History Revisited - just a bit of bull

One of the little known facts about Armidale is its role as national headquarters of a remarkable number of beef breed societies. I haven’t counted them all, but there are over twenty. I didn’t know that there were that many beef breeds!

This fact got me wondering about the history of cattle in Australia.

I found that the first cattle to arrive in Australia came on the first fleet, picked up at the Cape of Good Hope on the way through. There was old Gorgon the bull, four or five cows and a calf. They were almost certainly of Africander breed, with probably at least one balck Vaderlander.

They quickly strayed after a convict who was meant to be watching them fell asleep. Livestock were valuable. Five hundred men were mobilized to search for the cattle, but to no avail. There were no more known cattle in the colony until another ship arrived three years later, again from the Cape, with eleven black Vaderlanders aboard.

In 1795, a convict was told by an Aborigine about a herd of cattle to the west of Sydney. He went to investigate, and found the escaped herd near modern Camden. It had grown to sixty one, a remarkable rate of increase for such a small herd in just seven years.

In the still small settlement, these cattle were a valuable resource. Governor Hunter rode to see them. He named the area Cowpastures, made it a reserve for the wild cattle and ordered a guard house built to stop poachers. Numbers grew steadily.

Sydney was full of rogues intent on enriching themselves. Governor King laid personal claim to a large number of the wild herd on the basis that Governor Phillip had owned part of the original herd and had given them to him. The wild cattle were difficult to catch. King therefore promptly swapped the claimed cattle for 200 tame Zebu and black cattle from the Government herd!

In a colony of rogues, John Macarthur was the rogue of rogues. On his first exile in England, Macarthur went to see Minister Camden and persuaded the minister to give him a very large land grant around Mount Taurus.

This was blatant chicanery. Lord Camden had no idea that Mount Taurus was in the centre of the cattle reserve, that he was giving Macarthur not just a land grant, but control of the wild herd itself. Governors might object, but the grant stuck.

Macarthur himself was more interested in sheep than cattle. His efforts here laid the base for another great New England industry.

Some of the best cattle were domesticated, others were shot for meat. The herd vanished. However, its rugged genes became widely spread throughout the colony’s rapidly growing cattle numbers.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 December 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

This will be the last History Revisited column posted here. I am switching posting to my New England history blog since the columns are exclusively history. 

History Revisited - performing arts shows town's dramatic side

The first “big” play that I ever intended was an Armidale Theatre Club production in the old Parish Hall. I was very young and it was quite frightening!

Why? It was a murder mystery about a serial killer. He had a desk that included a secret drawer in which was to be found a noose. He used this to strangle women.

To get to the drawer, he had to carry out a special movement, a sort of a hand wriggle. Now there I was in the dark of the Parish Hall, watching an aunt standing with her back to the murderer while he got out the noose. See why it was frightening?

During the week, Judith Ross Smith sent me her book Never Whistle in the Dressing room: a history of the Armidale Playhouse 1953-2003 (Kardoorair Press 2005). From that book, I know that the play was probably The Ladykiller, one of the fist productions of the Armidale Theatre Club.

That actually makes me feel very old!

Armidale and the surrounding area has a quite remarkable theatre tradition. At the time my girls were born there, we had a choice of fifty different productions within one hour’s drive of our home. That’s astonishing.

Armidale shares part of its story with the broader New England, the way in which smaller communities created their own fun. But there were also special features in Armidale associated with its role as an education centre for the broader New England and well beyond.

Many of those features are entwined in my own mind, either directly or through my knowledge of our area’s shared history.

In December 1923, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald announced that The Armidale School Dramatic Society would present the Greek play, "Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus" in the original Greek; the Quarrel Scene from Corneille's "Le Cid;' and "Gaspard de Coligny," by W. Wentworth Shields (an old boy)at the King's Hall. You could buy tickets at Paling's.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that an Armidale theatre group presented a play by an Armidale author to a Sydney audience. That’s interesting, but it was the reference to the original Greek that caught my eye.

Digging into the story a little, I found that the senior boys in the TAS Greek class, TAS then taught ancient Greek as well as Latin, wanted to make TAS and Armidale the Australian centre for studies concerned with classical Greek!

There is something wonderfully eccentric about this notion, but then theatre in Armidale has always seemed a little larger than life.

Today Armidale has many production venues. The photo shows the inside of the Hoskins Centre. That wasn’t always the case.

Initially, plays were presented in one of Armidale’s little halls or in the Town Hall. The opening of the Teacher’s College added a new venue. Then in March 1969, the Armidale Theatre Club opened the Armidale Playhouse as Armidale’s first dedicated venue. But that’s a story for another column.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 December 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History Revisited - Armidale's retail changes

One of the significant changes in the Armidale streetscape over the last sixty years has been the decline in the corner store. They are still there, but their numbers have diminished.

Even sixty years ago, many Armidale households did not have a car. Bus services did exist, but they were infrequent. Some products such as milk, bread or ice were delivered on regular rounds. By then, you could order groceries for home delivery by phone, although store staff still visited to take orders at the back door from regular customers. But for many, a walk to the nearest corner store was still the normal way to buy day to day items.

You can only carry so much in a string bag. For that reason, the stores were quite widely spread, with the greatest concentration in the old city south of the creek.

Then as today, kids had vivid memories of the nearest stores for there you bought lollies or snacks. .You may be surprised at just how often those memories feature at reunions, on Facebook pages or in email exchanges among the tens of thousands of people now living elsewhere whose memory of Armidale was formed in childhood and at school.

In our case, it was Mrs Beatty’s store, now Knights. Midway between our parents and grandparents houses, we visited often.

I remember being sent there with a note from my mother. In return, I received a brown paper package to bring home. It would be years before I worked out that the package contained a sanitary napkin!

The transformation that we would reshape Armidale shopping was already well underway.

While there is debate about the exact genesis of the concept, the idea of the supermarket first emerged in North America with the spread of the automobile.

The concept was a simple one. Instead of customers knowing what they wanted and then ordering from a shop assistant who packed items individually, replace this with a more open store where customers chose and then carried the item to the check-out. This allowed greater variety and was cheaper.

It took some time for the concept to reach Armidale.

In the period after the Second World War, three Armidale businesses (Hanna’s, Richardson’s and Burgess’s) progressively introduced the concept. As they did, the centre of retail gravity shifted.

Initially, the changes were locally driven. Then came the chains.

In Armidale, there were two of what were then called variety stores, Coles and Penneys. They were great for kids with limited budgets looking for cheap Christmas presents for family. They also had toys!

Coles transformed. Expanding rapidly, it bought Penneys among others.

In 1960, G J Coles opened its first Australian supermarket. I haven’t checked my facts here, but my recollection is that Coles first reached Armidale when they took over Richardson’s grocery business. A new era had begun.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 December 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History Revisited - ship sales marked the end of an era

On 31 March 1954, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the North Coast Steam Navigation Company had called for tenders for the sale of its nine ships. This announcement marked the end of a now largely forgotten era.

The Company had begun in 1857 as the Grafton Steam Navigation Company primarily to get the produce of the coast and tablelands more effectively to Sydney. Over time, it grew into a significant coastal shipping operation. Now squeezed by rising costs, the company had decided to go into voluntary liquidation.

Before the construction of the Great Northern Railway, people living in Armidale and surrounding districts had a choice in bringing goods in or sending produce out. You could send them overland to the river port at Morpeth on the Hunter or, alternatively, down one of the precipitous tracks over the escarpment to one of the North Coast river ports.

The choice was made on grounds of cost and convenience. From Armidale north, the focus was west-east to the coast. At Tenterfield just prior to the construction of the railway, several hundred people were employed carting goods between the Tablelands and the Northern River ports.

Even after the construction of the railway, the coastal trade continued. As late as the 1930s, some North Coast students at the Armidale Teachers College found it easier to go to Sydney by rail and then complete the journey by steamer because of the bad condition of the roads to the coast. One student remembered being lowered in a wicker ware basket from the steamer onto the long wooden pier at Woolgoolga that used to stretch from the beach into the open sea.

The Northern seas could be treacherous. Wrecks were common.

The 2005 ton twin screw steamer Wollongbar was the pride of the North Coast fleet. It had accommodation for 235 first-class passengers, 40 second-class and extensive general cargo.

On 14 May 1921 the ship was alongside the jetty at Byron Bay when a storm broke out. Attempts to move the vessel into the Bay failed. It was driven ashore and wrecked. Its replacement, the Wollongbar II, was lost of Crescent Heads in 1943.

The Second World War came far closer to Armidale than many realise. Japanese submarines operated along the Northern coast, torpedoing ships and laying mines. The mini-sub attack in Sydney Harbour is well remembered because of the panic it caused. Fewer people remember the sea war of the New England coast.

During the War, both the Great Northern Railway and the New England highway were vital transport links. Troop trains and war supplies passed through the Armidale railway station on Brisbane bound trains.

The railway is gone now, of course. Armidale itself would have lost its rail connection without the work of our local activists.

The mournful sound of the whistle of the Brisbane Mail as it travelled through Armidale at 3am is a fading memory. The railway station at Wallangarra with its dual Queensland and NSW stations with their very different architectures stands as a mute memory of that past.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 28 November 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - memories of past lives

In Armidale on my last trip, I watched my column being laid out. It took my mind back, a long way back!

I wonder how many University of New England students, or for that matter other Armidale residents, would remember Neucleus?

Not ring a bell?

Founded in 1947, Neucleus was the University of New England student newspaper. The Neuc in the name stood for the New England University College.

I joined the Neucleus team as a relatively young eighteen year old and, by happenstance, ended up as business manager. A somewhat grandiose title for someone whose primary role was to sell advertising!

I wasn’t very good at it, but actually it wasn’t hard. The Armidale businesses I called in to see already advertised, knew students, and had their material set up. Later, I became co-editor with Winton Bates, the only Neucleus editor whose thundering words feature in Mathew Jordon’s history of the University.

Apart from the excitement of producing a newspaper, Neucleus had one supreme advantage. It had its own dedicated building, the sub-lodge. Fancy having your site on campus to hold parties free of interference!

My attention attracted by the modern Express office, I went searching for material on the history of Neucleus. In doing so, I found a 1960 Australian Archives photo showing then editor Ross Pengelley and Malayan student Khoo Soo-Hay doing the layout of the next Neucleus edition in the printing room of the Armidale Express.

That interested me for several reasons.

One was the physical production process. I cannot remember all details as to how we produced the paper. I do remember that we had to type material out and then physically lay it out on the page. We would fiddle around to get the best fit and the past it to the page. What a change!

The other thing was Khoo Soo-Hay’s presence. In 1960 the White Australia Policy was still formally in place. Yet by then, UNE had a substantial overseas student body, relatively greater than today, who became involved in every aspect of University life. The Overseas Student’s Association was one of the largest student societies on campus, including a number of Australian students as associate members.

These students were brought to Armidale by the Colombo Plan. Born out of a meeting of Commonwealth foreign ministers held at Colombo in 1950, the Plan aimed to encouraging development in our region. Tens of thousands of Asian students were funded to study in this country, many in Armidale.

Their presence was very visible in the smaller city of that time. And how did Armidale respond? Very well measured by student memories. The two things most often mentioned are hospitality and the cold!

The links endure to this day. Now a noted poet, Khoo Soo-Hay returned to Armidale in 2006 for Wright College’s 50^th anniversary celebrations. Photographs show him exploring the campus he once knew so well.

Neucleus is long gone, the parties we held in the sub-lodge a distant memory. Yet there is certain symmetry in that the sub-lodge is now the office of the International Student’s Association.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 14 November 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - Armidale's landscape reveals its history

I thoroughly enjoyed presenting last week to the Armidale North Rotary Club.

My thanks to Mick Duncan for arranging the talk and to the Club for allowing non-Rotarians who had heard about the talk to attend. I really appreciated that.

I was asked why there were in fact so few Armidale blue brick homes. This is the quintessential Armidale building material, yet most of the older houses are weatherboard.

The present built landscape of Armidale reflects every stage in the city’s history.

If you look at an Armidale street map, you will see a central core of rectangular blocks separated by streets running north-south and east west. This is the old measured Armidale.

The 556 people who lived in Armidale in 1851 straggled. Alcohol flowed, horse races were held in the dusty main street, stringybark huts dotted the landscape. It was a rough and ready male dominated place.

Order was imposed on Armidale over the second half of the nineteenth century. In social terms, the male oriented frontier society was replaced by families who (and especially the women) demanded an ordered society. In spatial terms, the previous straggle was replaced by the neat grids we know today.

The physical landscape of Armidale is all about money.

Armidale’s population grew from 556 in 1851 to 4,249 at the 1901 census. This growth created wealth.

The Armidale mercantile and professional families often built in brick because they could afford too. The growing number of ordinary workers, the railway families and trades people, built smaller cottages in cheaper weatherboard. These cottages were built on the then outskirts of the city and especially in West Armidale towards the Railway Station.

The twentieth century political landscape of Armidale reflected these patterns. Armidale Town Hall voted Country Party, whereas West Armidale was Labor Party territory.

By the 1950s, the city’s growth had over-spilled the old boundaries. Newer houses were built in brick. Urban in-fill had started. Flats had begun to appear.

In all this, one of the most remarkable changes has been in colour. Armidale’s colours have changed.

Today, everybody remarks about the heritage colours, about the city’s greenery. I love them. They are simply wonderful. Few realise how recent they are.

Flying into Armidale in the 1950s or 1960s, three colours dominated; white, red and green. White because the predominantly weatherboard houses were generally painted white. Red and green because they were the standard galvanized iron roof colours.

Armidale always had parks and trees. But many of the trees we so love date from the Armidale Beautification Committee campaigns that began in the 1950s.

And the heritage colours? They are due to new paint types that simply weren’t available before.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 7 November 2012. The photo is by Gordon Smith. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - wine industry's vintage

I mention this now because of Armidale’s recent focus on food and wine, including the forthcoming Under the Elms event at UNE. Many of we expats wish we could be there!

Even fifty years earlier, the Uralla pub story would have made no sense, for the Tablelands still grew and sold its own wine. By the time of the story, that had gone. I thought, therefore, that I should share with you the story of the rise and fall of the Tablelands’ wine industry.

In 1830, George and Margaret Wyndham purchased "Annandale" in the Hunter Valley, renaming the property "Dalwood" and building Dalwood House as a home.

In 1828 George had planted his first grapes using 600 cuttings purchased from James Busby. Following the purchase he immediately made the first commercial planting of shiraz at "Dalwood".

Produced in 1831, the first "Dalwood" vintage was not a great success; the "extremely hot conditions promised to make good vinegar." Still, in that same year Wyndham brought the 100,000 acre property "Bukkulla" near Inverell on the edge of the Northern Tablelands. There established another vineyard. Wine growing now expanded rapidly. By 1860, Wyndham's total holdings including “Bukkulla” were producing 11,000 gallons of wine per annum.

George Wyndham was not the only wine producer. Other settlers also planted vineyards and made their own wine.

The wealthier settlers were used to drinking wine, so it made sense to plant their own grapes. The surplus could also be sold locally through the little local hotels that dotted the stage coach routes.

As late as 1905, wine production from the Inverell area of New England was 227,000 litres from seven or eight larger vineyards and a number of smaller vineyards. Nor was this wine bad.

Between 1870 and 1920, wines from the area won many awards at wine shows in Sydney, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, Chicago and France. A prominent English wine judge of the time wrote of the “Bukkulla” wines, “(They) have a character and quality above the average of most wine-producing countries. The lowest quality is better than a large proportion of the ordinary wines of Europe, while the best would not suffer in comparison to the finest known growths”.

And then all this vanished. Why? Part of the answer lies in that dreaded word, beer.

Initially, colonial New Englanders were not big beer drinkers. Among those wanting to imbibe to excess, to get smashed we would now say, brandy was the tipple of choice. The Australian colonies were one of the biggest global markets for French brandy!

Beer did not become readily available until improved brewing techniques allowed consisent quality. Beer did not become readily available until improved transport allowed bulk shipments. The combination made beer the drink of choice among ordinary Australians.

This was not the only factor.

The rise of the temperance movements, the wowsers, also changed things.

Wine drinking diminished; brandy retreated to the medicine cabinet where it became hospital brandy. Only beer survived. The Tableland’s wine industry was one victim of all this social and structural change. Now it is back!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 7 November 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - literature's window to our past

One of the big challenges faced by any historian is to break through the veil created by the present to that far country of the past.

The present determines the questions we ask of the evidence, but it does more than that. It creates an almost irresistible temptation to force the past to fit the past to present ways of interpretation. Yet the past is always with us, influencing us in sometimes unseen ways.

I referred to this in my last column when I suggested that Armidale’s history with its key interlocking threads of grazing and especially wool, government, education and politics influenced current life in ways not seen by those now living in the city.

As it happens, on Monday 5 November I am coming back to Armidale to talk to the Armidale North Rotary Club. My topic is Northern Images: landscape and literature through Northern eyes. In the promo for my talk, I said that would use a mixture of paintings, photos, film, poetry, literature and political symbols to give Club members a small taste of the changing ways in which those living in Northern NSW, the broader new state New England, have seen their world.

Last week saw the annual Maurice Kelly lecture at UNE.

Maurice, a tall, quiet and gentle man always interested in other people, founded (among other things) the Classics Museum at UNE. The annual lecture celebrates that event.

Wife Gwen who died recently was far more peppery. She was also one of Australia’s better known writers whose book The Middle-Aged Maidens,. a satirical study of life in a private girls' school created a real storm in the Armidale dovecots.

Like many writers, Gwen wrote in multiple forms and mined her own life for material.

I still remember the story that appeared in a women’s magazine about her daughter’s blond haired, blue eyed boyfriend Henry. Now the Henry in question was a particular mate of mine, and I think that she captured him to a T. “Hold this Mrs Kelly, and you will get an electric shock.” Hold it she did, and indeed she got an electric shock!

Both Maurice and Gwen were bought to Armidale through UNE, the education stream in Armidale history. Here Gwen joined a number of people connected in some way to UNE who wrote in one way or another about their Armidale experience.

Crime writer Robert Barnard began his writing career based on his experience as a lecturer in the English Department at UNE.

His first novel, Death of an Old Goat, was set in part in Dummondale University, and included the Drummondale School Head.

One later reviewer, put it:

As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of academics who drink their way through the dreary days at Drummondale and as he investigates the bizarre behaviour of some worthy locals, a hilarious, highly satirical portrait of life down under emerges.

The book is actually quite cruel. One of the funniest scenes is a group of local graziers sprung by the police doing a secret Aboriginal inspired rain dance to try to break the drought!

I have run out of space for this column. I guess that I will have to give you more in a later column on writers, painters, film makers and musicians and the way they saw Armidale and the broader New England.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 31 October 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - city founders' grand designs

Armidale’s built environment reflects the different stages in the city’s history. Those stages may now largely invisible in daily life, for the city changed enormously over the second half of the twentieth century, yet their effects linger.

One of Armidale’s most attractive and distinctive features is what I call the old city, that compact part of the city that stretches especially south from Beardy Street up South Hill. This is Victorian Armidale, with its blue brick and iron lacework.

Armidale residents generally take the old city for granted, it just is. Visitors to Armidale are surprised by it, as they are by the schools, for there is nothing quite like it elsewhere in Australia.

That surprise is itself a sign of the social and economic changes that took place in the North and throughout Australia over the second half of the twentieth century. Even fifty years ago, Armidale was widely recognized in Australia and beyond as the Athens of the North, the prospective capital in waiting of our own Northern state.

Four interconnected things built Armidale: grazing and especially wool, government, education and politics.

Wool was important because it was a high value product that supported European settlement beyond the immediate boundaries of settlement, the nineteen counties. Settlement exploded. To manage this, the Government in Sydney appointed Crown Land Commissioners to establish authority beyond the official frontier. One of these, George Macdonald, established his headquarters on the Tablelands and called the place Armidale.

As an aside, in checking a fact for this story, I found no less than four spellings of the Commissioner’s name, all in common usage!

The Commissioner’s action made Armidale an administrative centre. At the 1851 census, Armidale with a population of 556 was the largest Northern town outside the lower Hunter, followed by Port Macquarie on 519 and then Grafton on 319. Grafton would soon outstrip Armidale in population. But ten years later, Armidale was still the largest inland urban centre.

Armidale’s role as a centre of Government brought schools and churches. Both added to the still small town’s importance. Armidale, the city of schools and churches, was born.

Politics was important because it added to the process.

In 1920 the first full New State manifesto, Australia Subdivided, put a key problem facing the North in this way: In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area.”

The political battles that followed saw first a teachers college and then a university college established to meet the needs of the North. These new institutions drew staff and students to the city, adding to the mix. Armidale as we know it now was born.

The world changes and the city has changed with it. Yet the four interconnected themes of wool, government, education and politic still influence the culture and character of the city today. We don’t always see it, but it’s there.

In coming columns, I will explore some of those influences, showing how past and present entwine in a fascinating mix.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 October 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

History revisited - a pressing change

A week back, The Armidale Express Facebook page carried a staff photo from the paper’s earlier days. That caused me to cast my mind back to the paper’s earlier days.

On Friday 12 April 1929, the Sydney Morning Herald reported the formation of a new company, the Armidale Newspaper Company Limited, to purchase two Armidale newspapers, the Armidale Express carried on by P. C. G. Hipgrave and J. B. McKenzie and the Armidale Chronicle carried on by A. Purkiss.

This announcement marked another stage in a change process transforming the Northern press.

At the start of the twentieth century, even small towns had their own independent newspaper to press the interests of town and district. Many had several. Then the development of new and costlier technology with growing competition from the metropolitan dailies began to threaten the financial survival of the country press. Papers started to close or merge, while a number became dailies.

The new country dailies were aggressive. In the North, the Grafton Daily Examiner and Northern Daily Leader combined with the Lismore Northern Star and the Murwillumbah Tweed Daily to form the Associated Northern Dailies to compete for city advertising. In 1931 the Maitland Daily Mercury would join the group.

Competition from the Northern Dailies increased the pressure on the other newspapers still being published on a tri-, bi- or weekly basis. In the New England, the combination of train and truck allowed the Northern Daily Leader to reach towns from Tamworth to the border in time for breakfast.

Mind you, the competition was not all one-sided.

Following a bad train crash, Northern Newspaper’s Ernest Sommerlad wrote with glee to fellow director David Drummond in September 1926 that the Glen Innes Examiner had “got a good one on Tamworth yesterday, in connection with the rail smash.” “Armidale passed the word on that Tamworth were sending a special edition up, to arrive about 7pm”, Sommerlad explained. “I got busy & made a fine display of stuff in the short time available. Then hired a motor-bike and sent 350 copies to Inverell, having rung Knapton to get a dodger out in the meantime. The street was blocked with people waiting for copies & we made a great sale - & a great scoop.”

Despite such successes, the pressure on the smaller papers grew. Then in 1928, a financial adventurer, William John Beckett decide to launch a chain of newspapers around Australia. Armidale was mentioned as one of the key centres in the Beckett proposals.

Realising 'that at all costs Beckett must be prevented from getting a foothold in the North', Sommerlad agreed with Albert Joseph (the founder of the Northern Daily Leader) that the Tamworth Newspaper Company and Northern Newspapers should jointly sponsor the merger of the two papers. In Sommerlad's view, this intervention was necessary 'since the two Armidale proprietors were so mutually jealous there was no possibility of the amalgamation being brought about except by an outsider.' This view was supported by Drummond, now member for Armidale.

Tensions between the parties led the Tamworth Newspaper Company Board to refuse to participate. Northern decided to continue.

On 10 April 1929, The Armidale Newspaper Company Limited was formed with Dr. R.B. Austin (Chairman), E.C. Sommerlad (Managing Director) and Colonel H.F. White as initial directors. W.S. Forsyth, the main Armidale promoter, wrote happily to Sommerlad that he was 'pleased with the entire outlook.'

Drummond and three others were appointed to the Board at the first directors' meeting, and then, on 2 September 1929, the first edition of the merged paper appeared. The twentieth century Express had been born.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 October 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

The column was originally called Belshaw's World, but has now been re-titled by the paper. 

Belshaw's World - flypaper and chip heaters

Each period of New England life has had its own rhythms. Last week, I told a story from New England’s Aboriginal past, the week before I mentioned Masyln Williams’ evocative picture of Tablelands’ life during the 1920s.

Reading Williams reminded me of two things from my own past, things that older Armidale residents will remember that have now largely vanished.

Armidale has always had a problem with flies, both the blowfly and the common housefly. Hiking though the paddocks with the 2^nd Armidale scouts (I still don’t know what happened to 1^st Armidale!), the blowflies used to gather, attracted by the salt in the sweat that soaked our shirts under the packs we carried. Looking forward while walking in file, each scout carried his own crowd of flies hovering around the pack, diving to settle on the sweaty patches exposed as the pack moved.

As an aside, I had assumed that the blowfly was an Australian pest. Apparently not. It appears that the sheep blowfly arrived in Australia from South Africa in the mid to late 1800s, causing a major outbreak of fly strike in many areas in 1897.

The fly position in town was worse. Very few houses then had fly screens, doors and windows were always open in summer, allowing flies to congregate inside. What to do? Well, flypaper was one answer. This was a longish thin strip of paper coated with a sticky substance, sometimes impregnated with poison such as arsenic. This impregnation featured in two famous British murder trials where the accused was alleged to have soaked the fly paper in water to extract the arsenic for later nefarious use.

Hung from the ceiling or from an often begrimed dangling light shade, the flypaper was hardly an attractive sight. For that reason among others, it went out of fashion, despite its sometimes effectiveness in attracting and killing flies.

The second vanished item was far more attractive.

Many Australian places and especially in the country, had no access to gas or electricity. Water for bathing had to be heated on the stove and then carried to the bath or tub. This world was captured in a nostalgic poem by Mary Gilmore, The Saturday Tub. There, standing in a line by the fire, the children take their turn

To stand in tub the size of a churn,
It was, 'where's the flannel?" and, "Mind the soap!"
Slither and slide, and scuffle and grope

Despite Mary Gilmore’s childhood nostalgia, the process was very time consuming. An Australian invention from around the 1880s came to the rescue, one that took advantage of the relative availability of wood. This was the chip heater.

The cylindrical heater included a fire box that was fed with paper, pine cones and chips from the woodheap. Water circulated through the firebox, providing a supply of hot water for bath or shower.

Many older Australians have nostalgic memories of the chip heater drawn from child hood. We had one for a brief period when I was young, and there was an immense thrill in being allowed to light it and then feed the fire! They could be cranky and noisy, but they were also fun.

By the 1960s, the spread of electricity as well as water heated from slow combustion stoves had destroyed the market. The chip heater went the way of fly paper, leaving just memories behind.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 October 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the columns by clicking here for2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's World - Red Kangaroo & the Bundarra mob: an epic tale of warfare in prehistoric New England

The year is about 1720. The place a major bush camp outside what is now Gunnedah. The smoke from the camp fires drifts into the dusk air. Overhead, the stars are beginning to appear. The visiting envoys sit silent, waiting patiently. The warriors have been in council all day, and it is time for decision.

The trouble had begun some months earlier. The powerful Tablelands’ mob from the Bundarra-Kingston area had been raiding for women in Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) speaking lands. They left the strong Nammoy River mob alone, but had struck at the Goonoo Goonoo and Maneela (Manila) River mobs with considerable success, seizing women and killing the warriors who had opposed them. Finally, both groups sent envoys seeking help from the Nammoy to get their young women back. The Nammoy could keep the Bundarra women taken, although if many were taken, perhaps the Nammoy would share.

Lit by the fires, Gambu Ganuuru (Red Kangaroo in Gamilaraay), the Nammoy warrior chief, moved to the centre of the gathering.

The Red Kangaroo was then about forty and had been war chief since the age of nineteen. At over 190cm, he was a tall well built man whose body carried the scars of past battles. Now he summed up. The prize of the Bundarra women was not of great concern, but it was “another thing to have this Bundarra tribe come raiding so close to our territory. We are strong now, and we have to break any strong tribe who is a danger to us. Do you agree with me that we fight the Bundarra warriors to prove whose tribe is the ruling tribe, first and last?”

There were ninety warriors in the war party that now assembled. The Red Kangaroo led the forty strong Nammoy party, while Goonoo Goonoo war chief Ilparra commanded the fifty warriors from Goonoo Goonoo and Maneela, with Maneela war chief Mooti second in command.

There was no chance of a surprise attack, for throughout the one hundred kilometre journey small Bundarra parties gathered on all sides, spying on them and driving away the game they needed for food. Finally, a bigger force than theirs came to give battle on a long granite sand-flat through which ran a wide stony creek.

Ilparra was killed early by a spear through the throat, with Mooti taking command of the combined Goonoo Goonoo/Maneela force. For two hours, neither the combined force nor the Bundarra warriors that opposed them could gain ground. Realising that the Nammoy warriors were getting too far ahead and out of touch with Mooti’s party, the Red Kangaroo ordered his men to turn to take the party fighting Mooti on its flank.

The main Bundarra party that had been fighting the Red Kangaroo called out three times. At this pre-arranged signal, those opposing Mooti ran back to the main Bundarra group. Mooti and his warriors pursued, ignoring Red Kangaroo’s calls for them to join him. In the following fighting, Mooti was killed and his warriors broken into small groups.

The position was now desperate. Red Kangaroo’s party were outnumbered, had thrown nearly all their spears, while the Tablelands’ spears would not fit into the Kamilaroi spear throwers. “Gather and break their spears”, the Red Kangaroo told his party. “We must make it across to that pine scrub where they will be forced to fight hand to hand.”

Using his powerful voice, the Red Kangaroo coordinated the fight against the still larger but more disorganised Bundarra forces. Fighting as individuals or in small groups, the Bundarra warriors finally broke and ran. Kibbi, their great war chief, was killed by the Red Kangaroo’s spear.

Red Kangaroo and his warriors came the main Bundarra camp. Only old men and women were there. “Go tell your warriors to bring their women and children back to this camp”, the Red Kangaroo said. “No warrior who comes back will be harmed.”

Under the peace terms now imposed, the stolen women were returned, while five women each were given to the Goonoo Goonoo and Maneela tribes. Thirty four young women and five young boys and girls were taken by the Red Kangaroo and his warriors for the Nammoy tribe.

I hope that you have enjoyed this tale from New England’s more distant past. If you would like to learn more, Ion Idriess’ Red Chief gives a gripping fictional account, while Michael O’Rouke’s Sung for Generations provides a detailed analysis of the source material for all the Red Kangaroo stories.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 October 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's World - sharing a love of history

Last year I came back to Armidale to deliver a paper on social change in the broader New England over the second half of the twentieth century. While in town I did as I always do, I went book shopping.

As a writer and commentator on New England history and issues, I need access to books and records, many now out of print and hard to find. For that reason, I buy what I can when I can. I also buy for the sheer joy of it, for we have had some wonderful writers.

On this trip, I struck real gold in the form of Maslyn William's His Mother's Country (Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1988). I knew of Williams as an award winning Australian writer and documentary film maker, but had no idea of his New England connection.

Williams was born in England in 1911. After his parents’ death, an uncle sent him out to Australia to work as a jackaroo on a large station near Tenterfield. There he fell in love with Australia. His Mother’s Country explains why. Written in the third person (he calls himself the lad throughout), the book describes Williams’ experiences in 1920s New England, the lives and personalities of numerous individuals he encountered, and the distinctive identity of the landscape that ultimately claimed his loyalty.

It really is a wonderful book. It justly won the FAW Christina Stead Award in 1988 and then in the following year the Douglas Stewart Prize in the State literary awards.

Maslyn is not the only writer who describes childhood or early life in New England. Another is Judith Wright, a third Judith Wallace. Their writing traces the texture of a changing world in Armidale and beyond.

Last weekend, I was back in Armidale for a reunion of the TAS Leaving Certificate class of 1962. Those attending had come from all across Australia, from Hong Kong, Canada and the United States.

As I waited to go to TAS, the sound of bagpipe music from nearby Central Park drifted across the motel balcony where I was sitting. Distracted, I packed away my notes and walked to the park to listen. It was PLC’s 125^th anniversary celebrations, and the Scots College band was playing. I met the Headmistress and explained that my brother and I used to line up with the girls for our bread and jam, This was in the old school before the move to the top of the hill.

Later at TAS, we yarned about our shared history, about the changes that had taken place, about the things that we had done. For most of us, to come from Armidale or to come here for school or university is to leave the place. I have been lucky, for I have been able to come back on visits, then to live here again, and now once more to visit. For all of us, the links remain.

In coming columns, I would like to share with you some of those links through the wonderful history that we have in common: from spies to classical Greek plays; from the very local to the regional and beyond; from fly paper to chip heaters; from food to furniture; from our ancient Pleistocene past to the present.

I hope that you will come with me on the journey. I hope, too, that you will contribute your own stories.

Next week, I will give you a story of warfare beyond the frontier of written history, of a time before Captain Cook. It’s an exciting tale that I think that you will enjoy.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 26 September 2012. It is my first column after a gap. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's World returns to Express in new form

Back in February Belshaw's World, my long running column in the Armidale Express got suddenly and abruptly axed by the new editor. I wasn't alone. In my case, the column was replaced by a new one, the Views of Gen Y.

The wheel turns. That editor is gone, there is a new editor, I am back. It won't be quite the same column. It's in the magazine section and will have a stronger focus on history. It probably won't appear in the public on-line version of the paper. If that's the case, I will repost it here with a week's lag.

I missed the old column, so I am rather glad to be doing it again even if the focus is a little different.

Belshaw’s World – New England’s Blaxland’s Flat girl dies just eight hundred years ago

Some eight hundred years ago a girl died in the area that would be later called New England.

Her family was camping in an area now known as Blaxland’s Flat some 15 miles south west of modern Grafton. This is hilly country with long deep narrow valleys running north-south between sandstone ridges down which rush creeks often turbulent after heavy rain ending in the Orara River. It was also country with a high sacred value to the people of that time.

Six miles to the north are a series of stone arrangements on the western side of Skinner’s Swamp. Nearby are artworks including a three foot long fish like figure and a large goanna. A mile to the north east, we enter rougher country. Here in the many rock shelters we find one of the largest concentrations of Aboriginal art in the Northern River.

While the evidence is still uncertain, all these sites appear to belong to the same period, the centuries surrounding the death of Blaxland’s Flat girl.

We do not know why she died, although there is no evidence of foul play. We do know that she was loved. On her death, her family cut a shroud from the bark of a bloodwood tree and wrapped her in it. They then carried her to what could well have been the family deposition site.

Aboriginal people interred their dead at different ways at different times over the millennia. Sometimes, bodies were placed in trees to allow the flesh to rot for later burial. Sometimes, bodies were cremated and the bones then broken and deposited. At other times, the dead were tied up in sitting positions with their legs bent so that they could leap to the future chase. They were then buried in shallow graves, covered by brush. 

In Blaxland’s Flat girl’s case, they carried her from the camp to a low hung rock shelter set back in a cliff a bit under eight feet from the ground. This height was probably intended to protect the site from predators. There they deposited her body, protected at some point by a sandstone wall.

I say that we know that this was probably a family site, for at least fifteen people were deposited there.

Blaxland’s Flat Girl rested for the next eight hundred years, although family hopes about disturbance proved illusory. It is clear that that the site was visited, probably by one of the large tree goannas found in the area. These tear the flesh with long claws, feeding on the remains. They could certainly have entered the site.

Late in 1963, dingo hunters found the site. This was reported to Isabel McBryde at the University of New England who mounted a carefully planned rescue dig. After eight hundred years, Blaxland’s Flat girl returned to the public gaze. Now after meticulous scientific research, we have a human being to fit into the often dry record revealed by archaeological remains.

Note to readers: This column began in the Armidale Express. Earlier in 2012 it was replaced by a new column called the Views of Gen Y in order to make the paper seem more relevant. Tsk! I am continuing the series because it gives me a chance for a different type of writing. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw’s World – the incivility of modern technology

There is something fundamentally uncivil about modern communications technology. It isolates us while giving us the illusion of connection.

I am writing this sitting in a suburban train carriage. Around me, people are listening to music, phoning, texting, reading emails, watching their small screens.

Last week I looked at my own household. The TV was on. Youngest had isolated herself in her bedroom watching things on her laptop. My wife was watching TV while playing with her handheld device. Eldest was watching TV while looking at her laptop. I sat in silence.

I am a conversation type person. I like to talk and, more importantly, to listen. I am interested in people, curious about the things that happen around me. My family has always laughed at the way I get into conversation with strangers. I am just interested.

To someone like me, there is something deeply alienating about modern communications technology. Deprived of the conversation and direct human contact that I crave, I find that my spirit withers. Worse, I begin to lose the ability to actually talk to people when I have the chance.

This evil does not seem to affect the young, or at least not to the same extent. They, however, suffer from another problem, communications dependency.

To their parents and especially grandparents, if you were out of touch your were out of touch. You might ring in by landline, but this depended on a phone being available. Otherwise, you did your own thing.

Now we have all become dependent upon instant contact. Without it, we are all infected by worry. Has something happened? Is everything all right? What is going on?

In a way, it’s like a GPS in a car. Prior to GPS, you got a map and planned your trip. Now many rely on GPS to tell them what to do. Without it, they have no idea where they are, where they should drive. If the GPS stops, they are lost.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be without my mobile. It’s just that it should be a tool, a means to an end, not an ingrown piece of kit.

I was trying to work out the other day when I first began to lose my ability to talk to people. It sort of crept up on me!

I am not naturally gregarious, although I have learned to be. I am naturally curious, and that’s not a bad substitute at times.

The real crunch-point came when I chose to work from home in order to carry-out the main child care role. Now I found myself isolated for long periods, leading to desperation for conversation when people were around me.

To a degree the usual social routines associated with school provided a substitute, although I found that the very isolation of day to day life made this more difficult.

The Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby was released in 1966. That’s well before the modern communications era. The chorus goes:

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

To my mind, that’s the story of modern communications technology, for the number of lonely people has actually exploded since the new technologies were introduced.

There are those who remain stuck in the past, unable to use the new communications technology but who are conscious of the loss. And then there are those who have used it, only to have the interaction withdrawn. They are far sadder, for without the technology crutch their lives are much diminished. They wait sadly for the SMS that never comes.

You can actually see this working itself out on Facebook too. The act of un-friending someone has become a weapon, something to be used consciously in the warfare that human relations can become.

While these things affect all ages, I feel especially sorry for the young and insecure.

No longer can you lick your personal wounds in private. The acts of friendship and the ending of friendship are played out across time and space in the pitiless glare created by our communications systems, recorded on our timelines for many to see.

Joy is replaced by sadness and even anger driven home by their very visibility. I find that sad!

Note to readers: This is the first Belshaw's World since the ending of my Armidale Express column. I am continuing the series because it gives me a chance for a different type of writing. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's World - the ever-changing face of Sydney

At the moment I am working on site in Parramatta. I have therefore been interested in the stories in the Express about the links between the University and the Eels. However, that’s not what I wanted to write about in this column.

Each day, it takes between one hour ten and one hour forty to get too or from the office. This is the story of one such trip.

The journey begins in the leafy suburb of Kingsford between six thirty and seven in the morning.

This is older Sydney. Each morning I pass older people exercising their dogs or just walking. We often say hello, for we pass each other all the time.

This used to be a heavily Greek area, with the Greek Orthodox Cathedral only a few blocks away.

Sometimes I stop to chat to an older Greek lady. We discovered by accident that we have the same birthday. She is upset about the state of her country.

Walking on, the world changes quickly as I near Anzac Parade. The apartment blocks now rise suddenly. I have entered country dominated by the ever spreading influence of the nearby University of NSW.

On Anzac Parade, a few Greek establishments remain. My barber is Greek and has been in same shop for over fifty years. His walls are covered with photos of him in the navy, his band and the various people he knew.

The Greek shops that were once such a prominent feature have largely been replaced by a variety of Asian restaurants and food stores. The local IGA is Chinese owned and has Chinese staff. Students from multiple countries and different faiths wander the streets.

The many buses that feed into Anzac Parade all carry students to or from the University. It’s a very big business indeed.

Past UNSW, the bus continues down Anzac Parade past Sydney Girls and Boys High Schools. As is so often the case, there is an Armidale connection.

On 9 June 1928, the present Sydney Boys High School was officially opened by the Honorable DH Drummond, Member for Armidale and Minister for Education on land formally known as 'Billy Goats Swamps' but renamed 'Moore Park'. Today, Sydney Boys High sporting teams regularly visit Armidale to play TAS teams.

Depending on the exact bus, the bus turns left into either Cleveland or Gresham Streets travelling downhill towards Central. We have now entered very different territory.

The arc of inner city working class suburbs that swung in a great arc from Ultimo and Glebe through Newtown and Redfern into Surrey Hills and surrounding areas have all been undergoing gentrification.

The old factories and most of those who worked in them have long gone, replaced by a mix of students and younger professionals wanting an inner city metro life style. This is entertainment Sydney.

In recent weeks, I have spent time helping eldest look for a house in these areas.

She and two friends are looking to rent a three bedroom house. They are all students with reasonably well paying part time jobs.

I knew this area well during my younger days. As we drove from place to place, I thought how much it had all changed. Who would have thought that competition for relatively small three bedroom places would drive their rents to $720-750 per week?

At Central, I join a train travelling north west, first passing though what is now called the inner west. This is Green socially progressive country, looked down on by many of those living in the inner city suburbs even when they share many of the same views.

Past Strathfield, the train enters melting pot Sydney.

The passengers are often poorer, less well dressed. There is huge variety in national groups, as well as a very strong Muslim presence. The striking Gallipoli Mosque at Auburn is the largest mosque in Australia.

The school children who crowd the trains during term time wear the same clothes, but look very varied.

I shut my eyes and listen to the chatter. The variety vanishes. The language is the same down to the ever ubiquitous like. They are all Australian.

The train has arrived in Parramatta. It’s time to stop.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 22 February 2012. I have been repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

This was, in fact, the last Belshaw's World to appear in the Express. After 164 columns, Belshaw's World and the Express have parted company. However, the column will continue here every Wednesday in similar format.

Belshaw's World - when life was an ocean wave

I really, really, don’t feel like being serious in this column. As I write it’s Monday night and I’m feeling very tired. Today has been quite a good day and I should feel pleased, but I just feel jaded.

There are lots of things that I should write about if only to say that I told you so. Yet the spirit is not there. Instead, I am going to do something simple and share some photos with you.

Don’t expect anything serious, this is just a ramble!

I found this simple family snap among our photos, just an ordinary family. Well, perhaps not quite so ordinary.

It used to be the case that Australians beat a path to the UK and to Europe as soon as they could. It was part of a right of passage for those who could afford it.

Of course, in those days you went by ship. The next photo is simply entitled "On the Sports' Deck on Orion 22nd April 1952". It shows Aunts Margaret and Kay and my grandparents on their way to England.

Now there is an irony in this photo that I have discussed before.

I belong to the age group that discovered Asia as a new and romantic frontier. Those who were older than me like Clive James or Germaine Greer rushed to England and really never returned. Now they pontificate from afar.

To many of us who were a little younger, Asia was the thing. Armidale writer Francis Letters’ The Surprising Asians was one of the first Asian travel books written from what we might call today a back packer perspective.

It’s not surprising that Armidale people should discover Asia. After all, the Asian student proportion among UNE’s undergraduates in the 1960s was far higher than today.

This next photo shows students getting ready for Overseas Week in 1960.

The irony in the ship photo lies in the fact that today Australia’s young have fallen in love with Europe in the same way their grand parents and great grand parents did! Asia has been forgotten.

In modern multicultural Australia, our young know far more about the cafes of Florence or Venice than they do about any Asian city. Knowledge of Asia has been relegated to very specific things such as tubing on the Mekong, something I wrote about in this column several years ago.

Even in 1952, ship was still the main means of international travel. The idea of a four week dash to Europe to see the sites was rare.

This meant that those travelling often went for much longer periods. In the case in question, my grandparents and aunts were away for twelve months.

Sifting through the family shots, people did much the same things as today. They toured, visited sites, swam and ate. There are the same type of shots of buildings and street scenes.

One difference between then and now was a much greater focus on England.

This trip coincided with the coronation of the new queen, and the girls took every opportunity to experience the occasion. This included presentation to the new queen where, by accident, the girls were the first to be presented to the new monarch, something that was reported in the Australian papers.

The last photo shows Aunt Kay dressed for the occasion.

Four photos, a glimpse into a past world.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 15 February 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's world - when the daily news counted

Straight after my Armidale Express column on economic forecasting came out (The economic version of the weather man, AE 11 January 12), the World Bank released new economic forecasts suggesting that the world faced a severe risk of global depression.

This is, if you like, the economists’ version of “We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,

"Before the year is out." Within days, positive economic data turned perceptions around!

I will write about this in my new national economics column in Australian Business Solutions Magazine. Here, for the moment, I want to return to the country press.

If the mark of a rising town in the nineteenth century was the establishment of a local newspaper, then the mark of ultimate arrival was the establishment of a daily newspaper.

The first daily newspaper in country NSW was the Daily News. This began publication, would you believe, in Braidwood in February 1859 and ceased daily publication some five months later.

The first daily newspaper established in the broader New England was the Singleton Times. This began publication in September 1863 and lasted barely three months.

The printing technology of the time made publication of a daily hard and expensive work. Despite this, between 1863 and 1895 eleven daily newspapers were established in New England. Of these, only two (the Newcastle Herald and the Maitland Mercury) survived.

Between 1895 and 1995, a further twelve daily newspapers were established. Five of these were still in existence at the end of the twentieth century.

Country newspapers were not as we know them today during this early period.

In small communities where everybody knew everyone else’s business, demand for local news was limited. Instead, all the papers provided news from elsewhere, often just scissors and paste of each other’s articles.

The spread of the telegraph made news transmission much easier. Most papers whether daily or not, carried main national and international stories. The cost of telegraph services became a major expense item.

With time, significant differences emerged between the coverage in New England’s dailies and those publishing less frequently such as the Express.

Country populations were now larger. There was increasing demand for local news. The country press in general began to drop its coverage of national and international news, focusing instead on local news.

The dailies were different, providing broadly the same type of coverage as the metropolitan newspapers.

As late as the early 1950s, the Sydney papers’ circulation within New England was limited, with the Northern Daily Leader outselling the Sydney Morning Herald in Armidale by a considerable margin.

There were practical reasons for this.

Transport times meant that the New England dailies were in people’s hands earlier and often had later news than the early edition Sydney papers. On the Tablelands and plains, people read the Northern Daily Leader for their international, national and regional news, the local paper for their local news.

The dailies were quite aggressive in commercial terms, seeking to expand their circulations.

Lismore’s Northern Star (daily from July 1907) sought to expand its readership on the far northern Tablelands. For twelve months, its Lismore based editor personally attended every meeting of the Tenterfield council.

In the south, the Tamworth Observer moved to daily publication at the end of 1910 and then, at the start of 1921, re-badged itself as the Northern Daily Leader.

Under editor Victor Thompson, the paper saw itself as the premier daily promoting northern causes and especially self-government for the North. Its circulation grew rapidly.

From the early 1950s, improvements first in road transport and then air brought the metropolitan newspapers into people’s homes much earlier.

In the south, the Newcastle Herald retained market dominance. Further north, the Sydney and, to a lesser degree, Brisbane papers increased their circulation at the expense of the New England dailies. By 2000, the dailies were a shadow of their former influence.

There is a sad postscript to all this.

In November last year, APN ceased publication of the Tweed Daily News and Coffs Harbour Advocate in the face of falling circulations. An era had ended.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 8 February 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.

Belshaw's World - no wonder it’s cold here

There are many mysteries in the history of the broader New England.

One that I have written about before is the apparent absence of Pleistocene Aboriginal occupation across New England. Now we may have a possible answer.

I need to set the scene first.

From around 36,000 years ago, the Australian climate became cooler and drier. The cooler temperatures offset the lower rainfall by reduced evaporation; the streams, lakes and wetlands of inland New England therefore retained their water, providing a continued base for Aboriginal occupation.

From perhaps 25,000 years ago, the local environment deteriorated significantly.

Sahul, the name given to the continent that then included Australia and New Guinea, became very dry, both intensely hot and intensely cold. This climatic regime peaked during what is called the Last Glacial Maximum, 21,000 to 15,000 years ago.

The sea retreated to perhaps 120 metres below current levels. The sea became colder, 2-4 degrees C below current levels. On land, mean monthly temperatures probably fell by 6-10 degrees C. Extensive inland dune building suggests that the climate become much windier.

According to Mulvaney and Kamminga, severe cold, drought, and strong winds over central and southern Sahul, would have discouraged tree growth , although some species common today must have survived in sheltered or better-watered refuges.

The retreating sea would have progressively increased the size of New England’s coastal strip. The impact here would have varied along the coast, depending upon water depth. In broad terms, the immediately adjacent shallow water to the east of the present coast is quite narrow, with the continental shelf then falling away sharply.

In South East Queensland to the north, the falling waters probably extended the coastal strip to between twelve and twenty kilometres east from what is now Stradbroke Island. Further south the lower water zone narrows, before widening a little after what is now Nambucca. In the case of what is now the Macleay Valley, the coast line probably extended ten to sixteen kilometres to the east.

The sclerophyll woodland and deciduous forests would have progressively colonised the new land, with the coastal dunes and associated wetlands following the shifting coast east.

The Tablelands would have been a very different story. Here average temperatures fell by perhaps 8 degrees C. The New England Tablelands marked the start of a region of cold steppe and scattered sub-alpine woodland sweeping down through the southern Snowy Mountains into Tasmania.

In the southern Snowy Mountains, the fall in temperature was sufficient to allow glaciers to form despite the lower precipitation. In New England, the higher portions of the Tablelands in the centre and south where average heights are around 1,300 metres must have been very cold, dry and windswept. Along New England’s Snowy Mountains where the highest peak (Round Mountain) is almost 1,600 metres, there were probably blizzards and semi-permanent snow despite the much lower precipitation.

To the west, Mulvaney and Kamminga suggest that much of the south-eastern interior of Sahul experienced cold arid conditions similar to modern Patagonia.

So far so good. However, of itself, this does not explain the apparent absence of Aboriginal sites, for there would have been areas where occupation could have continued.

But what might happen if the broader New England and especially the Tablelands were colder than we now realise?

Here Rod H, a geologist and one of my fellow bloggers, has put up a post pointing to evidence of cold climate even glacial features on the Tablelands. Now that’s fascinating, for it may explain the absence of Aboriginal occupation. It was just too darn cold!

If you would like to learn more, the link to Bob’s post is http://nrgeology.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-cold-was-it-glaciers-in-new-england.html.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 1 February 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012.