British, Irish and Germans began to take up land, but the first concentrated group of settlers were the 22 families from north-eastern Germany who arrived in four ships between 1863 and 1864 and established themselves in the area now called Bethania.

The Brisbane Courier of March 1, 1866, commented that their progress was being followed with great interest in their home towns and expressed the hope that this would encourage the immigration of similar groups.

The offer by the young colony of land orders to those who paid their own passage to Queensland combined with economic and political pressures in Prussia provided a great incentive to make the move.

At first, the Gramzow families and a similar group who had settled nearby at Mount Cotton, attended Pastor Haussmann's Bethesda Mission near Beenleigh, but the distance was too great for many to travel.

The two communities therefore agreed to join forces to found a church of their own and in 1875 Pastor Haussmann purchased ten acres from the Government midway between Gramzow and Mount Cotton.

The church was built by members of the community in a traditional north German style with hand-made brick nogging in a timber frame that had been axe-dressed and fixed with wooden pegs.

[1] The cemetery that was formerly attached to this church and which contains the graves of most members of the foundation committee and other pioneers of the Gramzow and Mount Cotton areas continues in use.

A perimeter plantation consisting of a double row of regularly spaced mature pine trees planted in the 1960s borders the whole block.

This is standard or "high" German, although the Scheer grave carries an inscription "De Heer is myn Herder" (The Lord is my shepherd) in Platt Deutsch, the dialect that was spoken at home although seldom written.

One grave, that of Lizzie Benfer, is topped by an ornate carving of an angel, but the majority of the monuments are of the upright slab type, most favouring an austere simplicity of style.

The site has potential to yield information that contributes to the understanding of a small and extremely cohesive group of German settlers who were played a vital role in the original settlement of the Logan district.