Tribute to Pastor August Fricke, 1942-2024

August Fricke was a gentle man with a fierce sense of social justice, so it was no surprise that his involvement in the gun control debate at its Qld epicentre of Gympie would earn him a meeting with the Prime Minister. This is his story:

A photo of Pastor August Fricke, Lutheran Minister at Gympie taken in 1998.

For years, Pastor August Fricke was a beloved and well known face and personality around the Gympie region.

A man of strong faith, generous, kind, gentle and devoted but with a fierce sense of social justice and passion for gardening, the young German boy would go on to have a long and highly respected tenure as pastor in Gympie, Ingham, Tully and Brisbane and to make a real difference in East Timor.

In Gympie, his part in the gun control debate would earn him a private meeting with the Prime Minister.

August died on June 19, and a memorial service will be at St Luke’s Lutheran Church in Nambour on Friday, June 28, at 10:30am.

August was born in Oerlinghausen, Germany, on December 31, 1942 to August and Luise Fricke.

Pastor August Fricke, Lutheran Minister at Gympie in 1998.

He was the first of six children, along with his siblings Friederike, Adelheid, Hermann, Luise and Martin.

He loved playing soccer, birdwatching and cycling around Europe on holidays, but felt the burden of high expectations knowing he wasn’t academically gifted, especially in English.

Even though his father was a pastor, August kept a secret box under his bed for his for pocket money in support of mission work, hiding his sense of vocation from a young age to grow up to be a missionary of sorts.

So August immigrated to Australia by ship in 1963 and soon joined the Lutheran seminary in Adelaide, South Australia.

He was ordained as a Lutheran Pastor in 1969 in Pittsworth and served there until the end of 1970, where he met his future wife, Betty, while she was working as an intern at Toowoomba General Hospital. He sent flowers to the hospital reception every week for months until she agreed to marry him.

Pastor August Fricke conducting service at the Gympie Zion Lutheran church in 1997.

Betty and August were married in Toowoomba in March 1971, and then went to live and work in Germany for most of the rest of that year.

Moving to Ingham on their return, August served the Ingham and Tully congregations from 1972-1977, during which time, Bettina and Martin were born.

In 1977, August accepted a call to a new parish in Brisbane, spanning Wynnum, Manly and Carina. He and his family stayed for the next 17 years and two more children followed, Daniel and Luise.

Aside from his congregational ministry, August worked as a prison chaplain at Boggo Road Jail for several years, which ignited his passion for social justice. In the 80s, he also rallied his congregations to help support local women’s refuges, recently arrived refugees from Vietnam and Aboriginal rights campaigns.

Pastor August Fricke in the main street of Gympie in 1997.

On his day off each week, Monday, August was pursued his other great passion: growing fruit.

He established a couple of hobby farms over the years but his last and most ambitious was in Cabarlah outside of Toowoomba.

He mainly grew stone fruit, avocados and kiwi fruit which he would then sell at the Rocklea Markets with the sign Fricke’s Fresh Fruit, dreaming of giving up his day job to become a full-time farmer.

Finally leaving Brisbane in 1994 to accept a call to Zion Lutheran Church in Gympie – his family mortified - August soon found a wonderful new community to call home – and a new cause.

As Gympie made national headlines during the gun control debate, especially after an effigy of Tim Fischer was lynched at a protest rally, August became actively involved locally in the campaign for gun reform, helping organise a counter rally at which Tim Fischer came to speak, albeit tentatively!

Pastor August Fricke with TFN leader Rev Mukunda before the distribution of aid in Timor.

Despite their otherwise differing politics, in acknowledgement of his advocacy in the community, August was pleased to be invited to meet the Prime Minister, John Howard in July 1996.

A few years later, August was very moved by the Timor-Leste crisis of 1999 and after their attainment of Independence, helped organise a group of Gympie residents and businesses who donated freight containers full of food, bicycles, fibreglass boats and other essentials to Laga.

From this point on, August had found his true vocation. He founded the charity Asia Focus in 2003 and devoted the rest of his life – as ardently as ever even after his retirement in 2008 - to supporting small communities and projects in Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, the Philippines, India and Liberia. His regular trips to Asia (and twice to Liberia), his sharing stories of people in need through FIRE magazine and during his tireless fundraising in churches around Australia, became his most lasting legacy.

He still devoted any spare moments of the early morning or late afternoon to his garden, establishing an orchard, a rose garden, a rainforest and a cactus patch on his Gympie plot.

Pastor August Fricke puts the finishing touches to one of 11 outrigger fishing boats before they were taken to Timor.

After being diagnosed with a lymphoma in his brain in 2020, August spent nine months in the Wesley hospital receiving intensive treatment.

He quite enjoyed all the attention and even though the treatment had lasting effects on his capacity to continue his work with Asia Focus, he was given the all clear toward the end of 2021, and was able to spend his last years at home with Betty and in the garden.

One of the first things he did on his return to Gympie from hospital in Brisbane was to plant 12 mango trees.

He still wasn’t sure if the tumour was entirely gone at that stage and was still very weak. To imagine him planting one new tree seemed ridiculous, let alone 12. But August dug and prepared the soil and planted every one of them himself.

As it turned out, he won’t get to taste the fruit from all of those mango trees, but they are growing beautifully and we look forward to the next season.

That he died at the end of a beautiful day in his garden is a comfort to his family.

Vale Pastor August Fricke.

Originally published as Tribute to Pastor August Fricke, 1942-2024