New England, Australia

Orphir & Mott on new states

2012-01-29T10:49:00.001+11:00

Mitch Ophir has resurrected his blog with two interesting posts in support of New England statehood.

In Becoming Australia's 7th State - New England, he looks at ways of achieving statehood, suggesting that New England might make things easier for NSW by buying assets. This drew a dusty comment from Ian Mott suggesting that it was a bit like a battered wife being forced to buy her way out of the marriage!

In his second post, Managing New England (7th State)'s Assetts - Police Force, Mitch takes the police force to look at what might be done. Central here is that New England would not have to duplicate all infrastructure but might use existing NSW assets, in this case the Police College at Goulburn, on a fee for service basis, thus helping both sides.

Ian Mott picked up the second post in Policing in New North Wales. Ian prefers the name New North Wales to New England, and also uses different boundaries to this blog, excluding the Hunter. That's another story. For the moment, Ian's arguments are relevant to New England however named or defined.

Ian's analysis suggests that policing costs would actually be similar to NSW. No gain there. However, New England or New North Wales would gain from the transfer of certain positions from Sydney. In economic terms, New England would be better off.

Belshaw's World - problems with colours

2012-01-28T13:58:00.001+11:00

Some years ago when we were running a national consulting business out of Armidale, we were very much into colours - red, green and blue to be precise.

Now this might sound all very artistic, but the colours referred not to colours but to personality types.

A red person was activity focused, get things done, see problem fix problem. At the extreme, our red person was so busy doing that the value of what was done could be quite lost.

A green person was framework and structure focused. At the extreme, a green person could be so busy planning nothing actually got done.

The third personality, the blue, was people and relationship focused. At the extreme, a blue person could be so concerned with harmony, about not hurting others, that decision making could become very difficult.

Most people contain some mix of colours, although it’s generally true that one colour is more dominant, a second less so but still important. Experienced managers often show up in test results as rainbow, a mix of colours, simply because they are used to adjusting their style to balance the personality mix in their teams.

So far so good, but what happens if you place a person under considerable pressure? Then the normal primary and secondary colours can reverse themselves.

Place a high red person with secondary green characteristics in a situation beyond personal control where doing is difficult. Suddenly, that person may become very green indeed, preparing plans and drawing up lists of things to do because this gives at least the illusion of action and control.

By contrast, a green/red person placed under pressure may suddenly go very red indeed. This may take the form of bursts of activity, doing for the sake of doing. It may also lead to quite ruthless actions to resolve the problem should this seem possible.

Of course, red/blue/green is not the only way of characterising people, nor are the things measured the only things that can be measured. The modern world is full of psychological testing of all types. It has become a plague!

While the red/green/blue model is only partial, I have found it helpful in shaping responses to people in a working environment.

Over the years, I have worked for many people and have had many more work for me. Then in my professional work assisting organisations to improve performance, I have necessarily been concerned with the personalities and interactions within the client organisation.

Partly as a consequence, I appear as rainbow when measured by others, green/red when I undertake the test.

Despite all my experience, I sometimes find it remarkably difficult to adjust my personal style to best mesh, especially where personal relations are concerned.

As a consultant or contractor in particular, I need to get in and complete the assignment as quickly and efficiently as possible. In doing so, I have to take into account the needs and personalities of all those that I work with.

Like most of us, I have developed conscious techniques for doing so, including use of the red/green/blue model as an analytical tool. I am reasonably good at it. I have had to be.

Why, then, did I say that I sometimes found it remarkably difficult to adjust my personal style? Simple really. Get my emotions involved, and my carefully constructed professional style can be torn down in an instant! Then my underlying green/red mix surfaces.

I was involved with a project. Technically I was project manager. However, I was experiencing significant problems with a senior manager whose actions seemed to me to threaten the project. That manager was also expressing serious reservations about my work to others.

My first reaction was green – I increased documentation both to provide more information and to record what I had done. Then, as things got worse, I went red. I took specific overt action to protect the project. I was successful.

Now all this is fine. The problem is that I could have achieved the same result in a different way without the subsequent scarring if my personal emotions had not become involved.

We are all human. That means that personal emotions and interactions are central to our being. Not matter how good the techniques and processes we might use to manage this, emotional responses will always be present.

Life would be actually pretty bad if that ceased to be the case.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 18 January 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Welcome to visitor 70,000

2012-01-27T19:43:00.001+11:00

Visitor 70,000 has just visited the site. The visitor came from Finland via a Google search on bush erotica!

I fear that there must have been some disappointment. Certainly the time spent was 00:00!

Belshaw's World - the economic version of the weather man

2012-01-24T05:56:00.000+11:00

While at university I swore that I would never be an economist because there were so many in the family. Instead, I decided to focus on history and become an archaeologist specialising in Australian prehistory, little recognising that history, archaeology and anthropology was another family path.

By accident, I ended up in the Commonwealth Treasury and spent the next twenty years working as a professional economist. You see how hard it is to escape our past!

Later I put economics aside, although I still used the techniques and analytical tools in my work. Then, with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis I picked up economics again. Now I once again sometimes claim to be an economist, although I am badly out of touch with elements of the academic discipline.

I mention this now because I have become quite fascinated with the behaviour of economists as economists.

When I first worked as an economist, there were very few private sector economists. Most worked in universities or in public sector institutions. Today, the majority of economists actually work in the private sector. Their primary task is to check the economic entrails and provide forecasts on economic activity.

The human desire to know something of the future, of the likely outcomes of our activities, is deeply held.

While in Greece last year, we visited the remains at Delphi, the site of the most famous oracle of the classical world. As we walked among the ruins, I thought of the tens of thousands who had visited the site seeking advice from the oracle.

Perhaps the most famous case was that of Croesus, King of Lydia.

Seeking advice from the oracle, he was told that if he attacked if he attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. He did. His own!

Our modern economic oracles don’t have the luxury of ambiguity. We expect them to provide detailed numbers. The exchange rate will be this, GDP growth that, the CPI another number.

We puzzle over these numbers, comparing the different forecasts. Tables are prepared showing all the different forecasts. Because we know that results are uncertain, we do things like taking the median forecast and using that as a base.

Monday’s Financial Review provided an example of the process as work. There a table listed forecasts from no less than eighteen economists, along with the median forecast. The assumption is that that median forecast, the central view, is more likely to be accurate than any individual forecast.

It’s all very interesting. The problem is that it just doesn’t work!

By its very nature, economic forecasting relies on past data to try to determine the future. That data is partial, the relationships between variables uncertain. There can never be certainty, even with the most complex econometric models.

All economists use the same data, read the same things. Their views tend to converge. The use of comparative tables and of median forecasts just reinforces the process. The median forecast is no more accurate than the majority of individual forecasts simply because it reflects those forecasts.

To my mind, in focusing on what might happen at a point in time, we have lost sight of the role of economic forecasts. They are not oracular projections, just best guesses at to what might happen.

Economic forecasting is a process whose role, is or should be, different from the actual numbers at any point. What is relevant is not the numbers themselves, but the way in which results diverge from the projections as they must.

Government and business have to make judgments about the future, about the likely impact of economic changes on their activities. Their needs are very different from those of market players betting on what might happen in the short term. Yet economic forecasts that are actually linked to and driven by the needs of market players have come to dominate the forecasting process.

Most prominent business economists work for financial institutions. Their primary internal role is to provide advice on what might happen in financial markets. The economic reporting that follows from their public utterances is also markets focused.

Pity the poor businessman or even Government official trying to use all this to make sensible decisions. They end up like a wind vane constantly changing direction as the numbers change.

I have largely given up reading the short term projections beyond a very simple scan. It’s really the only way to retain a degree of sanity!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 11 January 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Urunga Aborigines - can you identify?

2012-01-21T15:25:00.000+11:00

In response to my post Elections, Aborigines & the need for change, MC wrote:

Hello Jim
Im wonderingIf you know who this family is in the photo? And if you have many other photo's with names as I was born in Belligen and lived in Urunga and found out that we are Aborigines. But our Great grand father married Our grandmother she was from England so it was not to be talked about in our family.Which is great loss.
MC

The photo follows. Do you know who the people in the photo are?

Postscript:

Christine made this extremely helpful comment that I thought should be brought up in the main post:

Hello there... I have recently completed some research into the relationship between missionaries, Aboriginal people and the government in NSW during this period and may be able to provide some clues as to where to look.

I found this link showing that the family appear to be a family who moved to an island in the area to live independently of the Aborigines protection Board in about 1914. Here is the link.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.cs-pa-http%253A%252F%252Flibrary.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au%252Fcgi-bin%252Fspydus.exe%252FENQ%252FPIC%252FBIBENQ%253FIRN%253D2862563%2526FMT%253DPA

It may be worth a look in the Minute books of the Aborigines Protection Board around that time to see if there was any fuss being made. If there was, then their names would have been listed. It is also worth wondering whether the family DID live on the actual Aboriginal Reserve and was kicked off. In which case it is possible their names would have been listed. In 1914, however, the Board was fairly busy drafting its 1915 Amendment. Certainly it may well be that the family, living off the reserve, was not subject to the various acts. Sadly they may well have come to the notice of the Department of Child welfare... again it is a matter of combing the lists. There is a project underway to reconcile children with families. I can provide a contact name.

Another possible area to look may well be the Unitee Aborigines Magazine The Advocate (copy in Mitchell Library). The UAM was active up that way during this period and would have known and named the family. But then again, sorry, there were one or two families who spurned the faith missionaries because they were Roman Catholic. Your correspondent mentions that there was a marriage with a white woman. Perhaps you could tell me more about this? You could also try the index of births deaths and marriages if names and dates are known... this may also help.

I will have a look through my copies of archival material to see if I can be more specific but these leads may be of assistance.

My email is christine at chrisvickers.com.au

Intermission

2012-01-16T20:23:00.001+11:00

I will be resuming regular posting this week. Just an explanation.

Belshaw's World - anyone for tennis anymore?

2012-01-11T14:34:00.000+11:00

I hope that you and yours had a happy Christmas.

Over the Christmas break, I continued sorting and digitising family photos. In this column, I want to share some of those photos with you.

Just to set the scene, this first photograph shows the tennis courts once to be found at the back of Parliament House in Sydney. David Drummond, then member for Armidale, is front right.

With the decline in the importance of tennis, it's hard to realise just how important tennis was in New England. It was the most important social game across the entire North. Most properties, many homes, every small settlement, had their own tennis courts. Most people played.

Tennis had many advantages as a sport. Land was then cheap, and courts were easy to construct. Tennis was a game that could be played by most ages. Importantly, it was one way in which boys and girls could meet and interact in a socially acceptable and relaxed fashion.

The next photo shows my grandparents and some of their daughters with friends.

This is actually a fairly typical shot from the 1930s. It’s a bush scene, with furniture dragged out from the house - two boxes, a formal chair, a wickerwork chair, one of those fabric sun chairs that you still see in England. They are all eating watermelon.

Nearly everybody played tennis. Down at the local tennis club, players and those learning to play thronged the courts. The photo shows the Armidale club in the 1950s.

I learned to play tennis on the court at my grandparents’ house in Mann Street. There my grandfather and our aunts taught brother David and I to play from an early age.

I was just an okay player. Others in my family were better.

The final photo is of Aunt Kay (Kathleen Vickers nee Drummond) as champion at the Armidale tennis club. Later she became club patron along with Paul Johnstone.

Today, the tennis courts across New England have largely gone.

The small settlements with their tennis courts are now just locality names on maps. The home courts have been turned into building blocks.

With their end has gone the dominance that Australia once enjoyed in the sport. More importantly, the social cement that tennis once provided has gone as well.

In writing this column, I tried to think of a modern equivalent to tennis, one that allowed young and old to mix, one that allowed the young to meet and match, one that crossed the divides created by class and status.

I can’t. Can you?

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 4 January 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

De La Salle College, Armidale - 2012 Reunion

2012-01-05T13:11:00.001+11:00

Founded in 1906, De La Salle College Armidale was the first Australian De La Salle school. In 1974, the combination of demography with social trends led to De La Salle being merged with sister school St Ursula's to create O'Connor Catholic High School.

I did not go to De Lah as everybody called it, but they were our traditional rivals in rugby.

Now a De Lah reunion is being held at the Armidale Services Club on Saturday 3 March 2012: - dinner at 7:30 pm. In attendance will be several Old Boy Brothers of the De La Salle order; the current Provincial (Australian head of the Order), Brother Ambrose Payne; and the principal of O'Connor High, Charles (Charlie) Allen.

By happy coincidence (or not), the following day the Armidale Race Club is holding a race meeting. And before that, on the Sunday, those who wish can attend Mass celebrated by an Old Boy priest.

The diaspora who have not visited Armidale recently will discover that the O'Connor/ex-De La Salle Chapel has been returned to its original condition following damage by fire. And the grounds and buildings have been extensively refurnished, including the Grotto, which Michael O'Rourke (De La Salle 1964-1969) tells me used to be - we hope no longer! - a favoured haunt of schoolboy smokers.

Thanks to Carl Graham and others, most of the college's original archives stored at Oakhill College in Sydney have brought back to Armidale and can be inspected. In this connection, Old Boys able to attend the reunion should please bring any documents, photos, college magazines etc (or copies) that they can donate.

It is strongly suggested that accommodation bookings be made early because of the various functions held in Armidale, including the races.

Old Boys should contact the following: paint01 (at) bigpond (dot) com (CARL GRAHAM) or holloway (at) northnet (dot) com (dot) au (GARRY HOLLOWAY). For the reunion drinks and dinner, prepayment ($45) by cheque is requested, payable to "De La Salle Old Boys Union" - Carl or Garry will advise their mailing address in reply to your email. RSVP by 31 January 2012. Wives, partners, family members, friends welcome, but please advise names.

Old Boys not able to attend should nevertheless contact Carl or Garry and supply them with a current telephone number, email address and your years at College. This will allow the Old Boys mailing list (currently 800 names) to be updated for the purpose of other reunions that are to be held in Tamworth and Sydney.

Postscript:

Those interested in the history of Catholic education in what might be called the "mild west" of New England, the diocese of Armidale as it is officially called, can check here: http://www.arm.catholic.edu.au/about/history/armidale/religious_orders.htm

Rower Henry Searle New England's first world champion

2012-01-04T17:07:00.001+11:00

Until I read Mark's Henry Searle - Australia's First World Champion, I had no idea that New England had a world champion rower from the late 1880s. And no, Mark, I don't know where the Sydney monument is!

Read Mark's post to find out more.

Belshaw's World - friends and the fabric of life

2012-01-03T12:55:00.001+11:00

Hard to believe, but the first Belshaw World column appeared in the Express on 24 December, 2008.

Looking back over those three years, over the 155 columns written, started me musing on just why I did it.

It’s not always easy writing on such a regular basis. Sometimes I sit before a blank screen and wonder what to say. At other times, I just don’t feel like writing, yet write I must for I have a deadline to meet.

I worry, too, about getting the right balance in what I say in terms of variety and emphasis. This is a personal column, so I can write what I like. And yet, I also want to take my readers’ interests into account. Sometimes, all this isn’t easy.

Why, then, do I continue?

Looking back over the three years, I would describe the single most important thing I have gained simply as the gift of friendship.

All human beings value friendship. After our families, our friends provide the basis social support on which we all depend. They are there for us when we need them.

I can see this clearly looking back at my own life. Sometimes the examples are small, at other times more dramatic.

As a child when mum was sick, I remember how her friends gathered round to provide practical support such as meals for us.

Much later, I was overseas when mum died. By the time I returned, Aunt Kay and her friends had organised all the details of the funeral for me. We wouldn’t have coped without that support.

While I am an Armidale person, I have actually lived more of my life outside Armidale than in the city itself. Today, I live in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, part of the great New England diaspora. Yet despite that, Armidale remains deeply entwined in my life.

It’s an odd thing that people sometimes find difficult to understand. It’s just the nature of the connections.

Captain Thunderbolt may or may not have been shot in Kentucky Creek on 15 May 1870. I think that he was, but disputes remain.

Great grandfather Goode was one of those who signed the document congratulating Constable Walker. Today cousin Arnold continues documenting and promoting the history of Uralla and Rocky River.

Grandfather Drummond arrived in Armidale on a cold day in 1907 as a farm labourer. Twenty one years later he founded a Teachers College, thirty one years later he helped establish a University College, in so doing bringing my father to the city from New Zealand as the first staff member to actually arrive at the new college.

The people involved in the various political movements, the educational pioneers, are not just names in the historical record to me; they are people I knew, or at least knew of, as a child or young adult.

Robb, Earle Page, Dr Austin, Mary White, PA Wright, S H Smith, Newling, Tom Lamble, Edgar Booth to take a few examples are not just names of Colleges or buildings, but actual people.

I grew up in the world of the siblings, the children of the New England University College staff. Later I was an undergraduate student at UNE, then a postgraduate student. Today I remain connected as a UNE adjunct and a member of the Heritage Futures Research Centre.

All this may seem a long way from my opening remarks about the column and the gift of friendship, but there is a direct and tangible connection.

Inevitably given my own past, I write a fair bit about the history of Armidale and the broader New England, about life past as well as life present. Now here a remarkable thing happened.

Through the column as well as my New England blogs, I have actually re-established contact with many of my old friends and the people I have known across the now globally dispersed New England diaspora. I have also made new friends that I would not otherwise have met.

That’s a very important personal return for my writing efforts.

To all my readers, I hope that you had a happy Christmas and may 2012 be a good year for all of us.

To those who have emailed me or sent me material, my thanks. I am not always a good correspondent, but I really value your input.

And to my colleagues at the Express and especially Editor Christian Knight and Janene Carey, my thanks for your support and for making me feel part of a team.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 28 December 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

New England's Air Wars

2011-12-29T13:04:00.001+11:00

The following Rigby cartoon provides an insight into another element of New England's past, the air wars that dogged our skies from time to time.

The then Menzies Government had a two airline policy. There was no room under that policy for Tamworth based New England carrier East West Airlines as a separate airline.

In 1961, Civil Aviation Minister Shane Paltridge told EWA founder and Chairman Don Shand that EWA must merge with Ansett Airlines. When Shand revealed this, Paltridge denied that the conversation had taken place.

David Drummond as MP for New England had been present at the discussions. Drummond was then 71 and in his final term. The Government had a wafer thin majority of one. Drummond tried to see PM Menzies to warn him, but without success.

White and shaking, Drummond rose to speak to an almost empty house. The house filled as he spoke, confirming Shand's versions of events. Given Drummond's reputation for honesty, no one doubted his words. The NSW Labor Government then came in in support.

Minister Paltridge and the Government hastily backtracked. EWA remained as an independent New England owned carrier. The cartoon captures the drama of the moment.

Belshaw's World - UNE should change marketing focus

2011-12-28T15:35:00.001+11:00

There were a number of things that I could have written about today: swimming pools, history excursions, meeting old friends and the latest craziness’s that pass for modern management all came to mind. The last was a close run thing and indeed forms the entry point to this column.

There is a basic principle of management that says if the rules won’t let you win, change the rules. If you can’t change the rules, change the game. If you can’t change either the rules or the game, then stop playing.

In my last column I spoke of the flock instinct that afflicts journalists and commentators as they chase around after a story. They become participants in a game where the behaviour of other members of the flock influences them as much as the thing that they are reporting or commenting on.

Something very similar happens in senior management. They too behave like chooks. The views of their peers in the flock, their success as measured by those views, can come to dominate.

A story to illustrate just what can happen.

Some years ago I moved from Treasury to the Commonwealth Department of Industry and Commerce as that Department’s principal economist. We wanted to do new things, but to do that we had to reduce the power and influence of what are called the central coordinating departments – Treasury, Finance, Prime Minister and Cabinet – in the policy areas that we were interested in.

Those agencies had established an intellectual lock on ideas, on what was considered to be acceptable in policy terms. New ideas were welcome, but only so long as they fitted in with the conventional wisdom as espoused by the central coordinating agencies. They set the terms of the policy debate at officials’ level.

To break through this impasse, those and others like me had to mount an intellectual challenge to the current dominant mind sets. We had to articulate and sell alternative perspectives. We were trying to change the rules of the game.

For a period and especially in the early days of the new Hawke Government we were quite successful. Things happened. But then, the dead hand of central control began to reassert itself.

Many of our senior officers came, as I had, from the central coordinating departments. In the Canberra pecking order, their careers depended upon the assessment of their peers and especially those in the central coordinating agencies. The flock instinct began to re-assert itself. Creativity dropped away.

I make this point now because during the week there was one of those conversations among UNE alumni and ex-staff about the university. Why, asked one former staff member, did UNE either not feature in or feature so low in the rankings so loved today?

If you are bored and want to see what I mean, have a look at http://www.australian-universities.com/rankings/.

Now those of us outside UNE know that UNE has been and still is a very good university. I know from the experiences of my own daughters that it is far better than many of those ranked higher. Indeed, I and others feel that one of the distinguishing features of UNE lies in the fact that it is, in fact, still a real university.

Despite this knowledge, we struggle to get the message across. Part of the reason for this is that UNE persists in playing university games, continues to insist on applying competitive techniques and management theories that have been effectively discredited in a broader environment.

Consider the UNE little boxes ad that has been running on SBS. When I first saw this, I thought that it was a good ad and in some ways I still do because of its focus on the student experience and the ease of study. However, the ad on its own misses a key point.

James Cook is running competitive ads at the same time, targeting internal students. Those ads focus not just on the student experience, but on JCU’s absolute excellence in certain things.

UNE says study with us externally because we offer a great external experience. JCU says study with us because we are the best.

Townsville is a bloody sight further away from Armidale, yet I know that it is attracting students in place of UNE. To add salt to the wound, I know that Darwin’s Charles Darwin University is starting to out-compete UNE in certain areas.

On the rules of the current game with its relative ranking systems based on narrow criteria, UNE cannot win. The university has to change the game and that means focusing on absolutes, on its role as a university.

An excellent delivery system, and that’s all on-line delivery is, does not a university make. It’s just one element in the mix required to make students come.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 21 December 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Wednesday Forum - memories of holiday's past

2011-12-21T10:20:00.001+11:00

Over on Australian Observer, Paul Barratt's The summer holiday drive recalls the summer holiday drives from Armidale to the coast. This was an annual ritual for many inland New Englanders, something that I have written on.

Those posts attracted a range of nostalgic comments from others with similar experiences. That got me thinking. As part of my work in documenting New England history and life, it might be interesting to further document some of our collective childhood holiday experiences.

Did you have a favourite holiday spot? What are your memories of getting there, what did you do while there? What things are now draped in nostalgia?

Remembering the Tamworth Boys Home

2011-12-21T09:54:00.001+11:00

The Tamworth Boys Home was opened in 1947. On 16 December, the ABC's 7.30 report carried a story (video and transcript here) on the horrors of the place.

That same day, ABC news carried a further story with a little more detail. The photo is from that story. Back in 1999, Submission - Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, outlined the experience of another inmate at the institution. You will find the archival records for the Home here.

It's just a small snippet of New England's history, but one that I thought that I should record.

I have the strong impression that the Second World War period saw a distinct harshening in aspects of Australian life. However, that's something that I will explore further on the New England history blog.

Belshaw's World - seagulls from fish and chip wrap become part of the story

2011-12-20T16:17:00.001+11:00

Joh Bjelke-Petersen used to describe the whole process as feeding the chooks. By this he meant the way in which the media gathered around while he fed them.

Now whatever one may think of Joh, he was a shrewd old bird himself. It is hard to deny that the media does behave like a flock, and Joh knew them all pretty well.

Like any flock, the individual birds do have differences, as do breeds. Journalists from the Australian do not behave in quite the same way as those from the Age or, indeed, my colleagues from the Armidale Express.

Yet despite these differences, reporters and commentators wheel in circles, rushing from place to place in a flock.

When the Rudd Government was elected, Mr Rudd received universally favourable coverage. The flock wheeled around the new PM, pushing and shoving to receive scraps from his hand.

Then, quite suddenly, Mr Rudd could do no right. The flock had turned cannibal, pecking away at him until he bled to political death.

Ms Gillard’s media honeymoon was brief, but it was there. Then a new food source arrived in the person of Mr Abbott.

Initially derided, the media could not resist the new food source. They rushed after him. The coverage of the Gillard Government became relentlessly negative. A new feeding frenzy formed. The Gillard Government, too, began bleeding to political death.

Then, surprise, surprise, the reporting tide turned.

The Government didn’t fall over and managed to get some successes. As we reach year’s end, the flock is now pecking away at Mr Abbott as Doctor No, suggesting that Ms Gillard has in fact had a successful few months.

We saw the same flock behaviour during the Global Financial Crisis. We will all be ruined shouted the breathless reporting. Then, as it became clear that Australia was not to experience economic armageddon, the flock wheeled. Suddenly, the reporting was all about this country’s relative success.

To a quite substantial degree, the media flock now operates independent of reality. The flock has become its own reality.

The problems experienced by Mr Rudd lay in part in his style and personality. But they were also affected by current structures in politics and public policy and administration.

Those of us watching how Mr Rudd worked pointed to problems early on. Initially, these problems were ignored by the main media flock until, suddenly, they became central to reporting.

In removing Mr Rudd, the Labor Party removed certain aspects of his style, but other elements were in fact left untouched. As problems resurfaced, reporting swung.

Mr Abbott’s focus on a very small number of issues was quite effective. However, barring a catastrophic collapse by the Government, it was always going to be the case that just the normal business of Government would bring new issues and initiatives. This swung the media flock back.

The media’s flock behaviour is due in part to its focus on the current issues and the now twenty four hour news cycle. Inevitably, reporters constrained by time and lack of resources go quickly with main stories and themes. This has become more important as real resources are reduced in the name of productivity. However, I think that it’s more than that.

One of the distinctive features of modern media is the way that reporters and commentators talk too and watch each other.

The same talking heads appear on multiple outlets, exchanging views. They may disagree on issues, indeed that disagreement is part of their stock-in-trade, but they actually talk about the same things. They opine, opining that inevitably affects subsequent reporting, but they opine about similar things.

This drives the flock behaviour. However, there is another factor.

Today we live in a world dominated by celebrity. Reporters and commentators have become name figures, themselves feeding the flock. They no longer report just on the news, but have become part of the news.

I think that’s a problem.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 14 December 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Armidale in leading edge Vodafone trials

2011-12-19T16:32:00.001+11:00

Vodafone has connected its first customers to the National Broadband Network, in Armidale: a move that marks its first foray into fixed network offerings.

According to IT Wire, It is trailing the fetchTV IPTV service including high definition movies on demand and is also the first operator to trial femtocell technology over the NBN, using the Vodafone Expand product. Vodafone says it is planning similar trials in Kiama, NSW and Brunswick, Victoria in 2012.

More information here.

New England's brumbies

2011-12-19T12:57:00.001+11:00

This photo from Gordon Smith is simply entitled Brumbies.

The caption reads:

Brumbies watch us as we pass them by. The stallion in the foreground was especially interested in making sure that his harem was kept away from us.

There is a certain romance about the brumby, descendants of horses that escaped from or were abandoned by European settlers. In Australia, they are best known in the Alpine country in the Monaro and Victoria, but they have been a feature of New England life or many years. Their control has been a matter of some debate.

According to Wikipedia, between 22 October and 24 October 2000, approximately 600 Brumbies were shot in the Guy Fawkes River National Park by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The public outcry that followed led the NSW Government to establish a Steering Committee to investigate alternative methods of control.^[52] Since the campaign began to remove horses from the national park, over 400 have been passively trapped and taken from the Park, and 200 of these have been re-homed.

In 2007, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service commenced a plan to reduce Brumby numbers in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park by passive trapping . Over 60 brumbies captured in the Apsley River Gorge have now been re-homed.

Belshaw's World: I love writing – whether I’m a writer or not

2011-12-13T12:51:00.000+11:00

A bit over two years ago, I decided to do short term contracting work. I really wanted to write, needed time for that, but also needed cash to feed my writing addiction.

While I write a fair bit, I make very little money from writing as such. In the meantime, groceries have to be purchased and bills paid.

The contracting work proved far more fraught than I had expected, with long gaps between contracts.

The other day my wife looked at me and said “your hair has gone completely white”. She was right, and it happened quite suddenly, almost overnight.

I will write on the contracting experience at some point, for it has broader lessons. For the moment, it got me musing on my desire to be a writer.

You would think that I would rush to take advantage of my involuntary periods without work to actively pursue my writing projects. After all, I say that I want to write full time, and here is the chance to actually do it! Sadly, things don’t quite work that way.

By its nature, writing is a solitary occupation. There is you, a pen and paper or a keyboard, the piece you are writing, the imagined reader or audience at the end.

I am used to working from a home office. When the kids were young I chose to work from home because it allowed me to fulfil the primary child care role. I learned to create structure, but also had structure imposed on me because of the routines of school and domestic life.

I must say that it was very lonely some times. Still, I had my outlets: business meetings, conferences, school functions. Today is very different.

It’s partly that the family has changed.

My wife and daughters lead busy lives. The things that I used to do that gave structure, the running around, have largely gone. The cooking that I used to do has become complicated since the numbers at home for dinner vary all the time. Even a simple thing like a combined family meal has to be scheduled a week in advance.

These changes do give me more time, although just keeping the house tidy is a bit of a battle. However, I find the absence of past structures difficult to manage.

The term writer’s block was coined in 1947 by the psychoanalyst Edmund Bergle to describe circumstances where a writer loses the ability to complete new work.

At one level, I don’t have writer’s block because I still write all the time. And yet, I find that my productivity has dropped enormously despite all the extra time I have at present.

In my case, writer’s block manifests itself through an inability to concentrate. I know that I should be writing, but I will do everything and anything first: clean the kitchen, go for a walk, vacuum the hallway, draw up a new writing plan.

Those dreaded plans! If I can’t do, I find myself planning how to do. Planning becomes a satisfactory substitute for action because it gives me an illusion of progress.

In all this, I must say that I am beginning to wonder about my desire to be a writer, even wondering what the term writer actually means.

For a long time, I refused to describe myself as a writer. It sounded just too pretentious. Now if asked what I do, I sometimes say that I am a writer. After all, I now think of myself as a writer.

This gives rise to some funny reactions. “And what do you write?” is a pretty standard question, with people often having novels or plays or poetry in mind.

But just what do I write? Anything and everything actually, but it is nearly all non-fiction. I don’t write a single thing, I write many things, and that’s part of my problem. I am neither fish nor fowl.

Trying to think through just why I am so addicted to writing regardless of form, it comes back to a love of language combined with a desire to involve and to communicate.

In my historical writing, for example, I write as an historian. In doing so, I have to comply with the canons of the discipline. However, as a writer I also want my history to be good writing, so I am addressing a double barrelled challenge as historian and writer.

I am not quite sure where I am going in all this, just trying to clarify thoughts and issues that are important to me at present. Still, I have at least finished another column!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 7 December 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

New state support grows in Newcastle

2011-12-07T14:47:00.001+11:00

My thanks to Greg for this one.

In Container port bound for Botany, the Newcastle Herald reports that the Sydney Government is to ditch the long standing plan to make Newcastle the next NSW container port after Botany Bay.

The story attracted a range of comments reflecting the way an issue likes this generates divergent views. Yet what was interesting from my viewpoint were the number of comments suggesting that this was yet another example of the need for a New England or Northern new state.

I haven't checked back, I am short of time, but it must be two years now that the need for a new state first surfaced in comments on Herald stories. At first the comments were scattered. Now they have become a consistent thread. The simple idea that self-government for the North is a part solution to the problems of misgovernment in the Hunter is becoming entrenched.

Obviously I welcome this, given my own views. Yet what's interesting from a political perspective is the way that an idea once rejected as just too left field, a figment of the past, has again become current.

Wearing my New England hat, the politicians ignore this at their peril. The defeat of the NSW Labor Government was widely welcomed as the start of a new direction in NSW. In relief, people were prepared to give Sydney the benefit of the doubt. And yet. all this did was suspend a deeply felt cynicism.

What commentators and others locked into conventional metro mind sets fail to realise is that this cynicism is not just about politics as such, but about the actual structures of Government.

My 23rd November Express column was entitled return of New England. New England is back. Ignore us at your peril!

Belshaw's World - ratings madness

2011-12-06T14:14:00.000+11:00

The global credit rating agencies have become a cancer eating away at the global economy.

In the lead-up to the global financial crisis, they gave triple A credit ratings to institutions and securities that were clearly not. As the crisis unfolded, the variations they made to country and institutional rankings added to market instability.

We see the same thing today in the unfolding crisis with the Euro.

The credit rating agencies provide no new information to the market. The standard of their economic and financial analysis is clearly suspect. Yet despite all this, a shift or threat of a shift in a county’s credit rating can have damaging or even catastrophic market effects even though it tells us nothing that we didn’t already know.

Our problem and it is our problem because it affects us all, lies in the way that we have awarded the ratings agencies authority without responsibility. We have created a cancerous monster.

We have had to work quite hard to achieve this.

Looking back into a now dim and distant past, I remember discussions in the Commonwealth Treasury on the possibility that Australia might get a triple a credit rating for the first time. We did, lost it in 1986, then finally got it back in 2003.

Australia’s original concern with its credit rating at state and Federal level made a lot of sense.

In those days, both State and Federal Governments borrowed to fund infrastructure. We needed access to global capital for both private and public purposes. A high credit rating made it easier for a small relatively remote country like Australia to access funds and at a lower cost.

From being a means to an end, the maintenance of a triple A credit rating became an end in itself. All Australian Governments preached this as a badge of honour.

There was a certain irony in this shift, for it coincided with a fundamental shift in Government funding patterns. Australian Governments largely stopped direct borrowing, thus reducing the direct gains associated with the triple A rating.

One can argue whether or not Australian obsessions with triple A rating were justified. One can also argue about the use of so called private-public partnerships to shift apparent borrowing to the private sector, thus increasing borrowing costs.

What can be said with some justice, however, is that the obsession with the maintenance of a triple A rating did provide some degree of fiscal discipline, something that would be important during the global financial crisis.

So far, so good. However, at this point a fundamental change occurred in the approaches adopted to the ratings agencies, one that would have devastating consequences. In simple terms, their credit rating role became institutionalised.

Take Australia as an example. As part of the deregulation process, local government was given greater freedom to invest surplus funds. Further, there was an expectation that local government would manage their funds so as to get the best return, thus benefiting rate payers.

Under previous arrangements, investments were restricted to a prescribed list of asset classes. Now, local government had greater freedom to invest so long as the securities in question had the appropriate rating from the ratings agencies.

I have used an Australian example, but this type of change took place around the world in both private and public sectors. The ratings as awarded by the agencies were built into a myriad of regulations, financial arrangements and associated contracts.

This institutionalisation created a fundamental conflict of interest in the agencies themselves, for they made the majority of their money from fees charged for ratings. More importantly, it gave the agencies a role that they could not in fact properly fulfil.

We saw the results of this during the global financial crisis when agency rated triple A securities proved to be, at best, junk status. However, there was another even more pernicious effect.

The institutionalisation of agency ratings, their incorporation into so many regulations and arrangements, meant that variations in credit ratings had direct flow on market effects in ways that no-one had foreseen. The ratings system itself had become a direct cause of market instability and on a large scale.

At this stage, it is very hard to see just how all this can be unwound. Yet we need to do so if global economic problems are to be properly addressed.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 30 November 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Discovering a New England treasure trove

2011-12-02T20:56:00.001+11:00

One of the reasons why I have been so slow in posting here is the need to sort some of my possessions for discard, retention, storage or sale. As part of this, I found three book boxes full of New England books, most no longer available: biographies, autobiographies, local histories, property histories, novels, poems and photographic albums from across the North.

I knew I had had them, but thought them lost: from North Star to Lake Macquarie, from the Upper Clarence to Scone, from Page to Wright, from McBryde on New England prehistory to two copies of my original honours thesis, a first edition of Baal Belbora and so it goes on.

It's not a complete collection. I used to try to buy every book published in or about or written by someone from the broader New England. Sadly, I ran out of money and space. Still, at a rough count I have more than four hundred publications.

There are other collections, but its a fairly unusual resource. I have also managed to preserve a lot of my original source material on my PhD thesis, including copies of key new state correspondence and, in some cases, the originals because they are family papers.

I have to go on sorting, but you can expect more explorations through the life and history of the North that so many of us love.

As I have said before, and really as Australia Subdivided inferred in 1921, we have lost so much of our history and culture because it was just not seen as relevant by the gatekeepers who control so much of what Australians read or see.

New England Australia reader interests November 2011

2011-12-01T18:18:00.000+11:00

End of months stats and reader interests time.

The graph on the left shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the last twelve months.

In terms of reader interests, the most popular posts over November were:

Moree flood evacuation centre 444 page views
Wednesday Forum - what hash tags should we use to promote New England? 185 page views
Wednesday Forum: resolving environmental conflict - 173 page views
Wednesday Forum: preserving New England's heritage... 139 page views
Coal seam gas & the rise of political and policy stupidity 107 page views
Charles Sturt University to open in Tamworth? 93 page views
The Poetry of Judith Wright - Bora Ring 77 page views
The Poetry of Judith Wright - South of My Days 76 page views
New England new state car sticker, 1960s 62 page views
Round the New England blogging traps 10- a miscellany 59 page views

Belshaw's World - return of New England

2011-11-30T13:48:00.001+11:00

Documentary film maker Mathew Harvey (Kangabear Pictures) has begun the development of a film looking at the North and the question of Northern or New England identity, including the fight for self government.

Mathew was attracted to the project because he thought that there was a story there that had been neglected.

In an email to me earlier this week, he said that he had just been watching the YouTube the other day and had seen the 'Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall' song by Coldplay.

That song has been a considerable success.

The video clip has had 22 million views. Another clip with just the song has had close to 13 million views. The song has hit number 14 in the States and the band is the biggest rock/soft rock band in the world at the moment.

Now the point here is that the song heavily samples Peter Allen's 'I Go to Rio'. This led Mathew to wonder how many kids in the New England would even know this, or who Peter Allen was. He went on:

“Australian society in general doesn't know the impact of New England artists/musicians because most of them don't even know that New England exists outside of being the federal seat of 'that politician Tony Windsor'

who gave us the Gillard government’.”

Mathew is right of course, and that’s part of the reason for his documentary. However, there is an interesting sea change underway.

I began blogging on New England issues back in April 2006. By New England I mean the broader new state New England, not just the Tablelands. In turn, this led to this column, with the first Belshaw’s World appearing at the end of 2008.

When I began writing on New England issues it was actually quite lonely in the sense that nobody came. Our North really seemed to have gone for ever, swept by the tides into the dustbin of Australian history. We didn’t exist and nobody was interested.

Slowly that changed, so slowly that at first I wasn’t aware of the change.

Through the miracle of the internet I began to gather readers who also provided comments. I found that there was real interest in the history and character of the North, the broader New England.

Page views on the New England Australia blog grew from a few hundred a month to well over 5,000 a month. Once again, people were talking about New England issues.

I am not suggesting that the increase in interest was solely due to my efforts, although I think that I helped. Other things were important as well.

One was simply peoples’ desire to know something about their own past. A second was growing dissatisfaction with the way NSW was governed, meaning that people once again started looking for alternative structures.

Most writers, certainly all historians, draw from previous writers.

As I sit here in the early morning, it’s a bit after 4am, I think of those New England writers and especially political writers who have gone before me. You see, I draw from them all the time.

I think of Victor Thompson scribbling away in the cramped Tamworth Observer office penning the editorials that would launch a new state campaign.

I think of David Drummond seeking donations to fund the publication of his pamphlet on constitutional change and then telling Ernest Sommerlad not to destroy the type because Drummond hoped for a new print run.

“I have received your terribly fearsome letter”, Sommerlad wrote before patting Drummond down.

I think of Sommerlad himself writing the first ever book on Australian journalism, one that articulated the special role of the country press.

Then there was Ulrich Ellis whose typewriter went with him everywhere.

As we lost our history, all the many New England writers exited stage left. It wasn’t just political writers, but all writers.

Measured by theses and journal articles, interest in New England history actually peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s.

From the start of the 1980s it went into long term decline.

The University of New England, once the powerhouse of New England research and writing, lost its own focus. Even today, it has a much diminished view for an institution that once saw itself as the Sydney University of the North.

New England is back, but it will take time to rebuild. We are just at the start of the process. Yet I take great comfort in the fact that we are back.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 23 November 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

The dead hand of Sydney myopia

2011-11-29T12:50:00.001+11:00

My main post today, Dreams past: Collective Wisdom, education & the NBN, is on my personal blog. It is, as the title suggests, a memory of time's past.

In that post, I refer to a bid for funding under the the Commonwealth Government's Cooperative Multimedia Centre's program. There were five NSW contenders - two from Sydney, one each from Armidale, Lismore and Bathurst. I still remember how hard it was to get any interest out of Sydney at official level.

Straight after the demonstration I refer to in my post, I left for Sydney to join my family. Later that year, one of my colleagues asked me to put forward nominations for people that might go onto the State Government's Information Industries Board. Based on my knowledge, I put forward a number of non-metro suggestions. They were all knocked back by the Department of State Development on the grounds that they weren't in Sydney, that they needed Sydney people because it made working easier.

One of the reasons why I sometimes despair is that the entrenched barriers that we have to work against to get effective Northern development are just so great. When I was a kid I thought that it was conscious neglect. That can happen, but what actually makes it so hard is that we are dealing with structures set up in such a way as to encourage neglect, to work against real change.

People aren't dumb or uncaring, they just don't see it. They go with what's easy or efficient at the time. To do otherwise requires a conscious act to break out, to see in different ways. There is really no incentive or even mechanism that will allow them to do this.

A lot of my readers will agree with me, I think, that self-government is the final answer. But we also have to deal with the now. And that won't change until change is forced.

New England new state car sticker, 1960s

2011-11-28T15:37:00.001+11:00

This is a New England New State movement car sticker from the 1960s. I had it on my first car.

I have no doubt that if we had won the 1967 vote, we would have been a bloody sight better off. Even if we did not have a new state by now, we could not have been ignored in the way we have been.

North Star online

2011-11-27T15:17:00.001+11:00

Do you know, I know New England pretty well, but I have never been to North Star, a small farming community in New England's north west. Nearby communities include Boggabilla to the north, Moree to the south. The Aboriginal community that I mentioned in Toomelah the movie opens in cinemas is not far away.

North Star is now the terminus of the branch railway line that once ran to Boggabilla from Moree. There is a story here. When the line was under consideration, one of the Progressive Party members for the then Northern Tablelands seat (David Drummond) fought to have planning for the line extended into Queensland to junction with the Queensland network. The move was opposed because it might divert wheat traffic from Sydney.

I mention North Star now because the community has taken to the internet in a big way via:

a community web site
a Facebook page
and on Twitter (@NorthStarNSW)

Well done, but a suggestion. Do tell people where North Star actually is and how to get there!

Postscript:

To ask, sometimes,is to receive. Thanks to the miracles of twitter, the good folk at North Star added material to meet my suggestion as to the location of North Star.

Toomelah the movie opens in cinemas

2011-11-25T16:06:00.001+11:00

Another New England movie, Toomelah, has hit the screens, if again with limited release. The plot is described in these terms:

The film is set entirely in the remote Indigenous community of Toomelah, located on the NSW, QLD border. It was created as a mission during the 1930s, bringing together Gamilaroi and Bigambal people from the surrounding area.

The story centres on Daniel, a small ten year old boy who dreams of being a gangster. He is kicked out of school and befriends a local gang leader, until a rival gangster arrives back from jail to reclaim his turf. A showdown ensues and Daniel is caught in the middle, leaving him with a choice to make about his uncertain future.

Toomelah is a deeply personal story, that intimately depicts mission life in contemporary Australia. The film reveals the challenges facing the young Gamilaroi people of the Toomelah Community. Robbed of much of their traditional culture by Government policy, it is a community on a cultural edge, struggling for an identity. It is a provocative and yet comic story that transports audiences inside the community, creating an authentic world and way of life that is "Toomelah"

I know that many Australians are actually put off by movies about Aboriginal people or issues, but this one is worth seeing in its own right and as a depiction of one aspect of New England Aboriginal life. Further comments follow the trailer.

I have written a fair bit on New England's Aboriginal peoples. In this context, this post is actually the tenth in a continuing series introducing readers to past and present Aboriginal life in New England.

Those who are interested can find a full list of posts by either clicking New England Aboriginal life or, if you want, to read in date order from one up, click on Introducing New England Aboriginal life. I still have to do a consolidation of all my historical posts.

I have also done written a fair bit on New England films. Again, I need to do an update.

It's nice to have a film showing a very different aspect of New England life that should appeal to a wider audience.

APN ceases daily publication of Tweed Daily, Coffs Advocate

2011-11-23T16:31:00.001+11:00

Yesterday's post, Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change, talked about aspects of the history of the media in New England.

Given this, I thought that I should record APN's decision to cease daily publication of the 123 years old Tweed Daily News and the 104 year old Coffs Harbour Advocate.

In the latest set of Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Daily News was selling just 3,689 copies. The paper started life in 1888 as the Tweed and Brunswick Advocate. It became The Tweed Daily in 1914. At one point it was one of only two daily newspapers in Australia to have an offset printing press.

The Daily News will sell a print edition only at the weekends with a cover price of 50 cents instead of the current $1.30. It will go on offering readers online updates via the mydailynews across the week.

The Coffs Coast Advocate will become a twice weekly freesheet, circulating on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On its paid for days it had been averaging 2,959 sales.

I have written a little on the history of the New England media. Maybe time to do an update.

Postscript

In a comment, the Armidale Express's Janene Carey (@janenecarey) pointed to the job losses involved - 30 to 35 of 85 staff, apparently mainly editorial.

Janene and I have talked about this one - the survival of the print press and the reporting that depends on that press - in posts and comments on a number of occasions. It's a very difficult issue.

Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change

2011-11-22T15:29:00.001+11:00

I am writing a short piece for the new Companion to the Australian Media on the remarkable story of the Vincent newspaper family.

It’s hard to fit the story into 500 words, for we are talking of three generations and multiple mastheads. Local mastheads included the Glen Innes Examiner and Uralla Times.

I will write a little more on the Vincents later. Immediately, my research drew me back into the past days of New England’s newspaper world.

Today we forget just how important the printing press was. It provided a vehicle not just for books, but also pamphlets and then newspapers. According to Wikipedia, by the early 19th century there were 52 London papers and over 100 other titles.

The political and economic impact of the printing revolution was just as significant as the internet today.

The authorities struggled to deal with new forms of political expression. New concepts emerged such as the fourth estate and freedom of the press.

Advertising was born, fuelling emergence of what we now call mass consumer goods. Advertising allowed the price of newspapers to be reduced. Mass circulation papers emerged.

The new papers fed an ever-growing demand for information and entertainment. The invention of the telegraph made news from far distant places accessible.

The public demand for information was remarkable.

On the moving frontier in the Australian colonies, newspapers were handed on, read in reading rooms but also by firelight in distant camps.

A single paper could be read by dozens of people until, finally, it met its end lighting fires, pasted onto walls as insulation or as toilet paper. In the days before toilet paper, newspapers were cut into squares as a substitute.

As towns emerged in the Australian colonies, they wanted their own papers. Powerful figures fighting for their commercial and political interests were often prepared to fund papers.

In the Clarence where either inclusion in Queensland or, alternatively, creation of a new colony was a hot issue, one paper was founded to support the cause, another to oppose it.

The new papers were highly unstable, opening and closing all the time. Often, they vanished without historical trace.

In Armidale, the presence of Frank Newton’s Armidale Telegraph is mentioned in the historical record. However, no copies were known to have survived until one was found, by accident, in the walls of an old Armidale house.

Start up costs were relatively low. All you needed was a press and some initial working capital. Those presses were constantly recycled, moving down the chain to new smaller papers as their original owners replaced them with new equipment.

By the first decades of the twentieth century, even small New England communities had their own newspapers, bigger towns had two.

Many of the names are gone now. Who remembers the Tingha Miner or even knows that Tingha once had its own paper? Yet their influence lingers.

The two decades following the First World War saw consolidation.

Newspapers merged in Inverell, Glen Innes and then Armidale. The Tamworth Observer changed its name to The Northern Daily Leader and launched a campaign to become the premier inland Northern daily, attacking the metropolitan newspapers on one side, the purely local papers on the other.

While many papers remained sole proprietorships, new companies emerged. Northern Newspapers and the Armidale Newspaper Company are examples.

The papers were in fierce competition and fostered that local parochialism that has always been New England’s curse. Yet they could also combine. The rapid expansion of New State agitation in the early 1920s was led by the papers.

When first radio and TV came to the North, it remained locally controlled. Even in the late 1960s, every media outlet in New England was locally or regionally owned.

Then everything changed. By 2,000, local ownership was limited to a handful of independents.

With that loss went the capacity to combine in any coordinated way. Newspapers were split between a Queensland looking APN and Rural Press, two organisations that barely talked to each other. Radio and TV were integrated into national organisations.

The newspapers themselves still represented the local interest, but it was a much diminished interest for it was now purely local.

Looking at the Northern Daily Leader as an example, the old Leader consciously positioned its coverage to provide a Northern focus.

The Leader still carries a limited range of broader Northern stories, but the days when it outsold the Sydney Morning Herald in Armidale are long gone.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 16 November 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Belshaw's World - cursive writing a critical tool in the modern world

2011-11-15T15:10:00.000+11:00

From time to time, there have been suggestions that the teaching of cursive writing, what we used to call running writing, should be totally done away with. Better to teach children to touch type, or one of the other skills required for a modern world.

I really hated lessons in running writing at primary school. I don’t have especially good fine motor skills, nor eye hand coordination. Running writing lessons were a misery only exceeded by the obligatory craft.

Ultimately I learned to write and write fast. I had little choice if I was to complete exams. Then, too, at work I faced tight deadlines.

My writing was never neat. Not for me the old fashioned copper plate nor what was called a fair hand.

Typists and secretaries struggled to read my writing, although once they got used to it problems dropped away because I was at least consistent.

Once computers became popular, I stopped using hand writing on a regular basis. Like so many of us, I sat in front of a screen and keyed directly.

Without practice, my hand writing deteriorated quite quickly. My old problems with fine motor skills re-appeared. I also had a very particular problem in my right wrist, a repetition strain injury from all my previous writing.

By the early 2000s, my occasional handwritten notes had become an illegible scrawl.

There was one partial exception to this retreat.

Over the years, I have done a lot of facilitation and training. I enjoy it, while it has also been very useful and sometimes profitable.

As part of this, I used whiteboards and butchers’ paper all the time. This means hand writing.

Through a combination of printing and sometimes scrawl I got the message across. Indeed, I used my bad handwriting as a teaching device, something to entertain but also as an excuse to re-explain.

Had you asked me then whether I thought it necessary to still teach cursive writing in primary school, I could well have said no. Now I have changed my mind!

About three years ago, I started to keep writer’s diaries. I was spending up to three hours each day travelling by train or bus, and wanted to use the time productively.

Part of my writing was simply recording thoughts or notes on things around me. Part was also recording reactions to things that I was reading, including taking research notes for later use.

I actually became quite addicted to the process, beginning what I still call my train reading. This involved picking a book each week from my shelves almost at random that I had not read, or at least not read for a long time.

I got some funny looks on the buses and trains as I sat there absorbed in a book with my notebook in front of me, reading and then scribbling. Some of my best short writing came from this process.

Initially, my handwriting was literally a scrawl. However, as I wrote more I found that my running writing was coming back because it was both neater and faster.

Having re-acquired handwriting, I now find myself using it all the time. It’s just so useful for someone like me: I jot notes in parks and on benches; I use it as an excuse to leave my desk to sit somewhere else while still working; and I find that it’s increased my working speed.

In pre-computer days, you had to work out just what you were going to write before you really started. Too many people with computers just start writing, relying on the edit facility.

Sometimes that’s good. However, it can also lead to slower work, worse English. And that’s bad.

It seems that I have rediscovered the importance of handwriting as a tool. If you ask me now whether the teaching of cursive writing should be abolished in primary schools, I would say no!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 9 November 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Coal seam gas & the rise of political and policy stupidity

2011-11-10T10:51:00.001+11:00

This is the first of two posts on New England's environmental wars with a special focus on coal and coal seam gas.

In yesterday's post on my personal blog, Carbon tax, the Sydney/Gunnedah/Bowen Basin & coal seam gas, I introduced the Sydney-Gunnedah-Bowen Basin, coal and coal seam gas.

While there is some overlap in readership and issues between Personal Reflections and this blog, the two blogs serve different purposes. The sidebar here reads:

This blog is dedicated to the history, life and culture of Australia's New England, that part of Australia stretching from the Hunter Valley through to the Queensland border and incorporating the Hunter Valley, the Mid North Coast, the Northern Rivers, the New England Tablelands, Slopes and Western Plains.

While New England has still to achieve formal political identity, it has its own character and identity and is, in the words of the Australian poet A D Hope, an ideal in the heart and mind.

The majority of the readers on this blog come from or have a connection with or at least an in interest in New England. This includes the great New England diaspora. By contrast, while regular readers on Personal Reflections are well aware of my New England interests, they could hardly be otherwise, they read the blog for its mix of commentary and analysis with the purely personal.

One issue common to the two blogs can be summarised as out of sight, out of mind.

On this blog, I talk about the way in which the submergence of New England identity has led to neglect. On Personal Reflections, I talk about the way in which current main stream metro dominated media reporting with its focus on a narrow range of issues impoverishes policy discussion.

Developments outside the relatively narrow circles in which politicians, reporters, commentators and indeed public servants move tend to be ignored until, suddenly, they explode on the scene. Responses to them are then conditioned by the culture and attitudes of the dominant groups. The results often include confusion and simplistic analysis.

If you think that I'm wrong, consider the confusions in reporting and analysis that arose over the formation of the minority Gillard Government. Lacking any real knowledge of New England's history or geography or indeed the history of the various country movements more broadly, really unaware even of the existence of the New England independents, commentators struggled to make sense of the whole thing. They had been bitten by a now unknown past.

Coal and coal seam gas is another such issue. You see, while important, coal seam gas is only one of a series of interconnected economic, environmental and land use issues that have been bubbling away for a number of years.

Isolated community or farm protests rose and fell. New movements emerged and died, with their media treatment depending on prominence and fit within the conventional left/right or apparent party political spectrum. Riven with conflicting views, apparently disconnected groups began to coalesce, looking for support elsewhere.

It must be four years now since I began to write on Personal Reflections about the growing disconnect between dominant, predominantly urban views and the rest of the country. About eighteen months ago, I started focusing on New England's own environmental wars.

I felt that all this was significant. I was also annoyed at what I saw as the sometimes contemptuous dismal of things as unimportant, as special pleading. I have been involved with the country movements most of my life. I have been researching their history for thirty years, during which time I have seen them largely vanish from the research agenda. Well, they are back.

The Government's ability to pass the mining resource rent tax largely depends not on all the policy papers, not on the views of the states, mining industry or main political parties, not on the views of the reporters or commentariat, not on the views of metro voters. It depends, instead, on a single issue, whether two New England independents and Mr Windsor in particular can be satisfied about coal seam gas. I find this sad and frustrating.

This is not in any way a criticism of Mr Windsor, nor is it a comment on the coal seam gas issue. Rather, it is my indictment of the way our political system and associated policy processes have evolved. To my mind, we no longer have the capacity to analyse a multi-faceted issue, to identify principles, to recognise the impact of variation outside certain now very stylised formats.

These are strong charges. To illustrate them, I am going to take New England's environmental wars in my next post and discuss principles and issues. It will be Sunday before the post comes up since I have to go away.

There are no perfect answers, no ways of satisfying everyone. But the best results in an imperfect world come from information and recognition of the issues involved. I leave it to you to assess the validity of my arguments.

Belshaw's World - Armidale is different and difference sells

2011-11-08T00:06:00.000+11:00

Back in 2006, the then Labor Government introduced a new state plan. I did it the courtesy of actually looking at in detail because I thought that the concept was a good one.

To do this, I started by defining what I saw as New England’s needs. By New England I mean not the New England, but the broader new state New England from the southern edge of the Hunter to the border.

This took me quite a long time since this area does not formally exist. I collected statistics and prepared policy analysis. What were New England’s problems? What might be done about them?

I then examined the new State Plan against my analysis. Sadly, I concluded that even if every one of the thousands of targets was delivered, it would leave New England just where it was before in terms of key needs.

Blow me down, it seems to have happened again.

The trigger this time was some writing that I was doing on tourism.

A week back, David Whitley wrote a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald Sorry Australia, Europe rules. He compared Australia adversely to Europe, suggesting that things like the Opera House cannot compete.

These European attractions were always going to appeal. There was nothing Australia's tourism authorities could do about them. What they should do was differentiate and sing about what Australia could do better instead.

I suppose that we are all locals at heart.

Country people (and universities) cannot help comparing themselves with bigger fish. Armidale can offer good coffee, all the features you can find in Sydney.

Sydney people are just as bad. People should come to enjoy Sydney’s cosmopolitan life style. Our food is as good as anywhere in the world. Yawn!

Armidale or New England cannot compete with Sydney on Sydney’s own turf, nor can Sydney compete with global centres on their grounds. It is difference that sells.

This problem is not new.

Rod, one of my blogging colleagues, was at UNE in the 1990s. He got very angry when the then mayor and VC said things like “the area has all the features you could want in a city" or “this region can offer the same university experience as a city university”.

As Rod said, how dumb can you get! Armidale and UNE were so different and that difference was what made it worth more than studying at a city university or any other for that matter.

In writing on these issues I made the point that the broader new state New England needed its own tourism strategy, one that would promote the area’s specific features. Not the tablelands, not the country, but one that capitalised on the very specific differences, commonalities and linkages across an area larger than the UK.

Anybody who has been involved in tourism will know that NSW tourism promotion has been a mess for a very long time. There has been no coherence, no stability. Branding strategies come and go.

From a New England perspective using New England in both a narrow and broader sense, our own image has been destroyed in a greater mess.

As I said in one piece of writing, if you think I’m wrong just try to answer these question: what is NSW’s tourism message? If you say NSW, what core images come to mind? Then compare this to the other states and territories.

I thought that maybe I was being unfair in all this given a new government, so I went to the new state plan (http://2021.nsw.gov.au/).

There are differences in ideology and emphasis. In fairness to the National Party, there is a greater regional emphasis in the new plan. Yet it is still the same mess of disconnected performance indicators.

And on tourism? It doesn’t appear to exist. There is no tourism strategy, no indication of the ways this might fit in, not even a performance indicator that I could find.

Mind you, there is a new tourism body Destination NSW, which is developing another strategic plan. Something may come of this.

I accept that I am biased at many levels. Among other things, I believe that New England needs its own state to have any chance of making progress. I am also quite one eyed when it comes to the need for New England advancement.

Accepting this, my charge on tourism is simply this: it is up to the Sydney Government to prove that it can deliver on the things that will benefit the North. I doubt that it can.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 2 November 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Northern Tablelands - UNE archaeologist up a tree!

2011-11-07T23:51:00.000+11:00

This post is a simple follow up to Clarence Valley - UNE archaeologists at rest!, just another photo of past UNE digs and survey missions. I am not sure why I wanted to climb that tree! Brief comments follow the photo.

In 1920 the first New State manifesto, Australia Subdivided, complained: In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area.

The manifesto was dead right. One outcome of the subsequent campaigns was the establishment of the University of New England.

Now that I have a few photos I am going to bring up a piece on the New England History blog looking at aspects of the role played by the University of New England in documenting the history of New England with a special focus on Aboriginal New England. It's a good story. and one that shows the University delivering on the hopes of those who published that first manifesto.

Another New England revolutionary song

2011-11-06T20:21:00.000+11:00

I have several part completed posts. I am going to bring them up at their due date.

In a comment on Clarence Valley - UNE archaeologists at rest!, anon wrote in a comment:

1:40 found this site
1:41 bookmarked this site
Long live New England! Ever heard "Chester" by William Billings?

I had not. It is a US revolutionary song. The first stanza reads:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.

You can see why anon noticed it. It may be in a different time and a different place, but it's another New England revolutionary song. For those who don't know it, the chorus of the New England New State anthem:

We will raise the
Banner of New England
Work for New England
Fight for New England
We will raise the
Battle cry of freedom
Fight for our Liberty

You can find out more about the anthem in More on New England's Battle Song. I wonder how many musicians we have in our midst. We need more New England songs!

Clarence Valley - UNE archaeologists at rest!

2011-11-05T12:46:00.000+11:00

I have been sorting, a distracting task!

I was thinking of Mark when I found this photo of one of the Seelands digs. I am on the left. Comments follow the photo.

The Seelands Rock Shelter is an important Clarence Valley archeological site excavated by UNE teams under the leadership of Isabel McBryde. At the time this photo was taken, I wanted to be an archeologist specialising in Australian prehistory. Other things intervened and I became a professional economist. Yet, years later, I have returned in some ways to my original dream through my historical research.

We are clearly at rest. It was a very hot day. By the end I had a splitting migraine head ache, so I remember the day very clearly.

Turmoil in Northern NSW Football

2011-11-03T16:17:00.001+11:00

I had intended today to follow up yesterday's post Local Government & the Australian Constitution with a more detailed analysis of the issues. However, an issue has come up that I wanted to report on.

Soccer is the only sport in which Northern NSW, the broader New England, has its own state league independent of NSW. The creation of the Northern NSW Football Federation dates back to the height of the 1960s new state campaign.

on 31 October, the Newcastle Herald reported on the axing of NNSWF CEO David Eland. The move generated controversy.

The following day, the paper reported that former president Bill Walker had blasted the board of directors over its sacking of David Eland, saying the process to remove the chief executive was ‘‘morally and ethically’’ wrong. Mr Walker resigned from the board in protest.

Then on 2 November, the Newcastle Herald carried three stories:

Today's story is NNSWF defies advice, names Jock Graham CEO. The NNSWF turmoil finds some reflection on its Facebook page.

Reading between the lines, a number of factors seem to have come into play here, including politics in Football Australia. What is clear is that the turmoil is not helping soccer - NNSWF has 50,000 members in seven zones across New England.

Postscript

Updated story in the Newcastle Herald NNSW board brushed FFA's appeal. I quote in part:

It now appears the NNSWF annual general meeting, set down for December 4, will be the likely showdown between the board and its members.

In any vote to remove the board, the seven zones each have two votes and the standing committees of the state league and first division clubs each have one, as does the referees’ association. A successful vote requires a 75 per cent majority. Zone officials are confident all votes will go against the board.

As an observation, I was a little surprised at the apparent lack of newspaper coverage on this one, I have only skimmed the online editions, elsewhere in New England.

Local Government & the Australian Constitution

2011-11-02T17:38:00.001+11:00

Just at present, an expert panel is reviewing the question of whether or not there should be some form of constitutional recognition for local government. The following submission to the panel was written by Newcastle accountant, Greg Howell, the president of the emerging Northern New State Movement.

Constitutional recognition for local government raises some complicated issues from a new state perspective. Many new staters support an enhanced role for local government, but how to achieve that without destroying the ideal of real self government raises complicated issues.

I will explore some of those issues tomorrow drawing from Greg's analysis. For the moment, I note that Greg is writing in a personal capacity to place issues and ideas on the table.

29th October, 2011
The Secretariat
Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Local Government
GPO Box 803
Canberra ACT 2601

Submission to Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Local Government

As an interested citizen, I am responding to the discussion paper published on the website http://www.localgovrecognition.gov.au/

I have no political affiliations, but I am acutely aware of the difficulties and challenges faced by regional Australia. My own perspective is that of a resident of Newcastle – Australia’s largest non-capital city, and a significant but often neglected large regional centre.

Introduction

The role of government should be to provide its’ citizens with fairness in terms of democratic representation, self-government where possible and equitable distribution of funding and services to all citizens, regardless of whether they live in capital cities or regional cities and towns. Regional Australia gets a very poor deal in this regard.

Consider this:

1) The Newcastle region has over 550,000 people residing in five LGA’s. Those five LGA’s have no unifying strategy for the Lower Hunter, nor do they have any significant capability of developing any such strategy. They are largely in competition with each other and have limited financial resources. Most significant government matters are administered at state level in Sydney by bureaucrats with little knowledge or understanding of the Lower Hunter.

2) The Newcastle region alone has a larger population than the state of Tasmania and also larger than the territories of ACT and NT, each of which has self-government, Senate representation, a voice at COAG and a share of Commonwealth funding. The Hunter and Northern NSW generally have no such independent voice or advocacy.

3) Northern NSW from the Hunter to the Queensland border has a population exceeding 1.5 million people, similar to that of South Australia. This represents approximately 7% of Australia’s total population in an area larger than the state of Victoria. Yet it's voice, unique needs and aspirations are swamped by metropolitan Sydney which dominates the state of NSW.

4) The people of Northern NSW have held aspirations of self-government which pre-date the creation of Victoria in 1851 and Queensland in 1859. Those states have far outstripped Northern NSW since their creation. Without self-government, Northern NSW slips ever further behind in infrastructure, services and relative importance. This is not only to the disadvantage of Northern NSW but also the disadvantage of Australia.

5) Politically, Northern NSW currently provides just one of the 76 Senators to the Australian Parliament. It has not provided a NSW state premier since the first years of federation and it’s only Prime Minister was Earle Page from Grafton (for just 20 days in 1939). That is an appallingly poor representation for Australia’s largest, and arguably it’s most important, region.

Northern NSW has Australia’s largest regional population, yet the above suggests that it is under-represented at higher levels of government and suffers from a lack of self-empowerment. All levels of government have failed Northern NSW badly. Regional Australia clearly needs more than just token recognition of relatively weak local government.

The discussion paper states that:

“The Constitution sets the basic rules on how governments, and the different arms of government, operate in Australia. Due to historical circumstances, it addresses only the relationships between State Governments, Territories and the Commonwealth. Local government is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.”

As the discussion paper states, Australia has indeed changed significantly since Federation. A nation of fewer than 4 million has grown to 22 million. Sydney’s population has grown from about ½ million to 4.4 million and its’ share of NSW population has grown from 36% to more than 60%. Northern NSW now has a greater population than had the entire state of NSW at the time of Federation. but a significantly lower proportion of the total state population.

In spite of these demographic changes Australia’s political landscape has remained static with no new states having been added in the 110 years since Federation. By comparison, USA has added 5 new states to their Federation in that time reflecting their continuing evolution and progress.

The relationship between the Commonwealth and the States has not always been smooth. The Commonwealth increasingly micro-manages state affairs, to the disadvantage of the States, via fiscal dominance and the state grants power contained in section 96 of the Constitution. It is hard to imagine how the Commonwealth might now also micro-manage some 560 competing local government bodies.

I will address my views in relation to the specific points in the discussion paper under the same headings.

Why recognise local government in the Constitution?

The discussion paper makes the claim that:

“Local government would be better able to attract the support and resources it needs, and to develop the new capacities to fulfil its increasingly important role in our system of government.”

This is a dubious claim without evidence. It is hard to imagine that local government would or could be any better positioned unless recognition is also accompanied by the ability to raise taxation revenue and make laws of its’ own. This in turn would change the entire nature of government in Australia and would probably have little chance of success in any referendum. This claim is not one that lends any significant weight to the need for local government recognition.

Ideas for changing the Constitution

The discussion paper has sought ideas that will:

“make a practical difference
have a reasonable chance at a referendum
resonate with the public.”

The expert panel noted a real potential Constitutional impediment to including any substantive provisions in the Constitution in that it could be held to “prohibit a State from altering the fundamental characteristics of a system of local government.”

It is hard to imagine any ideas that lack substantive provisions resonating with the public and having a reasonable chance of success at a referendum.

“The panel would also like to know whether there are any other ideas you would like to add.”

I have addressed my own ideas in detail under the heading “Further Questions”.

Symbolic recognition

“Do you think that, if the Constitution is changed to include a preamble or statement of values, local government should be referred to in either?”

“Symbolic recognition of local government would seek to enhance the status of local government in the Australian Federation in a way that has minimal or no legal effects.”

It is hard to see the purpose of any mere symbolic recognition of local government. If there is no substantive change from this process then this would be a truly wasted opportunity.

The discussion paper failed to examine just what, if anything, such a “preamble or statement of values” would be designed to achieve. This would seem to add little advancement to either the interpretation of the Constitution or the status of local government. Given that local government is recognised in each of the state constitutions, further reference in the Commonwealth Constitution would seem to be an unnecessary duplication.

We need to be careful to ensure that there is no overlap and confusion as to which level of government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of local government. If it is to remain the responsibility of the states (and there is no reason to believe that any change to this responsibility is either necessary or desirable) then why local government should be mentioned in the Commonwealth Constitution needs some explanation. Without an objective or an explanation of what this is intended to achieve I would not support this proposal.

Financial recognition

“Should the Constitution be changed to explicitly say that the Commonwealth Government can provide funding directly to local councils? Do you agree with either of the suggested changes to section 96 of the Constitution?”

Funding of local government services is a significant issue. Councils have relatively limited ability to raise revenue and limited powers delegated by their states. The states have ultimate fiscal responsibility for government within their state boundaries.

As pointed out in the discussion paper, direct funding by the Commonwealth is of questionable constitutional validity. I also do not agree that direct funding would be desirable since the demands of 560 LGA’s would potentially raise questions of equitable allocation of Commonwealth resources, as well as the real likelihood of further undesirable centralisation of power and control in Canberra.

It should be remembered why our states federated into one nation. The original purpose was for the common good with respect to matters of shared interest (eg. defence, foreign affairs, trade, communications, currency, pensions & welfare etc.). Local and regional matters such as public hospitals, education, roads, and justice remained, quite properly, state responsibilities. The states remain the cornerstone of our federation.

I doubt that our founding fathers had ever intended or even considered that the Commonwealth would become so fiscally dominant as it is today and that it would apply the state grants powers under section 96 in such a questionable manner in order to micro-manage state affairs, much less bypass the states altogether.

This is a significant issue in relations between the levels of government.

I would not support any proposals which have the effect of giving the Commonwealth more power to direct spending via tied grants to either the states or to bypass the states directly to local government bodies. This would only serve to increase centralisation, bureaucratic control and waste from Canberra, when the object should be more decentralisation and regional empowerment.

For reasons outlined above I would strongly oppose any of the suggested changes to section 96 of the Constitution.

Democratic recognition

“Should democratic elections for local governments be guaranteed by the Constitution? If so, which of the proposed provisions should be included in the Constitution?”

Councils have relatively limited ability to raise revenue and limited law making powers. The states remain ultimately responsible for administrations within their borders and therefore should retain the right to dismiss dysfunctional councils where necessary.

Council elections are already a democratic tradition across all states and territories. Dismissal of a democratically elected council is a rare event and unlikely to be taken for spurious reasons. I do support the principle that local government should be democratically elected and should not be dismissed except by an act of the state parliament as opposed to ministerial directive. However, this is and should remain a matter for each state and territory Constitution rather than a Commonwealth constitutional issue. I do not believe that local government is a Commonwealth matter and would be hesitant to support amendment of the Commonwealth Constitution in this regard.

Recognition through federal cooperation

“If the Constitution is changed to refer to the desirability of cooperation between the Commonwealth and the States, should local government be included in any such provision?”

In a practical sense governments already co-operate, although tension naturally occurs when state rights are impinged, when governments of opposing political persuasions disagree or when the Commonwealth and the States have different objectives.

I see little potential for improving and streamlining government by including local government in this process. It could potentially lead to a further blurring of responsibilities, bogging down the business of government in excessive consultation. The states should be free to carry out the business of government within their borders without Commonwealth interference. The Commonwealth’s primary responsibility must be to manage matters of national significance rather than to become involved in local or regional issues. I would oppose any such provision.

Further questions

“What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the particular ideas discussed in this paper?”

Mere symbolic recognition of local government would be a wasted opportunity. Yet I am even more concerned that something more than symbolic recognition for local government would represent a substantial shift in our system of government and potentially lead to greater regulation and control from Canberra. Regional Australia needs more decentralisation.

“Which ideas, or combination of ideas, do you think could best provide a basis for constitutional recognition of local government in Australia?”

For the reasons stated above I cannot support any of the ideas presented. Given the poor history of referenda in Australia and the failure of the 1974 and 1988 referendum questions, it would seem unlikely that enough support can be gathered for constitutional change without an exceptionally strong argument. None of the arguments presented in the discussion paper were persuasive and most proposals have significant ramifications barely considered.

“Are there any other ideas not covered in this discussion paper that you support?”

The Constitution has an existing but never used mechanism contained in Chapter 6 “New States”, sections 121 – 124. This should be activated to create the decentralised government that regional Australia desperately needs.

The constitution requires no amendment to create new self-governing states, although an intransigent state refusing to cede territory could still be an impediment under the provisions as they currently stand. However, this would run counter to the principles of self-determination and a state parliament would find it difficult not to accede to regional self-government if there was a plebiscite in the proposed new state area in favour.

There is a long precedent for states acquiring and ceding territory. During the 19th Century NSW relinquished control of territory as needed for the self-government of Tas, SA, Vic and Qld. In the 20th Century NSW ceded the ACT and Jervis Bay to the control of the Commonwealth, which in turn subsequently established self-government for the ACT. NT has been variously part of NSW and SA before assuming it’s present day borders and self-government. South Australia and Queensland have also both had border adjustments before assuming their present day borders.

There is no logical reason to assume that all existing state borders are set in stone or that no new Australian states should now be created from territory ceded by a parent state. The Cohen and Nicholas Royal Commissions in the first half of the 20th Century both recommended the creation of a new state of New England in Northern NSW. It is now time for the question of self-government for New England to be revisited and for an honest and fair plebiscite to be conducted throughout Northern NSW. Other regions such as North Queensland may also have strong desires for self-government and should also be given this opportunity.

“Do you think that there are other ways of recognising the role of local government and enhancing its status, apart from constitutional change?”

Local government has little or no ability to plan for an entire region or even one metropolis, where there are multiple LGA’s that together make up a broader community. State government is required for matters of regional significance, rather than enhanced recognition of local government.

For example, the Newcastle City Council LGA has approximately 155,000 residents while neighbouring Lake Macquarie City Council LGA has 200,000 residents. The other three neighbouring LGA’s of Maitland, Cessnock and Port Stephens add almost another 200,000 people to the Lower Hunter population. Yet Newcastle, as the major CBD, bears the greatest responsibility for regional facilities which benefit the entire Newcastle region. For example, Number 1 Sports Ground, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle Region Museum, Civic Theatre, Blackbutt Reserve are maintained by Newcastle City Council. The ratepayers of the city of Newcastle also bear the cost of maintaining public roads that service other state owned regional facilities such as John Hunter Hospital, Ausgrid Stadium, Broadmeadow Railway Station and Newcastle University.

Newcastle Airport, another regional facility is a partnership of Newcastle City Council and Port Stephens Shire Council. This is a rare example of what can be achieved when there is a regional focus. A New England state government with its’ own treasury, taxation base, public service and sharper northern focus could achieve so much more for Northern NSW.

There might be certain minimum criteria for identification of a particular region deserving of recognition as a proposed new state. For example there should be:

a desire for self-government;
a distinct regional identity (such as Hunter/New England and Northern NSW); and
a population not less than the existing smallest state of Tasmania.

“Do you think that there are any implications beyond the benefits to local government that might result from the suggested changes to the Constitution?”

There are substantial implications which have the potential to change our system of government and make it more centralised, cumbersome and less responsible, with few obvious outweighing benefits.

States blame the Commonwealth for failing to provide sufficient funds for state programs while the Commonwealth blames the states for inefficient use of the funds provided. The addition of 560 local government bodies in this process could only exacerbate this.

Conclusion

For the reasons outlined above, I would not support any of the proposals in the discussion paper for recognition of local government. It would have the potential to fundamentally change the way that governments operate and interact in Australia. It is likely to lead to greater centralisation and Commonwealth control without enhancing the values of good government.

The provisions contained under Chapter 6 for creation of new states were included in the Constitution by our founding fathers to recognise and empower regions deserving of self-government and to enhance decentralisation. In more than a century since Federation we have lacked the vision, courage and commitment to use this mechanism for the benefit of regional Australia. Worse still, self-interested state capitals fearful of losing territory in NSW and Queensland have stymied progress towards creation of new states.

Chapter 6 requires no constitutional convention or amendment. All that is required is a commitment to the ideals of democracy and the UN Charter for self-determination, to which Australia is a signatory.

It is long overdue that significant regions with long held desires for self-government, such as Northern NSW, be given the opportunity to vote in a fair and balanced plebiscite in accordance with the conclusions of the Nicholas Royal Commissions and the principles of self-determination.

I urge the panel to broaden the discussion to include recommendations for creation of new states as needed to provide decentralised government and more equitable distribution of resources, infrastructure and services for the major regional populations of Australia.

Yours sincerely,
Gregory J. Howley,
B. Comm., CA, FPA, Reg. Tax Agent

Belshaw's World - life, death and Sydney’s real estate prices

2011-11-01T14:58:00.001+11:00

Another column, another blank screen.

I spent yesterday morning shifting book boxes from one storage shed to another. As I write, my back is killing me, a salutary reminder that I may not be as young as I once was!

I saw from the paper that Lloyd and June Piddington have celebrated their 65^th wedding anniversary. Sixty five years! That’s a very long time indeed. My congratulations.

By the nature of their business, the Piddingtons have been entwined with Armidale life for a very long time. In my own case, they have buried grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles.

A family death is always stressful. The thing that I most remember is the calm kindness with which Lloyd and other family members handled the inevitable problems.

Down here in Sydney, the news that the NSW economy is in the slow lane nationally has attracted some attention. The problem from my perspective is that there is no such thing as a NSW economy.

To the good folk in the NSW Treasury the concept makes some sense because they have to estimate tax revenues. For the rest of us, NSW is increasingly little more than lines on a map providing a notional unity to an increasingly disparate territory.

Because of its size, Sydney dominates the numbers. Even in Sydney, there are considerable variations across the city. As we move outside, the variance becomes greater.

Take real estate.

In Sydney, house values have held up, but sales are down. The value of transactions is down nine per cent compared to the five year average.

In the sea change regions of the Northern Rivers and parts of the Mid North Coast, the value of transactions is down 30 per cent on the same basis. By contrast, the mining areas of the Hunter or areas around the ACT are trending above average.

Three areas with three very different performances.

In Sydney, real estate continues to dominate many dinner party conversations. The prospect of quick profit stays in mind, as it has done since the first days of European settlement. However, with Sydney real estate flat, home purchases in the US have become the new investment topic.

There are good practical reasons for this. Both countries have stuffed up their real estate markets.

In the US, rules that limit bank recovery to just the value of the property in conjunction with losses associated with the end of the property bubble have made banks unwilling to lend, while people are also reluctant to invest. House prices have fallen much more than rents, making for very good rental yields.

In NSW, by contrast, it is expensive to develop land or to build houses. Residential building has been low for some time. This leads to high prices and low rental yields; the prospect of capital appreciation dominates expected returns.

With capital appreciation uncertain, people are unwilling to buy even though Australian banks will lend. With the stock market also uncertain and interest yields quite low, some are now investing in US real estate to take advantage of the high rental yields.

With gain comes the risk of pain. Some will be hurt. However, there is a more immediate problem from my perspective.

We rent in Sydney, part of an increasing group forced to do so because of the very high real estate prices. This is a bit of a nightmare, one that is rapidly becoming worse. There simply aren’t a lot of long term lets of the type we want.

We have moved four times over the last five years, with another move possible next May. Each time rents have increased.

Listening to people chat about US housing investment, I just think of what it means for local rents. I also think about my back!

Like other Sydney costs, storage costs have been rising. We are therefore trying to reduce material in store to fit into a smaller and cheaper storage area.

This is complicated by the fact that last time we moved, we moved into a smaller house. This meant more stuff to store.

This morning I have the last twenty boxes to check and move. Oh my aching back!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 26 October 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Grafton to Inverell cycling classic turns 51

2011-10-30T17:12:00.000+11:00

One of Australia's oldest road races is the Grafton to Inverell Cycling Classic has just turned 51. Clarence Valley Today was there to record the start.

This is a pretty but rugged race that crawls up the escarpment from Grafton, runs across the New England Tablelands and then down to Inverell. Mark's posts are:

Why Newcastle's Urban Insider is just so good

2011-10-28T15:43:00.001+11:00

Yesterday's post, Why new state New England must have its own tourism strategy, dealt with the need for us to have a tourism approach independent of that applied in NSW.

Tourism is all about experiences. An experience is not just a good meal or a cup of coffee on its own, but those things in a context. You can get a good meal or a cup of coffee anywhere. Generally you remember them because something else is added in.

One of the things that I have tried to do in my writing is to draw out a little of the richness of New England life and history. Here I am trying to add a context, something that will make both New Englanders and visitors aware of our special features.

I have often spoken of the unrecognised features of Newcastle, the things that add specific richness to that city, a richness that can be enjoyed by locals and visitors alike. Sadly, things that are unrecognised die or are demolished. It is only later that we become aware of what we have lost.

From time to time, I have referred to Newcastle's Urban Insider. This relatively new e-magazine focuses on the texture of Newcastle life. It's great.

Just consider this feature by Matthew Endacott, Curtain Up Newcastle! The Theatre Town That Was. I have written a little on Newcastle's theatre tradition trying to understand something of its history. Matthew's article extends my knowledge.

The point about Newcastle's theatre tradition lies not in the comparison with other places, but in the fact that it is Newcastle's tradition. It is special to Newcastle.

To my mind, the brilliant thing about Urban Insider lies not in its immediate benefit to those living in Newcastle, although that's substantial. Rather, it is part of a process that is accumulating the Newcastle experience and making it available to a world well beyond Newcastle.

Why new state New England must have its own tourism strategy

2011-10-27T23:52:00.001+11:00

This post began as a Wednesday Forum discussion, but was then delayed until today by other pressures. This then allowed me to read David Whitley's piece Sorry Australia, Europe rules. He compares Australia adversely to Europe, suggesting that things like the Opera House cannot compete.

I agree with him. Indeed, I have written about the new love affair that many Australians have with Europe. I have written about the trails that our young follow through Asia. Australia as a new country cannot match the history and accumulated experiences, the very exotica, When the Sydney glitterati want to promote the city's museums, its cafes, they are no different from a country mayor who wants to promote a local park. The park may be nice, but it is not a draw in its own right. Both are blinded by the wrong comparison.

I also agree with his conclusion:

These things (the European attractions) are always going to appeal. There's nothing Australia's tourism authorities can do about them – but they can differentiate and sing about what Australia does do better instead.

If the broader new state New England is to attract increased visitor traffic, it has to focus on its unique features, those things that are distinct. Those things are not the same as Sydney.

The history, the geography, the style are all different. So long as New England is merged with, subordinated to, tourism promotion based on Sydney then we will fail. And so will Sydney.

We can see this is the failure of NSW tourism promotion and the two brand strategy - brand Sydney on one side, brand NSW on the other - over a very long period.

The NSW Government's attempts to promote Sydney as a global city, as a cosmopolitan global centre, fail in international terms because it puts Sydney in competition with a London or New York, a Singapore or Shanghai, and Sydney fails this test. In domestic terms, the Melbourne or Adelaide promotion of life style attracts domestic visitors, Crudely, Sydney is reduced to a bridge, an opera house and a harbour.

Elsewhere in NSW the position gets worse because NSW has no identity. If you look at international tourism promotion, Sydney itself gets a guernsey, but the rest of the state might as well not exist. If you look at domestic promotion, NSW is the only state without any form of definable tourism identity. Yes, that's right, the only one.

Try this test.

Ask people that you meet what are the key tourism features of each state, the few words that describe it from a visitor perspective. I bet you, the only words you get for NSW will be a few Sydney based attractions. All the other states will attract words linked to experiences.

New England suffers particularly because its identity is not recognised. We do have our own history, we have our complex life styles, we have great variety and attractions. Each is served up in fragments in the ill-defined stew that is NSW.

Many of us had hoped that the new NSW Government would address some of our concerns. At least so far as tourism is concerned, we now have enough evidence to suggest that it will follow the same path as before. I stand to be corrected, but I know of nothing in current plans that will aid us.

As before, the tourism strategies are fragmented and effectively deny our identity. Our history and special features are simply ignored.

Is is possible to have a unique New England brand? Certainly it is. This would centre on the North, the emergence of New England, our 150 year fight for statehood. It doesn't matter whether you agree with self-government or not, it's a unifying story.

New England tourism promotion would start with a central identity, but then focus on the promotion of difference, putting this in a broader New England context. Newcastle, for example, would emerge from the NSW imposed shadows as a distinct centre in its own right. The different New England wine regions would be promoted as an entity and in their differences.

How can you promote NSW wine when there is no unity, when people must choose one area but not another? In Victoria and in New England it is possible to do an integrated wine tour.

In Victoria, Geelong has established itself as the national wool centre from a museum perspective. Yes, the Western Districts are important, but so is wool in New England. Yet who would know?

I could go on, but will pause here with a plain statement.

If the NSW Government really wants to help New England tourism, then it must focus on the promotion of New England as an entity. This implies largely doing away with brand NSW and instead focusing on the promotion of the broader geographic entities making up NSW. If it can't do this, then let us go our own way.

Postscript

A brief response to some of the issues raised with me on this post.

First, by new state New England I mean the Tablelands, the coast, the Hunter, the Western Slopes and Plains, not just the Tablelands.

Next.

Surely David Whitley's comment on Australia as a whole applies to New England? What makes you think that a New England brand could attract international visitors in its own right?

That's absolutely right. In the medium term, say ten years, a New England brand would be unlikely to attract significant international traffic in its own right. What it would do is to increase our share of visitors already coming plus make a small incremental contribution to the totality of Australia's international tourism promotion.

We have to keep a sense of perspective. A Rhodes or a Santorini already attracts more international visitors in their own right than the totality of New England's international visitors because of history, romance and closeness to Europe. We are talking about a slow build process.

What's New England got that would attract visitors compared to other parts of Australia? They have beaches, national parks, festivals etc. They have far better developed tourist attractions. Why should people bother going?

Sigh. I actually get this type of comment from Sydney dwellers quite a bit. Many of those living in Melbourne, for example, don't even know where the place is. Yet we have some of the best attractions and locations in Australia.

Alright, what would a New England tourism strategy look like? Why would it work?

In considering this we need to take two things into account:

Visitors are attracted by a total experience. That takes time to build.
Low visitor numbers to many parts means that New England tourism economics are severely constrained. We presently don't have the spend to support basic infrastructure or visitor related activities. Again, this takes time to address.

In terms of markets, a New England tourism strategy would:

Promote New England to locals to encourage greater internal traffic. Do you know, there are Newcastle people who have never visited Armidale, Armidale people who have never visited Newcastle? There are new arrivals in some coastal centres that have never been over the ranges. And so it goes on. Towns don't sell to each other, they sell against each other. Glen Innes could probably double its total Celtic festival visitors from Armidale alone. How many Armidale people know about Inverell's Pioneer Village? Or have been to Timbertown? Internal promotion - taking in each other's washing if you like - can help improve economics and add to the human experience for locals and visitors alike.
Adopt a highly segmented approach taking geography and travel time into account. For example, Tenterfield would promote itself in its own right - Henry Parkes, Tenterfield Saddler, etc. It would be promoted as an extension of the Granite Belt to attract add-on visitors especially from Brisbane, but also be promoted as part of the New England geographic wine region. Tenterfield should cross-sell, encouraging its visitors to go to Stanthorpe and the Granite Belt for wine, to drop down to the Richmond and Tweed valleys, mentioning Armidale in the context of Peter Allen.
Adopt a thematic, niche, special interest approach linking different parts of New England. Wine, railways, mining, whatever you like. Anything that appeals that would also get people to travel more broadly within New England once they are there.
With all this unified within a central New England brand.

The coordinating promotional role would involve, among other things:

Promotion of the central brand.
Coordinated campaigns based around key themes.
The use of tourism facilitators whose role would centre in part on encouragement of cooperation at local and regional levels within the broader New England.

A key feature of the central role would be a focus on and promotion of difference, of features unique to specific localities or areas. Parochialism is deeply entrenched within New England. It should be used as an asset, not liability.

Postscript 2

Greg Commented:

Jim, I read this article yesterday and what struck me was the Sydney/Melbourne centric viewpoint. There is so much more to Australia than just two cities. Let's face it, if you are from the northern hemisphere and you want the experience of a cosmopolitan world city, then travelling half way around the world to Sydney is not going to be high on your list.

There was also the disparaging comments about our smaller cities eg. Newcastle, Wollongong, Ballarat and Bendigo, being vastly inferior to the many European small cities eg. Oxford, Cambridge and Bath. The logic seems to imply that because our smaller towns and cities lack 1000 years of history and mediaeval architecture that they are simply not worth visiting. What an appallingly narrow minded comment.

What we do have is an entire continent out there with a multitude of different destinations, all with their own unique landscapes and stories.

We can never compete with Europe if your interest is castles and cobbled streets, but that is not necessarily everyone's ideal holiday experience. Our own tourism authority could market and leverage off our own unique strengths. Our climate, unique landscapes, laid back lifstyles and our own story - something that you simply cannot experience anywhere else.'ll mention Newcastle, because it is obviously what I know best. Where else on earth can you experience world class beaches, a large coastal lake, the bays, sand dunes and blue water of Port Stephens, world class wine districts, ancient rainforests and a climate ranging from subtropical to alpine in the highlands of the Barringtons - all between 2 minutes and 2 hours of the city CBD? You would think that would be a tourist marketers dream. Yet if you relied on NSW Tourism website you might never know most of it existed.

Postscript 3

The Sydney Morning Herald (29 October) carried an interesting piece by Sean Nicholls Cashed up, curious - now to get them on the plane on the plans of Destination NSW. If you read the piece, you will see the same use of ambitious targets (double the money spent by tourists in NSW in 2020); the same focus on what are perceived as golden markets, in this case China and to a lesser extent India; the same ambivalence and confusion between Sydney and NSW; the same focus on big ticket events; and an apparent disconnect between target and activities.

In fairness, Destination NSW is presently developing a strategic plan to achieve its objectives. Perhaps we should wait and see. However, having watched multiple planning processes over decades, I don't feel confident.

Belshaw's World - Summer days, Blue Hole and the 'Terrible Quads'

2011-10-25T11:01:00.000+11:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 19 October 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Cousin Jamie has been posting family photos. I, too, have been going back through some of my own collection looking for shots that might be worth putting online, as has brother David.

Between us all, there are hundreds of photos not counting the proliferation that came with the digital camera. Eldest’s face book page actually has more photos than the entire collection!

Family photos can be an issue, for what is interesting to the family can be dead boring to the outsider. Older readers will remember the once popular slide shows – this is us in front of <insert appropriate monument>. Eyes glaze and bums get sore.

Still, when I look at our photos I suspect that some might be interesting if put into a broader context. They do cover more than one hundred years of New England history.

I don’t want to devote entire columns to family snaps. However, I thought that it might be worthwhile from time to time to use some photos as an entry point to discussion of aspects of our shared past.

A week or so back, there was a letter complaining about the condition of the road to the Blue Hole. I had to laugh, for the Blue Hole road has been the subject of complaint for a very long time!

The Blue Hole has been a popular picnic spot for many years.. This photo is simply entitled "On a rock - the Blue Hole 1937, The Terrible Quads".

One person in the photo is Aunt Kay, but I have no idea who the other members of “The Terrible Quads” were! I suspect there are people in Armidale who might answer that question.

The thing about the Blue Hole is that it provided a deep swimming spot when they were relatively rare. This made it a popular swimming and picnic spot.

Other places such as the Pine Forest or the Gwydir did have deep pools.

I still remember skinny dipping at the Pine Forest getting a very burned backside as a consequence, but those pools tended to disappear as creeks silted up or changed course. The Blue Hole was different, always deep.

I first went to the Blue Hole as a kid many years after this photo was taken. The road was dreadful, really ruts wending their way across the paddock.

There were two things required to make the visit special.

One was a rope tied to a tree branch from which we could swing out into the water. The second were tire tubes.

In an earlier column I wrote about the experiences of my daughters tubing on the Mekong.

Our tubes were smaller, nor was the locale as exotic. Still, the concept was the same.

You could lie in the tube and look out at the world. More precisely, you could do so until someone tipped you out!

The problem with the smaller tires was the valve. I kept getting skin abrasions from those valves!

One feature of the Blue Hole was just how cold and dark the water became as you dropped below the surface. We used to dive down, but I never went very far because I didn’t like the cold. I still don’t.

This may sound strange coming from someone who grew up in Armidale, and indeed for periods I used to go swimming at the baths when they opened at 6am for training. Today that seems like insanity!

Thinking about the Blue Hole, I wonder if today’s Armidale kids have the same reactions that we did.

I know that when my girls were young we simply didn’t do some of the things that I had done. There were just so many more choices in terms of activities.

Just a bit more on the Werris Creek Railway Museum

2011-10-24T20:09:00.001+11:00

So far I have written stories mentioning the Werris Creek Railway Museum:

17 April 2008 Kamilaroi Highway - Werris Creek Railway Monument and Museum
25 April 2010 Three things I still have to do in New England -1 Railways
20 July 2011 New England's railway museums.

Now Kelly Fuller from ABC New England North West has interviewed Chris Holley, President of the Museum. It's worth listening to for those interested in the Museum or railways more generally.

Armidale High Class of 61 reunion

2011-10-20T12:36:00.001+11:00

Back In June I went to the Armidale Demonstration School 150th anniversary celebrations and had a wonderful time washed in the warmth of nostalgia. Just as well there was some warmth. It was bloody cold! Just for consolidation purposes I have listed the various posts I wrote on the celebrations at the end of this post.

While there, I attended a planning meeting for the reunion of the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate Class of 1961. While I went to TAS (The Armidale School) instead of High, I was in the same class at primary school as the High group and remained friends despite the different schools. Now through the wonders of the internet, many of us are again in contact.

Armidale Express editor Christian Knight has kindly sent me some photos of the reunion for circulation among the Armidale Connection group. I will do so, but thought that I would run one group shot here. Names follow the photo.

From left back in the photo" Rex Jones, Ann Woods (nee Heagney), Lawrie Placing, Pat Schofield (nee Hume), Paul Sommerville, Phil Emery, John Bain, Darryl Clarke, Ray Christie.

From left front in the photo: Val Bevege (nee Edmonds), Maggie Fathers (nee White), Helen Jones (nee Davidson), Laurel Clark, Narelle Woodland (nee Todd), John Parsons, Jock Roxborough, Susan Chapman (nee McSpedden) and Bruce Whan.

Dear some of the names took me back! I wondered if Maggie Fathers (nee White) was the same as Margaret White who was in my year at Armidale Dem. To this day I still carry the nickname Chalkie among some because of our primary school friendship!

Just a reminder on a point I have made before. If you are having a reunion, let me know and I will publicise it here.

The Armidale Dem 150 Year Celebration Posts

15 June 2011 Armidale Dem turns 150
22 June 2011 Belshaw's World - the Dem school: memory of a living entity
29 June 2011 Belshaw's World - Rugby League, Dem and more nostalgia

Gordon Smith's Uralla

2011-10-19T14:10:00.001+11:00

I am not running a Wednesday Forum this week because of time pressures. I am shifting storage sheds.

Instead, I thought that I would indulge myself with another of Gordon Smith's photos from his photo blog lookANDsee.

For those who don't know Uralla it is a small town (population around 2,300) 14 miles south of Armidale. This photo shows Bridge Street, the main street. Further comments follow the photo.

I am glad that Gordon is running a series of photos on Uralla. It's an interesting town well worth a visit. As so often happens, I suspect that Gordon's photos will give me lots of fodder for stories!

Belshaw's World - caught between a tweet and a print place

2011-10-18T10:00:00.001+11:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 12 October 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

From time to time I argue with Express editor Christian Knight about the need to bring the paper properly into the online world.

Now some Express readers might argue that immortalisation of the paper within the internet would be just too much of a good thing. Those same readers say that there is never anything in the Express anyway! Why, then, bother?

Editor Knight takes a different view.

As editor, he is hardly going to accept an argument that says there is nothing in his newspaper! His worry has been that if he puts the paper fully online, his Armidale readers may stop buying it and just read the online edition. This worry is set against the background of the general troubles facing the main Fairfax papers.

I don’t agree with those who say that there is no content in the paper, although I would accept that some editions do get a little thin. Living in Sydney as I now do, I read the Express quite carefully and find some very interesting content indeed.

A year or so back, one of my metropolitan blogging colleagues actually visited a country town, brought back a copy of the local paper, and then ran a piece parodying the stories.

Talk about come in spinner. I retaliated by taking stories from one edition of the Express and then comparing it with similar stories from Granny Herald. The Express stood up pretty well.

This type of disparaging attitude towards the country press in general is not uncommon.

In September, Express writer Janene Carey wrote on her blog about lunch with a friend who seemed bemused that Janene would want a part-time postdoctoral fellowship so that she could continue working at the Express. The friend asked Janene if she’d 'ever considered journalism as a profession?' - by which she meant a job on a "real" newspaper, a daily in the city covering serious, important stories.

Musing over this conversation, Janene simply recorded three stories that she had worked on that day, each local but with national or state implications.

The days when the Express ran front page foreign policy stories about developments in Tsarist Russia may be long gone. However, this does not mean that locally attuned reporting either lacks complexity or is without value.

I suspect that I probably read the paper from a somewhat different perspective to most readers.

It’s not just that I want to keep in touch with local developments. I also use the Express as a source of stories and ideas in a way that may surprise many.

I think that Armidale people have a tendency to knock the place. You might be surprised at the size of the Armidale footprint, at the way in which the apparently local actually has broader significance. That was Janene’s point.

Linking this now to my argument about the Express’s online presence, the paper actually serves two quite different audiences; one is purely local, the second is the broader and especially expatriate community with interests in Armidale.

If you limit the paper’s on-line presence to a small number of stories, then you are to my mind effectively penalising the broader Armidale community. I think that’s actually a problem for the city.

But can you broaden the online presence without affecting the local readership? I think that you can because the interests are different. You have, in effect, two linked publications.

I don’t think that I am going to win this argument any time soon, if only because of the way that Fairfax inline has been evolving.

In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy and use the print edition as a source of stories and ideas for a broader public.

Rod's Northern Rivers geology blog

2011-10-17T16:33:00.001+11:00

I sometimes feel blessed with our fellow bloggers.

A few weeks ago I was driving eldest to work and said that I was trying to learn something about geology. She laughed and rolled her eyes! Geology is not one of her pet interests.

My problem is that I need to learn something about geology to explain elements of New England's life and history. As always by New England I mean the broader New England, not just the Tablelands. So I have been struggling away trying to come to grips with terms, trying to sketch a geological history. Now I have received a message from Rod wondering whether I would be interested in his new blog on the geology of the Northern Rivers.

Interested? I could kiss him on both cheeks! Further, it's not just me that is likely to be interested. I immediately thought of two of my favourite picture bloggers, Gordon on the Tablelands, Mark on the Clarence Valley. Both add background to their photos.

If Rod keeps going, I suspect that he will become a real resource for the rest of us. Rod's blog is Northern Rivers (NSW) Geology. Hey, I will even forgive him for adding NSW in the title!

Rod will probably need to do a bit of educating for the rest of us. Things like simple blind freddy overviews.

Please visit. In the meantime, I have added the blog to my must read list.

Round the New England blogging traps 25 - a few writers

2011-10-14T17:56:00.001+11:00

New England crimance (crime plus romance!) writer Bronwyn Parry is appearing on a crimance panel at the Melbourne SheKilda 2011 – Australian Women Crime Writers’ Convention. Bronwyn has also finished the draft of her latest book and is now going through the editing stage (Revisions).

Another New England romance writer, Nicole Alexander, interviews a third New England writer - Cathryn Hein & the power of stories. Born in South Australia’s rural south-east Cathryn’s debut novel, Promises was released last month. She hails from a family of jockeys and admits to growing up horse mad. Now living in Newcastle, Cathryn writes full-time.

Nicole herself has a rural background, now hailing from north west of Moree. Her blog contains a variety of stories extending well beyond writing.

Armidale writer Jeremy Fisher reports on a variety of upcoming conferences. This includes a call for papers for an Armidale conference. In this case, I have taken the the liberty of repeating the post in full.

"Where do you think you are? Writing Australia

Arts New England: Centre for Research and Innovation in the Arts will be presenting a symposium on 15 November, 2011, to consider the development of an Australian identity in and through Writing (defined as a process of creativity unlimited by form, linearity or mode). The symposium will explore a range of ways in which Australian writing has evolved and is evolving.

Guest speakers include:

Angelo Loukakis, Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors, has worked as a teacher, scriptwriter, editor and publisher. He is the author of the fiction titles For the Patriarch, Vernacular Dreams, Messenger, and The Memory of Tides. He has also written a number of non-fiction works, including most recently a book of the SBS television series Who Do You Think You Are? His collection of short stories, For the Patriarch, was winner of a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Angelo Loukakis is a past member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and chair of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. He has taught writing, publishing and editing subjects at UTS and the Australian Catholic University. His latest novel, Houdini’s Flight, was released in 2010.

Lisa Heidke, author of Lucy Springer gets even (2009), What Kate did next (2010), and Claudia’s big break (2011). Lisa will speak on the challenges of writing chick-lit.

Sophie Masson, Chair of the Australian Society of Authors and former member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts and author of more than fifty novels for young people. A graduate of UNE, Sophie is published in many countries. In 2011 her historical novel, The Hunt for Ned Kelly, won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, while her alternative history novel, The Hand of Glory, won the Young Adult category of the 2002 Aurealis Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has also had many books shotrtlisted for various awards, written several novels for adults, and four thrillers for teenagers under the pen-name of Isabelle Merlin. Her short stories and essays have also been extensively published, in print journals in Australia, the UK, USA, and online in many different publications and blogs. Sophie will speak on French-Australian identity

Papers for the symposium are sought on the following themes:

Context and environment

Indigenous matters

Censorship, legal, moral and ethical problems

Expatriate writing

Outside looking in, or inside looking out: other tongues and accents

Syllabus studies

Historiography

Industries, products and production

Publishing and its products

Writing and new media

Popular culture – newspapers, magazines, pulp fiction, TV/film, music, theatre

Careers

Processes

Individual/collaborative/community

Technology

Shapes/forms/structures

Modes/Genres

Biography/Romance/Horror/Crime etc.

Narratives without words

Professional writing

Advertising/Public relations

In the first instance, submit a 300 word abstract of your proposed paper by 17 October to Dr Jeremy Fisher jfishe23@une.edu.au"

Speaking of Sophie, her blog A la mode frangourou continues to be a delight! For those interested in blogging, Sophie had a post (Food for Thought) on Writer Unboxed about her experiences in creating her blog.

Turning now to another Armidale writer - there are a lot of us!. Denis Wright has been exploring the nature of the Tao in a very good and clearly written series of posts. You will find the first post here. Once there, you can follow the later posts through via the links in the posts.

This one may well be a tad late.

Another New England writer is Hunter Valley based Sharyn Munro who blogs under the title The Woman on the Mountain. Sharyn's latest book, Mountain Trails, was reviewed in these terms in The Adelaide Advertiser Magazine

‘You may think your neighbours are eccentric, but Munro’s are animals: spotted quolls, possums, wallabies, koalas, snakes, frogs and echidnas to name a few. She describes them in short, often humorous vignettes of her life on the edge of a national park, 90 minutes from the nearest town.

‘Her style is engaging and informal as if telling stories over a cuppa, and her enthusiasm and concern for the creatures are infectious. The stories are illustrated with her own sketches. Munro ends with a restrained but passionate call for action to protect wildlife. As a reminder she includes a list of species already driven to extinction.

‘A good read.’

Sharyn's previous book, The Woman on the Mountain, has largely sold out. However, you can get a copy plus her new book from the publishers at a special combination price.

Well, I have run out of time and I haven't even had a chance to discuss the latest Captain Thunderbolt controversy. More later!

The importance of tennis

2011-10-13T17:54:00.001+11:00

Cousin Jamie continues to post family photos. I have many now to post as well. I have just called the following photo the importance of tennis. Comments follow the photo.

In some ways, this is actually a fairly typical shot from the 1930s. Its a bush scene, with furniture dragged out from the house - two boxes, a formal chair, a wickerwork chair, one of those fabric sun chairs that you still see in England. They are all eating watermelon.

This photo is of Aunt Kay when she was champion at the Armidale tennis club.

The world changes. The small settlements have largely gone. The home tennis court has been turned into a new block. Fewer people have the time or today even the skills to settle down for a few hours tennis.

Yet, and call me old fashioned if you like, I still miss the tennis. It's a game that I can play with my girls, that we played on every return visit to Armidale or when we were holidaying at South West Rocks. It's a game that stays with you.

I quite enjoy golf, another traditional New England game. Yet golf is not a social game in the way tennis is. It's too individualistic.

This week, and just down the road here in Sydney, I found surviving tennis courts hidden on a lane appropriately called Court Street. Oldest daughter has promised to play with me. Maybe there is hope!

Belshaw's World - Armidale in the 1960s: a city in transition

2011-10-11T17:16:00.001+11:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 5 October 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

The Express story about the Rologas family (28 September) carried me back into Armidale of the 1960s.

Armidale’s population had passed 12,000 for the first time. Part of the increase came from natural population increase, part from an increase in the city’s boundaries.

Old Armidale – the old city – had an area of just 3.3 square miles. This is the city you can still see on the maps with its square grid pattern.

By 1960, the population had begun to spread into the adjoining Dumaresq Shire. The city council had long complained about the city’s small rating base relative to needs. Finally, the city boundaries were expanded to include part of the emerging urban areas in the Shire.

This was a city in transition. The large residential blocks that marked the posher areas of the old city had begun to be subdivided. The city’s first flats were appearing. Yet the city was still clearly that which I had known all my young life.

The CBD was still made up be the three central blocks on Beardy Street. The central block, now the Mall, was still the town’s main centre.

Richardson’s Department Store anchored the CBD on the west. Modelling itself on David Jones, Richardson’s offered a complete range of services including a small lending library.

A lending library? Well, prior to the expansion of the city library, Richardson’s library offered a range of popular material that appealed especially to my mother.

Just beyond Richardson’s, the Capital Theatre marked the entertainment epicentre. This was a pretty popular theatre.

On the eastern side of Beardy Street, the less popular side, Hanna’s provided an alternative to Richardson’s, anchoring the east end. Nick’s Café was to be found beyond and was a popular place.

The department stores plus Burgess’s all offered home delivery of groceries. In those pre-internet days, there would be a knock on our back door. Mum would go out and give her order; the groceries would be delivered later.

Armidale’s pubs were the centre of much socialising, each drawing a particular clientele.

Rebuilt in 1930s in art deco style, Tattersalls Hotel in the centre block was Armidale’s prestige hotel. By 1960, fashion had begun to pass it by, but it still carried the marks of a grander past.

East West Airline founder Don Shand still held court there from time to time with the grazing families that came into town to do their shopping. Big and burly, Don could tell a good yarn.

I can still remember sitting in one of the leather arm chairs in the Tatts foyer waiting to be introduced to a girl friend’s parents.

I had met Steph earlier on the long boarding school trains that used to take the boarders out of town at the end of term. As a local, I normally did not go on the end term trains, but this time I was going to stay with a school friend at Molong.

Those trains were quite something. The platform crowded with students and supervising teachers suddenly emptied as teachers waved the charges good by. For their part, the charges now freed from teacher supervision settle down to smoke, fraternise and sometimes drink. It all seems quite mild now, but it was exciting then.

That day I was to meet Steph’s parents for the first time for they had driven up to collect their daughter. I still remember how nervous I felt!

I may seem to have come a long way from my starting point, the Rologas family, but there is a link.

As compared to Victoria, NSW has always been a bit of a wowser state. It still is. It was not until the early 1960s that the Mun Hing and Nicks obtained liquor licenses, the first cafes in Armidale to do so.

Prior to Nicks obtaining its licenses, those wishing to go out to a dinner had very limited choices. The main Tatts dining room was quite good, while Tatts’ Tavern also served food. However, they weren’t so good if you simply wanted to take a girl out to dinner with a degree of privacy!

Once Nicks got its licence, it opened a whole new dining experience and I ate there a lot. Civilisation had arrived!

Part of the attraction of Nicks lay in Chris and other members of the family. It was just a nice, friendly place in which to eat. I also liked the food.

From then through the upgrades and the creation of Seven Brothers I continued to eat at Nicks, as did my parents and many people I knew.

The world changes. Those days are gone, but the fond memories remain.

A little more on New England hash tags

2011-10-10T17:12:00.000+11:00

I left my last post, Wednesday Forum - what hash tags should we use to promote New England? up front for a while. I have started putting up tags as postscripts the Forum post.

I got some ideas in emails, some from searches. As you might have expected, it all proved more complicated than I had expected. I will keep on adding to the original post and then do a proper update.

Death of New England writer Ruby Langford Ginibi

2011-10-06T16:16:00.000+11:00

My thanks to Mark from Clarence Valley Today for alerting me to the death of New England writer Ruby Langford Ginibi. I am sure that there will be a full obituary at some point. At this point, I just wanted to record a few points, to set a context if you like.

While I have read a number of her books including her best known work, Don't Take Your Love to Town (1988), I only have one of her books on my shelves, All My Mob (2007). That's a pity, one that I will remedy.

Ruby Maude Anderson was born on 26 January 1934 at the Box Ridge Mission, Coraki, in the Northern Rivers. She was raised at Bonalbo and attended high school in Casino. At 15, she moved to Sydney where she qualified as a clothing machinist. She had nine children by various relationships, but only legally married once, to Peter Langford, whose surname she took as her own. Ginibi was added later as a Bundjalung honorific; the Bundjalung were the large Aboriginal language group occupying territory from the northern banks of the Clarence River into Southern Queensland.

Ruby 's writing style was colloquial, yarn telling in the tradition of her people. She bought alive a slice of Aboriginal life and oral history, making it accessible to a broader audience. Often unwell later in life and with a history marked by personal tragedy, her writing is still laced with a hope and humour that makes her words stand out.

Ruby Langford Ginibi received recognition in part because she was an Aboriginal writer. I am not detracting from her work when I say this, for that is important. However, my perspective is a little different, for I focused in my reading on her role and history as a writer who was both New England and Aboriginal. I enjoyed her writing as writing, but also focused on her writing as social history relevant to a time and an area.

I did not meet her nor, unlike Mark, even hear her talk. While I knew that she was not well, I simply did not focus properly on her age or health. Now I find myself quite unprepared to put her into proper context.

Part of my research into the history of New England has been concerned with the history of New England's Aboriginal peoples, including the language groups that she was linked too. My most recent research has been concerned with social change in New England in the period after 1950, again with a special focus on New England's Aboriginal peoples.

As I read her books, I looked at what they told me about the history and people I was interested in. I did not regard them as history as such. Indeed, there were specific points of interpretation that I disagreed with. However, they provided a rich and deep stream of memories that I almost salivated over because they gave me the opportunity, assuming that I could meet the challenge, to bring alive particular aspects of New England's past.

As I said, I am sure that there will be broader obituaries. I will add them here if I get a chance.

Postscript

A fuller obituary by Malcolm Brown has now appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Wednesday Forum - what hash tags should we use to promote New England?

2011-10-05T10:19:00.000+11:00

In a response to my post, Dobson's Brewery - new New England beers, Denis Wright tweeted " @JimBelshaw You're a corrupting influence, Belshaw.

Mmm! I like the idea!

This got me thinking. I have only just begun to use has tags on Twitter and am really just learning how. I have also been watching others use of the tags.

I spend a far bit of time promoting New England causes or reporting on New England stories. Here I really should use hash tags more, for we can can use them to promote New England causes and life style. But to really have impact, we need some common hash tags.

I say common hash tags because this adds to impact and creates threads that people can follow.

Any ideas on hash tags that might be used?

Locality names is one obvious possibility. However, here we may need a modifier where other places have similar names. For example, #newcastle is dominated by Newcastle in the UK, #newengland by the US. By contrast, #armidale is all armidale. So do we add oz at the end?

And what about life style or attractions?

Ideas?

Update One

Suggested list of initial tags based on suggestions and search:

For newcastle, #newcastle. Despite the number of newcastle UK tweets, #newcastle well established. Adding oz or Australia likely to fragment
For Hunter Valley, #huntervalley
For living history, #livinghistory
For adventure tourism, #adventuretourism
For Northern Rivers, #northernrivers

Belshaw's World - online learning no teaching panacea

2011-10-04T12:34:00.000+11:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 26 September 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

I wrote on on-line learning in my Express column of 14 September (The online myth) and had not intended to return to the topic so soon. However, Professor Barber’s views as reported in the Express (Online learning the real deal, 21 September 2011) concerned me.

I am not opposed to on-line learning, nor do I regard face to face and on-line as either or cases.

The best teaching mode depends on the purpose of study and on the student’s position. On-line is very good where access to information is the key requirement. Further, many students simply cannot access face to face learning; they have no choice. The best delivery is that which combines delivery modes in the best way taking individual positions into account.

In his support for on-line, Professor Barber appears to go much further than this. He seems to argue that on-line is best for all students in all cases. He also appears to argue that those of us who challenge the current dominant focus on on-line, who argue for a balanced approach, misunderstand young people.

In considering Professor Barber’s views, what does the evidence tell us?

The material I have seen suggests that around 29 per cent of students regard on line as the best form of delivery. This rises to 39 per cent among younger students with the strongest on line experience.

A recent twitter exchange among UNE’s own students on the role of lectures supports this position. The majority of students came down quite clearly in support of the lecture, largely because of the greater interactivity involved.

The majority of New England alumni studied as external students. If you look at the attitudes among them, a common theme appears to be the value placed on external schools, on access to lectures and lecturers, on interaction with other students in face to face situation.

Age does affect attitudes, but not quite in the way you might expect from Professor Barber’s comments.

UNE’s own students break into two age groups.

Those most dependent on-line delivery, the externals, are older. By contrast, those experiencing fuller face to face teaching, the internals, are generally young.

I stand to be corrected, but I know of no evidence that university choices among the Australian young are influenced by the standard of a university’s on-line offerings and services. By contrast, university selection among older students is so influenced.

Given that the majority of UNE students actually depend upon on-line delivery, what can we say about UNE performance in this area?

The UNE system is functional, but not especially sophisticated. In technical terms it has similar components and about the same level of functionality as the internal system my old consulting network introduced some ten years ago.

There are practical reasons for this.

One reason is that many UNE staff are not especially knowledgeable about the on-line world. They are also time short; it can be hard to find to time to learn new things, to prepare new types of content in new form, while still doing one’s ordinary job. Students, too, have varying levels of knowledge.

A second and broader reason is the one that I mentioned in my earlier post, the fact as I see it that no one has yet defined an on-line delivery system that really works in a mass education market beyond a certain basic level. It’s just very hard to do.

In saying all this, I do understand the challenges that Professor Barber faces and his enthusiasms.

We do need to debate the type of issues raised, but I think that it requires greater clarity in analysis

My concern with his remarks as reported is that they mixed things together in ways that didn’t necessarily make a lot of sense to me. There is no silver bullet that will solve all ills.

Belshaw's World - going down to Irish song

2011-09-27T14:30:00.000+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 21 September 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

We parked the car at Eden Park a little after 6.30pm New Zealand time. Eldest, Helen, had worked out the closest points to the stadium outside the parking exclusion zones and we found a place to park without much trouble.

We walked up the quiet suburban streets towards the stadium. My first thought was that we could have been in Armidale; tree-lined streets with weatherboard houses that would have been familiar to any Armidale person.

The streets were already crowded with those going to the game. The Irish were in good voice and indeed had been all day. Driving around Auckland earlier in the day we had found the Irish everywhere!

This was a special trip.

To begin with, I love New Zealand. The Belshaws are a part Kiwi family: Dad was born in Christchurch; I have been to New Zealand many, many times; and we still have family there.

Then, too, this trip had a very special feature.

Helen and I had wanted to go to the previous Rugby World Cup in France. When lack of time and cash made this impossible, we agreed that we would go to New Zealand in 2011.

Again limited time and cash – tickets alone are fiendishly expensive – created problems. Helen was determined: I will take you, she said, and set about making this possible. We decided to go for four days, see the Australia-Ireland match plus do some touring.

I am sure that you will see what I mean by special. In the end, all I had to do was just go!

As we walked, we got glimpses of the brightly lit Eden Park Stadium through the houses. I don’t quite know how best to describe it, but it has a very particular style highlighted by blue lighting. It’s clearly a stadium, but it’s a little more than this, almost an architectural icon.

New Zealand loves its rugby, and Eden Park is a shrine to that love.

I don’t get to many live sporting matches, but there is always an impact when you come through into the stands with the brightly lit ground before you. Modern sporting events are as much entertainment as sport. Everything is designed to raise emotions, create excitement.

This was a special feature in this case because of the nature of the game. Augmented by Kiwis of Irish descent, the Irish outnumbered Australian supporters almost two to one.

Australia was short priced favourite, but the Irish were determined to do their team proud and lived in hope of an upset. From the beginning, their songs and chants set a tone.

Helen had organised seats for us about six rows back from the front in the tunnel section. That was one reason we went to just one game. At $A300 each, these were pricy seats!

In the lead up to the game, Helen with camera kept rushing to lean over the tunnel to get shots of players coming in or out. Some of the Australian players and officials came to the fence in front of us to talk to people in the crowd, allowing Helen to get herself photographed with some of her heroes!

The game began with an Irish rush that lifted the already high spirits of the Irish supporters. They out cheered and out-sang the Australian supporters. The Irish team in its turn was lifted.

I don’t know what was wrong with the Australian team that day beyond saying that they lived up to their sometimes nickname, the wobblies. They just couldn’t seem to get their act together.

Because of our position, we could clearly see the players leaving at half time or the replacements coming on and off the field. The Australian players were trying, but the body language over the second half was becoming increasing desperate and depressed. Helen and I were depressed too!

I really felt sorry for the Australian team at the end.

We leaned over the edge of the tunnel to watch them do the obligatory line-up, forming two rows through which the Irish team left the stadium. In the midst of the handshakes and pats, the Australian players looked absolutely whipped.

We left the stadium to the celebrating Irish.

As we walked back to the car feeling depressed through the street parties that had erupted in all directions, Helen began working out in her mind just what was now required for Australia to come though in the best way.

We both cheered up. Not all was lost.

Still, it left me wondering just how a team does come back from this type of defeat.

I don’t think that you can blame Robbie Deans as coach. This was a players’ defeat. Only the players themselves can turn it around.

UNE passings - death of John Geake

2011-09-26T17:34:00.001+10:00

Professor John Geake died, aged 62, 8 September 2011. I did not know John well, but he was obviously a remarkable man whose life spanned aspects of New England's history.

I have not been able to find details of John's early life. The UNE obituary used as a base for this story begins with his Honours degree in Physics from the University of NSW, where he was President of the Students’ Union. He went on to do an A.Mus.A. from the Australian Music Examinations Board with the flute, a Diploma of Education, a Master’s degree (with First-Class Honours) in Education, and a science PhD.

Now John was clearly something of a charismatic character. Searching around I found this this quote from Graeme Dunstan:

Returning to the UNSW campus as an arts student in 1970 my Students Union friends welcomed me back and appointed me Chair of the Students Union Council of which John Geake was President. This meant I got to chair the Council meetings (they were wild!) and participate in Executive meetings (radical!). John Geake (now Professor John Geake) was a wiz of a President who in my absence had been an organiser behind the Ian "The Wizard" Channel and the UNSW Play Power phenomenon.

I had forgotten the Wizard. If you click on the above link you will find out more about him.

John's passion for education led him from university to teach at the Sydney International Independent School, then on to Currumbena, an independent progressive school at Lane Cove. He was clearly a gifted teacher. One of his students wrote:

John taught me science at the Australian International Independent School back in the early 1970's. He was a truly extraordinary teacher - able to take what to me was an incomprehensible mish-mash of unconnected facts called chemistry and give it life, coherence and even beauty thanks to his profound expertise in physics and his rare ability to communicate this expertise. John;'s wonderful lateral mind, his iconoclasm, his kindness and his social idealism were deeply inspiring and rare to find in a schoolteacher. It was obvious schoolteaching was only going to occupy him temporarily, and that he would seek a broader field to endow with his brilliant mind and many gifts. I am sad to hear of his early death, but it is clear that he really was someone who used his gifts and promise to the full, and did indeed leave this planet the better for his passing through. With deep sympathy for John's family and friends, from Jane Crancher, Sydney.

In 1973, John joined the hundreds of bright, energetic and progressive young dreamers who went to the Nimbin Aquarius Festival. This marked the start of John's connection with New England.

In company with friends, John bought the “Paradise Valley” property just out of Nimbin, and was the first of the original communards to relocate from Sydney. First he built a communal space, then his own house. “He was a genius,” said fellow communard and long-time friend Dr Harry Freeman of Lismore. “There didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t do.”

Turning his attention to the wider community, John teamed up with teacher Dorothy Smith to open the Nimbin Community School, where he taught maths and science.

In the early 1980s John exchanged the hippy mantle for more academic robes and left Nimbin to pursue his own studies, learning to play the flute to concert standard in just two years while gaining further degrees in science, mathematics and education. He performed at many classical concerts in Nimbin, which helped raise funds for the grand piano in the School of Arts.

By the late 1980s John was the Conservatorium director at Lismore and a college lecturer at the University of New England (Northern Rivers). Developing an interest - among his many passions in the sciences - for the teaching of gifted children, he taught at the new Southern Cross University in Lismore, and at the University of Melbourne, where he was a tenured Senior Lecturer. In 2002 he received an Eminent Gifted Educator award from the Australian Association for the Gifted and Talented.

Dr Jurriaan Beek was a fellow student with John at UNSW and then met him again during the Northern Rivers period:

I first met John when as undergraduates at UNSW we both studied physics - way back in 1967.
John was an incredibly bright and gifted person, who I recall involved himself in all manner of UNSW student political activities of the late 1960’s.

We next met up in Lismore, Northern NSW in the early 1980's, where much to my surprise he was then teaching music at the then NRCAE, and much to his surprise I had changed my career to medicine.
He taught my daughter the flute for many years, a skill she has never forgotten.

We were probably amongst the first to make use our Apple IIe computers as a means of sending messages over the phone line to each other. This was way before the dot com and the internet protocols as we know it today had been developed.

I well recall his that his stated desire to teach music was based on not only his love of good music but the need to pass this on so that in his later years there would be musicians around to play the sort of music he loved to hear.

His interest in the field of special education dealing with the intellectually gifted children is well known to educationists. His passing will be sorely missed by all concerned.

John accepted the position of Professor of Education at Oxford Brookes University and lived for eight years in the UK, returning to Australia to take up his post as Professor of Education - Learning and Teaching at UNE in 2008. While in Oxford he conducted neuroscientific research into high intelligence and creativity at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, Department of Clinical Neurology, John Radcliffe Hospital. He co-founded the Oxford Cognitive Neuroscience-Education Forum, and was adviser to the House of Lords All Party Group on the Future of Science & ICT Research for Education.

Professor Geake published more than 60 articles, book chapters and books on a wide range of educational issues, in addition to being a popular keynote speaker at international conferences. His latest publication was his book The Brain at School.

He is survived by his wife Ann, his sister Helen, children Sally and Jonah, stepchildren Paul and Hollie, and grandchildren Tom and Sophie.

Dobson's Brewery - new New England beers

2011-09-25T11:31:00.001+10:00

So much happens in New England that it is hard for a mere mortal like me to keep up!

The latest development is the establishment of a new boutique brewery on the premises of Eastview Estate Wines at Kentucky on the Tablelands.

Dobson's Brewery has a simple promise. I quote:

Where possible all Beer produced by Dobson's is subject to the Bavarian Purity Laws of 1516 this limits the ingredients to just water, hops, yeast and grain. No preservatives are ever used, guaranteeing a clean, consistent product. The only exceptions are the asian style rice beers and seasonal ales which require fruit or spices. The water we use is harvested on site from the massive thunderheads which are a part of being at over a kilometre above sea level, our water is conditioned in three large stainless tanks, we use chalk and gypsum to recreate the water profiles of famous brewing waters such as those from the Trent river in England and the Pilsen region of the Czech Republic.

I have to say to this takes New England's German tradition to a new historic level. I look forward to trying the beer!

Grafton's Gate to Plate

2011-09-24T09:50:00.001+10:00

Just a short post today.

With 320 guests, 10 courses and matching wines from the Granite Belt served over 4 hours, Grafton's Gate to Plate is, to quote Mark, a gastronomic marathon celebrated in the historic 'Barn'.

You will find Mark's photos of the event here:

I really would love to have gone. I feel quite envious!

The sad story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh Railway 3 - the Dorrigo-Guyra line

2011-09-23T09:28:00.000+10:00

This post continues the story of the Dorrigo-Glenreagh railway from The sad story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh Railway 2 - building the line.

In 1927, the first Nationalist-Country Party ministry came into power. The new Country Party ministers came to office with seven years' accumulated dreams and hopes to fulfil, and with an electorate that expected them to do just that. Neither they nor the electorate were to know that Depression would shortly bring a sudden and bitter end to their hopes. The result was a brief Indian Summer of intense activity, some of the most productive months the Country Party has ever know.[1] Buttenshaw immediately accelerated public works expenditure: his Department provided country towns with water supply and sewerage schemes, while a number of new railway lines were commenced. To the North, the most important of these was the long-dreamed of Guyra-Dorrigo railway.

The ideal of an east-west New England railway line had a very long history. Now, for the first time, it could become a reality.

On 20 October 1928, before a crowd of between 3000 to 4000 people,CP Leader Buttenshaw turned the first sod of the new line at Guyra.[2] After praising the new state and Country Party workers who had campaigned for the line - Bruxner, Drummond, Thompson, Colonel H.F. White and others - Buttenshaw declared: 'The Government had decided that no work would be authorized, no sod turned, until they were absolutely safe in saying the work would be finished.'[3] Despite the freezing weather, it was a day of hope and speeches. To Drummond, the railway was a sign that 'the people of the North were combined, each party realising that if it could not get what it particularly wanted, it must help other parts in their efforts.'[4] For Victor Thompson, the day was a step towards something bigger:

The job, however, was not finished, and they could not sit down but must go on with the great Northern works. Most of them would live to see the turning of the first sod of something much bigger than was now being celebrated. - the first sod of the new Northern state, which once established would have a powerful influence on not only the North, but on New South Wales, and on Australia. (Applause).[5]

Two days later a similar ceremony was carried out at Dorrigo. The Armidale Express remarked happily that the new line marked 'a new era for rural New South Wales and the north, in particular.'[6]

As the Great Depression engulfed NSW, work was stopped. Faced with great financial stringency, the Nationalist-Country Party coalition returning to power after the defeat of the Lang Labor administration did not resume construction despite the dominance of the Northern leadership in the new United Country Movement (the new name for the Country Party). To many, this was a betrayal. It also left the Dorrigo-Glenreagh line truncated from its broader hinterland, dependent on Dorrigo Plateau traffic for its survival.

[1]Unless otherwise cited, material in the next paragraphs is drawn from Ellis, The New South Wales Country Party, pp.106-114.

[2]Reports in the Armidale Express, 23 October 1928, and Armidale Chronicle, 24 October 1928. Cited in: G.S. Harman, 'Politics at the Electoral Level - A Study in Armidale and New England, 1899-1929', MA thesis, University of New England, 1964, pp.164-166. The opening is also reported in detail in the Northern Daily Leader, 22 October 1928.

[3]Armidale Chronicle, 24 October 1928.

[4]Northern Daily Leader, 22 October 1928.

[5]ibid.

[6]19 October 1928.

New Zealand & the case for New England self-government

2011-09-22T19:06:00.001+10:00

I spent last weekend in New Zealand. As we drove into Auckland I remembered my grandfather's first impressions all those years ago. I quote from the story I wrote of his life.

In April 1929, Dave and Pearl travelled to New Zealand on an private visit; it was their first visit overseas. The trip was a busy one, for Drummond took the opportunity to travel widely throughout the Dominion inspecting schools and welfare institutions, farms and civic facilities. He was impressed by what he saw. He told the Northern Daily Leader that New Zealand, unlike New South Wales, had big provincial cities which could and did act as centres of culture. New Zealand farming techniques were also excellent, although as in the North the gradual disappearance of horse traction had created real problems for farmers as a result of the destruction of the oats market. He was less impressed with the New Zealand school system which, he thought, had little to teach New South Wales. However, even here he brought back school plans which he thought could be modified for use in the hotter parts of the State: 'I have long been impressed by the fact that the small type of schools... is entirely unsuitable during the warmer months of the year', he wrote to the Department.

Since the Drummond's trip to New Zealand much has changed, yet some things remain the same.

Today New Zealand's population is about that of Sydney. Despite that, New Zealand has five airports with international connections, NSW one. New Zealand has multiple cities capable of hosting international rugby matches, NSW has three.

Despite the growth of Auckland, New Zealand has remained a relatively decentralised country whereas Sydney has greatly increased its share of the NSW population. New Zealand has eight publicly funded state universities, NSW nine. Those universities are attracting a growing share of the international student marketplace, whereas the NSW share is declining. Despite the growth in tertiary education in NSW regional centres, New Zealanders across the country have easier access to tertiary education than do those living in NSW and especially regional NSW.

New Zealand standards of living are statistically lower than Australia's. The country is less wealthy and has struggled to maintain certain activities. Yet compared to the economic hollowing out inflicted on New England over the last forty years, the country has done remarkably well. There is poverty in New Zealand, but nothing compared to the poverty traps that have appeared across parts of New England.

New Zealand has been through some pretty tough times over the last forty years as the country lost its traditional markets. Yet the country responded with a degree of imagination not seen in Australia and certainly not in NSW.

New Zealand simply couldn't afford the nostrum that the role of Government was simply efficient service delivery even though New Zealand pioneered many of the administrative ideas later introduced into NSW under the Greiner Government that then became entrenched in NSW official thinking. When your economic back is against the wall, you have to search for new things.

This photo shows a simple but delicious hamburger provided as part of the Rugby World Cup taste New Zealand experience.

There is much soul searching in New Zealand about that country's lack of economic progress. Yet considering the economic turmoil it experienced, it has actually done pretty well, certainly a lot better than New England.

In 1900, New England's population was around 60% of New Zealand, today it is roughly a third and still dropping.

Those of us who have argued for New England self-government for so many years have made the simple plea that self-government would allow us to unleash our own creativity, give us a chance to stand or fall by our own efforts. It's hard to see how we could do worse than the Sydney Government has done. In any event, it would then clearly be our own fault!

Belshaw's World - the online myth

2011-09-21T11:28:00.000+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 14 September 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

I spent the first six months of this year working on a new on-line service delivery project.

The project aimed to streamline certain aspects of professional practice, and especially the preparation of certain types of more complex documents.

I am not a tec head. I focused on the way the system needed to operate if it was to meet customer need, leaving specific technical solutions to others.

As part of this, I spent a fair bit of time looking at other offerings that were competitive in one way or another with what we wanted to achieve. There were some interesting offerings in the marketplace, but none really delivered an integrated solution.

We faced two key problems in our attempts to define a better approach.

The first was to properly understand just how professionals worked when carrying out the specific tasks that we were interested in. For our system to work, we had to make it easier for the professional to do their work across a whole document preparation process that might involve multiple steps spread over time, with varying interactions with clients and other professionals.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Most on-line systems expect people to adjust to them. It is far harder to adjust systems to people.

The second problem was to define the best interface between customers and our system, taking work processes into account. Again, this is not as easy as it sounds.

The interface needed to provide a seamless experience in which the customer could access information from a variety of sources, seek help as required and write and edit, all within the one interface. The system also had to be easy to use since most customers were not especially computer or internet savvy.

In the end, we had to put aspects of the project aside because the costs and technical difficulties associated with the translation of the functional requirements into a working system were too great for the available budget.

This experience is relevant to a number of discussions taking place in education, including issues associated with external teaching.

I follow a number of educators on Twitter and via blogs who are absolute enthusiasts for the use of new and especially on-line technology in teaching. I admire their enthusiasm, but cannot fully share it.

Part of my problem is just time. I am hard pressed to do what I’m doing now, let alone learn how to use the latest system. However, it’s more than that.

One of the problems that we faced in the project I talked about lay in the gap between those concerned with the business and operational requirements and the technologists and advanced users.

I am not sure which was worse. Advanced users wanted bells and whistles, while the technologists often opted for specific solutions that they liked in advance of the discussion on work processes. We see both at work in the education arena.

To my mind, the key to success in effectively utilising new on-line technology in education lies in what we call fitness for purpose, taking into account both the limitations of technology and the needs and capacities of those on both sides of the system.

One of the big myths of on-line delivery is that it’s cheaper and faster. That’s not necessarily so.

In education, content still has to be prepared. Further, preparation of that content normally takes more time because of the need to modify it to fit on-line forms. Once on-line it can be accessed by more people, but the initial input time is still greater.

In education too, a whole series of processes still have to be carried out. Assignments have to be marked, queries answered, students supported.

Some of these processes can be automated: common student queries can be answered at a single point; forums can be used as a vehicle for discussion; simple tests can be used to test basic knowledge. Still, my experience suggests that the actual time input costs involved in supporting the on-line student can be greater than the equivalent internal student.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that on-line education is a bad thing, especially for students who for reasons of time or distance cannot access full time on-campus study. However, I do think that unrealistic expectations are sometimes attached to the process.

Chatting to my daughters who are internal students at Sydney universities as well as to those studying fully on-line including UNE students, I don’t think that any of the universities have actually mastered the use of the internet.

Probably the biggest difficulty is the same one we struggled with in the project I described earlier, creating a system that links to work or study processes.

The sad story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh Railway 2 - building the line

2011-09-20T11:18:00.000+10:00

My first post in this series, The sad story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh Railway 1 - ghost railway, simply set the scene,

For those who don't know Dorrigo, it lies on the Dorrigo Plateau perched on the edge of the New England escarpment. This is truly beautiful country, although the colours are not quite your Australian stereotypical colours as so often presented. It is just too green because of the high rainfall.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Dorrigo was heavily forested. Lumbering and clearing began, but the high escarpment made it difficult to get produce to the seaboard. Timber in particular had to be hauled over rough roads to Armidale or Grafton.

This type of difficulty was was true to greater or lesser extent across New England. Fights for east-west rail links helped fuel the discontent that generated the desire of so many New Englanders over more than 150 years to gain Northern self-government.

In 1905, work finally began on a north-south North Coast line. Settlers on the Dorrigo Plateau began an intensive campaign to link their area to the projected railway. On 28 December 1910, the Glenreagh to Dorrigo Railway Act was passed, providing for the construction of a line linking Glenreagh on the coast to Dorrigo. This would allow timber and other produce to be shifted through the small port at Coffs Harbour. However, the protagonists saw this as a first step in a longer inland east-west line.

The photo shows bullock teams at work at the Coffs Habour port in 1928.

Survey work on the new line did not commence until 1914, actual construction a little later. In 1917, the war interrupted work, with construction beginning again in 1920.

Construction was no mean feat because of the rugged terrain and regular rain. Land slips were common and were to plague the line throughout its life.

The new line was finally opened on 23 December 1924, providing a Christmas present to residents of the Dorrigo. Next step, construction of the Dorrigo-Guyra line begins.

Next post. First post

Postscript

I felt a bit sad writing this post. It's not just a story of lost dreams, but today everything is so tied up in rules, regulations, proscriptions, evaluations, impact statements, cost-benefit analyses, performance measures etc that the Government in Sydney struggles to build a single railway line.

Belshaw's World - big issues missed in political discourse

2011-09-14T20:53:00.001+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 9 September 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

I don’t know about you, but I find present political discussion at Federal level quite depressing. We have what I can only describe as group think, in which everything seems to be dominated by two policy issues (refugees and the carbon tax) plus one political issue (Gillard vs Abbott).

In all the screaming media headlines and chattering heads, it’s easy to forget that life goes on, that there are other important issues that need to be dealt with, that decisions are being made that will have significant national and regional impacts.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that either refugees or the carbon tax are not important, just that the current obsession with them and the fortunes of the PM are draining the oxygen from other important issues.

From a narrow Armidale perspective, the decisions being taken on the future of higher education are far more important than either refugee policy or the carbon tax since they will determine just how many jobs the city has in five years time. That’s kind of important.

More broadly, the Gonski inquiry into school funding has just released four important research papers.

They suggest, among other things, that while Australian school education still scores quite well, the gap between the top and bottom performers has widened. They also suggest that performance within the Australian school system is far more influenced by socio-economic factors than is the case in many other places.

As I write, the Australian Government is considering changes to visa requirements to make it easier to bring in skilled labour to work on mining projects that cannot otherwise get people.

Facing its own skilled labour problems, the Defence Department has announced plans to try to train the workers it needs for planned large scale Defence procurements. The skills required no longer exist in this country.

All three examples selected deal in some way with education and training.

To take a different area, who knows what is happening with the Australian Government’s regional development agenda? Action goes on, but it has largely vanished from the political stage in terms of public discussion.

One of the features of all these various policy areas is the importance of time.

Back in another mining boom, I was a member of a high level interdepartmental committee formed to address the question of skills shortages. An investment boom was underway, and we didn’t have the people required to build the mines and railways.

Looking back, we had been under-investing in technical education. Special programs were launched to try to increase supply of skilled labour.

By the time those people started to come on stream, that mining boom was over. Further, the economic re-structuring of the 1980s took away just those jobs in manufacturing that the newly trained workers were equipped to do. With unemployed tradesmen, training was cut back again, leading to subsequent skills shortages.

In the late 1990s, I was CEO of the Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists. Our workforce planning analysis suggested a looming shortage of ophthalmologists because of the combination of population growth with an aging population. But where were the new trainees to come from?

The then Commonwealth Minister for Health had been worried about the costs of medicare. He had concluded that there were too many GPs and that this was leading to over-servicing. Medical training was cut back, while it was made more difficult for GPs to get the required certification to access medicare. The resulting shortages at all levels of medicine are now history.

In higher education as well, policy has chopped and changed in light of current views and fashions with significant long term effects. The problems faced by UNE are partly a result of poor management, more the flow-on effects of past Government decisions that started in the 1980s.

If we now link all this back to current imbroglios at Federal level, the Gillard Government may or may not survive. We may or may not have overseas processing of refugees. We may or may not have a carbon tax.

What we can be sure of is that the current focus on the short term, the obsession with the Government’s immediate fortunes, Mr Abbott’s hard ball short term political focus, means that the scope for real policy discussion has become increasingly constrained.

Those of us with a genuine interest in resolving past problems, with finding a way to actually do things better, have become increasingly marginalised. Real policy discussion has moved from the centre to the periphery.

You won’t find real policy discussion or indeed reporting in the main stream media with its narrow obsession with the current. You won’t find real policy discussion in the headline political discourse. It’s all been poisoned by the short term.

I think that’s a problem.

Problems with disorganisation

2011-09-13T14:59:00.001+10:00

I am sorry for the slow posting here. It's partly a matter of personal disorganisation, partly due to the reasons I explained in a post on my personal blog, Enjoying the Rugby World Cup. I do love my Rugby!

I am flying to New Zealand Thursday for a couple of days. Despite that, I expect to resume posting tomorrow. I have a number of part completed stories: I just have to complete some for future posting!

Belshaw’s World – separatist fire smoulders 96 years on

2011-09-08T07:37:00.000+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 31 August 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

In 1915, an incident occurred in Grafton that would change the direction of New England history contributing, among other things, to the creation of the University of New England.

While there were regular separatist outbreaks in Northern New South Wales during the nineteenth century, they did not result in a sustained campaign for local self-government such as that maintained in North Queensland during the same period. However, by the end of the century a tradition of separatist agitation as a way of responding to local grievances had been well established.

The sense of country grievance was particularly strong in the Grafton area, a key centre for nineteenth century new state agitation.

The construction of the north-south inland railway had first damaged and then destroyed the traffic from the Tablelands and Slopes to the Grafton port. Attempts to gain a railway line from the Slopes and Tablelands to Grafton to help revive the trade had failed repeatedly. Grafton's sense of grievance associated with the destruction of its trade and the failure to gain an east-west rail link, was aggravated by the failure of attempts to gain a north-south coastal rail link, and by the failure of the Government over many years to take any action to remove the reef at the mouth of the Clarence, a reef that significantly hindered shipping.

The accumulating grievances came to a head early in 1915. The Minister of Public Works in the Holman Government, Arthur Griffith, decided to remove the free steam ferry Helen from the Grafton-South Grafton run. In the absence of any bridge, the Helen was the main means of transport between Grafton and South Grafton. There was an indignant public reaction culminating in a public meeting in the Grafton Town Hall attended by about 250 people from both municipalities.

Although the meeting had been called to discuss the Helen incident, it changed character when Earle Page moved a motion suggesting that the time had now come for the North to consider separation, either alone or in connection with the southern portion of Queensland, and calling for the appointment of a committee to investigate the question and confer with other portions of the North Coast, Tablelands and Queensland.

Page was then thirty-four. Born at Grafton, he had been educated first in the Clarence and then at Sydney High School before studying medicine at Sydney University. After a little over a year as house surgeon at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Page returned to the Clarence and quickly established a thriving practice together with a modern private hospital at South Grafton.

Page's travels across his practice - it covered an area of some 16,000 square kilometres - gave him a detailed knowledge of the Northern Rivers district, of its potential and problems. By 1913, when he was elected to the South Grafton Municipal Council, he was well-known in his own area. Now, with the Helen incident, began a chain of events that was to throw Page into national prominence and help give particular form to Northern history.

Page's separatist motion was carried unanimously. The committee then formed reported in April 1915. Its report, subsequently published as a pamphlet, detailed many of the arguments that were already and were to remain traditional in separatist propaganda.

The central complaint was that the North was suffering because of the centralising policies of the Sydney Government; these had retarded the progress of the state in order that the artificial progress of Sydney might be maintained. Separation was the only way to halt this process. The report then went on to recommend that the new state should include the North Coast as far south as the Hastings Range south of Kempsey, the Northern Tablelands, the Liverpool Plains and Western Slopes, and a strip of the Western Plains as far west as Bourke.

On 29 April 1915, the report was discussed at a large public meeting in Grafton which decided unanimously in favour of separation and then formed a Northern New South Wales Separation League.

The new League, with Earle Page and F. McGuren from Grafton and David Ritchie from Dorrigo as its chief propagandists, spread rapidly: by August there were twenty-two branches on the coast and an attempt was being made to extend the organisation inland. Then towards the end of 1915, the new movement vanished as fast as it had risen because of the growing impact of the war which took away its leaders, including Page himself.

This had been a grass fire, but it laid the basis for a much bigger blaze that was to burn strongly across most of the first seven decades of the twentieth century, with spot fires continuing today.

Without that blaze, we would not have the University of New England.

The sad story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh Railway 1 - ghost railway

2011-09-07T17:36:00.001+10:00

In the next few posts I want to say a little about the sad and sorry story of the Dorrigo to Glenreagh railway line. This is a case where a New England Government could have and probably would have taken a more pro-active approach simply because the line would have been more important, not just a minor line in a distant part of New South Wales.

To introduce the posts, this you tube video is simply called Ghost Railway:

New England and the NSW Budget 2011

2011-09-06T17:53:00.001+10:00

I have been dredging my way through the NSW budget papers trying to make an assessment of the likely impact on New England. Those who are interested can find the budget papers link here.

It's remarkably difficult to do, in part because New England doesn't exist in a formal sense so data isn't organised in that way, in part because so much depends upon the detail of individual agency plans. The one thing that we can be reasonably certain of is that the great majority of the extra billion in mining royalties will come from New England and especially the Hunter.

While digging around, I found that the new Government has released its own state plan to replace the previous Labor Government plan.

I will try to do at least some form of rough assessment of both from a New England perspective over the next day or so. As I have argued before, unless we have some idea of just what is being done to us compared to New England's needs then a sensible response is extremely difficult.

For those who are interested, my posts on the previous Government's plan were:

14 November 2006, NSW Ten Year Plan - New England's needs
16 November 2006, Does the NSW Ten Year Plan meet New England's needs?
18 November 2006, NSW Ten Year Plan and New England - Conclusions
19 November 2006, NSW Ten Year Plan - praiseworthy but flawed

Belshaw's World - can we harness local super?

2011-09-05T09:04:00.001+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 24 August 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Did you know, I didn’t, that the top ten global technology companies ranked by market size had no less than $US 290.89 billion in cash and cash equivalents? Of this group, Apple has the largest cash horde of no less than $US 76.2 billion!

To relative size of the cash pile can be simply illustrated.

Google’s purchase of Motorola plus Microsoft’s purchase of Skype cost roughly $US 21 billion, a big number but also only 7.2 per cent of those companies’ combined cash reserves.

I am indebted for these strange pieces of information to a story from Alex Wilhelm (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/22/big-money-the-companies-with-the-biggest-cash-piles-in-tech/) on the The Next Web.

What does all this mean? Well, I’m not sure, but I can make a few comments.

To begin with, what do companies do with all this cash?

Part of the answer for, say, IBM is the need to provide working capital and a buffer in uncertain times. However, beyond that, the presence of such large cash reserves simply reflects the absence of decent investment opportunities.

One of the issues about scale is that as you get bigger, then you need to find bigger investment opportunities. You can’t get sufficient return given costs through a multiplicity of small investment opportunities.

We actually have a good example of this at present in Australia, and that’s superannuation.

I actually support compulsory superannuation, but our present system comes at a cost.

One cost is the diversion of savings away from local investments in areas like New England. In the past, local savings were more available to fund local investment. That’s no longer true.

Our compulsory superannuation is aggregated into large lumps. The superannuation funds cannot afford all the assessment and management costs associated with small regional investments, so the funds leave.

A second cost is the way that our retirement incomes have become dependant upon performance by a relatively small range of investment classes.

In a way we are our own worst enemies here for we focus on short term returns as compared to longer term sustainability. Yet when an asset class goes down, the suffering is concentrated on those most dependent, those who actually need cash now.

A third cost lies in the way that superannuation collections now exceed the value of immediately available Australian investments.

If you like, Australia is now experiencing what New England experienced earlier. Cash has to leave the country. There simply isn’t the range of local investment opportunities of the required size.

This problem has been compounded by the decline in the relative size of the Government debt marketplace. There just isn’t the range of Government securities of all types that there once were.

I have been wondering for some time about the possibilities of increasing variety in the superannuation marketplace. Not variety in the way normally expressed such as low fees super. These are macro, big scale issues that do nothing to address the type of issue that I am talking about.

Rather, I have been wondering about possible ways of increasing the number and variety of superannuation providers so that we all had more choice, so that there were more options of marshalling local or regional funds for local or regional purposes, more options for keeping Australian funds in Australia.

I am not talking here about things like quotas to force super funds to invest in particular ways. I don’t support these.

Rather, I am looking for changes to our present regulatory approaches that will make it easier for smaller and more varied funds to survive and grow,

I am well aware of issues such as risk, transparency and probity. I just don’t think it right that those from Northern NSW should be prevented from investing a proportion of their funds in local assets. I think that we should be given more real choice.

To do the type of thing that I am talking about actually requires a fundamental change in the way that Government regulates the superannuation industry. We have to move away from a one size fits all big is beautiful approach.

I would like to think that this was possible.

UK Daily Telegraph on Newcastle

2011-09-04T09:01:00.000+10:00

My thanks to Greg for this one.

What has the Australian city of Newcastle got that Sydney and Melbourne haven’t?

According to the UK's Telegraph, its ramshackle glamour on apricot beaches!

It's actually not a bad story although, as some commenters pointed out, it still suffers from the confusion that you have to get to Newcastle from Sydney. That's not true, of course, given the flights from other cities to Newcastle. The story also fails to recognise that Newcastle is an entry point not just to the Hunter, but to the broader North.

Still, it's nice to see Newcastle and the Hunter getting further recognition.

New England Australia reader interests August 11

2011-09-02T09:09:00.001+10:00

I am sorry for the continued lag in posting here. Hopefully full transmission will resume shortly!

The graphic shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) on this blog to end August 11.

The most popular posts on this blog in August were:

The Poetry of Judith Wright - South of My Days 268 page views
Wednesday Forum: preserving New England's heritage. 50 page views
Wednesday Forum: resolving environmental conflict 36 page views
The Poetry of Judith Wright - Bora Ring 32 page views
Round the New England blogging traps 10- a miscellany 25 page views
Charles Sturt University to open in Tamworth?
Round the New England blogging traps 24 - land, mining & the environment 19 page views
New England Story - the making of Captain Thunderbolt 18 page views
Armidale Kempsey Road Bullock Drays 1920s 17 page views

The popularity of South of My Days reflects the school curriculum!

Belshaw's World - a model for the nation

2011-08-23T08:29:00.001+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 17 August 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Congratulations to Bob Neville for winning the individual section of the NSW Building Inclusive Communities Award.

The photo shows left to right – State Premier Hon Barry O’Farrell, Bob Neville Tingha Regeneration Inc, Diane Torrens Chairperson Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and Mr Tim Torrens.

The prize was awarded for his leadership of the Tingha Regeneration Program which is not only designed to rebuild the community, but also seeks to provide a model for many struggling communities throughout Australia.

Back in February 2007, Professor Tony Vinson released a national report into Australia’s poor towns, those communities most affected by poverty and community development.

The preceding November, the then State Government had released its state plan. I examined it in detail at the time to try to assess the extent to which it might meet New England’s needs.

My conclusions were not positive. The various measures proposed were fragmented and took no account of the underling economic and geographic linkages across the whole North. I concluded that even if every one of the targets set in the plan were achieved, New England’s core needs for economic and community development would not be addressed.

Now when I came to look at Professor Vinson’s study, I found that nearly all the poor towns identified in NSW were in the broader new state New England. Every part of New England was represented, from the lower Hunter to the border, on the coast, the tablelands, the slopes and plains.

Tingha was one the towns identified by Professor Vinson. It ranked low on every positive indicator, high on every negative indicator. It was, in fact, one of the poorest communities in Australia.

The problem with community decline is that it can become entrenched. As it does, the community’s capacity to respond further diminishes. Once intergenerational disadvantage – the transmission of disadvantage through generations – emerges, recovery becomes still harder. People give up hope.

In September 2008, Bob launched a program to try to turn this cycle around.

While working as Economic Development Manager with Guyra Shire Council, Bob had established working relationships with Tingha people. Through his experience in working with small communities at every level, Bob had developed a holistic approach to community development. He chose Tingha as a potential model community for the first test implementation of his small community regeneration program (Community Gold Program).

Bob approached the Uniting Aboriginal & Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) with a proposal to take on a facilitator role to implement and test the program in Tingha. The UAICC had been involved in Tingha for over twenty two years, but was now seriously considering withdrawal because of constant failure.

The UAICC accepted Bob’s offer.

I first wrote on Bob’s work back in February 2009. I was interested in it because of my interest in community development. However, I had also just been re-reading Helen Brown’s history of Tingha. I therefore emailed Bob with various tourist promotion suggestions.

Bob explained that it was just too early to try this type of thing. If the community development program was to work, it had to start at the base and then build up. Once basic building blocks were in place, then broader promotion would become possible.

Bob’s reply illustrated one key difficulty in effective community development in circumstances where the very fabric of the community has become frayed. If you are going to attract visitors, you really need some accommodation; the town needs to be welcoming; you need trained volunteers; and all this takes time.

Bob’s approach has been slow and painstaking, working with the community to try to build support. This is micro level work, creating and sustaining small projects that can meet needs, increase skills, demonstrate success and thus build morale.

Critically, the process has to be broadened beyond the facilitator so that it becomes self-sustaining.

I am not close enough to the project to make a full, objective, judgement. However, on the surface, it’s already been a considerable success.

If we look across the dimensions of the work, we find involvement at school level, women’s exercise groups, skills training, a refurbished caravan park, an internet centre and beautification projects. Most recently, a butcher’s shop opened.

This is slow, hard, grafting work. Disappointments are frequent. It’s only looking back that progress becomes clear.

On 26 October, a gathering in Tingha at the regenerated Tingha Gems Caravan and Camping Park, 91 Swimming Pool Road, will launch the community regeneration program nationally. Those speaking include Preston Campbell, Nathan Blacklock, Tony Windsor and Richard Torbay

I congratulate Bob on his work.

Brief pause in posting to allow for research

2011-08-21T10:29:00.001+10:00

I need to take a little time for research on two primary topics.

The first is the geology of New England. I need to complete some research and writing here to fill a gap in my history of New England. However, I also want to use the research to provide background for some further pieces on New England's environmental wars.

I don't know about you, but I find that while I have a good general understanding of the geography and geology of New England, I also get frustrated at the way that some of the discussion ignores or at least occurs in isolation of the geography. Why, for example, is Liverpool Plains groundwater important?

Peter Firminger (@PeterFirminger) has been doing a very good job on Twitter in just recording some of the media reporting on issues connected with the environmental wars with a special focus on coal seam gas. I think that reporting would be enhanced if I provided factual material and background analysis.

The second thing I need to do further research on is higher education in New England. This will allow me to continue the series I began with The story of higher education in New England 1 - introduction. It will also fill in another gap in my history.

I am now coming under pressure to move my history forward. For personal reasons, I must get the book to the point that I can seriously seek a publisher. I know who I want to publish the book, but I can't approach them until I have more to show.

I do not expect the break in posting to be a long one. During the break, I will continue to bring my Armidale Express columns on-line, and will respond to comments. I will also be making some posts to my New England history blog that I will reference here.

Postscript

I did a brief summary of my current historical research, Report on Belshaw historical research and writing, that I think will provide a bit more background to this post.

Attracting migrants to inland New England

2011-08-20T16:26:00.001+10:00

From time to time I have talked about the best way of attracting migrants to New England. These might come from other parts of Australia (internal migration) or from overseas. In this post, I want to focus on the attraction of overseas migrants.

New England now has some of the poorest towns and areas in Australia. This problem has emerged progressively over the last fifty years as our young have left to be replaced in many areas by in-migration of retirees or those on welfare. Our population is now older than the Australian average, in many areas unemployment is higher than average, we have seen a drift of higher paid jobs.

As in any geographically diverse area, the pattern is not uniform.

We have parts of New England on the North Coast that are now simply overpopulated relative to economic opportunities. We have inland areas where there are available jobs that cannot be filled, vacant jobs that are holding back employment growth by reducing income and activity.

Even on the coast, there are areas where the inability to attract people to fill vacancies is a problem.

One of the problems that I have talked about in public policy is the way we deal in very broad terms, universals, that actually prevent the targeting required to address needs that vary greatly across space and time.

To assist in resolving this, I suggest that one of the things that we need is a specific policy approach to address the workforce needs of inland New England. We need approaches that will bring trades and professionals to fill existing gaps.

At one level, this may seem that we are favouring coastal over inland New England. Yet the reality is different. Growth in inland New England can aid coastal development, can provide broader opportunities for coastal kids.

I mentioned overseas migrants my opening paragraph. One way of assisting inland New England would be to specifically target this in migration programs. Professionals or tradies prepared to settle in inland New England might receive preferential treatment.

We are not talking huge numbers. Even two hundred new settlers in any twelve months would, over a few years, make a huge continuing difference. Then the focus could switch to other areas.

What about it?

A visit to a Cessnock boxing tent

2011-08-19T11:44:00.001+10:00

My main post today is Boxing, history & social change. I followed this with Classical Greek, boxing & New England history. Now I want to complete the trifecta with a post directed just at the readers of this blog.

In my main post I mentioned The Tent by Wayne McLennan (Quadrant, May 2002).

Quite a few of my readers here come from Newcastle and the lower Hunter. I think that you will enjoy this description of a visit to a boxing tent at Cessnock in, I think, the 1960s.

Even if you are not from this area, it's still a well written piece.

Postscript

In a comment on my original post, kvd pointed out that Wayne McLennan had been inducted to the Cessnock Hall of Fame. kvd also led me to add something to the post on Bell's Boxing Tent, a continuing boxing show that Wayne boxed for!

In another comment, this time here, Greg reminded me of the short and tragic life of boxing great Les Darcy. Darcy was born on 31 October 1895 at Stradbroke, near Maitland. There is a real story in the boxers of the lower Hunter that deserves better promotion.

Postscript 2

Further comments from Greg:

We shouldn't forget another great New England boxing legend - the great Dave Sands from Kempsey.

Dave Sands also had a strong connection with the Newcastle area having had many of his early bouts at The Stadium in Newcastle West before going on to win the Australian middleweight title.

Boxing was legendary at The Stadium in the early to middle 20th Century. I remember it as the site of the Newcastle ice rink when I was young and I think that by then it's boxing days were over. Now it is the site of the Marketown shopping centre. A colourful piece of Newcastle history now barely remembered.

Incidentally - Dave Sands was another great sporting tragedy. He died in a truck accident at the age of just 26.

You will find details of Dave Sand's life here. I really do love the way comments extend discussion! Thanks, Greg!

Update:

Saturday Morning Musings - boxing & the power of blogging in history on my personal blog provides a consolidated update on these linked posts.

Visitor 60,000, Gordon Smith & the outback

2011-08-18T20:10:00.001+10:00

Visitor 60,000 has arrived on this site. He/she searched on Armidale and ended up on this post from June 29, 2009, Gordon Smith's St Peter's Cathedral Armidale.

Looking at the post, my blogging colleague Gordon Smith was just back from an outback tour. As I write, Gordon is running photos from his most recent outback tour. They are very good: you will find them here.

Nice coincidence, don't you think?

Armidale school life, 1890s

2011-08-18T09:12:00.001+10:00

This photo from the TAS (The Armidale School) photo archive shows, I think, boarders leaving the school at the end of the nineteenth century.

For those who don't know Armidale, it became a major New England educational centre in the second half of the nineteenth century. From the 1890s, its boarding schools drew borders from across Northern New South Wales into Queensland.

It's an interesting shot for a number of reasons. You can see them packing the coach, while the boys' uniforms are clearly visible.

It could be a school excursion (it looks like sport's gear with the whites), but might also be a break-up. To get to or from school in Armidale, most people travelled by horse or coach, then train, then horse or coach. Some added a steamer trip in the middle. As late as the 1930s, abysmal road connections to the coast meant that some North Coast kids at the Armidale Teachers College went to Sydney by train and then by steamer back up the coast.

Staying with TAS photos, this photo shows the first group og boarders at the school in 1894.

It's an interesting shot because of the clothes and its composition. The master on the right with his gown strikes me as a bit of a lad from his posture.

On the far left, the stolid bloke with his hand in his jacket pocket looks like the School Sergeant. The headmaster, clerical of course, sits in the middle.

This is the second of my nostalgia posts for the day. The first, Armidale vs Canada in Rugby 1960, was much more modern, even if I am starting to get a tad ancient!

Wednesday Forum: resolving environmental conflict

2011-08-17T12:36:00.001+10:00

For some time now, I have been writing about the environmental wars raging across New England. Peter Firminger (@PeterFirminger) provides regular updates on the same topic.

This Wednesday Forum seeks your input. What are the main environmental conflicts in your area? How might they be resolved? Can they be resolved?

To set a context, I have been back through my previous posts to try to pull some issues together.

Access to information

Access to information appears to be one of the recurring problems. For example, how many Australians have heard of the Hunter-Bowen orogeny, also known as the the Sydney-Gunnedah-Bowen Basin? That's where the coal is. Or the Liverpool Plains? That's one of the current environmental flash points.

You will see public discussion on the importance of ground water on the Liverpool Plains, but who knows that it's the largest ground water deposits in New England? People all across Australia form views on New England environmental issues without knowing where New England is nor the significance of the specific issue.

Lack of knowledge applies at local level at well.

How should information be made available?

Winners and losers

All Government decisions involve winners and losers. In theory, problems can be resolved to some degree by compensation from winners to losers. In practice, this doesn't happen.

Take the coal deposits in the Hunter or Liverpool Plains.

Development of those deposits involve costs extending beyond the investment costs. We have lost agricultural land, problems of congestion, higher service costs. These are generally local. There are some local economic benefits, but with Fly In, Fly Out these are reduced. The general benefits go elsewhere.

This is not an argument against development, just for better recognition of the spread of costs and benefits and for better compensation. How might we do this?

Who owns what?

Our present Government structures are skewed. At national level, we say that things like mineral resources are a national resource that must be used for the benefit of all Australians. Then mineral resources belong to the crown in right of the state.

Through Royalties to the Regions, WA wants to see funds from development benefit areas from which the resources are extracted. The Commonwealth says resources are national and opposes WA plans. Without its own Government, New England is ignored.

In Tasmania, the Government and Greens develop a plan to preserve native forests. Because this affects State revenues, the Commonwealth is expected to provide compensation. The justification given is that those forests have a unique value. By implication, they are a national asset justifying national funding.

In New England, Malcolm Turnbull proposed that the waters of the Clarence should be diverted to water South East Queensland. The justification given was that the Clarence was a national resource.

I argued that the Clarence was a New England resource, that any decision to divert resources should include compensation to those affected. This was opposed in the Clarence partly on the grounds that the Clarence belonged to those in the Valley regardless of where the water came from. There was no recognition that those on the Tablelands had an interest in the water.

Those further west argued that the waters should be diverted to the western streams to maintain irrigation. Those further south and in the capital cities argued that farmers and communities on New England's western slopes and plains should lose their water to keep environmental flows going and give Adelaide water.

On Cape York, environmental groups from the south gained sufficient support to lock up the rivers on general environmental grounds. This was opposed by Aboriginal groups who said that you are taking away our rights.

So who owns what? How do we accommodate cascading ownership claims?

Individual vs Group rights

One of the difficulties in current arrangements lies in the conflict between individual and group rights.

The purchase of water rights from willing sellers under a market system can wipe out entire communities. Landowners may sell out to mining companies and disadvantage other adjoining landowners. Private gains go to a few, costs are borne by others.

Again, a better compensation system would help, as would better regional planning.

Action without responsibility

In each Australian constitutional entity, the voters have equal rights. That's central to democracy. Two problems arise.

The first is that entities cascade from national to state to local. The voters and governments at one level can and do over ride those below.

The second is that pressure groups take action without any responsibility for the consequences. Voters in Sydney can force action in circumstances where they are simply not affected in the short term by the consequences of their actions.

It's a classic case of authority without responsibility.

I will pause here. What do you think?

Belshaw's World - euphoria to ill-informed economic future

2011-08-16T10:04:00.001+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 10 August 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

This week I listened to the almost breathless reporting on the economic news with a degree of bemusement. It was hauntingly familiar.

I was in Shanghai when the global financial crisis broke. I watched it all unfold on international TV.

Back to Australia, I was struck by the almost total disconnect between local reporting and my own perceptions of the Australian economy. No matter which way I cut the numbers, I couldn’t see how the worst case outcomes that people were talking about could actually occur.

I was right, of course, and for the reasons I thought. Now something of the same disconnect seems to be occurring again.

Human beings can be strange.

Prior to the global financial crisis Australian talk focused on boom. Then, suddenly, we went from almost euphoria to despair.

As we came through the global financial crisis relatively unscathed, we went back to talking about boom. Mining Boom Mark II was born.

There was no such thing as Mining Boom Mark II, of course. It was just a continuation of previous events. It only seemed a new boom because of our varying perceptions.

In the midst of the euphoria, I found my self playing a Cassandra role. It is simply not a good idea to count on the golden egg before it’s actually laid!

Now as we plunge back into gloom, exactly the same issues arise.

At a purely domestic level, Australia is well positioned to ride out the current troubles. Our budget position is sound, and we very little national debt.

The big difference now as compared to the global financial crisis is the exchange rate.

As the global financial crisis hit, the Australian dollar fell because people saw it as risky. Again, this was a very silly thing in economic terms because of the strength of the Australian economy. However, it gave us an added buffer to help us ride out the shocks.

This time our dollar is very strong. Again, there is not really a rational reason for the dollar’s current strength. It just is.

Most Australians don’t realise that the Australian dollar is the fifth most heavily traded currency in the world.

Relative to the size of our economy it is not as heavily traded as, say, the Swiss franc or the New Zealand dollar, but it is still a very heavily traded currency. This means that the value of the currency moves as markets dictate independent of real changes in the Australian economy.

The fact that our dollar is so high is hurting us, but our basic economic position is still strong.

Outside Australia, I just don’t think that the global economic position is as gloomy as people think.

The big global problem is that we are going through a period of adjustment that combines longer tem structural change with the need to work through past excesses.

The longer term change is the shift in relative economic power from the mature developed economies to the developing economies. This would have required adjustments in any case. However, these adjustments are complicated by the way we have overspent as consumers.

Throughout most developed countries, the combination of easy credit with rising asset prices allowed us to spend more and save less. This drove apparent economic growth. Now the process has gone into reverse.

All this means that many countries are likely to experience slower economic growth, even economic stagnation, until balance is restored. However, that’s a very different issue from some of the gloom talk we are now hearing.

In all this, China remains the big question mark for Australia.

China’s current phase of economic growth is coming to an end.

Chinese growth has been export led, supported by a large underemployed workforce, very high domestic savings, very high investment and an artificially low currency. The Chinese economy has become unbalanced, imbalances that are in fact the mirror image of imbalances in the developed economies.

The next phase of Chinese growth is likely to see a stronger domestic focus, a rise in Chinese consumption, together with some restructuring in Chinese industry as domestic wage costs rise. Some Chinese manufacturing is already shifting to lower cost countries.

I don’t see this as a necessary problem from an Australian perspective. However, it does pose some short to medium term threats to our more optimistic projections.

Nobody can deny that we do not face significant challenges. My point is that we are not well served by current reporting in coming to properly understand them.

The story of higher education in New England 1 - introduction

2011-08-12T12:12:00.001+10:00

In discussion with Greg on Charles Sturt University to open in Tamworth?, I realised that some of the things I write about New England's universities probably don't make a lot of sense in isolation.

To set the scene for the discussion that follows, this photo shows graduation at the Newcastle University College in March 1957 or 1958.

From left to right you have Sir Earle Page as Chancellor of the University of New England, Dr. Wallace Wurth, Chancellor, University of New South Wales (standing), then I think that on the far right in the front row is Robert Madgwick, then VC at UNE.

Why are there UNE people present? Well, at the time the photo was taken, Arts students at Newcastle University College were supervised from the University of New England in the same type of relationship that the New England University College had had with Sydney University. Indeed, this supervision was one of the two critical conditions under which New England gained its autonomy. The other was the introduction of external studies at UNE.

At the time, Newcastle was a college of the University of Technology in Sydney, now the University of NSW. However, the University of Technology did not teach arts. For that reason, the introduction of arts at NUC required support from another university. As had happened earlier with Sydney and NEUC and for the same reasons, the relationship between UNE and NUC was a sometimes troubled one.

Now the point of this little story is that this link between UNE and Newcastle is little known. Indeed, the whole history of higher education in New England is little known, fragmented. This affects the way that people judge stuff that I write, for while I write from a broader New England perspective, they look at the picture in terms of individual institutions or, sometimes, the higher education sector as a whole. The broad New England perspective is absent.

I have a further problem in that my own allegiances and family connections to UNE are well known. I write a lot about UNE because it is important to me. Just to take a very small example, at the NUC March 1959 graduation my father presented the Arts candidates!

Does this mean that I am UNE biased? At one level it does, but when I write from a broader New England perspective whether historical or policy I try to be balanced.

Does the absence of a broader New England perspective, of the entire historical background, matter? I would argue that it does. But then, I am clearly biased!

Thinking about this, I have decided that I really need to consolidate my writing on New England higher education, adding some new material to fill gaps. I have now written hundreds of posts across blogs connected in some way with higher education. You will find a partial list here. In addition, there are the specifically New England posts.

Given my time constraints, I am going to focus on material already prepared. All I want to achieve is to provide information and analysis that people can use to make their own judgements.

Charles Sturt University to open in Tamworth?

2011-08-11T12:14:00.001+10:00

My heart sank a little when I saw this story in the Northern Daily Leader: Time to get smart in Tamworth. The story begins:

TAMWORTH could boast a more visible university presence in the near future and it could be coming from Bathurst, not Armidale.

Tamworth Regional Council has unanimously, and excitedly, supported a nomination from Charles Sturt University (CSU) to act as the university partner on a funding application to establish a multi-

sector education precinct in the city.

The precinct would be established adjacent to the New England Institute of Technical and Further Education’s Tamworth campus.

The endorsement of the proposal was made on Tuesday night and involves seeking approval for a federal government Education Infrastructure Fund grant.

Why did my heart sink? Well for many reasons.

Tamworth has wanted its own campus for a long time. Even though UNE has provided local facilities over a long period, it hasn't really moved to meet Tamworth needs. Now Charles Sturt is trying to step in as part of a continuing and aggressive expansion campaign.

I do not begrudge either Tamworth or CSU for trying to move forward. Instead, I have two primary concerns that I have explored on this blog before.

The first is simply loss of vision by UNE. During the 1970s and 1980s the University lost its original university vision, its regional role across the broader New England. Its regional vision shrank to New England Tablelands, North West. For that reason, there is a certain irony in the CSU move, for it strikes at the heart of UNE's diminished regional role.

I do not want to overstate this, for UNE's broader regional role has begun to come back because no one else is doing it. Many of us have also been trying to force the University to stand outside the pressures created by Canberra dictates, what we can call university games, and instead reinstate its previous broader regional focus. This is not the University's only role, but it is central its role.

If UNE doesn't do it, no one will will. Certainly CSU won't.

The second thing that I have written about is the fragmentation in New England.

The Australian Government talks about the role of Universities in pursuing Australia's interests. The NSW Government sometimes talks about the role of NSW universities in developing NSW. No one talks about the role of New England's universities in pursuing New England's interests.

New England is not the same as NSW beyond an accident of political geography. Our universities are not just big businesses, but critical contributors to New England social and community development. We need them to cooperate if New England is to advance.

I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that CSU's move will help. The new Tamworth campus will remain a small outrider, an add-on, a branch office. It is likely to become just another contributor to New England's continuing fragmentation.

Belshaw's World - trials of working from home

2011-08-10T15:19:00.001+10:00

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 3 August 2011. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.

Yesterday morning my wife left for Perth on a short business trip, my eldest daughter for a longer trip to Kununurra via Darwin. Helen’s boyfriend is a pilot with Alligator Airway and she hasn’t seen him since before leaving for her semester in Copenhagen.

The Kimberley region has always fascinated me because of its remoteness and very different history. However, while I have researched the area and even written some pieces on its history, I have never been there.

Eldest has promised to take some photos for me, so I will be able to add these plus her reactions to my store of knowledge.

With two of my three girls away, the third busy for much of the day, I largely had the house to myself. I also had a long list of things to do, including this column.

Do you ever have one of those days when you can’t concentrate? That is what happened to me. I was restless and bored.

Sydney has been cold and wet. Not Armidale cold, but miserable because Sydney houses are not really designed for the cold.

Living in Armidale or Canberra, there was always one place in the house that was really warm. Not so in Sydney I find. We do have heating that more or less warms the whole house, but it’s somehow unsatisfying. It’s also very expensive.

There have also been days of high wind.

I came out one morning to find our clothes’ line demolished, dumping all the wet clothes onto the ground. The owner who now lives in London finds it hard to believe that wind could do this, so doesn’t want to pay for the line.

This adds to my feeling of gloom.

I do sound grumpy don’t I!

Anyway, yesterday I sat down with my list and tried to motivate myself.

We all play games with ourselves. At least I do.

I broke my list up into small chunks, saying to myself if you complete this you can then reward yourself with that. Often this works, but not yesterday. I wandered restless around the house, finally ending up back at the computer just roaming the internet and answering some of my email back-log.

Since we came down to Sydney I have worked a fair bit from home. It was just easier that way because it meant that I could do child-care things.

When I first started working from home, it was much talked about, but still unusual. Today it is much more common.. For that reason, I have a written a number of pieces explaining the best ways of home based working.

This may sound odd given my complaints about yesterday. However, my own problems provide part of the raw material that informs my writing.

Thinking about it over the period, I have boiled my advice down to three key points.

First, you have to set things up so that you can work effectively.

This is in fact one of my problems just at present. Since we moved house in March, my home working environment has been somewhat chaotic. I just haven’t got things re-organised.

Second, you have to create a proper working structure. By this I mean simply things like proper working hours that provide a framework and especially a separation between home and working life.

You own family is often the greatest problem here, for they think that if you are home then you are available. Would you mind doing this, dear.

Blast. That reminds me that I haven’t taken my wife’s dry-cleaning to the cleaners!

Third, you have to get out to see people and to do new things. This actually requires discipline.

Working from home can be a very isolating thing, for you don’t get the type of interaction provided by a more structured working environment. Apart from the loneliness that can afflict the home worker, you can also lose professional touch.

I didn’t recognise this properly when I started working from home. Depending on the work you are doing, you actually have to create for yourself the type of networking and professional development that tends to come automatically with a more conventional working environment.

Well, I will have to finish here. I really need to take my wife’s clothes to the dry-cleaners!

Who will be Australia's Seventh State?

2011-08-09T16:41:00.001+10:00

Look, I know that the Northern territory wants to be Australia's seventh state. But seriously, New England was there first and deserves the title.

We have been trying for self government for more then 150 years. We want our go.

The ABC has an interesting info graphic on changes in Australia since Federation. Have a play. it's quite fun.

In 1901, Sydney had 36 per cent of the NSW population. New England had over a quarter of the then NSW population, not all that far behind. We had more people than most of the then Australian sates.

By 1945, Sydney's population was 50 per cent of the state total, and New England was falling behind. Yet even in the 1950s we had more people than Tasmania, WA and SA, and were not all that far behind Queensland.

Today NSW is classified as the sick state, and New England is a large pimple on Sydney's bum.

Isn't it time to give us our go?

In 1924, the NSW Cohen Royal Commission accepted that the country had been disadvantaged relative to Sydney. However, the Commission said, this is no longer true. There are other ways of achieving the new state goal; regional councils are the answer. Hah! Where are those councils?

In 1867 at our plebiscite, those opposed to self government said that New England would gain by staying in NSW, that we could not afford statehood. Oh yes?

Why are most of NSW's poor towns in New England? Why have our opportunities shrunk? Why aren't there any jobs for those who want to go home?

Bluntly, we couldn't have done worse. Why not give us a go now?

Sydney really needs to worry about it's own needs. If New England gets self government and fails, then that's our responsibility. So give us our chance!

Bob Neville & Tingha Community Regeneration win new award

2011-08-08T15:54:00.001+10:00

Congratulations to Bob Neville for winning the individual section of the NSW Building Inclusive Communities Award.

The prize was awarded for his leadership of the Tingha Regeneration Program which is not only designed to rebuild the community, it also seeks to provide a model for many struggling communities throughout Australia.

My congratulations to Bob and those who have worked with him.

It seemed an appropriate time for me to pull together a few of the past posts I have written about Tingha:

Back in March 2007 in New England's Poor Towns - a failure in public policy I referred to Tingha as one of the poor towns listed by Professor Vinson, Nearly all the NSW poor towns listed by Professor Vinson were in New England. My concern then as it is now lay in finding ways to turn this around.
New England Australia's Chinese - Reference Post (30 March 2007) was a then consolidation post on the Chinese in New England. The Chinese form an important part of Tingha's history. Wing Hing Long & Co - Tingha (2 May 2008) deals with an exhibition on this Tingha store.
The vanished Kamilaroi and the need for a new approach (16 August 2008) includes a photo of an Aboriginal family pea picking at Tingha.
Tingha - a case study in community regeneration (February 16 2009) was the first story I wrote on Bob's work. This was followed by Belshaw’s World: Overcoming the curse of local self-interest (25 March 2009) Tingha Community Regeneration Continues (30 March 2009) and then Tingha Community Regeneration Project update (20 October 2009).

Actually, there are fewer there than I thought!. Still, if you look just at this list, you can see that I have been following Bob' work for a little while.