As traumatic accounts of families struggling to pay their mortgages or rent fill our newspapers and TV screens, spare a thought for Friedrich Herbig some 170 years ago.

No mortgage or rental accommodation for him! Friedrich stepped off the ship in Port Adelaide in 1855. He was from Silesia in Poland, aged 27, and virtually penniless.

In his previous life he’d been a tailor, but he headed north-east for what is now Springton near the Barossa Valley to try his hand at farming.

Friedrich didn’t even have a tent to live in. But he did have a tree.

You can still see the Herbig Family Tree, just off the Springton main street. Amazingly, the gnarled hollow red gum, up to 500 years old, is still alive – with a cavernous trunk some six metres wide at the base.

Friedrich was to live in that tree – no doubt filling in the gaps with branches – for the next five or so years. There was no government help of any kind.

In 1858 he married 18-year-old Caroline Rattey, who had arrived in Adelaide two years earlier with two uncles and their families from what is now Poland.

Caroline suffered more trauma in the new colony than bears thinking about. While working as a maid for another family in Cockatoo Valley, she was attacked by a stranger, hung by a rope, and left for dead.

Somehow she survived and moved to the home of her uncle and aunt in the Springton district. Friedrich had begun working there in a dairy owned by George Fife Angas – one of the founders of the Province of South Australia. Friedrich and Caroline met, married, and went to live together in Friedrich’s tree.

Friedrich showed some spunk in leasing from Angas 32 hectares of land including his gum-tree home. After a considerable financial struggle, he managed to buy the land some 11 years later. His dream of owning a farm was becoming a reality.

The Herbigs were still living in the tree one year later when their first child, a son, was born in 1859. But after their second son was born in 1860, Friedrich built a pine and pug dwelling 400 metres upstream from the tree. Four years later he built a stone house next door – and the couple went on to have 16 children, nine sons and seven daughters.

Friedrich built a successful chaff business, and helped found the Friedensberg (‘Peace Hill’) Lutheran Congregation. He died aged 58 after suffering a head injury when he fell from a load of chaff while crossing a creek. His eldest child was then 27 and his youngest, just 15 months.

Caroline outlived her husband by 40 years. She was illiterate, but learned from her children how to write her name and sign documents. When she died in March 1927, she left behind four of her sons, five of her daughters, 44 grandchildren, and 35 great-grandchildren.

Friedrich and Caroline are buried together in the Friedensberg Cemetery, and their descendants continue to live in the area. Their amazing story of resilience, ingenuity, and hard work should be an inspiration to the current generation.

Dr David Phillips is a former research scientist and founder of FamilyVoice Australia.