Belshaw's World - bittersweet moment when young leave the nest

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column, the last for 2010, in the Armidale Express on 29 December 2010. 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

I hope that you had a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Looking back, this is my third post Christmas column.

The first, Christmas in New England, was a nostalgic look at Christmas’s past. The next was equally nostalgic.

Nostalgia seems to grow with age. There is simply more to be nostalgic about!

Each Boxing Day since the girls were very young we have gone to see a movie. The Kings Speech was this year’s choice.

This is a remarkably good movie.

At its first public showing at the Toronto International Film Festival, the audience stood and applauded at the end. In Sydney, they clapped.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, I won’t give the full plot away.

The film stars Colin Firth as King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as speech therapist Lionel Logue who helped George VI overcome a totally debilitating stammer.

The film begins with the future king’s excruciating closing speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.

Nobody expected Albert Duke of York to become King. He was just a younger brother. Still, he had public duties to perform and so went to Logue for help.

The film takes some dramatic license with the story in that its primary focus is on the period before and immediately after Albert became King.

Checking the story, it appears that the first major speech that the Duke of York gave after beginning treatment with Logue was much earlier, the 1927 opening of the Australian Parliament. He delivered this without a stammer.

I can forgive this license.

Bertie, as Logue called him, took the throne from a sense of duty. War quickly followed. There he and his wife achieved almost iconic status by sharing the experiences of Londoners during the blitz.

Logue continued to provide support throughout.

As I started writing this story after the movie, my wife was learning Danish. This must seem a strange, unrelated, segue. Not so.

The reason why Christmas is so often wrapped in nostalgia is that it reminds us of things past or passing, of traditions such as our Boxing Day film.

In mid-January, eldest leaves for six months at the Copenhagen Business School. This is her first time away from home for an extended period, and there is much excitement.

Helen is trying to pack as much into the trip as she can, visiting New York on the way across and then returning via South Africa. While in Europe, she hopes to use Denmark as a base for some European touring.

She has saved hard for the trip, working night shifts at a nearby pub.

The hours are long, and she has to watch how much she earns because she doesn’t want to lose her Youth Allowance since she will need this while she is studying.

It’s complicated, actually.

Twelve months ago Helen worked extra shifts at the pub to fund a trip that she and sister Clare wanted to do in Asia. Without realising it, she went over the income limit and lost YA. She then had to re-apply on return, leaving her without income at a critical period.

After some hesitation, my wife has decided to visit Helen in Copenhagen, hence the Danish.

I admire Denise’s facility with languages. She has a very good ear for sounds, and can pick the basics up quite quickly.

For Helen’s father’s part, I would love to go but can’t afford it.

For the first six months this year I chose to work full time on my book, and then looked for contract work to give me an income while still allowing me to write. This proved more of a battle than I had expected.

Have you ever noticed that those who pontificate most about work force flexibility and the need to keep older people in the workforce are all in permanent jobs? The on-ground reality is quite different!

I am going to miss Helen.

I know that things have to change, that my girls have to spread their wings. Yet after all those years in which I was the primary child care, I find the adjustment remarkably difficult.

May 2011 be a good year for all of us.

Belshaw's World - it was all Greek at TAS

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 22 December 2010. 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

I was browsing around trying to find material for a piece I was trying to write when I stumbled across a copy of the December 1923 edition of The Armidalian, the TAS magazine. Here I found the answer to a question that had always puzzled me.

I knew that TAS had presented a play in Sydney totally in Classical Greece. This had puzzled me, because I went to the school Latin was still taught, but there was no sign of Classical Greek. I knew that it had been taught, but to actually put a full play on in the original language struck me as unusual.

I now know that the Play was presented in December 1923, with bookings at Palings. Nor, it appears, was this the only arcane play on the bill.

Before talking about the play, I need to introduce you to one of TAS’s most famous eccentrics, William Charles Wentworth IV.

Born in 1907, WCW IV better known as Bill or Billy Wentworth was the great grandson of the first William Charles Wentworth. He was bright, precocious and somewhat idiosyncratic.

Indeed, there is has been a wonderful strain of eccentricity through the Wentworths from the first WCW to modern columnist Mungo Wentworth MacCallum, Bill Wentworth’s nephew. I knew Mungo in Canberra, not well, and he could be very entertaining.

Stories about Bill Wentworth were still alive when I went to TAS all those years later, although by then it was hard to separate fact from fiction.

There was the time he blew up the science lab trying to make explosives! Then he persuaded the Head to create a school fire brigade.

Bored with parading on front field, he decided to carry out a small live drill. They set a small fire in the school Agriculture building.

As the smoke billowed forth and the school bell rang, the suspiciously ready fire brigade gathered. They had wrapped the hose around the heavy school roller used on the playing fields and, pushing it before them, charged down the hill towards the smoke.

Nearing the building, one boy fell. The rest lost control of the roller which charged ahead, smashing through the weatherboard wall of the building!

I am not aware of what happened to Bill Wentworth on this occasion, but it clearly did not affect his ability to write the editorial for the December 1923 Armidalian.

The editorial was a passionate statement of the importance of Greek. Classical Greece was the foundation of our culture. Knowledge of Greek was still important for those wishing to study at English universities. The growing number of boys studying Greek held out the possibility of TAS becoming the centre of Hellenic studies in Australia.

Now all this may sound a bit pie in the sky, but there was clearly a push on. The Sydney Morning Herald of Monday 17 December records:

“The Armidale School Dramatic Society will present the Greek play, "Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus" in the original Greek; the Quarrel Scene from Corncillo's "Le Cid;' and "Gaspard de Coligny," by W. Wentworth Shields (an old boy), at the King's Hall this evening. Plan at Paling's”.

Looking at The Armidalian, it appears that the quarrel scene from Le Cid was presented in the original French, while Gaspard de Coligny is a melodrama based on the French aristocrat and Huguenot leader of the same name.

Quite impressive, actually.

The reference to English universities is not as strange as it would seem. It was then not unusual for TAS boys with better-off parents and with academic inclinations to consider Oxford or Cambridge as an alternative to Sydney. The foundation of UNE was still some years ahead.

Wentworth went from TAS to Oxford, as had David Ogilvy (Ilparran Station) a few years before. In 1925, The Armidalian recorded that a number of boys were considering Oxford or Cambridge.

Wentworth’s visions of the future were to founder on a Great Depression that almost brought the school to its knees and was then followed by the Second War War.

Wentworth himself went into Federal politics. There he became an anti-communist warrior. However, he is now best known for his pioneering work for Aboriginal advancement, including his appointment as the first Federal minister with responsibility for Aboriginal Affairs.

Belshaw's World - Negative message hinders university

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 15 December 2010. 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

As I read the story by Craig Schneider (University to face grim times: Vice-Chancellor, AE 8 December) reporting on Professor Barber’s speech to the Armidale & District Chamber of Commerce, my heart sank.

The University of New England has a remarkably loyal group of alumni. They would have to be to still hold the faith after all the things the University has done to them.

Over the last thirty years, we have seen the University lose sight of its own past and traditions. We have lived through the networked university when it came close to collapse, losing all its reserve funds. We have lived through a fight between Chancellor and Vice Chancellor that pushed the University onto the national front pages for all the wrong reasons.

During this time we have seen multiple new strategic directions, multiple cultural changes processes, multiple marketing initiatives, all couched in the language of modern management speak. When Professor Barber speaks of the need to re-examine UNE product, its markets and its business processes, he is following in the steps of his predecessors.

This column is not an attack on Professor Barber, nor on the detail of his proposals. I do not know those well enough to comment. Indeed, I doubt that many alumni do, for the University has not been especially good in communicating to its broader support base. Instead, I want to look briefly at the challenges that the University faces and make a few suggestions on possible responses.

To begin with, Professor Barber is correct that the University faces a fundamental challenge. It is not alone in this.

Australian universities as a whole are declining in the global pecking order. In saying this I am not talking about the pecking order on the various international rankings that so obsess some. Rather, I am talking about the chat I see on web sites and blogs.

In a recent discussion on one of the leading Australian blogs, the theme was that there were no Australian universities left that could hope to match it with an Oxford or Cambridge. They had become second rate mass degree shops, unable to provide the type of education that was once available here.

I argued during the discussion that, by happenstance, UNE was still a university in the true sense, drawing supporting comments from other alumni.

You may dismiss all this as chatter, but it is more fundamental than that because it affects future attitudes.

In recent years, international full fee paying students have become the cash cow for many Australian universities. Now we face something of a slowly rolling crisis in which enrolments are dropping, commencements are dropping faster.

Faced with this decline, the big universities who have benefited most from those students are turning back to the local market, increasing competition for local students. Here the most lucrative group are those from what are called lower socio-economic backgrounds because they get the greatest funding.

This hits UNE hard simply because its main regional student catchments actually contain a very high proportion of students in these groups.

All Australian universities also face a progressive “deregulation” of the student marketplace, one that provides an incentive to get big or get out. Professor Barber has, to my mind, correctly pointed to some of the issues here. Again, UNE faces more competition for students.

Action has to be taken. The difficulty is that the reporting on those actions whether in the Express or the Australian is actually reinforcing the stereotype of UNE as a place in trouble. There are no positive messages, no unifying themes.

People forget, I think, that the majority of the broader university community do not live in Armidale, nor in Northern NSW. Messages designed for a local audience actually spread quite widely.

If members of the broader community know that our university is in trouble because Professor Barber told us so, think of the impact on prospective students. Why should they bother enrolling at UNE? Unless, of course, they just want to use it as an entry point to Sydney!

We cannot sell process or negatives. We have to explain to students why they should some to UNE, to alumni why they should support.

This brings me to my final point.

If, as many of us believe, UNE remains a true university, that is no small thing in today’s Australia. It is huge long term selling point. We should focus on it as a unifying theme.

This should not prevent change. However, it provides a touchstone against which changes can be measured. It also affects the language used in presenting change.

If we don’t do something like this, then the latest changes risk becoming just another in the round of changes that have so afflicted the University in the past.

Belshaw's World - running on empty

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 8 December 2010. 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

This is column 100 for the Armidale Express. That’s quite a lot; 75,000 words!

Do you ever have one of those times when your mind is just a blank, unable to work?

It’s like those times in class when your teachers asked you to answer a question and you had absolutely no idea.

Well, we are back in the rental market again.

We knew when we took our current house that the maximum lease period would be eighteen months. Still, we were glad to take it.

It’s not just that the house is nice, although it is rather special. It’s also that we had to vacate our previous house after just six months when the owners decided to move back in.

Moving costs are high. When you have to do it twice in seven months it adds the equivalent of a $100 per week to the rent. That hurts!

I am sitting here knowing that I should be checking rental houses on line, but just don’t want to do it.

I have come to think that our modern life style is really running on empty.

When your car is empty, it’s harder to start and there is the worry about running out of petrol. You know that you have to fill it, but you put it off for that short run.

We live in a just in time world. Increasingly, everything is geared to doing things at the last moment, or at least doing things in very quick time. Increasingly, there is little scope for recovery if things go wrong.

Much of my life for the last twenty years has been spent managing or advising professional services firms.

At the moment, I am working on an assignment for a new legal services on-line business. With the thinning out of middle management, the reduction in in-house knowledge, demand for technology that might provide a substitute is increasing.

Part of the work can only be described as anal, detailed line by line comparison of grouped templates accompanied by the development of use instructions.

This is very detailed stuff.

By nature, I am not a detail person. I much prefer more broad based analysis leading to action. However, I taught myself to work this way to overcome my personal weaknesses. Now I find a degree of demand for these services.

There is a dreadful irony here.

Mr Fittler, my Dem School primary teacher, complained about my spelling. He and later teachers suggested that my inability to spell would hold me back. Now I find myself doing detailed proof reading!

Fortunately my work is not all anal. I also spend time working out how different types of customers might use the service, linking this to marketing strategies. That’s more my style.

Today the managing partner was complaining about client habits.

“They are all so busy”, he said, “that they think that a short email plus a few documents is an instruction.”

It doesn’t quite work this way.

Clients forget that the legal document – contract, confidentiality agreement, licensing agreement, whatever – is simply the legal wrapping. The law cannot resolve any basic problems in the arrangement surrounded by the legal wrapping, although the law may determine winners and losers.

In my professional writing and in my training, I have tried to emphasise the importance of what medicos call the diagnostic.

No good doctor would simply accept the symptoms described by the patient and then prescribe without at least trying to check and understand the basic details. Yet this is just what too many other professionals do.

In a way, I cannot blame them.

In a time poor world where they and their clients are all running on empty, the pressure to just react is enormous.

See problem, fix problem and do it now is the refrain. In the end, the client pays, for a good diagnostic can save costs.

In the project management arena, I once tried to explain it this way.

The Japanese spend a lot of time conceiving and defining the project. Implementation then follows quickly.

In Australia, we are impatient of the first, then spend a lot of time trying to fix things that should have been worked out in the beginning.

The Japanese approach is generally more cost effective.

Belshaw's World - damning numbers and cultural enlightenment

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 1 December 2010. 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

As many readers of this column will know, I am trying to write a general history of the broader New State New England, the North.

In this column I want to talk about the next stage in the project, one that I hope will form the base of a paper to be delivered in Armidale early next year, a paper on social change in New England between 1950 and 2000.

This is a topic that I have been dodging because I find elements of it so depressing.

In 1950, all the New England media was locally owned. By 2000, most were part of externally owned media chains.

In 1950, most major local organisations were locally owned or, at least, locally headquartered. By 2000, most were externally owned and controlled.

In 1950, the dream of self-government, of our own state, was alive. By 2000 it seemed dead and almost forgotten.

In 1950, the inland population rivalled that on the coast. As late as 1974, it was still possible to believe that Armidale’s population would pass 40,000 by 2000. Indeed, official projections said so. By 2000, inland New England was in absolute and relative decline.

In 1950, New England’s population and wealth was greater than that in South or West Australia. By 2000 we had slipped in population, more so in wealth.

By early in the new century, the poorest Federal electorate in Australia was to be found in New England. Fourteen of the identified poorest localities in Australia were in the North.

Of course, not all the changes were bad.

I, for one, would not want to go back to the world of sectarian divides. Women have far more opportunities, something that is important to me in a personal sense as a father with daughters. There are far more educational opportunities today.

All this said, there have been enough negatives to make it difficult to for me to write about it given my emotional involvement with the area in question. Still, I had to look at it if I was ever to complete the book.

As I dug down into the topic, I found it increasingly interesting. Indeed, I became fascinated.

The social changes that took place in New England over the period were, in some ways, a microcosm of those taking place elsewhere. You would expect this.

The mass migration programs that followed the Second World War, changing gender roles, changes in religious expression, structural change and associated changes to the world of work were all broader changes.

Yet while changes such as these were broader changes, their particular expression within New England is still interesting, still important. It’s not just that it forms part of our own immediate history, but also because the particular local expressions of change can help us better understand broader patterns of change.

We have already seen one local example of this in Don Aitkin’s What was it all for, a history of social change in Australia seen through the eyes of the Armidale High Leaving Certificate class of 1953. This is a very good book indeed.

When we talk about history in general and social change in particular, we talk about trends, about movements, about big social shifts. We use words such as revolution,

When we talk like this, we forget that change takes place because of individual decisions, that people are affected by change in different ways.

The twelve hundred meat workers who lost their jobs when the Tablelands meat works closed are not just a statistic, but people directly and permanently affected by change.

The closure of the BHP steelworks in 1997 was an economic decision that took place against a background of industry change and of changing policies in Canberra and Melbourne. It also marked a fundamental shift in the very psyche of Newcastle, for the BHP as it was known, had been a dominant feature of the city for much of the twentieth century.

The big changes such as the decline of many of New England’s traditional industries or the rise of the coast are relatively easy to see. However, there are also smaller and more subtle changes that can lie concealed.

The remarkable growth in New England’s cultural activities is one such change.

As one measure, I think that there are more published authors living in Armidale today than in the whole of New England in 1950.

This change is not limited to Armidale, but can be seen in varying forms across the North. Newcastle, for example, has established its own gritty cultural tradition that finds expression in writing, music, photography and film.

As you can see, I do find all this quite fascinating. I hope to share some of it with you over the next few months.

Belshaw's World - ponzi schemes and the human wreckage left behind

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 24 November 2010. 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

I finished my last column by saying that by 1996 I was convinced that current management approaches could not work in the long term. They had, in fact, become a super Ponzi game.

To those who don’t know the term, Ponzi schemes are named after the US con man Charles Ponzi. Investors are attracted by offers of high returns. However, those returns come not from profits, but from the investor’s own money or that of subsequent investors.

A Ponzi scheme will eventually collapse under its own weight. However, that can take some time as demonstrated by the recent case of Bernard Madoff in the United States.

This was the largest investment fraud case in history.

By the time Madoff’s scheme collapsed, the combination of actual losses plus promised returns totaled a staggering $US64.8 billion. Actual cash losses totaled roughly $US21 billion. These are staggering numbers.

Not all Ponzi schemes begin as Ponzi schemes. Some start as legitimate investment schemes. They become Ponzi schemes if lower than expected returns are then topped up from investor’s money.

Now why did I compare current management approaches to Ponzi schemes? Surely that’s unfair?

Let’s start with current approaches to corporate reporting.

The progressive changes that have been made effectively require companies to report on the future. This includes a requirement to report on variations that might affect future profits in any material way.

These changes were intended to protect investors, while making for a more informed market. However, they also had the effect of linking share prices to prospective returns rather than the company’s track record.

You can see this in the changed treatment of price/earnings ratios. They used to be based on historical profits, now they are based on expected future profits.

Add performance pay arrangements linked to the achievement of targets that can include a range of variables including sales, profits, and share prices to the mix.

Growth is central to these targets, growth in sales, growth in profits, growth in share prices. What value are your share options, for example, if share prices don’t increase?

At individual firm level, this may sound fair enough. However, there is a problem.

Each business sets growth targets that then flow through to pay and reporting. But what happens if the totality of those targets is such that they are unachievable?

Keeping things simple, assume the economy grows at three per cent per annum. This means that the combined growth of all firms cannot exceed three per cent.

Yes, firms may increase profits by more than three per cent if the profit share of national income rises. Yes, firms may grow by more than three per cent if they can access international markets, although the trends I am talking about are global. All this said, growth in national income still provides the effective constraint on business growth as a whole.

If the combined growth targets set by businesses exceeds the growth capacity of the economy, then businesses as a whole cannot deliver on target.

Say the combined targets require a ten per cent increase in profits, a not unreasonable individual target, when the growth capacity of the economy is three per cent, then the gap is seven per cent. If the average target is twenty per cent, the gap rises to seventeen per cent.

We now have the precursor condition for a Ponzi scheme. Clearly not all businesses can achieve targets. A gap has opened between projected returns and the results that can be actually achieved.

In our performance based world, the pressures on boards and executives to achieve targets, to show growth, are substantial. Incomes and reputations depend upon it.

We saw the effects of this in the Global Financial Crisis. This was a Ponzi scheme on a large scale. However, there are far more invidious effects.

Operating in an environment where combined targets cannot be met but individual targets must be met, firms focus on actions that will increase short term profits. In practical terms, this means cost cutting.

It is generally possible for a firm to meet short term profit targets by cuts to activities that do not immediately affect profitability. Too often, however, those cuts affect later profits. You are, in fact, operating a Ponzi scheme.

As with all Ponzi schemes, investor desire for above average returns makes the whole thing possible. The markets reward the short term.

Working as an outplacement consultant I saw the immediate results in the human debris that passed through our office. However, I had also seen it in my work as a management consultant.

Still, I should perhaps deal with this in a later column.

Belshaw's World - short term gain, but lame in the long run

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 17 November 2010. 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

People are meant to become more conservative as they growing older. I seem to have gone in the opposite direction!

Like all of us, my own views span.

On some of the current symbolic issues such as the monarchy, I have become more conservative. I am far more pro-monarchy today than I was twenty years ago. On management and social policy issues, I have become more radical.

All this gives rise to an odd, sometimes uncomfortable, feeling. People attach labels. As a monarchist, I am expected to have all sorts of other views; often, I do not.

This column is not about the monarchy. I leave that to others to argue! I am simply using it as an illustration.

Many things combined to reshape my views. This column tells the story of one of those things.

After we first came down to Sydney, I did some outplacement work for a Sydney recruitment firm.

This was very much the modern white collar equivalent of piece work. The practice charged a fixed price for every candidate based on the package of services purchased. I was paid a proportion of this.

This made for a very unstable income. The money I earned depended on the work coming through the door and that fluctuated. It also meant that there was constant pressure to do things in minimum time.

Those selling the firm’s services were paid a percentage of sales. To get the sale, they would effectively price cut, selling the package that the client would accept even though they (the sales people) knew that more would be required.

This created a constant tension for those of us concerned with delivery. Did we deliver just the purchased package, or should we go beyond this to provide the extra support that we knew would be required?

If we did the second, we reduced our own incomes. Our hourly earnings fell, but we also tended to get less work since work was allocated first to the high producers.

The firm had a candidate focused ethos. This was more than just words. However, there was an irreconcilable conflict between the ethos and the firm’s business model.

Many of the candidates I dealt with were the human rubble remaining from organisational restructuring.

The 1980s were a period of fundamental change in the Australian economy. This change coincided with a global change in management approaches that emphasised efficiency, measurement and process. This was reflected in the way executives came to be rewarded by performance pay based on the achievement of generally short term targets.

The Keating recession, the one we had to have, reinforced the impact of the changes. Organisations cut staff and then cut again. New words emerged – process re-engineering, corporate restructuring, outplacement.

Markets rewarded corporations not just on the basis of past performance, but on the basis of prospective profits flowing from cost cutting.

New dynamics were created.

Announce a restructuring and cost cutting program and your share price will rise. Deliver by cutting costs sharply so that your immediate profits after redundancy costs rise. You have delivered, share prices rise. Performance bonuses based on profits and share prices rise.

In my outplacement work, I was dealing with those left behind.

The hardest case I had to deal with involved a senior manager retrenched by a national bank.

He left school early to join a bank. Over the next forty five years he rose through the ranks, mainly in administrative roles. His bank was his world.

Following a bank merger, his corporate position was abolished and he was retrenched. The personal effects were devastating, a devastation accentuated by his continuing failure to get another job. He was seen as just too old, lacking the skills required for a modern work place.

By the time I saw him, he was in a state of total despair. The hardest thing was just convincing him that he actually had still useful knowledge and skills.

This story actually had a happy ending, one not due to me. Fraud prevention, an area he had worked in, came into market demand. With skills short in this area, he was actually searched out and offered a job.

The work I did as an outplacement consultant was wearing, if sometimes satisfying. However, I found a bigger problem in the work.

By 1996, I was convinced that current management approaches could not work in the long term. They had, in fact, become a super Ponzi game.

I will explain why in my next column.

Belshaw's World - inner city dwellers put the choke on car ownership

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 10 November 2010. 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

The city of Sydney describes itself as a city of villages. I would argue that Sydney as a whole is better described as a city of tribes.

Saturday we drove to Galston, an hour’s drive north from where we live, for an engagement party for one of Helen’s school friends.

It was raining as we battled our way through the traffic, finally reaching the far Northern suburbs.

This is mixed country on the urban fringe. Huge houses on tiny blocks sit cheek by jowl with the semi-rural.

Sydney has been wet, very wet. The party was held at an old nursery; its established old gardens were very green and really quite beautiful in the drifting rain.

The engagement itself was a mixed one, crossing two of Sydney’s most deeply entrenched tribal barriers.

The groom to be comes from Galston , the bride to be comes from the Eastern Suburbs, a geographically bound area that looks to the sea and the shops.

Galston and the surrounding areas are very different. Here people have been attracted by somewhat cheaper housing and the chance to enjoy a more rural life style.

I drifted between the two groups, listening to the differing conversations: the importance of the sea and good coffee (Eastern Suburbs); getting eggs from a neighbour (Galston); school stories from both, but again very different in terms of location and topic.

Today, Sydney dominates the NSW population. This was not true in the past.

Sydney once had less than half of the state population. The population of Northern NSW alone was once larger than that of Sydney. As a consequence, a remarkable number of Sydney families actually have a country connection.

The grandfather of the bride to be grew up in the dairying areas of the North Coast where his father managed butter factories. The other side came from the central west. Again, there were differences between the two tribes.

The Eastern Suburbs’ country connection is more remote.

When we first moved there, I was struck by the number of people who were second, third or even fourth generation Eastern Suburbs, whose partners were also Eastern Suburbs. You just don’t get the population turnover that you find in, say, Armidale. This makes for a certain parochialism.

The Galston country connection is more recent. Some of those I talked to still had working farms. Unexpectedly, I found myself rolling a cigarette (I can still do this, just) and chatting about shooting, feral pests, water buy-backs, the ending of the drought and current grain prices.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater.

One of the things that fascinates me as a social analyst is the way that Sydney’s tribes reinforce themselves. Take the Inner West as an example.

Those coming here are attracted by the inner-urban life style. They are likely to be less interested in the sea, more by certain ways of living. They are also likely to come from certain occupations such as the public service and the caring professions and have certain common attitudes. In turn, this attracts more people of like minds.

After each census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes a social atlas for Sydney. This looks at a whole series of statistical indicators. You can actually map the tribes of Sydney from those indicators.

Sydney’s tribalisation is interesting, but it also creates problems for those who live elsewhere in ways we don’t always see.

Take a simple thing like car ownership.

Cars are important to those in the country. Statistically, the proportion of the population with driving licenses and cars is very high.

By contrast, in the inner city with its better public transport, the proportion of the population owning cars is lower and declining. This affects public policy.

Inner city attitudes to the car are very different from those holding elsewhere. They seek to control and limit motor vehicles, they support restrictions intended to reduce death rates, they are pro-pedestrian.

The things they argue for are not necessarily bad. It’s just that their needs and attitudes are different from those who depend on the car.

Objectively, they can see the importance of motor vehicles to people who do not have access to public transport. Subjectively, they downplay this in their own minds.

Inner city people are articulate and, on average, better educated than the population as a whole. They also have better access to the levers of influence, including the public servants who live among them. Increasingly, they set the agenda in this area.

While one can debate the costs and benefits of each measure, the practical effect is to make it more difficult and expensive to get and hold a license, more expensive to buy and run a car. This disadvantages those most dependant on the car and especially those on lower incomes.

Belshaw's World - not such a lonely planet in a cafe full of cobbers

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 3 November 2010. 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

Eighteen months ago we promised to take Clare (youngest) to Greece. She is studying Ancient History at Macquarie University.

It proved to be a bit of a battle to get there, but we had promised, and finally we went. In doing so, we decided to focus on the Greek Islands. I had always been interested in the Islands, partly for historical reasons, partly because they are the ancestral home of so many Australians of Greek descent.

I write a fair bit about history because I love it. That’s one of the things I can blame on my old school history teacher, George Crossle!

The history was fun.

The Greek Islands are saturated in history. Each island has its own history, stretching back thousands of years.

The ancient Minoan city of Akrotiri on Santorini had running water several thousand years before Armidale! Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

The sea was central to Akrotiri’s prosperity. Its merchants traded across the ancient seas, visiting exotic lands. The things they saw were recorded in art, some of which has survived to this day.

The history of the Greek Islands is a bloody one. The sea could bring prosperity, but it also brought threats. Over the years, competition among the varying powers led to occupation and re-occupation of the various islands. Long periods of peace were followed by bloody war.

There is something very modern about this competition. It resonates.

Venice acquired control of Crete in 1204AD as part of the distribution of spoils that followed the sack of Constantinople. Like the Athenians before and the British later, the Venetian maritime empire depended on trade and control of the sea. Huge fortresses were built, but in the end power depended on the navy.

Venice’s strategic position was always complicated. It was constantly threatened by bigger powers, caught in the ever changing web of political and religious rivalries between east and west.

Venice responded with a mixture of force and diplomacy. To assist this, a constant stream of secret intelligence and diplomatic reports flowed back to the city from different parts of its empire and beyond.

Today, visitors to Venice or to the old Venetian provincial city of Rethymno on Crete marvel at the faded grandeur. What struck me was just how long Venice survived. After all, it ruled Crete for four hundred years.

Despite my interest in history, my attention was constantly attracted by other things.

I was travelling with four women, all addicted to shopping. I suspect I speak for most males when I say that shopping is not a spectator sport. Still, this gave me plenty of time to gaze around, to watch the passing parade.

Tourism is central to the Greek economy, more so to the Greek Islands. Many of those islands would have been completely de-populated without the combination of tourism with remittances home from migrants in countries such as Australia.

Partly because of our high dollar, the Australian presence is very noticeable.

On Santorini, I was attracted to a local café by a huge din. I found myself watching the last five minutes of the first AFL grand final, surrounded by fellow Australians. Not one but two cafes broadcast it live. Both were crowded.

Over the trip I chatted to many tourists from various nationalities including Australian, asking what drew them to the Greek Islands. Of course they all mentioned things such as ancient sites, but in the end it came down to what I can only describe as the experience.

I have suggested before in this column that one of the reasons for failure in New England and NSW tourism lies in out failure to focus on the tourist experience. We obsess about attractions and events, but lose sight of the broader picture.

As I watched and chatted on the various islands, I started jotting down notes for a new series on tourism promotion. Then, when I came back, I got out the guide books to compare the Australian and Greek equivalents. The comparisons were quite stark; Northern NSW really suffers as compared to its Greek equivalents.

As it happened, Monday’s announcement by Lonely Planet that Newcastle had been listed as one of the world’s top ten cities for travel in 2011 has really put the cat among the pigeons when it comes to tourism promotion.

In the parlance so beloved by officialdom, NSW has two tourism brands, Brand NSW and Brand Sydney. Both brands are tired, neither has worked very well.

There has been little room in this two brand world for a more differentiated tourism strategy. Newcastle people have long complained about this.

Now, in a single blow, Lonely Planet has created a third and rival brand, Brand Newcastle based on life style and the visitor experience. I think that that’s a good thing.

Belshaw's World - Obsessions with Reading

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express. 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

Jim Belshaw is on holidays. While he is away, Jim’s column is featuring some of his previous writing. This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on Personal Reflections in August 2009.

There was a time in recent years when reading, other than that which had to be done, dropped away. Reading for pleasure diminished to a small field; fantasy, a few pot boilers, re-reading old favourites. The last was really dominant. I knew the books, they were old friends, and I could escape drifting within the covers without thinking too much.

Today reading has once again become a passion, although the focus this time is mainly non-fiction. Writing, more accurately the desire to write, has been the driver. I am always looking for new ideas, as well as material to support or deepen my understanding of particular topics.

When I began what I now call my train reading, reading on the train to and from work, I did read a lot linked to the history of New England. However, I also deliberately chose older books from my shelves that I had not read before, books that had come to me from family collections.

My choices could only have been described as somewhat eclectic, deliberately chosen so as to be outside my immediate interests. A funny thing happened. I started choosing other books that might compliment in some way those that I had already read; a book chosen almost at random became the start of a chain.

Outside New England history, my train reading is not meant to be highly structured. I find it interesting that, despite my best efforts, it has started to connect and re-connect. It has, in fact, become a little world of its own: books widely separated in time, space and subject matter link in unexpected ways.

This world is sometimes far more interesting than the world around me. I become absorbed, lost. On the train I sometimes look up to find people watching me. No, I am not talking to myself, although I have to watch this given my habit when alone of saying things out loud just to taste the sounds. Rather, the sight of someone obviously absorbed and sometimes scribbling always attracts attention.

Strange this obsession with thought.

To this point most of my writing and thought has been object focused, deadline driven: prepare this briefing by, complete this advice by, make so many calls by.

I still keep time sheets, although I break time into ten minute blocks rather than the decimal based six minutes so loved by lawyers and accountants. To my mind, six minutes is just too short to have real meaning. However, now my time sheets actually record my growing obsession with reading and writing, as do my to do lists. Other things struggle to get in!

The real joy of my train reading is the freedom to go in any direction I want, to follow through threads that I would otherwise ignore. I actually have to discipline myself to do this. There are rules.

I will not read work related matter on the train unless I have a pressing deadline. I ration my New England history reading and also things like reading the Financial Review. Mind you, sometimes I actually have to allocate time to my straight professional reading because I realise that it is getting lost.

My train reading is a liberal education, a chance to explore. The act of selecting a book that I have not read and might not otherwise do so forces me into new ways. This is reading with purpose but without objective. This is luxury reading.

I am, fortunately, a very fast reader. Over the last few years my reading skills had actually dropped. I was still fast, but was in clear decline. Now my reading speeds are back to something approaching their old levels. This adds to my enjoyment.

I charge through a book, then stop, go back, find a linked point. Then onwards. Sometimes I stop and just muse.

You cannot read the way I do on-line. With exceptions, the computer is just too slow. The key exception is graphic rich text where the computer's bigger screen makes it easier to see things.

Recently I have been sorting books, discovering new ones that I have not read. I wonder, what next to select?

Judith Wright’s South of My Days

Note to readers: I normally re-run my Armidale Express columns with a week's lag. This post was meant to appear as a column in the Express on Wednesday 4 October 2010. Unfortunately, the Express lost the columns so that they will in fact appear later. Nevertheless, to maintain publishing schedules, I am repeating the columns here with a lag linked to the originally scheduled publication date. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010.

Jim Belshaw is on holidays. While he is away, Jim’s column is featuring some of his previous writing. This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on New England Australia in September 2007.

In his Friday Australian poetry series, Neil (Ninglun) featured Judith Wright's South of My Days. This is a magnificent poem that, like all good poetry, stands alone independent of context.

While the poem does stand alone, the language and content of the poem are also deeply imbued by the world in which Judith grew up. I know and love this world, so I thought that I might continue my irregular series on the poetry of Judith Wright by placing this poem and its language in a context.

The Wrights and the associated Wyndhams are one of the great New England pastoral dynasties whose story encompasses the rise and later decline of New England itself.

Our story begins in the Hunter Valley in 1830 when George and Margaret Wyndham purchased "Annandale", renaming the property "Dalwood”. From there the family spread, acquiring a chain of properties stretching along the eastern edge of the New England Tablelands into Queensland. Judith's book, Generations of Men, captures the early history of the family.

Wallamumbi, the home property for Judith's branch of the family, lies on Waterfall Way to the east of Armidale just before that road plunges into the rough country of New England's Snowy Mountains. Look north, and the rolling green hills are all Wallamumbi.

The poem begins: "South of my day's circle, part of my blood's country,"

Judith was then living to the north in Queensland. The spare elegance of these words captures location and love of country. Blood can be read in two ways, both her blood and that of her family. The poem goes on:

“rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter,
low trees, blue leaved and olive, outcropping granite –“

This is high country. Snow is not uncommon, frost very common; a little later in the poem Judith uses the term "black-frost night" to capture the worst frosts, the black frosts. These crisp the ground so that it crunches under your feet as you walk.

Much of the New England Tablelands is granite country. Granite takes many forms from huge boulders to flat sheets. Granite outcrops are common.

The poem continues:

“clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced,
willow choked, the slope a medlar and crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with green lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.”

“Clean lean, hungry country”. Granite makes for poor soils. Hungry country carries linked meanings: country that has to be fed to be productive; but it also means country that can suck the spirit, the life, from the settler.

There is a contrast built into these lines between the European willow and crabapple and the earlier reference to very the Australian "low trees, blue leaved and olive ".

The early European settlers planted to remind them of home. With time, these plantings run wild, became part of the landscape, creating a sometimes complicated link between past and present.

The old cottage that " lurches in for shelter" continues the theme of "wincing under winter." This continues in the next verse:

"O cold the black frost night. The walls draw in to the warmth
and the old roof cracks its joints: the sling kettle
hisses a leak on the fire ..."

In the early period, cooking was done over an open fire. There was often a bar over the fire on which hung kettles, pots and pans. People gathered in kitchens for warmth. At home in Armidale, my girl friends used to stand with their backs to the fuel stove, hitching their skirts up to capture the warmth.

The poem now changes direction, introducing old Dan with his "seventy years of stories".

Judith grew up in a village world. Tablelands' society was far more stratified than today. Yet properties then employed far more people, so Judith would have known and listened to the older hands.

In Judith's case, the stories would have resonated because of her own family past. So when Dan spoke of droving cattle from Charleville to the Hunter - "nineteen one it was, and the drought beginning" -she would have remembered stories from her own family experience.

The poem finishes.

“South of my days' circle
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country
full of dark stories that still go walking in my sleep.”

As they do for me too.

Belshaw's World - a legendary writer raised in Armidale

Jim Belshaw is on holidays. While he is away, Jim’s column is featuring some of his previous writing. This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on New England Australia in August 2006.

I learned today that Alex had died. My sense of loss can be nothing compared to that of Adrian, Merelyn and the family, but I thought that I should record my feelings. Added force is given to this because my wife has just left to take daughter Clare to school for the opening of the Wizard of Oz, a performance that Alex's youngest daughter is taking part in.

ABC radio today carried initial tributes to Alex as a writer. I cannot add to these without reflection. Many people knew Alex better than me. They will tell their own stories. But Alex has been part of my life since I was very young. So this is a personal reflection on Alex, his family and me.

Alex’s dad, Zihni, Buzo OAM, was born in Albania.

After completing his elementary education, he studied in Istanbul and the US before returning to Albania to work for the Rockefeller Foundation on a malaria control project, emigrating to Australia at the start of the Second World War.

Following the war, Zihni worked as a lecturer in Civil Engineering at Sydney University before moving wife Elaine and family to Armidale where he designed and supervised the construction of the Oakey Hydro Electric Scheme.

Zihni quickly absorbed the New England ethos and became an active proponent of water development schemes for New England. However, he also continued to work globally especially for UN agencies, working in more than 40 countries.

I do not remember when I first met Alex. Our parents were friends, so he was just around. Because he was a little older than me and in a higher class, we were not close. I do remember that at his parent's request he tried to look after me on my first day at The Armidale School (TAS), a difficult task because I was shy.
Later, and this bears upon his competitive spirit, I also remember playing football against him. I made a break, he ran me down to tackle me near the try line. Neither of us knew that the referee had already blown his whistle!

Alex and I had much more contact after we left TAS.

Alex had acquired a love of English at school. He found Armidale constricting and escaped to Sydney where he worked first in mens wear at David Jones. A keen observer, he collected accents, words and scenes. I am not sure when he actually started writing, but he did have a first play workshopped in 1967, with a full production of Norm and Ahmed in 1968.

Alex retained his links with Armidale. Wife Merelyn was an Armidale girl, a good hockey player, so he had family links with the town on both sides. I, too, retained my links with Armidale while working in Canberra.
Up until dad’s death, my parents had open house on Xmas Eve. The Buzos were regular attendees, so that's where Alex, I and later Adrian Buzo often met. Alex liked tennis, so at Christmas we often played tennis just down the road at Roy and Afra Smith's.

I always collected Alex's plays as they came out. Then he stopped writing them, pursuing other writing directions. I felt that this was a pity, and asked him why many years later. I think that it was just that he had broad interests and in some ways saw writing as a means to an end.

There was a gap in contact after my parents died.. Then Genny and Clare, our respective youngest daughters, ended up in the same class at St Catherine's and in the same hockey team. I again saw a fair bit of Alex and Merelyn at school functions and at hockey matches.

Talking is easy when you have known someone for so long and have so many shared experiences. In this last period, Alex like to talk about shared things, about the days at TAS, about his earlier experiences. He retained his dry wit and positive outlook.

This was a difficult period for the family. Alex was battling cancer, then his parents died. I felt with Zihni's death that this was the loss of another of the links with New England's past. But there were compensations among the troubles for Alex and the family with recognition for his long career and writing achievements.

There were interviews, while Currency Press put on a private reading of two of his plays that I was lucky enough to be able to attend with daughter Helen. The first play on the escape from a country town was clearly autobiographical. Alex expected me to recognise the allusions, and indeed I did. Alex also received an honorary doctorate from his old university, the University of New South Wales.

I knew that Alex was again very sick. But I still hoped that his fighting spirit would carry him through as it had done before, so the news of his death came as a shock.

I was not as close to Alex as some of his friends and I know that there are many more stories. I just wanted to provide a very personal perspective on someone who has been there to greater or lesser extent my whole life. My thoughts are with the family.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 29 September 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - Patrice Newell’s The River

Jim Belshaw is on holidays. While he is away, Jim’s column is featuring some of his previous writing. This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on New England Australia in August 2006.

In my last post, New England Australia – writers, I mentioned that I was reading Patrice Newell's book the River, the story of the Pages River in the Upper Hunter. I can hardly wait to finish to read her next book, Ten Thousand Acres.

I did not realise when I started reading that Patrice was quite famous. I bought the book because it was another book on New England. Now I am loving it.

It's not just that she writes well, and she does. It's not just that I am learning new things, and I am. Here, and so far, I especially like her catchment stories. But her writing is (unexpectedly) like an old and familiar friend.

I began this blog because I wanted to save and present the broader New England that I loved, a New England that I feared was becoming lost. While Patrice may not realise it, her writing is saturated with that New England, reminding me also of just how integrated New England was though links and cross links.

I may not always agree with her. I have a more positive view of former State National Party Leader George Souris, and not only because we went to the same school. But whether I agree or not, so much of her writing creates particular resonances.

Patrice writes of the architect Horbury Hunt who designed a number of buildings in her immediate area.

Hunt's building across New England include St Mathias's Church, Denman (1871), St John's, Branxton (1873), the Anglican Cathedrals at Armidale (1871) and Grafton (1880) and Booloominbah at Armidale (1888). Along with the Maitland Pender family who designed buildings such as Belltees and Saumarez, Hunt has left an indelible imprint on New England's built landscape.

Patrice also speaks of the Burning Mountain near Wingen where a long burning underground coal seam creates a volcano like area.

I first read of this in a 19th century news magazine held in The Armidale School library, then a repository of many ancient publications that today would be antiquarian finds.

Many years later, I dragged my then very young daughters up the hill, standing in the spot Patrice describes looking over the Pages.

This, mind you, was not a success. It was very hot, and they did not share my enthusiasm.

She describes the Wright family graves. I have not seen these, but years ago after having read Judith Wright's Generations of Men for the first time I searched for and found Dalwood, the family home described in the book. It was then semi-derelict, but enough remained to give a real feel.

She mentions excursions with Helen Brayshaw to find Aboriginal sites along the Pages.

Many years ago I trained with Helen under Isabel McBryde.

In 1960 Isabel was appointed to Australia's first titled position in Prehistory and Ancient History at the University of New England.

Up to that point the few pioneering Australian prehistorians had worked in a scatter gun fashion on isolated sites across the country. From these digs they tried to create cross-country cultural sequences. This made sense if but only if the Aborigines were homogeneous across the continent, which was not the case.

Working under the influence of her mentor, John Mulvaney, Isabel pioneered the study of Australian prehistory at regional level. In doing so, she gathered a group of students around her including Helen and myself to provide help.

We went on weekend survey missions across the North Coast, Tablelands and Slopes, took part in digs during some vacations, worked as research assistants during others sorting and recording Aboriginal implements. It was fun.

In 1965 Sharon Sullivan completed the first pre-history honours thesis under Isabel's guidance. 1966 saw the first full pre-history honours class. Many of Isabel's students including Helen and Sharon went on to distinguished careers in Australian prehistory and archaeology.

My own route was different, taking me into economics and work with the Australian Treasury. But I retained my very fond memories of the earlier period.

Patrice's writing brought this whole past flooding back.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 22 September 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - Simon Crean, Dr Rob and my daughter's 21st

As I write, Ms Gillard is announcing her new ministry.

By the time you read this column, the details will be far clearer than they are just at present. Still, I could not resist a few comments.

I know that many people in the electorate were upset by Mr Windsor’s decision to back Ms Gillard. The comments’ columns on the Northern Daily Leader dripped a fair bit of vitriol.

Regardless of individual views, Regional Australia is back on the political agenda in a way we have not seen for a number of years.

Mr Crean as the new minister is a very experienced operator with a known interest in the area. I think that’s good.

In a short historical post on his blog, fellow campaigner for regional development Paul Barratt wrote:

When the Coalition came to office in 1996 one of the departments established under the new administrative arrangements was the Department of Transport and Regional Development. In 1998 this was changed to the Department of Transport and Regional Services. Someone had taken issue with the thought that a Coalition Government would have any role in regional development (presumably the market would provide, as it always does) – it would just play some sort of a role in relation to service delivery in the regions (for which there was always precious little money).

Paul is right, of course. Semantics is very important in public policy because of what it signals about thinking. To my mind, this 1998 change in wording marked the end of any real focus on regional development.

Now that we have regional development and decentralisation back on the mainstream political agenda, Minister Crean can expect a fair bit of unsolicited advice and analysis.

I think that this is very important. If newspapers, columnists, bloggers and researchers, to name just a few, don’t respond, then the issue is likely to slide again.

I think that most agree that current policies have not worked so far as Regional Australia is concerned. The challenge now is to find new ways of working.

Friday, Gordon Smith emailed me of the death of Rob Robertson-Cuninghame. I felt quite sad.

As my mother grew older, she used to say “it’s getting drafty round here, dear.” By this, she simply meant the way in which the inexorable process of aging and death was taking away the people she knew.

Dr Robertson-Cuninghame was not just a nice bloke, but an intelligent man who made an enormous contribution to this community.

From time to time in this column, I have written about the challenges facing us in preserving and developing the University of New England.

For those few people who read this column on a regular basis, I can sound pretty obsessive about UNE. I am not alone in this, for UNE has a remarkably loyal group of alumni. However, without Dr Robertson-Cuninghame, I am not sure that I would have had a university to be obsessive about!

Early September is the heavy birthday period in the North-Belshaw household, with three birthdays in two weeks. This year it’s youngest’s twenty-first.

When I was a kid, twenty-firsts were a very big deal. Now kids get two shots at parties: at 18 and 21, yet twenty-firsts are still a big thing.

Catherine, one of Clare’s friends, came round to collect photos for the inevitable rolling slide show. Looking at the photos brought back so many memories.

There were the girls at Marsh Street, the shots at Montessori. Eldest in her Newling uniform, then both girls in their NEGS uniforms on the day they started there.

Talk about a trip down nostalgia lane.

As I listened to the speeches while watching the slide show, I thought how proud I was of my daughter, of how far she had come.

I am sure that all parents will understand how I felt.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 15 September 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - winds of change blurred lines in the sand

At present, I am trying to revise and finalise the paper I delivered in Armidale in July on New England’s Aboriginal languages.

One of my problems in so doing is that modern Australians have been trained to think in discrete units. We see boundaries, for example, as firm lines on a map, languages as single entities – English, French and so on. We recognise the presence of dialects, but we see these as part of a bigger whole.

Aboriginal New England was not like that. Languages shaded into each other, while boundaries could shift and overlap depending on the nature of relationships.

I hadn’t realised how much my own thinking had been affected by current approaches until I came to try to understand the distribution of Aboriginal languages across New England. I had to consciously challenge my own thinking, to try to think of land and relationships to land from an Aboriginal perspective.

The interesting thing about our tendency to think of things in discrete sharply defined units is that it’s actually quite new.

In medieval Europe, for example, power was personal, cascading down from the pope through church lords, kings and princes to a variety of lower level feudal relationships.

In this world, political, administrative and territorial boundaries shifted all the time like an ever changing patchwork quilt. Boundaries were often shaded, shared and could overlap.

While boundaries have always existed in one form or another, the emergence of the idea of boundaries as fixed lines on maps was progressive and directly associated with the rise of what we now think of as the nation state. Boundaries were there to delineate national territory, to help enforce central control.

One side effect of this was the way in which language came to be associated with political boundaries. Germany equals Germans who speak German. During the age of Empire, fixed boundary lines spread across the global map.

By the time I went to school, all this was well entrenched in thinking. It seemed the natural order. This meant that I struggled a little in trying to understand European history at school.

How did I make sense of a world in which the Holy Roman Empire, for example, was made up of some 300 territorial entities linked in a whole series of relationships?

One of the things that’s interesting at the present time in looking at Europe is that many of the older relationships from that past, less defined world, have been coming back.

Languages that had been in decline are being rediscovered. The very nature of the nation state is under challenge, squeezed to some degree between a rising sense of localism whether based on ethnicity, language or geography and the larger sense of European identity expressed through the European Union.

I hadn’t realised how complicated all this had become until I had cause to look at modern Spain. There you have a variety of types of territorial units where the desire for local autonomy or even independence jostles uncomfortably with the sense of Spanish identity.

You can map Spain in various ways – territorial units, ethnic groups, language. The result is a mosaic of overlapping entities on which the fixed if changing lines of administrative and political entities sit quite uncomfortably.

Aboriginal Australia is no different.

The desire of modern Australia including law and politics that things be measurable, that ownership be proved, sits quite uncomfortably with the actual realities of traditional Aboriginal life.

As happened in Europe with the growing dominance of hard line, fixed boundaries, those affected try to adjust to fit the new reality. New entities sometimes described as Tindale tribes emerge.

Tindale tribes are named after the anthropologist Norman Tindale who attempted to map Aboriginal tribes on the assumptions that such entities existed based on common language and occupying defined and mutually exclusive territories.

The problem is that there really were no such entities in the rigid and mutually exclusive way defined by Tindale. However, legislative and administrative requirements have in fact forced Aboriginal people to behave as though there were.

I do not have an answer to this type of problem.

It is extremely hard to define more flexible, boundary free approaches in areas such as Native Title when the administering system depends upon the existence of defined boundaries that can, in some way, be proved in a court of law.

Still, I would like to think that more flexible approaches could be developed.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 8 September 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - time to repeat the new state question

I generally avoid commenting on current events in this column, but this time I am going to break that rule.

Since the election, all sorts of emails have been flying around Northern New South Wales discussing just what the country independents might do. I will talk about these in a moment. But first, I want to make a few general comments about the position that the three country independents finds themselves in.

New England has its own constitutional tradition, one that Mr Windsor most certainly represents.

Part of that tradition is effective representation by the MP for his or her electorate. Country voters expect things from their MPs in a way that city folk do not. They are ours regardless of party, and we expect them to remember that.

Part of the tradition, too, is that once elected, MPs become members of parliament and are expected observe the traditions and values of parliament.

This may have been much tarnished by party politics, but it remains true. Parliament is our first protection against oppression by the executive, whether that oppression is expressed via the divine right of kings or the modern equivalent, the “national interest” as defined by the ruling party.

Let me illustrate by a past example.

In 1961, the Menzies Government had a majority of one. Implementing the Government’s two airline policy, the then Minister for Civil Aviation told East-West Airlines that they must merge with Ansett. When the airline stated this, the Minister denied it.

New England member David Drummond knew that the airline’s story was true. What was he to do? If he denounced the minister, he risked bringing the Government down.

White and shaking, he rose in the house to denounce the minister. As he spoke, the empty house filled. With his known reputation for honesty, no-one doubted his word. The government survived, but the attempt to force the merger was destroyed.

Drummond was acting partly in the interests of his electorate. More, though, he was acting in the interests of parliament, in the right of parliament to have honesty from executive government.

Everything I have seen suggests that Mr Windsor is acting in the same way. He has articulated a set of principles and is attempting to comply with them regardless of immediate partisan positions. The electorate’s belief that he would do this was a key reason for his large majority.

Now everybody wants something from him. If he sides with Labor one set of electors will be upset, another if he sides with the Coalition. Both groups will be upset if he cannot deliver tangible benefits for the electorate.

In a sense, I am no different. I, too, want things from Mr Windsor and his colleagues, although they are a little different from the various wish-lists that have appeared in other places.

Even including the population growth along the coast, the broader New England has been in structural decline for many decades. No one has addressed this.

Taking this into account and chatting among the growing number of new state supporters across New England, we would like Mr Windsor and his colleagues to do three things.

First, we would like him to support the holding of a new constitutional convention to look at the distribution of state and commonwealth powers, as well as ways of facilitating subdivision within the existing Federation. Regardless of individual views, there appears to be general agreement that the current system no longer works.

Secondly, we would like him to support the holding of another new state plebiscite within Northern New South Wales. We new staters want this. However, there is another issue that extends beyond the fight for self-government.

Regardless of individual views on statehood, there can be no doubt that the very existence of the New England New State Movement forced governments to consider broader New England needs in a way that has not happened since the Movement collapsed after 1967. We need this pressure again.

Finally, we would like both Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott to apply a key test to any specific initiatives that might be considered:

Will the proposal have any real longer term impact on New England development, or is it just a band-aid? We have seen too many of the second, too few of the first.

In asking this question, we would also like both MPs consider broader New England needs.

There are many shared problems across the North that would benefit from being addressed in an integrated way, instead of the fragmented and itsy approach that has applied.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 1 September 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - blank screens, spam and Captain Thunderbolt

Those of you who write on a regular basis will know what it’s like to have a blank screen day, one of those days when the words just won’t flow. To add to my woes, I have been suffering from a spam attack.

I woke up this morning with the need to write this column looming over me, and then had to spend three quarters of an hour going through deleting spam comments.

I am not quite sure why certain Chinese sex sites have decided that my blogs are a suitable place to lodge comments with links, but they have. The same applies to various purveyors of get rich quick schemes.

I don’t actually mind a bit of shameless self-promotion, so long as the promotion is in some ways linked to the original story. However, the link between various Asian beauties all described in Chinese and the question of whether or not Australia is a Christian country is, at best, uncertain!

My blog stats allow me to monitor the most popular posts on my various blogs.

Over the last month, by far the most popular post on my personal blog has been a post I wrote back in November 2008, Sunday Essay – the importance of quiet time in a crowded world, followed by a post from February 2008, Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940.

The two most popular posts on my New England blog in the same period were again older posts, Margaret Olley's New England connection and The Poetry of Judith Wright - Bora Ring.

I mention this because the spammers appear to be reasonably good at targeting some of the more popular posts, leading to the type of silly result that I referred to earlier.

The question of what people like to read always interests me, as it does most writers. After all, we all want to be read!

I write for two quite different audiences.

The first is that small group of regular readers, whether of this column or the blogs. I know many of this group because of comments or other feedback. Here I just try to be interesting, although my tendency to ride-off after my own hobby-horses sometimes detracts.

The second audience is that which comes to my writing through search engines. This is far larger, over 80 per cent of blog traffic.

People use all sorts of search terms to find the sites. Most come in, scan and then leave. They appear in the stats as one page view, 0 seconds.

I used to get a bit of a complex about this. Surely my writing was good enough to hold them for just a second?

The reality is that people coming in through search are looking for specific things. They can tell almost instantly whether or not the post in question has anything for them.

Far more satisfying are that very small number who stay and look.

Monday this week, for example, I had a visitor from Sydney who came in searching on Kempsey New England. That visitor stayed for almost fifteen minutes, with fifteen different page views.

Most satisfying of all are those who provide a personal response to stories.

A story I wrote on the search for Captain Thunderbolt drew a comment from David Donaldson. Now I had no idea who David was. I had to look him up.

It turns out that David, the first Director of the Sydney Film Festival, was a personal friend of director Cecil Holmes and had been driving the search for the lost film. In turn, this led me into further research and writing.

I have no idea whether or not a copy of the full 35m film can be found. I would like to think so, although I don’t feel confident. However, I had a lot of fun going through stills, looking at the shorts, identifying people and locations.

I never know with this type of thing just where I might end up.

To find a film still showing Aunt Kay (Kathleen Vickers nee Drummond) and Mrs Roy Blake (wife of the Express editor) that I could match with a photo of extras from the family collection is obviously satisfying.

Just as satisfying is the feeling that I can now put the movie into a better context.

Well, I seem to have come some distance from the issue of spam. Still, I now have a full screen. Time to finish this meander!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 25 August 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - Drummond's uphill election battle

Drummond may have gained Progressive Party pre-selection, but he still faced a hard battle to gain election for Northern Tablelands.

Under the new electoral system, three members were to be elected. Drummond considered, accurately, that the Labor vote would be disciplined and that their number one candidate, Australian Workers' Union organiser Alfred McClelland, would certainly be elected first. He also considered, again accurately, that Colonel M.F. Bruxner, the Progressives' star candidate, would be elected next. This left Drummond contending for third place against a galaxy of candidates, including two sitting members, F.J. Thomas and H.W. Lane.

If that were not difficult enough, each Progressive candidate had to organise his own campaign committee and pay for his own personal expenses including publicity, printing, advertising and travel. This was no problem for the wealthy and popular Bruxner, but it was quite another matter for the still poor and struggling Drummond.

During the campaign, a local stock inspector described the Drummond campaign organisation as 'one newspaper and a handful of cockies'. They may only have been 'a handful of cockies', but their loyalty and work were vital.

The support given by Drummond's old friends from Mt. Russell, the Coshs, was particularly important. Supported by brother Arthur, Leonard Cosh appointed himself Drummond's advance agent and political secretary. Their uncle, Stephen Cosh, provided transport.

Stephen Cosh had recently lost his wife. He offered to drive Drummond around the electorate free of charge 'except for petrol and a tyre or two', subject to the condition that he would not stay in hotels because of his nervous condition.

This offer was a Godsend to Drummond, who had a store of inexhaustible energy and a powerful voice, but little money.

Their normal practice was to move from meeting to meeting, up to ten in a single day. Drummond would usually speak in the open air, then adjourn to a room with his local committee to sign scrutineer and other forms and lay out the plan of organisation. After the meetings were finished, he and Stephen would retire, often as late as 1 am, to a quiet place in the countryside to spend the night.

They had always to be ready for the unexpected. Arriving in Ashford one night, they found the whole village in darkness, for the circus was in town and the whole countryside was at it. With no chance of coming back, Drummond asked the manager if he could speak at half-time. The manager responded dubiously, “that if I could stand it he supposed he could.”

At interval, Drummond bounded into the ring with a small wooden box. "Ladies and Gentlemen”, he said. “My name is David Drummond Progressive Candidate at the forthcoming State Election. Take a good look at me and make up your mind what you think of me. Vote Drummond No. 1". He then grabbed the box and made a fast exit before the bottles etc. began to fly!

Drummond’s political message was simple. His theme was always 'Decentralization, Development and Decent Government'. He usually finished by saying that “'Parties, Platforms and Policies' existed for only one reason, 'the good government of the people.' When they ceased 'to serve this end they should cease.'”

The Northern press with its new state emphasis played an important role in the Progressive's campaign. Progressive candidates such as Drummond were generally already separatists, and could therefore both identify with and be identified with the Thompson led newspaper campaign for statehood for the North.

Press support was particularly important for the lesser known Drummond.

Drummond's old friend, Ernest Sommerlad, supported him strongly through his paper the Glen Innes Examiner. In addition, Sommerlad persuaded the supporters of F.J. Thomas, the sitting member for Gough (Inverell and Glen Innes), to exchange preferences with Drummond.

This preference deal proved critical, for on 20 March 1920, Thomas’s preferences put Drummond into Parliament.

The result was a surprise to many. As The Land put it some years later:

“Mr Drummond was a young farmer of Inverell. He had ideas, and had been active in the Farmers and Settlers' Association. No one knew much about him, but that was of no consequence. He proceeded to tell them. There were no widely signed requisitions for him to contest Northern Tablelands. They were not required. He had made up his mind. He informed the electors he knew about politics, and would be able to run the country as it ought to be run. At first he was not taken seriously, but he was quite confident the people would elect him to Parliament, and they did.”

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 11 August 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - memories of political battles past

My last column began one Sunday in 1919 when twenty-nine year old Inverell share farmer David Drummond was asked to stand for the newly formed Progressive Party in the multi-member Northern Tablelands, Legislative Assembly seat.

Drummond agreed to stand and then threw himself into organising for the new party. Early in 1920, the Party’s electorate council met in Glen Innes to consider the eight nominations that had been received. Party rules dictated that any member in good standing could run, but it was clear that only two candidates could be successful.

There was immediate pressure on Drummond to withdraw. He refused, and the candidates were packed off to the Municipal Council Chambers to decide among themselves who should withdraw.

Just before lunch it was proposed that the candidates should have a ballot among themselves to select the three or four most likely to succeed. Drummond rejected this.

Immediately after lunch the candidates, with Drummond dissenting, asked the Electorate Council to indicate which four were most likely to succeed. The Chairman, Colonel H.F. White, refused on the grounds that 'it would be really pre-election selection which they had come into existence as a Party to destroy'. The candidates returned to the Council Chambers.

The pressure was intense. 'We are getting nowhere', one candidate said angrily, 'Drummond is a beggar to argue'. As a number of candidates needed to catch the 5 pm southbound 'Glen Innes Mail', the other candidates agreed that they should hold a ballot among themselves to select the most likely four, but that the result should not bind Drummond. Drummond, 'heartily sick of playing a lone hand all-day', agreed, as did Council Chairman White. One candidate, Fleming, withdrew, leaving seven candidates in the ballot.

Drummond came fifth. Catching the south-bound 'Glen Innes Mail' that night for Uralla where Pearl and the children were staying at nearby Arding, Drummond realized that publication of the ballot result must damage his changes. He therefore decided to return to Inverell where the FSA District Council was meeting the next day to get its endorsement for his action. That decision changed his life, for waiting on the Uralla platform next morning he

.. met a farmer who casually remarked "All the other candidates are going down to meet Central Council tomorrow. I suppose you will be going". In a flash I replied just as casually "Yes I will be going" though it was the first I knew of it.

In many ways this deliberate attempt to exclude Drummond from the field is not surprising.

He almost certainly did not appear a good candidate to party officials. He was young, very deaf (and adequate hearing aids were still some years off); relatively unknown outside his own district and a non-smoker and non-drinker lacking in easy social graces. Equally, his stubbornness at Glen Innes had not endeared him to the other candidates or their supporters.

This stubbornness now came to his aid. He calculated that he just had time to travel to Inverell as planned: north by train to Glen Innes then sixty-eight kilometres across country, get a letter from his District Council stating that they still regarded him as a properly endorsed candidate, then get back to Glen Innes to catch the 5 pm south-bound train.

Next morning Drummond presented himself at the FSA's Sydney headquarters where the Party's Central Council was to meet. The Party's General Secretary (J.J. Price, also General Secretary of the FSA) tried very hard to convince Drummond that he should withdraw. Drummond refused, produced the Inverell District Council letter, and was asked to wait. From where he was sitting, he faced the lift.

At that moment one of the chosen 4 at the GI meeting stepped from the lift. I have often heard the expression "So & So was so surprised he literally tripped over his own feet". This was the only occasion on which I have ever seen it. I had been deliberately barred ... from information that the Central C'ncl would interview candidates that morning and here I was calmly sitting outside the Council room when I was supposed to be 400 miles away in the peaceful countryside.

While waiting his turn to speak to the Council, Drummond decided on his approach. He would 'pull no punches' and therefore delivered a vigorous speech finishing with a final shot that reflected both the divisions in the countryside and Drummond's own position as a small farmer:

You claim to be a Farmer's Party yet every attempt has been made to prevent the one bona-fide farmer from being endorsed as a candidate. At present your team consists of two Graziers, a store keeper & a money lender. If you think with this team you are going to beat the Labor Party which has one if not two genuine Farmers in its team, then I believe you will find yourself badly mistaken.

The appeal was successful. Next day it was announced that Drummond had been endorsed as one of the Progressive Party candidates.

In my next column I will tell the story of that first election campaign.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 4 August 2010. 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

Belshaw's World - 1919: an election campaign begins

With the Federal election campaign now underway, my mind was thrown back to an earlier campaign. This is the story of that campaign.

One Sunday in 1919, twenty-nine year old share farmer David Drummond delivered the sermon at the church on a property near Inverell. Inverell stock and station agent Ray Doolin was in the congregation.

“We were looking for new candidates (for the Progressive Party), young men for preference”, Doolin later recalled. "Next day I got a few together … and went out to the farm. Drummond was working on shares ... He was very surprised and said he would give us an answer after he discussed it with Farmers and Settlers members and his friend Arthur Cosh.”

A few days later Drummond said he would stand.

The new party may have had a name, but they certainly had no political organisation. Drummond agreed to take on the role of electorate organiser for the newly created three member Northern Tablelands seat, subject to two conditions.

First, he later wrote, “that my acceptance would not invalidate my right to be a candidate. When I had received their assurance that I would still be eligible to contest at the elections, my next condition was that I would accept no payment for my services apart from out of pocket expenses.”

Drummond threw himself into the organising campaign. During the first six weeks, he covered all the Tablelands except for Tenterfield, where another candidate (Michael Bruxner) was well organised.

Drummond’s efforts met with considerable success except in Armidale, where ill-health (he had badly overtired himself) led to the failure of the first organising attempt. He returned to Armidale on Saturday 24 January 1920, and this time successfully formed a branch. He also met R.N. Hickson, a local architect and former New South Wales cricketer, who was to be his electoral secretary and a key supporter for forty years.

Drummond's speech at the second Armidale meeting was typical of his message.

The National Party, Drummond told his Armidale audience, 'was controlled purely by vested city interests and the Labor Party by the industrial interests of Sydney.' Since Parliament was controlled by city interests supported by the city press, the country had been neglected. Further, the pre-selection systems used by those city parties had degraded government and politics. The only solution was a party that represented country interests, that would provide cross country railways and ports, and stop the drift to the city. Drummond summarised the Party's policy as 'decentralization, development and decent government.'

With the organising campaign well under way, the Progressive's Electorate Council met at Glen Innes early in the year to consider candidates.

In addition to Drummond, seven nominations had been received from the branches: M.F. Bruxner (grazier and stock and station agent of Tenterfield); J.S. Crapp (grazier of Uralla); F.B. Fleming (grazier of Moree); P.R. Little (grazier and storekeeper of Bundarra); G.B. Ring (financial agent of Inverell); George Codrington (journalist of Inverell); and A. Piggot (orchardist and farmer of Inverell).

The meeting was to be a very difficult one for Drummond.

The Progressives, whose slogan was 'No pre-selection or pledge', were strongly opposed to any form of pre-selection of candidates. Any Party member in good standing was entitled to run.

That was fine, but only two candidates could hope to be successful in the three member electorate (Labor was assured of the third seat), while there were also financial problems associated with large numbers of candidates.

An immediate move was made to reduce the number of candidates by excluding Drummond. “It was apparent from the outset”, he later recalled, “that the other candidates ... with perhaps two exceptions ... [felt] that I had had a flying start and ... must be excluded.”

It was to avoid just this possibility that Drummond had gained the assurances from the president and secretary of the Council that his organising work would not invalidate his candidature, and he refused to budge.

The Council then packed the candidates off to the Municipal Council Chambers to debate who should withdraw. Just before lunch it was proposed that the candidates should have a ballot among themselves to select the three or four most likely to succeed. Drummond rejected this: he politely told the group that he had been invited to run, was correctly nominated, and until his Committee asked him to withdraw 'there was nothing doing'.

I will continue this story in my next column.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 28 July 2010. 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