Reiherstieg, landing at Port Adelaide on 26 October. He may have headed, like so many, for the Victorian goldfields but in November 1856 he joined the South Australian mounted police as a police trooper and was posted to Strathalbyn early the following year. Among his many arrests was Thomas Field, a member of John Kerney ("Captain Thunderbolt")'s gang of thugs. His work entailed frequent contact with the local aboriginal people, with whom he seemed to get on well. He received a steady stream of promotions (though punctuated by occasional demotions in response to budget cutbacks) until December 1869, when as Sub-Inspector (on a salary of £230) in December 1869 he was transferred to Palmerston in the Northern Territory, at that time the responsibility of South Australia. He was naturalised as a British citizen on 6 December. It is not known whether this was a condition of his employment in the North. His farewell dinner on 13 December was hugely attended, a testimony to his popularity and the regard the people of Strathalbyn had for him. He left on the Kohinoor on 16 December 1869. accompanied by Dr. J. Stokes Millner, then acting Government Resident (B. Douglas was appointed in April 1870). His Corporal, F. Drought and five troopers – W. Stretton, K. Kappler, H. J. Boord, H. Q. Smith, and J. Massey – were on the same boat (he had Smith and Boord recalled three months later for breaches of discipline).

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