Adelaide Hills German tradition of cricket bat making through the Kumnick and Fielke families since 1894
Cricket bat craftsman Bob Fielke wrote a history of Kumnick-Fielke bat making in South Australia and a history of his own family, arriving from Germany in the 1850s. At right: A plague in the Lobethal main street acknowledging the contribution of Ewald Kumnick.
Making cricket bats for the very English sport of cricket became very South Australian German tradition through Adelaide Hills Kumnick and Fielke families.
Willow trees, planted by German immigrants along the Adelaide Hills creeks to create a European landscape and help stabilise creek beds, fed the South Australian cricket-bat-making industry for many years.
Joseph Peck at Morphett Vale in the 1870s was credited as one of the first serious bat makers in South Australia. Peck pressed green timber (local willow) to compact the fibres and harden the bat but his bats were heavy while English makers compressed seasoned timber, making lighter bats.
In 1894, Ewald Kumnick, a carpenter at Lobethal who’d been repairing cricket bats, began making bats to supplement his income. He used local willows and spring handles from damaged imported bats and made 13 bought by the locals including Frank von Doussa.
Demand increased and Kumnick set up a factory that grew to employ 16 men and produce up to 15,000 bats a year in the 1930s under contract and the name of English firm A.G. Spalding & Bros. After more experimenting with local timber, English willow became standard for bats made by Kumnick. Spalding’s Adelaide man was Victor Richardson who graded all willow used and selected the English willow clefts for bats that carried his name.
World War II ended the timber supply from Britain and stopped the relationship with Spalding, who began making their own bats and joined other Australian market competitors. Kumnicks turned to making bats for schoolboys in much lower volumes. Jack Kumnick at 60 took over from his father but by 1958 he was ill and the business closed.
Soon after, the Fielke family of Mount Torrens started its bat-making business. As a boy, Laurie Fielke had been impressed by the Kumnick factory at Lobethal and he asked Jack Kumnick and his former employees to guide his move from refurbishing to making bats from 1965. Laurie Fielke started using local willow and Australian plantation poplar as well as English willow. His manufacturing became more sophisticated and by the 1980s his bats were used by South Australian state cricketers.
Laurie Fielke died in 1987 as South Australia’s only bat maker. His son Ron took over the business with his brother Robert (Bob), formerly a TAFE teacher, joining in 1994 – 100 years after Kumnick started – and taking on the craft of bat making on a small quality scale.
Bob Fielke inherited his love of cricket from his grandfather Paul and played the game at district and country level. His son Noel played state cricket for South Australia and scored a record 1,102 runs in a season for Salisbury district club – with a Fielke bat. In retirement, Bob Fielke wrote Cricket Bat Making in South Australia and another history book,The Fielke Cradle, tracing his family back to 1800 in the Prussian village of Guntersberg.
