sketcher, traveller, musician and collector, was a native of Altona (Germany) who was in New South Wales for four and a half years, from November 1854 to June 1859. He disliked Sydney and spent his time as a peripatetic violin-player, pianist and occasional labourer on the goldfields at Araluen and in the Goulburn, Braidwood, Moruya and Illawarra districts of southern New South Wales. He gathered various collections of Australian flora and fauna, geological specimens and Aboriginal artefacts, which he regularly sent back to Hamburg. He also filled successive sketchbooks with landscapes, trees and flowers. In 1860 he published an account of his travels.
Neither Lau nor his drawings and collections can be traced in today’s Hamburg. He is possibly the Hermann Lau whose music shop is noted in the Danzig (Gdansk, Poland) directories from 1878 onwards and whose descendants owned the shop until 1942. His drawings are known only through his book.
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- Writers:
- Fletcher, John
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
