He was a queer fellow, deformed and gnome-like in appearance, with a positive genius for bobbing up in the places where he was least wanted, sowing the seeds of trouble and mischief wherever he went.

Clandestine prayer-meetings in Light's Pass, exorcising of evil spirits, land dealing at Lobethal – these were but some of the side-issues of his main scheme – the realisation of a communistic settlement.A similar description appeared in the Hamilton Spectator in November 1880: he was a little, deformed man ... His face was dark and wrinkled, his hair, black, long and unkempt.

In public he always wore an overcoat of black cloth and latterly of opossum skin, which, with a broad-crowned German military 'cheesecutter' cap, completed a costume which, as I have said, was characteristic of the man.Fearing possible excommunication from the Lutheran church for his unorthodox religious views, Krummnow left South Australia.

In 1852 a group of German migrants, led by Krummnow, pooled their resources and purchased 1,584 acres (6.41 km2) of land near Mount Rouse, in western Victoria about 3 miles (4.8 km) north-west from Penshurst.

I do not believe that a doctor or medicine can prolong life; it cannot be proved.Herrnhut opened its doors to impoverished and destitute peoples as well as providing shelter, food and money for Indigenous Australian communities in times of crisis.

[2][11] At one stage Herrnhut "gave sanctuary to over three hundred aborigines who hunted kangaroos on the property and left many middens at their camping ground".

[1] One of the most significant events in Herrnhut's history is the arrival of Maria Heller, a self-styled prophetess who had set up a similar community at Hills Plain near Benalla, Victoria in early 1875.

[3][9] In March 1876 the South Australian Register reported that Krummnow had agreed "to pay all their debts and to regulate their affairs, under the condition of their joining his community, and of entering into the bosom of his Church".

[12] Some accounts recall Heller as a wild woman possessed of an uneven temper, whose followers brought discontent to the austere Herrnhut community.

Heller settled 23 kilometres (14 mi) away in Hochkirch (now Tarrington) and married a fellow Hills Plain and Herrnhut resident, Ernst Scholtz.

[3][4] This unsubstantiated claim is almost certainly false – Krummnow's eulogy was delivered by August Hildebrandt, the settlement's baker and a long-term adherent – attendees at the funeral were his friends and followers.

[4] According to Charles Meyer in the Victorian Historical Journal (1978), "[f]rom available evidence there is no need, to accept the rather biased description by 'Vagabond' (S. James) that the women and young girls 'toiled in the fields early and late, some clothed only in an old sack – toiled as hard as any negro slave'".

On 26 February 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National transmitted "Herrnhut" on Ark Stories with the presenter, Rachael Kohn, interviewing Metcalf about the settlement, Krummnow and some of the mistakes early settlers made in rural areas.