Franke goes to Kununurra
She lost irst her homeland, then her husband and inally her son, but Frauke Bolten-Boshammer rebuilt her life from a patch of barren red earth. Sue Smethurst meets the inspiring diamond queen of Kununurra.
Within minutes of landing in Kununurra, Frauke Bolten had made up her mind – by sunset she’d be on a plane back home to Germany. It was 1981 and Kununurra was a dusty frontier town, perishingly hot with little more than salty scrub bush as far as the eye could see. The rugged Australian outback was a world away from the rolling green hills of her European home, but with rich soil and endless sunshine, her husband Friedrich thought it was the perfect place to build a dream farm for his wife and their three children.
As their plane bounced along Kununurra’s red dirt airstrip, Frauke didn’t quite share his vision. “It was so remote and so isolated,” she recalls, “I honestly thought no intelligent soul could live here.”
The nightmare continued when they discovered that their “oasis” farmland was in fact hundreds of hectares of concrete-hard earth, covered in backbreaking weeds. Friedrich worked around the clock for weeks ploughing and reploughing their elds just so they could plant something.
“We sowed mung beans rst,” says Frauke. “Friedrich would walk over the paddock at 6am checking if they’d germinated. It was so hot that by the time he got back to the car, half an hour later, he had blisters all over his feet.”
Despite the punishing conditions and debilitating homesickness, the Boltens would not be beaten. Frauke adapted to the searing heat and harsh climate and learnt to live with the crocodiles that called her Ord River backyard home.
Then, just three years after they arrived, Friedrich took his own life, leaving her with a debt-ridden farm and by then, four young children to feed. It would have been easy for Frauke to pack her bags and head back home, but the Kimberley had begun to weave its magic.
That was 37 years ago. Today, Kununurra is the bustling, beating heart of the desert and Frauke is one of its most precious gems. She not only survived the perishing outback and further family tragedy, but she found love again when she least expected it and went on to build a diamond empire that has showcased Australia to the rest of the world.
“I fell in love with the Kimberley and its people,” she says, “life can be tough out here, but people stick together through good times and bad. They are the true heart of the outback and this place has become my oasis.”
No time for heartache
The realisation of just how far Kununurra was from the rest of the world quickly hit home to Frauke when she made her rst trip to the general store days after arriving in the remote Kimberley. She found little more than sacks of our, milk powder and salted meats, a far cry from the sumptuous fare of her former home in Schleswig-Holstein, the lush dairy region of Germany.
“When I opened the our it was crawling with weevils – it was just horrible,” she recalls.
With tears in her eyes, Frauke stormed back into town and confronted the shopkeeper.
“Sorry, love but that’s just how it is up here,” he said, explaining that Kununurra’s supplies came up by container ship from Perth, 3000 kilometres away, and sometimes took months to arrive. “By the time the our gets here, it’s spoiled. Nothing we can do about it,” the shopkeeper said. “Every bag will be the same and everyone else in town has them too.”
So, she lugged the bag back home, put on her apron and went to work. She sifted the our over and over again until every last weevil was gone, after which she baked the most delicious cake she could muster. It became a metaphor for how she has lived her life.
The Australian outback of the 1980s was a man’s world, and when Friedrich died the young widow battled to keep the farm alive and feed her family. Ironically, the last crop Friedrich planted before his death was the best they’d ever had, but even so Frauke knew soya beans alone wouldn’t bring success.
“I was so sad when Friedrich died,” she says, “but I had four children to feed and a farm that was failing, I had no time to grieve. I had to dust myself off and just get on with it.”
Love and purpose
Her children – Fritz, who was then 15, Margret, 14, Peter, ve, and one-yearold Maria – inspired her to keep going each day. She leased the farm, sold off equipment and began rebuilding their lives, and when she least expected it, love came her way again.
Robert Boshammer was a handsome young farmer who’d just arrived in the Kimberley and needed to borrow machinery for the property he managed. He and Frauke hit it off immediately, rst as friends, and then love blossomed. He proposed to her one year after they met and they were married within months. Another daughter, Katrina, was born.
“I think I am the luckiest woman in the world,” she says with a disarmingly open smile. “Robert came into my life when I least expected it and I found happiness again. After Katrina was born, our family and my world felt very complete.”
It was Robert who encouraged Frauke to step into her own business when Rio Tinto opened its Argyle diamond mine an hour’s drive from
Kununurra. With nowhere for tourists visiting the newly opened mine to buy Argyle’s precious gems, Frauke saw an opportunity and started showcasing jewellery from the back verandah of their house, high on the banks of the Ord River.
She was a gemstone novice but the risk paid off and within 12 months, she opened a store in town. Today Kimberley Fine Diamonds attracts visitors from around the world. Frauke showcases an immense collection of precious pink diamonds, along with works from local Kimberley artists.
“I think the shop had brought a bit of sophistication to the town and given local people something to be proud of. I had a customer from London in recently and she couldn’t believe what she’d come across in the middle of the outback.”
Frauke’s clients have included Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Baz Luhrmann. When the epic movie Australia, which was lmed around Kununurra, premiered in New York, Baz was wearing an exquisite Australia-shaped tie-pin set with pink diamonds made by Frauke’s jewellers in Kununurra.
“The diamonds bring people joy,” she says. “They are such a unique taste of the Australian outback. It’s wonderful to know that people all around the world are wearing a piece of the Kimberley near their hearts.”
In 2001, Frauke Bolten-Boshammer was awarded a prestigious WA business award. She stood before an audience and accepted the recognition for her services, humbly comparing herself to a German Stee-off doll – a roly-poly doll that always manages to right itself. “I might get knocked down, but I’ll always get back up again,” she said. Few in the audience knew of the second devastating tragedy to which she was referring.
The grief never leaves
One year earlier, in January 2000, Frauke’s precious 20-year-old son, Peter, had also taken his own life.
The devastation of losing Peter, a popular and talented local sportsman who seemed to have the world at his feet, oored the whole family and the tight-knit Kununurra community.
The grief was so unbearable that, at times, Frauke wondered if she’d survive. She describes the search for her son’s body in the crocodileinfested waters of the nearby Ord River as the most painful time of her life.
“Peter’s death was so different to Friedrich’s. When Friedrich died I was all alone, and with four children to look after I had to get on with rebuilding our lives. But Peter’s death rocked me to the core
“We had no reason, no explanation. He was such a happy, loved boy. It was so shocking. The death of my son was far worse than losing my husband,” she says. “Losing a child is the most unimaginable heartache, the grief never leaves you.”
She spent years soul-searching – wondering why Peter would take his own life – but she found no answers. Frauke now knows that, with suicide, there can be a strong familial link, which has prompted her to tell her story.
“Suicide has touched our lives way too often. Sadly, in the Kimberley region, we have a terrible problem with suicide, which seems to impact every generation – young, old and
“I had no time to grieve. I had to dust myself of f and just get on with it.”
particularly our Indigenous community. Beautiful hearts, gone.
“It’s a dif cult issue to discuss, and some say we shouldn’t for fear of triggering the vulnerable. But I’m choosing to talk about this in the hope of saving others.
“Our family now knows that there is a familial link with suicide. If somebody in the family has completed suicide, there is a greater risk that other family members will take their own life too. I wish I had been aware of this prior to Peter’s death.
“If our story can save one life, it is worthwhile sharing it. We must talk about this. We must support one another. We must encourage one another to seek help, because help is available. And life is a precious gift.”
Today, some 26 years after she sold her rst necklace off the back porch, Frauke Bolten-Boshammer is credited with not only pioneering an industry but putting the tiny outback town and its precious diamonds, on the global map.
At 71, the much-loved outback gure shows no signs of slowing down. She and Robert have celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary. The family, which arrived as four, now numbers 20 and growing, with a lively troupe of grandchildren who all adore their “Mutti”.
“My family is the essence of everything, the salt of my earth, and I thank God every day. I’m not a tree that’s easily planted. It took a long time to establish my roots here, but now I am home. So much has changed since I arrived here 37 years ago.
What was a dusty outpost is now the thriving heartland of northern Western Australia.
“With endless blue sky and earth, and the rich soul and community backbone of the outback to comfort you when you need it most, I am convinced that this is the most wonderful place on earth to raise a family. Amongst the dirt and dust and beyond the endless horizon there is a place where spirits can soar, where you can be truly free. I am sure that children are born here with resilience in their blood.”
Frauke still cherishes every pink sunrise over the spectacular Ord River. “Life is wonderful,” she exclaims. “Never begin to give up and never give up beginning.”
Frauke’s inspiring memoir, A Diamond in the Dust, RRP $32.99, was written with Sue Smethurst and is published in November by Simon and Schuster.