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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rise and rise of the New England Writers' Centre

Under the energetic leadership of writer Sophie Masson, (web site here), the New England Writers' Centre (NEWC) appears to be going from strength to strength.

It's only a few years'ago that the Centre lost its State Government funding.and was forced to let its full time director go. I joined the Board at the time and remember the feeling of gloom that surrounded the Centre's future. It was hard to be positive.

I am no longer a Board member, but I was there during the beginning of the transformation period that has now made the Centre such a force, This was helped by renewed State funding achieved with local member Adam Marshall's support, but this was only possible because the Centre itself was transforming under Sophie's leadership.

Inland Armidale lacks the sex appeal and reach now attached to Byron Bay. With time, economic and social change its prominence has shrunk from the the putative capital of our own New England state to the point that it is sometimes described as just a country town. And yet, somehow, the city survives as a unique university, educational and administrative centre.

Armidale has always been a writers' hub. Relative to its size, the current population is around 23,000, Armidale has more writers than any place in Australia. It has its own tradition, its own writer schools such as the Armidale poets who form part of the broader web of the New England literary tradition. You won't find this tradition referenced in literary writing with its metro focus, but it exists. Armidale is not alone here, of course. The writers of the Northern rivers are also neglected. I think that you would find the same in North Queensland or the Riverina..

The thing that the NEWC does, I think, par excellence, is that it links local writers into the broader networks required to have a chance in the competitive world of literature. There was a period in the dark days when the NEWC focus narrowed to just Armidale. Now the Centre is again extending its reach beyond the city.

Even though I am no longer a Board member, I am just so proud of what the Centre has achieved in recent years.  Well done to all those involved.          

For Deborah Tree - a guided introduction to Judith Wright and the Wright Family

Back in July 2015 Deborah Tree wrote in a comment on a post I had written in January 2007, Poetry's Decline and the Sound of Words:

Hello Jim I have just discovered the poems of Judith Wright - a friend gave me her "Collected Poems" yesterday and already I've learned the first verse of "South of my Days" mainly because it was the favourite of my friend. As I learn the words and say them out loud, the poem changes for me; I become enchanted by the sound of the words (as you said) and the way Judith has woven them like a rose brier hedge, an enduring essence of a distant, simpler life of survival through hardship. There is romance in that, and in her love of country. I have a Wright journey ahead of me. Cheers Deborah

The photo shows Judith Wright in 1946.

I promised to bring up a consolidated post that might assist Deborah in her journey. This is that post. Because of the scale of the task, I am going to have to let the post evolve.

Context

Judith Wright was born on 31 May 1915. From then until her death on 25 June 2000, her life and career went through a number of stages.As she went through those stages, her attitudes and interests changed.  “You ask me to read those poems I wrote in my thirties?” she wrote in Skins when she was sixty-six.. “They dropped off several incarnations back.”

My primary interest in lies in her connection with Northern New South Wales, the broader New England that is the subject of my main historical work. I am interested in her as a New England writer and as a member of a family that played a significant role in New England history.

To my mind, Judith remained a quintessentially New England writer. That was where her views were first formed, although her later experiences and especially her relationship with the older novelist and philosopher Jack McKinney would exercise a powerful influence over her. Judith met Jack McKinney when she moved to Brisbane. He was a much older man, some twenty four years her senior, only two years younger than her father. They fell in love, moving to Mount Tamborine in 1950; daughter Meredith was born in that year. In 1962, Jack and Judith finally married. Four years later Jack died, leaving a hole in Judith’s life.

Jack McKinney was the second of three powerful men in Judith Wright’s life. The first was her father, Phillip Arundell Wright, with whom she shared a middle name. The third was H C “Nugget” Coombs, a noted Australian economist and public servant, with whom she had a twenty five year love affair. Coombs was again an older man, in this case by nine years. Both were major public figures. Judith was a widow, Coombs long separated from his wife. Both shared common interests, including Aboriginal advancement and the environment. Judith moved to Braidwood to be closer to the Canberra based Coombs, but the affair was kept secret, if open to their friends and the Canberra network within which they moved.

Each man had a powerful impact on Judith, but I think that it was the father that formed her core views. It was he that gave her that love of the environment and of the country. It was he that gave her that love, affection and unstinting support that seems to shine through in the letters between them. This image is one of  W E Pidgeon's (WEPs') portrait of Judith's father.

 I knew her father as a much older man. PA, we all spoke of him as PA, was my grandfather’s friend; my grandfather was godfather to his son who bore the same first name; my copy of Generations of Men carries my grandfather’s signature, bought in the year the book first came out. To me, PA was a somewhat remote figure. I saw him at events and at the New England New State Movement Executive meetings that he sometimes chaired. I and my fellow students at the University of New England where he was chancellor poked gentle fun at him for his sometimes mangled English. It would be a number of years before I came to properly understand his contribution to Northern life and the causes he supported. .

Judith loved her father, she loved the Falls country in which she grew up, she loved the life on the family properties. Her earlier works reflect that love, and then the joy she found in her relationship with Jack McKinney. Later, there would come a darkening of spirit, erosion in optimism, a rejection of elements of her past. 

Judith had the misfortune to be born a girl in an age when men inherited. Especially after the death of PA, she became separated from the properties and life she had loved, although the family ties remained close. Towards the end of her life, she saw the end of the Wright family empire that had been carefully built by her grandparents and especially grandmother May Wright. The ABC TV Dynasties program recorded the event in this rather dramatic way:

By December 2000, he (brother David) had lost it all – his properties, his cattle and his wife to cancer. His sister, the poet Judith Wright, watched in despair and died soon after.

That’s dramatic, but the loss was a profound one. Generations of Men is dedicated to the children of May and Albert, to her father and his brothers and sisters. The phrase generations of men comes from Blake’s Milton; the verse is quoted on the book’s title page:

The generations of men run on in the tide of time

But their destn’d lineaments permanent for ever and ever.

If you look at those words, you can get a feel for Judith’s subsequent sense of loss.

Six years after Judith’s death, David died suddenly. It was a shock. On his death, University of New England Professor Bernie Bindon described David as one of the pioneers of the scientific research underpinning today's Australian beef industry. "I can't think of a beef industry person” Professor Bindon said, “who's made a bigger contribution to not only the growth of the beef industry but the science that underpins the beef business," 

The Herefords .that formed the base of the V1V and V2V Wright brands began their life at Dalwood. It was Judith’s grandparents, the core characters in Generations of Men, who began the breeding program that created the Wright cattle. PA, then David and other Wright family members carried it through to the end. There is a whole story there.  

So, Deborah, you have begun a journey that can not only gratify in terms of the poetry, but which can carry you through into many aspects of Australian life.It's also a story that is sufficiently well documented for you to get to know the people and their connections.  

Structure

I will break the remaining post into three parts:

• my posts on Judith and the Wrights.
• the published material, including the locally published material that you might not find unless you know where to look.
• a short guide to on-line sources that I am aware off.

My posts 

The various posts I have written to this point are set out below. They vary considerably in topic and length. I suggest that you scan quickly, that will give you a feel, and then come back to those that interest you. I welcome comments.

• 1 August 2006 New England Wine Regions - Hunter Valley
• 12 August 2006 New England Australia - Writers
• 14 August 2006 In praise of Patrice Newell
• 22 August 2006 Death of David Wright
• 3 December 2006 On Travel Time and Our Sense of Space
• 30 January 2007 The Poetry of Judith Wright - Bora Ring
• 30 January 2007 Poetry's Decline and the Sound of Words
• 30 January 2007 Poetry's Decline Revisited
• 2 July 2007 Australia's Regions - are they really different?
• 13 July 2007 Manners and Society in Modern Australia
• 14 August 2007 Judith Wright's The Hawthorn Hedge - Regional Australia writers
• 19 August 2007 Australian Poetry - a few meanderings
• 1 September 2007 The Poetry of Judith Wright - South of My Days
• 7 September 2007 Judith Wright's "For a Pastoral Family" - and "Skins"
• 8 March 2008 Saturday Morning Musings - Australian indigenous poetry
• 26 September 2009 The colours of New England
• 18 November 2009 Train Reading - S H Roberts the Squatting Age in Australia, 1835-1847
• 15 January 2010 New England Granite
• 15 February 2010 Page and Pooaraar's The Great Forgetting
• 27 May 2010 Regional traditions in Australian culture
• 4 December 2010 Social Change in New England 1950-2000 7: Judith Wright
• 17 December 2010 Ogilvies, Wrights, social change
• 26 May 2011 Writing multi-layered history
• 27 May 2011 Two Australian poetry resources
• 28 May 2011 People, biography & the New England tradition
• 23 November 2012 The deracination of New England poetry
• 14 May 2014 History revisited – Hunter Valley historical tour 2: Dalwood
• 29 May 2014 New England Travels – journeys through space and time
• 31 May 2014 Saturday Morning Musings – sidetracking through history
• 18 June 2014 History revisited – the shears stop in Newcastle
• 25 June 2014 History revisited – NENCO, Newcastle & wool sales part 2 
• 17 December 2014 New England writers – Introducing Binks Turnbull Dowling’s For crying out loud
• 20 December 2014 Saturday morning musings - planning for the holiday break
• 10 February 2015 Growing up in New England – four stories
• 18 February 2015 History revisited - vegetable gardens a fading necessity

To be continued

Collating the stories behind New England's writers

The Armidale Express has just featured Janene Carey's latest writing project.

Following publication of her latest book, A Hospital Bed At Home which attracting praise from author Helen Garner, .Janene hopes to take on the enjoyable yet daunting challenge of collating the stories behind the region’s greatest writers.

The new project will be in collaboration with the New England Writer’s Centre, and aims to showcase writers who have portrayed the region and its people, as well as writers nurtured here who have achieved fame elsewhere.

“It’s not going to be a scholarly book, it’s for a general audience,”Janene said. “So there will be anecdotes and snippets of [interviews] and hopefully [it] will be written in a colourful, engaging way.” From my viewpoint that's a good thing, for it will help give us the back story to the writing itself.

One of the people Janene would like to interview is Shirley Walker whose book, The Ghost at the Wedding, won the 2009 Asher Literary Award.

I haven't actually read Shirley's book. I have to say that it sounds interesting from the Penguin blurb.

"Three generations,two world wars,one family

The young men who worked in the canefields of northern New South Wales in 1914 couldn't wait to set off for the adventure of war. The women coped as best they could, raised the children, lived in fear of an official telegram. They grieved for those killed, and learnt of worse things than death in combat. They bore more sons to replace those lost, and these were just the right age to go off to the Second World War.

The Ghost at the Wedding chronicles events from both sides of war: the horror of the battlefields and the women left at home. Shirley Walker's depictions of those battles – Gallipoli, the Western Front, the Kokoda Track – are grittily accurate, their reverberations haunting. Written with the emotional power of a novel, here is a true story whose sorrow is redeemed by astonishing beauty and strength of spirit."

So much to read!

Postscript

This is the way that Janene wrote of her contact with Helen Garner on her blog. I have taken the liberty of quoting the piece in full:

Last week I went to a couple of public events connected with the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference at the University of New England. Iconic Australian writer Helen Garner was a special guest. I spoke to her after a lecture on Judith Wright, and gave her a copy of A Hospital Bed at Home. As homage, really. I love her writing, especially The Spare Room. 

The next day, I went along to the other public ASAL event, Helen Garner in conversation with literary critic Susan Lever. When I arrived for the pre-talk refreshments, Anne Pender from UNE was chatting to Susan Lever, and she introduced us. Susan’s first words to me were, “Oh, are you the Janene who gave Helen a book? She’s been telling me all about it; she’s been reading it all day!” 

When I spoke to Helen before her talk my head was spinning so much that I can’t even remember exactly what her compliments were. She said something about the clarity and directness of my writing, and the way the emotion was handled. I suggested that she’d had a strong influence on my style and she laughed and said, “That might be why I like it!” 

Anyway, this week I plucked up the courage to contact her through her publisher and ask if she would consider giving me a quote for the cover. I thought it quite likely that she would refuse as she must be asked so often. But she emailed it to me within a couple of hours of receiving the request. Actually, I have two – what she sent would fit on a back cover, but I was keen to have it on the front, so she allowed me to trim it. 

So the front cover now says: “An articulate, practical account of the work of love in the face of death.” – HELEN GARNER.  

The longer version that has gone online is: 

“A quietly articulate, intensely practical account of the work of love in the face of death: a guide for the timid and a challenge for the confident.” – HELEN GARNER (Author of The Spare Room)

You can see why Janene was chuffed. By the way, if you want to buy A Hospital Bed At Home you can find out how here. I haven't bought my copy yet, but will do so next pay.

I want to write a little more about the reasons why I think that Janene's new project is important, why we all hope that she gets grants to complete the work, but that will have to wait to a later post. 

New England writers – Introducing Binks Turnbull Dowling’s For crying out loud

Binks Turnbull Dowling’s For crying out loud (published by the author, Dorrigo 1997) is another of those autobiographical memoirs of early life and young adulthood that have so enriched our understanding of New England life and history. It’s also a good if sometimes confusing read.

The book is broken into somewhat overlapping chronological segments. In part, these explore and describe Binks’ life up to her marriage. However, For crying out loud is also an examination of her parents, their personalities and the complexities of relationship, seeking to understand. The book is dedicated to the father that she greatly loved, a father she rarely saw after she was sent to Kotupna at the age of five, a father who died when she was fifteen. Finally, the book centres on life on Kotupna itself, a large station in the Fall country to the east of Armidale and the heart of the large extended Turnbull family.

In some ways, the book is a story of loss, one replicated by other New England writers including Judith Wright and Judith Wallace. Loss of family connection, decline and finally loss of Kotupna itself.

There are sad elements in the story that made me uncomfortable, a reminder of the uncertainties and complexities of life. Apart from the story of her parents, I wondered about the inarticulate nature of the Turnbull men, about the break-ups and relationship failures. Sometimes, it seemed to me that Kotupna had become a devouring beast.

I know that members of the Turnbull family would probably not share that perception. When Binks asked her mother years’ later why she stayed at Kotupna, Jean looked at her strangely and said simply “But I was happy”. The love they all had for Koputna, Binks is no exception, shines through.

The book ends with Binks’ marriage to Ian and the establishment of a long and obviously happy relationship. The book was written because their children insisted. I am glad they did.

In the next post in this series I will look in more detail at the book itself. 

          

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New England writing - launch of Sophie Masson's Trinity series

Good to see that the first of Sophie Masson's Trinity series has finally found a publisher. I quote from her piece on Writer Unboxed:

This week, my new adult novel, first in a big new series called Trinity, is coming out.

I’m going to be celebrating even more than usual, because this one’s had a long hard road to publication, with nearly four years and several rejections before it was accepted. Even though I’m a well-established author with many books to my name, it looked like this one was fated to remain homeless. ‘Too different’ seemed to be the verdict. A mix of urban fantasy, romance and conspiracy thriller, set in modern Russia, it was outside of my usual genre of YA fiction, and clearly also outside the comfort zone of many publishers.

Follow the link above for more details. 

New England writing - Maynard on Lycett, Clarence Valley Women & Betty Mumbler's The Long Way Home

The AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies library facebook page is
a very good way of keeping in touch with writing connected with Australia's Aboriginal peoples. This post draws from the page to provide an update on writing linked in some ways to New England's Aboriginal peoples.

A new publication is john Maynard's True Light and Shade (National Library of Australia, 2014). Here I quote in part from the linked review.

"True Light and Shade is filled with beautiful images by convict artist Joseph Lycett that powerfully capture in intimate detail Aboriginal life, a rare record of Aboriginal people within the vicinity of Newcastle and how they adapted to European settlement before cultural destruction impacted on these groups.

(Worimi man) John Maynard writes an engaging short biography of Lycett and his life in Australia and follows this with a detailed commentary on each of the 20 images in the album. Each image is reproduced in full on a double page spread and then, on the spreads following, details have been enlarged to accompany John's text as he takes us through exactly what is happening in every picture: ceremony, hunting and fishing, carrying food (carving up whalemeat), land management and burning, interactions with Europeans, family life, dances, funeral rituals, and punishment. When you return again to examine the full image, you see it in a completely different light. John also includes written records from the time that corroborate Lycett's views."

Colleen Hattersley and Robynne Bancroft's Clarence Valley Women ( Clarence Valley Women Inc, 2011) adds to the growing volume of North Coast personal and oral histories.

The book incorporates interviews with nine Clarence Valley women interviewed, three of whom were Indigenous. Most of those interviewed had a very modest view of their contribution and were reluctant to draw attention to their own lives and achievements. "The diverse lives portrayed in this book represent a valuable insight into life in the Clarence Valley for well over a century".

Beryl Joyce (Betty) Mumbler grew up on a large property on the Tingha Road 12 kms from Guyra. The Dhungutti people (Macleay Valley) and her personal heritage fuelled a desire to record many hours of what the elders had to say. The result was The long way home: my Dreaming (2012). 

Betty’s Mumbler passed away before this book was published. She is remembered as a pivotal member of the community who was admired by everybody.  The Long Way Home: My Dreaming highlights the efforts undertaken by Betty as a bridge builder in the community, and the importance of reconciliation to her. 

Local writer Carma Eckersley helped Betty put the book together.The women met at a U3A Aboriginal Studies workshop and Betty asked for Carma’s help in starting the book. 

Like many of these books, The long way home: my Dreaming, had a limited print run. It's a real frustration from my perspective because it makes it so to capture and consolidate all the writing that has been done.

This is where the AIATSIS library is so valuable, for within its scope it does try to collect copies of all publications. Still, I could wish that there was a single point of collection for all the writings connected with the broader New England.  .  

New England writers and writing - the local historians

In aggregate, the local historians probably form the largest group of New England writers, especially if combined with the overlapping group of family historians whose writing often extends beyond the immediate family into broader topics such as station histories.

The first local historical writing seems to have been associated with civic events such as anniversaries. Here local newspaper editors such as E C Sommerlad in Glen Innes seem to have played lead roles. They were used to writing, were committed to their communities and also controlled the printing presses. They also wrote and published on a range of other topics through their papers, pamphlets and books, adding substantially to the total body of New England writing.  

In 1928, the Armidale Teachers' College College was established, followed by the New England University College in 1938. They brought the first trained historians to the North, while the students they educated generally came from the North and were interested in local and regional topics. This combined with a rising interest in local history. leading to the formation of local historical societies. The Richmond River Historical  Society was founded in 1936. Within twenty years, most Northern centres had their own historical societies. These not only provided local historical forums, but also began to collect records and memorabilia and to establish museums and displays.

Even in the 1950s, there were still very full local histories. This was not dissimilar to the position in Australian historical writing in general. An explosion took place over the next thirty years. By the end of the eighties there were hundreds of titles, most with very small print runs. General interest in Australian history was growing, but beyond that the existence of the Teacher's College and University in Armidale had a huge direct and indirect impact at every level in the process.

Not all the local histories were well written. Some were mere compilations of newspaper stories, catalogues of things considered to be locally important written in isolation from broader events. They provide a useful resource, but are boring to read unless you know and are interested in the area in question.  Others, however, are very good indeed. This includes both those books written by professional historians such as John Ferry's Colonial Armidale and those written by amateurs, if often amateurs with some form of study at the University of New England,

Note to readers:  This piece is a work in progress, the start of my attempt to define and describe the various threads in New England writing over time. I have over four hundred separate New England titles on my shelves, and i know that I have barely scratched to surface!