There’s more to tell about the remarkable Reverend Doctor John Herman Leopold Zillmann who was one of the most amazing Queenslanders to have ever lived. There was one year that he deviated from his religious teachings. I told a version of this story live on radio 4WK.

He was born north of Brisbane in 1841 to Polish-German parents.  He was married five times. His first three wives all died at a rapid rate within a five-year period.

He studied religion, became a powerful speaker, and sampled many religious denominations. He was raised by the Moravians, trained by the Wesleyans, spent time with the Lutherans and Episcopalians, went over to the Church of England, then the Congregationalists. After a time, the Church of England re-acquired his liking. Then he preached for the Unitarians.

Reverend Zillmann ministered in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, England, and North America.

In Queensland he preached in Maryborough, Brisbane and Ipswich. In Brisbane the suburb of Zillmere is named after him, or more specifically Zillmann’s Waterholes.

In Forbes in New South Wales, he baptised the posthumous child of the bushranger Ben Hall.

In Victoria he preached in Melbourne and Hamilton in the country. It was at Hamilton that he got into a public spat with the first bishop of Ballarat, The Reverend Samuel Thornton, who effectively banned him from preaching in Victoria.

In America he preached in churches and prisons where he witnessed the first-ever execution in an electric chair. A degree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred on him by a university in Chicago. He helped run a campaign opposing Theodore Roosevelt for the U.S. presidency. He was asked to stand for the United States Senate but declined.

Back in Queensland, he was approached a number of times to enter Queensland parliament but knocked that back too. He was a close friend of prime minister Billy Hughes.

Reverend Zillmann was associated with religious work his whole life – except for in 1888 when he was editor of the old ”Darling Downs Gazette” in Toowoomba (pictured top of page). He was at loggerheads with the mayor. The paper eventually merged with today’s Toowoomba Chronicle in 1922.

One of the first editorials published upon his appointment was allegedly a piece from the Cooma Express in New South Wales. It expressed the hope and expectation that the reverend would make his mark as a legislator, a national reformer, and even as a statesman.

The Australian, a Brisbane newspaper, reported that under Reverend Zillmann the gazette underwent a wonderful change. It said that before the pastor took charge it had fallen to a very low ebb, in fact it was not worth the paper it was printed on. But since the reverend’s arrival it had become one of the most readable papers in the colony. 

But the reverend made enemies. Such as William Henry Groom. Groom was Toowoomba’s first mayor, speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, and the first and only transported convict to serve in an Australian federal parliament. [Groom’s son later officially opened radio 4WK.]

Groom seemed to attack Reverend Zillmann and his paper at every opportunity. It was as if Groom thought that the Daring Downs Gazette only existed for the sole purpose of allegedly slandering him.

But then again, there may have been good reason. Reverend Zillmann in a public address early in his Toowoomba tenure, said that he had no respect for Speaker Groom, nor for those who elected him.

There was definitely mutual dislike between the mayor and the ordained editor. The minister of religion abandoned his editorial career early, and returned to a church, any church.

The reverend travelled the globe, wrote books, courted by politicians, witnessed executions, antagonised church leaders, baptised bushrangers’ offspring, and edited newspapers. He even accompanied his second son and his bride on their honeymoon.

Reverend Zillmann was seventy-seven years old when he died in Sydney in 1919 and today he’s buried in an overgrown grave. He deserves better. His stay in Toowoomba was just for one year, but this amazing Queenslander certainly left an impression.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD LIVE ON 4WK.

Photo credits:
Margaret Street, Toowoomba, Queensland, office of the newspaper The Darling Downs Gazette c1899 – Pinterest.
Portrait of Rev J.H.L. Zillmann, undated – Maryborough Family History.
William Henry Groom – State Library of Queensland.
Gravesite of Rev Zillmann Rookwood Cemetery Sydney – Find A Grave added by Ken 2024.