Return to Blogging

Cross posting to the Personal Reflections and New England History blogs.

Well, I am now in Armidale. I still don't have the internet working properly, that requires connecting to the NBN, but can access the internet using a hot spot created on the mobile. This is potentially very expensive, but meets my immediate needs.

After such a long delay in blogging, the move was creating distractions and delays long before the intensive move period, traffic to my blogs has declined greatly. I have to rebuild and that will take time.

I will write about the move, after all it has been a big and all consuming one, but for the moment I simply want to record that I am back blogging.

I look forward to a return to regular posting, to the on-going conversation with blogging friends old and hopefully new!

New England Writers' Centre announces a major new opportunity for writers living in the New England Federal Electorate

In partnership with Varuna, the National Writers’ House, and with the support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the New England Writers’ Centre is delighted to announce a major new opportunity for New England writers.

Applications will open on August 5 for the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship, which, through a competitive process, will offer the Fellowship winner a week’s inspirational writing residency in the beautiful surroundings of Varuna, in the Blue Mountains. The Fellowship package will offer full board and accommodation at Varuna, funds towards travel, a one-on-one consultation with a Varuna expert and more
.
The Fellowship will be open to all writers, at any stage of their career, and working in any literary genre, who are either currently living in the New England region (defined as the federal New England Electorate) or who have previously lived there for at least five years. Assessment of applications will be conducted by a panel of New England-based literary professionals to establish a shortlist of three finalists. From this, Varuna will select the winner, to be announced in early December, with the Fellowship to be taken up in 2020.  For all details of the Fellowship and information on how to apply: see here.

‘We’re so delighted to be partnering with New England Writers’ Centre on this new fellowship,’ said Veechi Stuart, Executive Director of Varuna. ‘Supporting the arts in regional Australia is key to what we do, and we’re keen to be part of the rich tradition of poetry and writing that New England inspires.’ 

We are very grateful for the support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, whose generous sponsorship has helped to make this inaugural Fellowship possible.  The Copyright Agency is a not-for-profit rights management organisation that ensures artists, writers and publishers are fairly rewarded for the reproduction of their work. Its Cultural Fund provides grants to creative individuals and organisations for a diverse range of projects which aim to enrich Australian cultural life.

New England has indeed many writers. I used to be able to follow them all, but that became impossible a few years ago  with all the growth. I hope that this initiative really pays off.

How Canberra's growth continues to shift relative economic power and influence from Northern NSW to the south

In December 2016 I examined the Ernst & Young cost-benefit evaluation of the proposed move of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Authority (APVMA) from Canberra to Armidale.

Proposed Canberra High Rise

It's fair to suggest that I was not impressed with the way E&Y presented the costs of the move compared with the benefits, I thought that it was shoddy analysis in methodological terms. I also thought that it ignored the dynamic benefits of the move, something I was going to write more on.

For a variety of reasons, including time and the rapid unfolding of events I did not follow up. Now I want explore one element of what I was going to say, the implications of Canberra's continued growth. The trigger here was a 27 May 2019 piece by Katie Burgess, The areas in Canberra flagged for intense urban infill. To quote from one part of the article. 

Canberra's population increased from about 375,000 in 2012 to 402,500 people in 2016, but is expected to rise by a further 7000 people a year to 589,000 by 2041. 

Around 100,000 new homes will need to be built between 2018 and 2041 to meet that demand, the planning strategy says, equating to nearly 12 new homes a day. Canberra Times

When I moved to Canberra to work, the population was around 65,000, a bit over four times Armidale's population. Armidale plus Tamworth's population was around Canberra's total. Now in considering the population of the ACT, you have to consider the over-flow effects. When I moved to Queanbeyan to live, it's population was quite a bit smaller than Armidale, Now it's population is around 37,000, well over Atmidale and not far from Tamworth's. . 

When I moved to Canberra, inland New England had two full seats and bits of others, Canberra had one seat, Now Canberra has three seats, inland New England one and a little bit of another. Between now and 2041, and ignoring flow-on effects, Canberra is expected to add around another 187,000 people, more than the present population of inland New England. By then in the absence of change, inland New England will be down to one seat that will have to spread east and west to maintain the required numbers.     

While many factors have contributed to these trends, the single over-whelming one is the decision to establish a capital at Canberra. 

Now for all the hyper-ventilation in the Canberra Times over the APVMA move, you can see that it has negligible impact in Canberra beyond a marginal reduction in the growth pressures facing the city, a marginal reduction in the new infrastructure spend.required to  ease growth pressures. For Armidale with a population around 24,500, the move is relatively more significant, but can still be absorbed without requiring additional infrastructure.

I now want to broaden my focus a little to bring in the remainder of New England, Hunter to the border by considering the dynamic effects of Canberra's growth, .

When I moved to Canberra, the trip to Sydney along the narrow highway took over four hours. Now it's down to three hours on the expressway and will shorten. Along that highway strip, the expansion of both Sydney and Canberra is slowly crawling towards each other, creating a single conurbation. The establishment of fast rail, this seems likely, will accelerate the trend. A Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne fast rail would further consolidate the dominance of the South-East.  

I remember the first grapes being planted around the ACT. Now the growing Canberra market, the most affluent marketplace in the country, has provided a base for rapid expansion that in turn draws visitors and adds to the tourist trade. While parts of the country are experiencing some rural depopulation, Canberra people are moving out looking for new experiences. Then down on the South Coast, Canberra is driving the development of coastal tourism. 

This southern growth process is being further driven by other factors. Wagga Wagga, one of the fastest growing cities in regional NSW, is only a bit over two hours from Canberra. Albury-Wodonga is a bit over three hours from Canberra, about the same from Melbourne. Further north, the line from Sydney to the Blue Mountains to Bathurst to Orange is another growth line. Bathurst benefited from early NSW Government shifts in public administration, while both Orange and Bathurst have benefited from relative closeness to Sydney facilitating weekend traffic and the growth of food and wine. Both Orange and Bathurst are presently a bit over three hours from Canberra.

I haven't attempted to fully analyse the way all these bit fit together, but perhaps i can use an example to illustrate, The growth of Charles Sturt University has been solidly based on its expansion in the regional cities of Southern and Central NSW. 

If we now turn to New England, we find a very different picture. In the south, the growth of Newcastle has been influenced by the growth of Sydney. In discussions including discussion on "regional development" Newcastle is often seen as an out-rider, a place to absorb Sydney population pressures. The linkages that once existed between Newcastle and the broader North have diminished to the detriment of both, in part because of the southern focus. 

In the far north, the rapid population growth in the Tweed Valley and, to a degree further south, have been driven by the growth of the South East Queensland urban conurbation, creating a degree of isolation and dislocation. Along the coastal strip between the Hunter and the border, the rapid increase in population associated with sea change including retirement brought people but largely without jobs beyond service jobs. Of course there are some pluses, but now these are some of the lowest income areas with some of the highest youth unemployment in the country. Unlike the growth  high income Canberra, the growth of say Coffs Harbour has had very few broader spin-off benefits. 

I find it interesting that the biggest infrastructure issue on the North Coast, the re-development of the Pacific Highway, is focused on a road whose primary purpose is to link Sydney and Brisbane. Of course it's important because the congestion on that road from through traffic has caused deaths and great local inconvenience. You can see why locals are concerned.But it's not actually going to add any new jobs of the type the coast needs. 

Inland, the towns and cities have been struggling just to hold. Growth has increased, but the puffery associated with each town's boosters with their local focus sets towns against each other. Armidale wants the APVMA. The Mayor oft Tamworth was critical because Tamworth needs jobs and this is special pleading for Armidale. Tamworth wants a university campus, its the only city of its size in NSW that does not have an equivalent. I don't see Armidale Council rushing to support. 

Meantime, the North's relative decline continued. This will continue until the North starts focusing in a more integrated way on cross-linkages and mutual support. Take the dynamic effects of the APVMA re-location as a simple final comment.

The E&Y study compared the local expenditure benefits by comparing the whole ACT with the then Armidale Dumaresq Council area. The ACT benefits would be greater because more of the flow-on effects would be retained there as compared to to the Armidale Dumaresq LGA. Let me turn that on its head. The dynamic benefits will be greater in Armidale just because the benefits from the spend will flow onto a wider area. That includes expenditure in Tamworth and on the coast. 

 .     .   

    .    .   

Antony Catalano's challenge -a possible ten time profit but only if he discovers his papers ' local and regional roots

Returning to posting after a gap of almost two months. I want to focus on our media.

With the exception of a few independents, Fairfax and Newscorp ended controlling every press outlet in the broader New England. Once Newscorp came in, access  to their papers fell behind paywalls. Then Fairfax introduced a maximum of five views fro certain regional publications. 

I got totally pissed off. There were three reasons for this. 

One was that people from outside the local area  could no longer access local news about the area they had come from, while the papers had lost their idea of a broader regional role, had become totally local.  

The second was purely personal. I started as a columnist at the end of 2008, I think. That's a long time ago.

I did not get paid in cash.The only reward i got was a subscription to the paper. I wrote for my own reasons. Then with the shift to the Fairfax pay model I lost even that.  I really protested through multiple emails, but could never get a satisfactory response.. Nobody could tell me why I couldn't  have my subscription back. It was just Fairfax rules I guess. Today I was trying to check a past column but could not because I was over my five views.

The third reason? I was totally pissed off because I thought that what Fairfax was doing was simple commercial stupidity. They simply did not understand their market possibilities. This is an issue that I will come back too elsewhere. For the moment, I simply note that a Sydney based enterprise focused on metrics struggles to understand local or regional markets.  

Now that Antony Catalano has taken over Fairfax regional we may have a chance. But what a value loss.  From $3 billion to $115 million including $60 million real estate. From a very profitable business to one that, on reports, is now unprofitable. Mr Catalona  clearly has a challenge in front of him. 

I believe that this is a brilliant deal. I believe that he can make a tenfold return on his investment within ten years. But this will happen if and only if Mr Catalano can ditch the Fairfax legacy and go back to the local and regional roots of his various papers. It may be our last  chance.

A review of Valerie Morton's Blame it on the Rain: life around Byron Bay

"Northern New South Wales is a big, fat, subtropical, coconut - and turmeric - laced cliché of heavenliness.

Here in Northern New South Wales, people like to go about barefoot." 

At Christmas time I took some book vouchers and went across to Harry Hartog's to try to but some books with a connection to Northern New South Wales, my broader New England.  The pickings were very thin, the worst they had ever been. Even the second hand book section gave zero results. In the end, the only book I could find was Valerie Morton's Blame it on the Rain: Life around Byron Bay (:Red Flower Books, 2018).  

Lavishly illustrated with photos, the book is a series of vignettes about beach, bush but mainly locals - with a dash of cane toads, ticks and gold top mushrooms. Did you know that some people lick cane toads because the poison contains a powerful hallucinogenic? That was certainly news to me. 

While the book references  Northern New South Wales, it is actually about the Northern Rivers, more precisely still that part of it covered by the Byron Shire, even more precisely the town of Mullumbimby and surrounds. 

It is not clear to me when people started to call the Northern Rivers  Northern New South Wales. It seems to link to administrative naming  by the Sydney Government, most recently the decision to name the local health district covering the Northern Rivers the Northern New South Wales Local Health District. Whatever the cause, the misuse of names has become an absolute pain. It's not easy when naming conventions take away the identity of your entire area. 

Valerie moved to Byron Shire some twelve years ago and now lives in a rain forest near Mullumbimby. a very pretty town. Nearly everyone that features in her book is a new arrival. I could only identify one local born person. That reflects the changes that have swept across the North since the 1970s. 

Australian poet and artist Edwin Wilson's The Mullumbimby Kid: a portrait of the Poet as a Child (Woodbine Press, 1973) present a picture of life in the area  before the changes, as does Shirley Walker's Roundabout at Bangalow (University of Queensland Press 2015), . When I was at university, some of my friends came from Mullumbimby, following the path of Wilson and Warlker out into the broader world via education in Armidale. 

First the counterculture and then the sea change movements brought great changes, changes facilitated because the  decline in dairying made relatively cheap land available .A proper history of these changes remains to be written, but they were quite profound. 

This is reflected in Valerie's book. This is a very local world made up of people with particular view who seem to have very little linkage with the surrounding regions, more in common with the patterns of life in Australia's inner city areas. Except, perhaps, that those in Byron Shire have developed particular patterns linked to their local environment. They are the same, but different, with trends accentuated by .smaller size. According to Wikipedia, link above, Mullumbimby has the lowest vaccination rates in Australia.  

This is not a criticism of the book, simply a reflection on my reactions to it. The book is not high literature, although it's well and simply written. Rather, it presents a clear and interesting picture of a some ways unique life in a particular area at a particular point in  time. It's worth a read whether you are in Australia or elsewhere. .     

Port of Newcastle. another example of the malign impact of Sydney centric decisions that ignore the North?

Port of Newcastle. another example of the malign impact of Sydney centric decisions that ignore the North?

On 25 February 2019, the Newcastle Herald carried a story by Michael Parris (NSW port privatisation inquiry finds key details kept secret from Parliament, calls for policy review)  reporting on the preliminary report of the NSW Public Works Committee Impact of Port of Newcastle sale arrangements on public works expenditure in New South Wales.

I first reported on the proposed sale of the Port of Newcastle back on 28 January 2014: Competition heats up for Port of Newcastle. It was only a very brief note in which I said that there appeared to be little opposition to the sale within Newcastle, perhaps because part of the sale proceeds was to be allocated to Newcastle infrastructure. Even then, I was quickly corrected when regular commenter Greg wrote :

"Actually Jim, there has been a fair amount of opposition in Newcastle. The port of Newcastle is substantially different to both Port Botany and Port Kembla in that the government would not be selling a business so much as a) a tax stream (ie. charges for use of the port facilities) and b) an awful lot of prime harbourside land which will severely restrict what can be done on and around the harbour for the next century. In particular, a container terminal was promised for the port a decade ago. That would have been logical to service the north of the state and help relieve congestion around Port Botany. This government has canned that and it is likely that the sale of the port will see hopes fade of a container terminal ever being built in Newcastle. 

There is also resentment that the money for infrastructure in Newcastle is tied in to the port sale, yet the dollar figure is set in stone. If the port gets sold for closer to say $1bn (highly likely), Newcastle won't see a zac more than that already promised from the sale. The state has made that absolutely clear. I don't think that there are too many people who believe that it is a good deal for Newcastle. The sale of the port will benefit Sydney more than it does Newcastle."

In April 2014, then NSW Premier Baird announced that a 98 year lease over the Port of Newcastle, the world's biggest coal port, had been sold for $1.75 billion. Of this amount, $340 million would go to Newcastle projects to aid the city's revitalisation. So it was sold for much more than projected, with just under 20% going to Newcastle projects.

What was not known at the time was that previous sale agreement of the leases to NSW Ports over the southern Port Kembla and Port Botany provided that the State Government would provide a financial reimbursement to NSW Ports should container traffic at the Port of Newcastle pass a certain trigger point. This clause was inserted to maximise the immediate cash to the Government in Sydney. The subsequent sale agreement for the Port of Newcastle included a clause that the new owners would have to reimburse the NSW Government should container traffic trigger the compensation clauses under the original agreement for the sale of Ports Botany and Kembla. The effect was to make a new container terminal un-economic.

These restrictive practice clauses were confidential, but inevitably peaked into the public domain. partly because the Port of Newcastle began to seek to develop a container port 

On 10 December 2018,  the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) announced that had instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against NSW Ports Operations Hold Co Pty Ltd and its subsidiaries Port Botany Operations Pty Ltd and Port Kembla Operations Pty Ltd for making agreements with the State of New South Wales that the ACCC alleges had an anti-competitive purpose and effect.
“We are alleging that making these agreements containing provisions which would effectively compensate Port Kembla and Port Botany if the Port of Newcastle developed a container terminal, is anti-competitive and illegal,” said ACCC Chair Rod Sims.

The following day, 11 December 2018, the Port of Newcastle released a commissioned report on the economic impact of a container terminal at the Port of Newcastle. This suggested (among other things) that a modern container terminal would cut land transport costs for northern NSW businesses by $2.8 billion by 2050. This would, according to Port of Newcastle CEO Craig Carmody, increase exports from Northern NSW including the Hunter by $1 billion by 2050

"Businesses in Newcastle, Singleton, Tamworth, Gunnedah, Port Macquarie, Kempsey, Liverpool Plains and Narrabri can look forward to savings of more than $500 per standard container, if they shipped their goods through Newcastle rather than Port Botany or Port of Brisbane," Mr Carmody said.

With these actions, the originally secret agreements preventing the Port of Newcastle competing against Port Botany and Port Kembla in the container trade finally entered full public gaze. It had been some time coming.

NSW Public Works Inquiry

On 10 November, 2018, a month before the ACCC action, the NSW Public Works committee established an inquiry into the matter. It's terms of reference were;  

"1. That the Public Works committee inquire into and report on the impact of Port of Newcastle sale arrangements on public works expenditure in New South Wales, including: 

(a) The extent to which limitations on container port operations currently in place following the sale of the Port of Newcastle contribute to increased pressure for transport and freight infrastructure in New South Wales, specifically: 

(i) the Westconnex Gateway project (ii) the Port Botany Rail Line duplication 

(iii) intermodal terminals and rail road connections in southwest and western Sydney 

(iv) other additional public road infrastructure requirements due to the additional road freight movements in Sydney under the existing port strategy.

 (b) The nature and status of the port commitment deeds, the extent to which they contain limitations on container port movements, and the terms and binding nature of any such commitments.

 (c) The extent to which container port limitations contribute to additional costs for NSW industries who are importing or exporting from New South Wales, especially in the Port of Newcastle catchment.

(d) Any other related matters.

2. That the committee report by 28 February 2019".  

The committee members were:

• The Hon Robert Brown MLC   Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Chair  
• The Hon Taylor Martin MLC Liberal Party Deputy Chair*  
• Ms Cate Faehrmann MLC The Greens
• The Hon John Graham MLC Australian Labor Party   
• The Hon Trevor Khan MLC The Nationals   
• The Hon Scot MacDonald MLC Liberal Party
• The Hon Lynda Voltz MLC Australian Labor Party

The Committee reported on 25 February 2019. It found:

:

• Finding 1: The Port Commitment Deeds including the conditions of sale and the levy were not disclosed to the public or the Parliament:  
• Finding 2 26 That the limitations on Newcastle container port operations following the ports transactions have not significantly impacted expenditure required on transport infrastructure projects in Sydney.

It recommended:

• Recommendation 1: That the Legislative Council consider establishing an inquiry into the ports transactions, and specifically container limitations and associated financial obligations contained within the Port Commitment Deeds, at the conclusion of the Federal Court proceedings involving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and NSW Ports or at such time as the House determines. 
• Recommendation 2: That the NSW Government conduct a detailed investigation of freight rail options between Ports Botany, Newcastle and Kembla, including options for line duplication and dedicated freight-line construction, to ensure strategic future corridors are preserved, to optimise rail modal share of freight transport, to better align capacity to meet future demand and to improve the rail service reliability. 
• Recommendation 3 35 That the NSW Government conduct a review of the state's ports policy, including the potential for a container terminal at the Port of Newcastle, at the conclusion of the Federal Court proceedings involving NSW Ports, or at such time as the House determines.

Commentary

I am still working my way through the analysis, However, some things stand out. Note that I am looking at the report from a Northern NSW, a broader New England, perspective. I make no apologies for that.

The analysis is very Sydney centric. I have seen this type of analysis before dating right back to the Cohen Commission inquiry into a proposed Northern state. There the analysis focused on railways, the apparent economies associated with the Sydney port rail network and the additional costs associated with developing an alternative system. Leaving aside costing and pricing issues, the way that then NSW rail freights were set provided an artificial surplus to the Sydney railway network carrying Northern good that then became a cost, the analysis was based on what was not what might be.

I thought that was the case here too. It is heavily set within existing plans, existing structures. The Port of Newcastle is seen as an extension of the Sydney network and analysed in that context. In a way, the approach adopted by the Port of Newcastle in emphasising certain savings that would accrue to Sydney through (for example) reduced infrastructure spend encouraged that approach. Disprove those, or at least cast doubt on them, and the case starts to fall to ground.

Assuming that I understand the arguments correctly, the evidence ran that the majority of container traffic was Sydney bound and that, further, the economic locus was shifting to the south and south west, effectively isolating Newcastle, The argument here seems to have been two fold. That expenditure and planning should be focused on the existing infrastructure and that these trends made it unlikely that a container port at Newcastle could be viable.

I have commented before about the way in which present development dynamics are progressively disadvantaging and indeed fragmenting the North The evidence presented to the committee seems to support that view. However, the whole analysis misses certain key points.

The anti-competitive clause itself should never have been there in the first place. It artificially increased the price that was paid for the long term lease at the cost of the Port of Newcastle, Newcastle and indeed importers and exporters across Northern NSW who might have benefited from alternative shipping options. It also artificially increased traffic through the Botany Bay and Port Kembla, creating an economic incentive for further investment to manage the increased traffic.

One can argue about the quantum, one can argue about the extent to which container traffic at Newcastle would be viable, but it remains an economic distortion introduced by the Sydney Government whose costs are born by those in the North.

In this context, and this in part reflects the way the committee's terms of reference were written., there is actually no recognition in any of this of the North as an economic and geographic entity with its own interests. How might we use a container terminal at Newcastle? How might we combine it with other infrastructure to encourage Northern development.? I think that these questions are worth asking.

Another blow to the North; Paywalls damage regional reporting - and cohesion - across Northern NSW, the broader New England

On Monday 5 January 1920,  Victor Thompson as editor of the Tamworth Observer (now Northern Daily Leader) re-launched the campaign for self-government for the North with an editorial on country neglect. Over the next eleven issues,  he published a series of articles calling for the establishment of a new state in Northern NSW. 

Following the initial success of the Thompson campaign, a meeting of Northern newspapers held at Glen Innes in March 1920 agreed to form a New State Press League and Press Propaganda Executive with Thompson as secretary to direct an intensive propaganda campaign.

Over the next twelve months, the twenty-seven newspapers that had joined the League funded the Propaganda Executive to distribute news and editorial material to Northern newspapers. By August 1920, sixty newspapers from the Upper Hunter to the border were publishing League material. 

These newspapers were intensely parochial, dedicated to their own communities. They were also in competition with each other. And yet, they could combine together to campaign for Northern interests.

In Sommerlad’s view, the provincial editor who had “a right conception of his office”, and was not afraid to offer constructive criticism, was the most important citizen in the community. “He can be a local king-maker if he guards jealously the sacred flame and wins and holds the confidence of his readers.” Rod Kirkpatrick

The role of the country and New England press was articulated by pressmen such as Ernest Christian Sommerlad.

Sommerlad was a shrewd businessman operating a business, but believed in the profession of journalism and he had a very particular view of the role of the newspaper, something he articulated many years later in his book  Mightier than the sword; a handbook on journalism, broadcasting, propaganda, public relations and advertising. (Angus and Robertson 1950).

To Sommerlad, reporting was a critical part of the role, promoting the interests of the area served by the paper an equally important part, leading public opinion a further important part. In these roles, he did not see the interests of, say, Glen Innes in narrow parochial terms but as part of a broader whole.

All the Northern editors were well aware of the power of local parochialism, a parochialism that had so often impeded cooperative effort. Recognising their own marketplaces, they sought to overcome this to greater or lesser extent by featuring stories from elsewhere in the North, by combining to support cooperative action beyond immediate town boundaries. So many things that we now have exist because of that. Whenever papers played just to the local, their own towns were the ones who finally lost.

Our say: Does Tamworth need its own uni with Armidale up the road? Northern Daily Leader 15 February 2019

In 1950, all the Northern media from Newcastle to the border was locally or regionally owned. By 2000,almost  none were. Newspapers became mastheads, parts of chains. Their focus became parochial. This process was accentuated by the decline in the sense of the broader Northern identity after the loss of the 1967 new state referendum. The result is an intense localism that benefits neither the papers nor the communities they seek to serve.

In the past, papers would report and support things that were seen to be of benefit to the broader North. That is no longer true. Over the last twenty years they have all become so narrow that I cannot think of a single example where  one paper has campaigned or at least editorially supported an initiative in another place on the grounds that it would benefit the North as a whole. I stand to be corrected here, mind you.

The problem with the heading I quoted above is that it plays into the Armidale v Tamworth meme, something that both the local papers have played to before. Of course Tamworth needs its own campus, although that to my mind should be a UNE campus because that facilitates cooperative effort. Otherwise, it's just more fragmentation of the North.

Paywalls localise, stop people following the broader story, further fragment the North

This particular post was triggered by the introduction of paywalls on the main Fairfax papers in the North from the Newcastle Herald north thus extending the paywalls across much of the Northern press. The effects are quite pernicious, made more so because the number of visit before the wall hits is limited to five a month.   They reflect a very particular view of the role of the papers and the markets they serve.

It hits me hard because I try to write about and report on the whole North. This means constant browsing and checking  I simply cannot afford to subscribe to every paper. So now I find myself, for example, effectively locked out of Newcastle. The problem is made worse because of the narrowing of coverage in individual papers.

Does all this matter? Well, it depends upon your perspective. If, like me, you interested in the broader North then I think that it does. But it also locks out people such as the broader New England diaspora who remain interested, can be interested, in particular issues and areas but who do not wish to subscribe to a paper when they are no longer interested in the detail of local life. I think that the practical impact here is to further narrow the influence of papers, extend the influence of other forms of media.

From a purely personal and practical perspective, I have to try to work out how I can maintain my broader analysis when my access to the main papers is limited to headline scans and a carefully rationed click through. My frustration is increased because when I search through google I keep coming across firewalls, if I see a FB or twitter feed and click ditto outcome. At least with the Fairfax papers, there are some smaller papers not behind firewall, while there is at least that miniscule 5 story limit. With the Northern Rivers papers now controlled by Newcorp, the firewall appears absolute.

 No doubt I will find a work-around solution. but it is another blow for the North as a whole and indeed, in the end, for the papers themselves.

New England Writers' Centre You Tube Channel - an introduction to publishing and writing at the smaller independent end

Sophie Masson, French Australian writer and chair, New England Writers' Centre

I received an email today from Sophie Masson, writer and chair of the New England Writers' Centre. The heading to the letter email read: "Watch great interviews with fantastic Pitch Independent publishers on the brand-new NEWC You Tube channel!

The email went on:

Dear members, 

A new year, and we have a new and exciting initiative! The brand-new New England Writers' Centre You Tube channel is now up and running, and features 13 fantastic interviews with 12 of the fabulous publishers and editors who visited our region during Pitch Independent in August last year. There's also a video interview with Michael Webster, Chair of the Small Press Network, who also travelled to Armidale specifically for Pitch Independent, from his base in Melbourne. 

The School of Arts in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education(HASSE) at UNE partnered with us in Pitch Independent, with the Small Press Network giving in-kind support. Dr Ariella van Luyn and Dr Beck Wise of UNE, who work within its Writing program, interviewed, recorded and edited the interviews, with the approval of all the interviewees. Many thanks to them for all their hard work, and to all our Pitch Independent for giving so generously of their time and expertise. 

This is an absolutely fantastic resource not only for NEWC and our region's writers and illustrators, but also for anyone interested in the publishing industry in Australia and its thriving small and independent sector. 

So head over to the channel, and have a look and a listen, there is much to enjoy and learn:

I did indeed head.to the new channel and think that it is valuable. I think, too, that it illustrates a little of the variety in modern writing, in part because of the thing the series misses out. We live in a world that has ever more opportunities for writers, but diminished opportunities for actually making a living. Listening to the various pod casts, I did think that we were missing out on some of the things in youngest's world, the world of YA and beyond.

This is a world of the merger of media. Still, at the end you have to get published and a book is the tangible form.    

The changing role of New England's Regional Galleries - a note

Joseph Backler, View of Tenterfield 1861, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

Robert Heather, former head of the New England Regional Art Museum and now Director Advancement, Communications and Events at the University of New England, kindly sent me links to paintings with New England connections. This is one of them.

The painter himself was something of a journeyman painter. Convicted of forgery and transported to Australia in 1832, Backler travelled widely across regional NSW and Queensland in search of portrait and landscape commissions. When he arrived in a town, Backler would advertise his services in local papers. He visited Tenterfield in 1860 on his way to Brisbane.

Backler's Tenterfield painting is one of those that the State Library Foundation is seeking sponsorship for to help conservation and preservation. Robert thought that it was a sufficiently important one in local terms that the need should be publicised.

Digging through the paintings presented by the State Library for sponsorship, I realised that I had no idea of the depth of their collection nor of the number of paintings with New England connections. I found over 30 artworks with some connection to the broader New England. This is another example.

Major James Nunn, Australian Mounted Infantry c1840, attributed to Joseph Fowles, State Library of NSW

Now James Winniett Nunn of the NSW Mounted Police is quite an important figure in New England history for his role as officer in charge for the massacre of Aboriginal people at Waterloo Creek in 1838. I had never seen an image of him.

Robert's message came as I was reading Antipodean Perspective: Selected writings of Bernard Smith (edited by Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer, Monash University Publishing, 2018). Smith, one of Australia's famous art historians, has been a favourite of mine for many years. He was the one who really introduced me to the history of Australian art around 1970, although I had had exposure before that.

Some of the early pieces in the book deal with Smith's views on the role of the art museum. Smith was a bit of an iconoclast, a man of firm views. He was concerned about the way that special exhibitions detracted from the gallery's primary collections. To his mind, a key role of the curator was to document and understand existing collections, to place them in context so that they became more broadly accessible. A policy that combined a focus on a limited number of special pieces with special exhibitions meant that the total collection gathered dust.

While Smith compared the failings of Australian state galleries with some of their London compatriots, he was not blind to the practical difficulties involved. The careful examination of individual works, the establishment of their provenance, their placement in an historical context, all took money which was in sort supply. Galleries had to make judgments, to satisfy funders public and private, people and organisations who did not always see the value of careful long term work.

Frances Cory (Mrs Edward Gostwyck), artist unknown, c1820. State Library of NSW.

The Corys arrived as free settlers in 1823 and, in 1828, were raising cattle and horses on a large holding at Paterson, in the lower Hunter district. This rare early colonial likeness shows Frances ‘Fanny’ Cory at about 28 years of age. She is dressed in the fashions of the late 1820s which saw the addition of fussy Elizabethan-style ornamentation to the previously uncluttered Empire line.

 Smith believed, too, that public galleries should combine exhibitions of work by current artists with displays from the collection. He also had a reasonably broad view of what constitutes art. Finally, he was a great supporter of the broad education role that he believed galleries should play.

While reading Smith, I was thinking about the role of regional galleries across the broader New England. Added force was given to those thoughts by the identification of yet more colonial paintings with New England connections. Before going on, I note that the regional or bigger public galleries are are only part of New England art history and current cultural life. There are smaller local public and private galleries, a multiplicity of artists and a range of private collectors.

While I have traced some of the history of the museum movement across the North, I haven't properly tracked the public galleries themselves. There is a problem here, for most galleries emphasise the date they received their first collection rather than the date the gallery opened for the first time. This was often in temporary premises and could be years after the first donation. Then there could be another long delay until permanent premises were acquired or constructed. The relatively large regional galleries that we know today are all relatively recent in historical terms. Their collections are also quite varied since the core reflects the varying interests of those who donated the collections.

On Smith's measurements, I think they do a pretty good job in terms of presenting the collections, in education services and in their displays by living artists. They do so despite limited resources with funding dependent especially on councils and on sporadic often project based NSW Government grants. There is some sponsorship, but the local pool of funds is relatively smaller than it was in the past and more hotly contested. This places the galleries in competition with each other and with other cultural institutions.

Recognising the constraints as well as just how well many are doing, I would argue that current approaches suffer from two weaknesses. In arguing this, I want to return to Bernard Smith.

Tom Roberts, Edward D S Ogilvie 1894-95, State Library of NSW. Edward Ogilvie commissioned Roberts to paint this accomplished, richly coloured portrait at Ogilvie’s extensive Clarence River property, Yulgilbar, north of Grafton. 

An art historian, Smith argued strongly that Australian painting had to be seen in its European context. To his mind, that provided a richer. deeper understanding of individual works. However, in then writing about Australian art he created an historical and visual framework that became a living entity in its own right. But, with exceptions largely linked to Sydney and Melbourne, he did not discuss regional variations in Australian painting.

This leads me to my two weaknesses as I see them The regional galleries may place certain paintings or artists in a broader context, they may point to certain local links, but they generally do not provide any picture of the total oeuvre of New England related work nor of the ways those paintings fit into New England history. This story remains untold.

Tom Roberts, On the Timbarra - Reek's and Allen's sluicing claim c1894, Art Gallery of  NSW. This painting probably dates from the same trip in which Roberts began the Ogilvie painting.      

The second related weakness, at least as I see it, is that while the galleries show current work, they do not really put that into any context. Of course they say something about the artist and the nature of the work, but it tends to be very one dimensional.

Like Bernard, I am an historian, although I make no claim to be either an art historian or critic. But I am conscious of the way in which I see patterns in art especially linked to area and style.

Julia Griffin, Rain on the Uralla Road

Back in 2009 I tries my hand at a photo essay, The Colours of New England, looking at the way colours changed across the North. In writing, I used a combination of paintings and photos with dashes of poetry. In the nine or so years since then I have added films, more paintings, more photos, more poetry and prose to deepen the picture that I had in my mind.

It would be nice to think that over the next decade our larger galleries might broaden their focus to make part of this story more accessible to New England audiences. There is a considerable story to be told. 

The year begins in Australia's New England

This morning I went into a bookshop at Sydney's Bondi Junction to use a book voucher I had been given for Christmas. As I always do, I was looking for books with a New England connection, something that I could use to explain elements of our life and history.

Harry Hartog's is a good bookshop. I worked my way along the various sections. History? nah. Poetry? nah! And so it went on. There were plenty of books by people like Richard Glover and Peter Fitzsimons, well known Sydney figures who seem to manage a new book a year. Finally, I found a book by someone who had moved to Byron Bay for alternative life styles. That was it. Sparse pickings all round.

I know that many books connected with New England or by New England writers have been published but they are generally only available locally.

I'm not making any firm promises for this blog, I continue to struggle with priorities, but I do hope to do a little better.

There will be more history, of course, both here and on the New England history blog. My first history column for the year in the Armidale Express, History Matters: Reflections of Christmas past, is in fact already on line

Apart from making real progress on some of my main writing projects, I would like to deepen and consolidate some of my writing and reporting. Returning to my complaint about the books at Harry Hartog's, remarkably little is written about the broader New England that shows our history as a whole, the linkages and differences, that reflects upon and makes accessible that broader past.

I do hope to do more reporting on current events, today's life, bringing out the depth and texture. Sadly, the firewalls went up last year across most of the Fairfax press within the broader New England, limiting free access to five stories a month. And if you bookmark and come back, that's two stories!

It's a real pain. I can no longer go to a paper, do a check back over a month's stories, select two that I think are good and then give you a line or two with the link so that you can follow up if interested. More importantly, the arrangement continues the fragmentation of the North that I have so often complained about. Fairfax assumes that people are all localised, only interested in their own little area, not recognising that many of us like to skim broadly. It puts another barrier in the way of promotion of the broader New England as an entity, something worthy of interest in its own right. It also cuts the papers of from the broader New England diaspora even from their own local area.

I haven't worked out how to handle all this. It adds to the importance of broader New England reporting or commentary but makes it harder to do.

As always,  the stories will reflect my varying interests. I will also try to pull together some of my past writing to make it more accessible to those interested.

Finally, may we all have a successful and happy new year. That's not always possible of course, so where troubles strike may we manage them as best we can.