New England and the cloying effects of imposed uniformity

In UK and the local benefits of devolution, I looked at the way in which devolution had benefited areas of the UK though greater local freedom and power. In this, the second of my posts reflecting on the lessons for New England from the experience gained on my European trip, I look at the cloying effects of the uniformity imposed on New England by current Governmental structures and practices, focusing especially on tourism.

To set a broad context for the discussions that follows, Scotland has an area of 73,387 square k, Wales 20,761 square k, England 130,395 square k. By contrast, NSW is 809,444 square k. So very much bigger.

England and especially Scotland and Wales glory in their differences. Difference from each other, but also differences within. These are matters to promote, to glory in, sometimes to fight over.

This is Jedburgh in the Scottish border country. Each part of the border country - the boundaries have varied over time - has its own character. This is expressed in tourism material, in books and other cultural material.

Centrally imposed variations in boundaries do affect local identity and complicate promotion, just as they do in Australia. However, UK areas seem better able to withstand these external pressures in retaining and presenting their heritage.

This is a scene from the English Lake District. In Australian drive time terms, it's quite close to the border country. The printed tourism material on the Lake District runs to hundreds of pages. Individual destinations promote themselves, but the focus is on the totality, on using a particular place as a base, but then moving around.

Further south, you find the same pattern in the Cotswolds, a stretch of hill country roughly 25 miles (40 km) across and 90 miles (145 km) long, stretching south-west from just south of Stratford-upon-Avon to just south of Bath. The picture postcard villages are a major attraction, with the attraction lying not just in the individual locality but in the totality of nearby attractions.This is important because no centre has enough attractions on its own to justify a longish stay.

This applies even in the nearby town of Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace.  Stratford is about the same size as Armidale in population terms.

Mind you, Stratford is HQ of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Employing 700 people whose theatre has just undergone a £112.8 million upgrade. I wrote on our visit to Stratford in Watching Henry V on the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt.

Armidale, by contrast, struggles to build a new library and theatre complex even though it is a major cultural centre. But then, neither the NSW or Australian Governments would even consider supporting something of the scale of Stratford's theatre extension in a regional centre.

Regional areas in the UK have certain advantages. Both populations and visitor numbers are higher. I haven't checked the number, but I suspect that Stratford gets more visitors in total than all of Northern NSW. I

suspect that the little village of Grasmere  in the Lake's District gets more visitors than any New England centre.

That said, we are left with a number of questions.

Why aren't local and regional differences properly recognized and promoted within the broader New England? Why don't people know about them? Why are all of the NSW "great cultural institutions" in Sydney? To put this last in perspective, the British Museum, truly one of the world's great cultural institutions, is actually a bit player in UK cultural and tourism promotion. There are no tourism promotions that focus on the capital cities as such unless, of course, they are funded by those cities.

I have really struggled with this, especially when I was actively involved in tourism promotion. I think that three factors are in play.

The first is the factional system of politics that evolved during the nineteenth century and which played local area against local area with benefits for votes. This translated into intense local parochialism only partially overcome by broader movements such as the new state movements. Each local area wanted to promote its own thing, even though this would be self defeating in the end. This continues today.

The second was the actual denial of regional difference. This worked its way through the school system with its emphasis, on uniformity but extended beyond that into various forms of official expression. Difference was recognised, but this was generally expressed in narrow geographic terms. The idea of historical or cultural difference was rejected.

The third was the differential in population terms between Sydney and individual centres elsewhere in NSW. Until quite recently, aggregate populations were not so dwarfed by Sydney. This was concealed by emphasis on locality as opposed to broader areas. More importantly, there were constant variations in regional boundaries and regional approaches dictated by central needs that made it impossible to create consistent approaches, especially in visitor promotion.

In all, the effect was the outcome I described in the heading, the imposition of a cloying uniformity. This still exists, nor is immediate change likely. Until change happens, improved regional performance is unlikely.  
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UK and the local benefits of devolution

I have just come back from a trip to Denmark and the UK, This is the first of several posts reflecting on the lessons for New England from the experience. The photo shows one view of the Welsh capital, Cardiff, from the castle.

When I was first in the UK for an extended period, devolution had yet to occur.The arguments used against self-government for Scotland and Wales were very similar to those previously used against self-government for New England. Scotland and Wales were too small, they had nothing to gain. Further, those who had opposed New England self-government on the grounds that Australia needed fewer, not more states, constantly pointed to the UK to support their case.

Scotland has a population of around 5.3 million, capital city Edinburgh (Scotland's second city) has a population around 493,000, 1.33 million in the greater Edinburgh region.Wales has a population of 3.09 million, Cardiff 346,000. Northern Ireland a population of 1.81 million. To put these numbers in context, England has a population of 53 million, of which 12-14 million live in Greater London depending on the definition used.

You can see that in demographic terms, Wales and Scotland are totally dwarfed by England. Both were effectively swamped, lacking in influence within a then rigid party system.   .  .

The wheel turns.As a consequence of constant agitation especially in Scotland that threatened to tear the Union apart, power was progressively devolved from Westminster.This could never have happened without that constant agitation. Now as I walked the streets, I could see some of the results.

This  is the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, capacity over 72,000. The nearest Newcastle equivalent is in Newcastle, an open air stadium with a capacity of 33,000 thousand.

It wasn't just the new or rebuilt institutions, but the focus on local character and interests, the buzz in the streets, the presence of young people. .

Now that the benefits of devolution have become clearer, North England (population 14.5 million) too is starting to demand some measure of devolution as a way of reducing London dominance. 

All this means that that the UK has moved from an argument against new states to a case study of the way that local benefits can flow.

Life style Uralla's mini-housing boom

I see from the Armidale Express that Uralla is experiencing something of a mini-housing boom.

Twenty-nine dwellings were approved in the town last year, the highest number of dwelling approvals in a decade. With five dwelling approvals in January plus a 60 lot subdivision application expected to be approved by March, the trend looks set to continue.

Driving around Uralla on a recent trip, I was struck by the continuing if slow transformation of the town. With the decline in the town's rural service function and then the collapse in growth in nearby Armidale during the nineties, the town's economic base was badly damaged. Slowly, and the changes here go back to the early eighties, Uralla has been reinventing itself as something of a lifestyle centre, creating a special atmosphere.

 These types of processes are slow. However, they do build with time. One of the reasons I have supported the continued retention of Uralla Shire despite arguments for local government mergers based on the now standard mantras of "efficiency and effectiveness" lies in the way that it has helped preserve a Uralla focus. I think that's good.  

Visions of New England – Raleigh Rumblings

There are hundreds of small halls scattered across New England. They are neither pretty nor pretentious, but they form one core of local life.

Raleigh is a small settlement near Urunga, not far from Bellingen, in the Bellinger Valley. All sorts of functions are held there, including the Raleigh Rumblings. This is one clip. Comments follow the clip.

i have been in so many of those halls over the years. The acoustics are often dreadful. Sometimes they can be bloody cold, but they help bind the community together.

As I research more into the history of New England, I find that that’s one of the things that really counts.

Growing New England - how do we overcome local town myopia?

At the moment, I am working on a response to the Sydney Government's draft arts and cultural strategy for NSW. Thinking about access to art and culture, I realised a funny thing about New England's urban dwellers. They are so used to shorter distances that they are won't travel unless it's a formal journey.

This is another shot of Uralla's main street. Pretty isn't it?

Uralla lies twenty minutes drive time south of Armidale. Now in Sydney where I am presently living in exile, no body would blink an eye at the thought of travelling thirty minutes one way for coffee, an hour just to go to a function, over an hour to work or to take the kids to sport, three hours to visit another place for the weekend. Yet when your normal driving time around town is less than ten minutes, twenty minutes along a main highway seems such a long way!

It's dumb really, and we lose so much. If more New Englanders consciously explored their own immediate area, then this would increase the marketplace for a whole variety of activities while also adding fun to to life.    

At present, the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) is presenting a number of exhibitions including Herbert Badham's Observing the Everyday. I described this in A morning at NERAM - Flora, Cobcroft and Badham's Observing the Everyday.

Badham was a realist painter of social urban life, renowned for his scenes of Sydney. The exhibition concentrates on the everyday in Sydney mainly during the 1930s, combining Badham with other paintings from the NERAM collection on the same theme. This is a large high quality exhibition that has the potential to attract visitors from a wide area including Sydney. Sadly, NERAM has neither the money for wider promotion, nor for the catalogue that would give visitors the tangible memory of their visit.

If New Englanders could overcome their local myopia, then the Badham exhibition could draw effectively from all those within a two to three hour drive of Armidale. If Armidale people were more prepared to travel and could lift their eyes above the bounds set by the city's urban boundaries, then they could enjoy the events, activities and attractions offered by other centres.

This simple shift in perceptions could actually transform the economics of local activities, allowing for growth beyond the scale dictated by local populations.  

New Zealand & the case for New England self-government

I spent last weekend in New Zealand. As we drove into Auckland I remembered my grandfather's first impressions all those years ago. I quote from the story I wrote of his life.

In April 1929, Dave and Pearl travelled to New Zealand on an private visit; it was their first visit overseas. The trip was a busy one, for Drummond took the opportunity to travel widely throughout the Dominion inspecting schools and welfare institutions, farms and civic facilities. He was impressed by what he saw. He told the Northern Daily Leader that New Zealand, unlike New South Wales, had big provincial cities which could and did act as centres of culture. New Zealand farming techniques were also excellent, although as in the North the gradual disappearance of horse traction had created real problems for farmers as a result of the destruction of the oats market. He was less impressed with the New Zealand school system which, he thought, had little to teach New South Wales. However, even here he brought back school plans which he thought could be modified for use in the hotter parts of the State: 'I have long been impressed by the fact that the small type of schools... is entirely unsuitable during the warmer months of the year', he wrote to the Department.

Since the Drummond's trip to New Zealand much has changed, yet some things remain the same.

Today New Zealand's population is about that of Sydney. Despite that, New Zealand has five airports with international connections, NSW one. New Zealand has multiple cities capable of hosting international rugby matches, NSW has three.

Despite the growth of Auckland, New Zealand has remained a relatively decentralised country whereas Sydney has greatly increased its share of the NSW population. New Zealand has eight publicly funded state universities, NSW nine. Those universities are attracting a growing share of the international student marketplace, whereas the NSW share is declining. Despite the growth in tertiary education in NSW regional centres, New Zealanders across the country have easier access to tertiary education than do those living in NSW and especially regional NSW.

New Zealand standards of living are statistically lower than Australia's. The country is less wealthy and has struggled to maintain certain activities. Yet compared to the economic hollowing out inflicted on New England over the last forty years, the country has done remarkably well. There is poverty in New Zealand, but nothing compared to the poverty traps that have appeared across parts of New England.

New Zealand has been through some pretty tough times over the last forty years as the country lost its traditional markets. Yet the country responded with a degree of imagination not seen in Australia and certainly not in NSW.

New Zealand simply couldn't afford the nostrum that the role of Government was simply efficient service delivery even though New Zealand pioneered many of the administrative ideas later introduced into NSW under the Greiner Government that then became entrenched in NSW official thinking. When your economic back is against the wall, you have to search for new things.

This photo shows a simple but delicious hamburger provided as part of the Rugby World Cup taste New Zealand experience.

There is much soul searching in New Zealand about that country's lack of economic progress. Yet considering the economic turmoil it experienced, it has actually done pretty well, certainly a lot better than New England.    

In 1900, New England's population was around 60% of New Zealand, today it is roughly a third and still dropping. 

Those of us who have argued for New England self-government for so many years have made the simple plea that self-government would allow us to unleash our own creativity, give us a chance to stand or fall by our own efforts. It's hard to see how we could do worse than the Sydney Government has done. In any event, it would then clearly be our own fault!

Attracting migrants to inland New England

From time to time I have talked about the best way of attracting migrants to New England. These might come from other parts of Australia (internal migration) or from overseas. In this post, I want to focus on the attraction of overseas migrants.

New England now has some of the poorest towns and areas in Australia. This problem has emerged progressively over the last fifty years as our young have left to be replaced in many areas by in-migration of retirees or those on welfare. Our population is now older than the Australian average, in many areas unemployment is higher than average, we have seen a drift of higher paid jobs.

As in any geographically diverse area, the pattern is not uniform.

We have parts of New England on the North Coast that are now simply overpopulated relative to economic opportunities. We have inland areas where there are available jobs that cannot be filled, vacant jobs that are holding back employment growth by reducing income and activity.

Even on the coast, there are areas where the inability to attract people to fill vacancies is a problem.

One of the problems that I have talked about in public policy is the way we deal in very broad terms, universals, that actually prevent the targeting required to address needs that vary greatly across space and time.

To assist in resolving this, I suggest that one of the things that we need is a specific policy approach to address the workforce needs of inland New England. We need approaches that will bring trades and professionals to fill existing gaps.

At one level, this may seem that we are favouring coastal over inland New England. Yet the reality is different. Growth in inland New England can aid coastal development, can provide broader opportunities for coastal kids.

I mentioned overseas migrants my opening paragraph. One way of assisting inland New England would be to specifically target this in migration programs. Professionals or tradies prepared to settle in inland New England might receive preferential treatment.

We are not talking huge numbers. Even two hundred new settlers in any twelve months would, over a few years, make a huge continuing difference. Then the focus could switch to other areas.

What about it?  

Charles Sturt University to open in Tamworth?

My heart sank a little when I saw this story in the Northern Daily Leader: Time to get smart in Tamworth. The story begins:

TAMWORTH could boast a more visible university presence in the near future and it could be coming from Bathurst, not Armidale.

Tamworth Regional Council has unanimously, and excitedly, supported a nomination from Charles Sturt University (CSU) to act as the university partner on a funding application to establish a multi-

sector education precinct in the city.

The precinct would be established adjacent to the New England Institute of Technical and Further Education’s Tamworth campus.

The endorsement of the proposal was made on Tuesday night and involves seeking approval for a federal government Education Infrastructure Fund grant.

Why did my heart sink? Well for many reasons.

Tamworth has wanted its own campus for a long time. Even though UNE has provided local facilities over a long period, it hasn't really moved to meet Tamworth needs. Now Charles Sturt is trying to step in as part of a continuing and aggressive expansion campaign.

I do not begrudge either Tamworth or CSU for trying to move forward. Instead, I have two primary concerns that I have explored on this blog before.

The first is simply loss of vision by UNE. During the 1970s and 1980s the University lost its original university vision, its regional role across the broader New England. Its regional vision shrank to New England Tablelands, North West. For that reason, there is a certain irony in the CSU move, for it strikes at the heart of UNE's diminished regional role.

I do not want to overstate this, for UNE's broader regional role has begun to come back because no one else is doing it. Many of us have also been trying to force the University to stand outside the pressures created by Canberra dictates, what we can call university games, and instead reinstate its previous broader regional focus. This is not the University's only role, but it is central its role. 

If UNE doesn't do it, no one will will. Certainly CSU won't.

The second thing that I have written about is the fragmentation in New England.

The Australian Government talks about the role of Universities in pursuing Australia's interests. The NSW Government sometimes talks about the role of NSW universities in developing NSW. No one talks about the role of New England's universities in pursuing New England's interests.

New England is not the same as NSW beyond an accident of political geography. Our universities are not just big businesses, but critical contributors to New England social and community development. We need them to cooperate if New England is to advance.

I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that CSU's move will help. The new Tamworth campus will remain a small outrider, an add-on, a branch office. It is likely to become just another contributor to New England's continuing fragmentation.       

Bob Neville & Tingha Community Regeneration win new award

Congratulations to Bob Neville for winning the individual section of the NSW Building Inclusive Communities Award.

The photo shows left to right – State Premier Hon Barry O’Farrell, Bob Neville Tingha Regeneration Inc, Diane Torrens Chairperson Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and Mr Tim Torrens.

The prize was awarded for his leadership of the Tingha Regeneration Program which is not only designed to rebuild the community, it also seeks to provide a model for many struggling communities throughout Australia.

My congratulations to Bob and those who have worked with him.

It seemed an appropriate time for me to pull together a few of the past posts I have written about Tingha:

• Back in March 2007 in New England's Poor Towns - a failure in public policy I referred to Tingha as one of the poor towns listed by Professor Vinson, Nearly all the NSW poor towns listed by Professor Vinson were in New England. My concern then as it is now lay in finding ways to turn this around.
• New England Australia's Chinese - Reference Post (30 March 2007) was a then consolidation post on the Chinese in New England. The Chinese form an important part of Tingha's history. Wing Hing Long & Co - Tingha (2 May 2008) deals with an exhibition on this Tingha store.
• The vanished Kamilaroi and the need for a new approach (16 August 2008) includes a photo of an Aboriginal family pea picking at Tingha.
• Tingha - a case study in community regeneration (February 16 2009) was the first story I wrote on Bob's work. This was followed by Belshaw’s World: Overcoming the curse of local self-interest (25 March 2009) Tingha Community Regeneration Continues (30 March 2009) and then Tingha Community Regeneration Project update (20 October 2009).

Actually, there are fewer there than I thought!. Still, if you look just at this list, you can see that I have been following Bob' work for a little while.  

Who will defend New England?

I guess I need to start this post with an apology to my colleagues for my non-delivery on certain matters. They will understand what I mean.

In Western Australia, Premier Barnett is staring the Feds down. One can argue for or against the WA position, but no-one can deny, I think, that the Premier is standing up for the people of WA. In New England, we have no-one standing up for us against either Sydney or Canberra.

Just at the moment, I am trying to complete several posts on the Grattan report, Investing in regions: Making a difference. This very bad think tank report argues, among other things, that resources should be redistributed from universities like UNE, SCU or Newcastle to those in Sydney, that resources should be redistributed from low growth areas like Newcastle to Western Sydney.

Newcastle a low growth area? Please excuse my under-breath comments!  

Today's post on my personal blog, People, biography & the New England tradition, was really a history post. However, a point was that the life, culture, history and thought of Northern NSW, my broader New England, had been largely written out of Australian discourse because it is seen as non existent or irrelevant.

In my history research and writing I see the linkages all the time. I also see the way in which local and regional causes have been constantly dismissed. You won't see the linkages in conventional history or writing more broadly. As I said, they have been written out of existence.  

Some of us including fellow bloggers are fighting to bring it back. We need your support.

You don't need to support New England self government, although many of us do. We just need you to tell the story of your own area and in doing to also focus on broader linkages.

This is what I try to do. Please join me.

Tinkler rides to Newcastle's rescue - again

I have to say that it's helpful to have a local billionaire.

I have written about the future of the Newcastle CBD a number of times on this blog. I am not a Novocastrian, but as a New Englander interested in Newcastle as the North's big city, I have mourned the loss of Newcastle's CBD as a vibrant centre.

Having saved the Jets and Knights, it appears that Newcastle billionaire is interested in the CBD, with Buildev apparently acquiring a large section of the CBD from GPT. Buildev is not just owned by Mr Tinkler, but he is the person attention has focused on.

Neil Goffet's Newcastle Herald story,Tinkler town: mall and all, provides the details.

Have a browse through the comments. There are a lot of them. The sense I get is an overwhelming feeling of relief that someone is actually doing something after failures by Newcastle City Council, much more by the Sydney Government, to actually do anything to help. I hope that Mr Tinkler and his colleagues can deliver. 

Tony Burke's bullshit

I do wonder sometimes.

According to Milanda Rout in the Australian, Australia's Minister for Sustainable Population Tony Burke has ruled out solving the country's population problems by encouraging people to move to selected regional cities through the relocation of government jobs.

Whether or not the movement of government jobs is a good or a bad thing is arguable. However, the report suggests that Mr Burke has very little knowledge of history in his portfolio area. To illustrate this, this post takes Mr Burke's reported views and then provides a comment.  

"Sustainable Population Minister Tony Burke told The Australian he would not follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and get people out of the cities and into the country by shifting public service departments.

He said this policy -- used by many past state and federal governments in places like Albury-Wodonga -- had failed in getting people to move over the long term, and it was better to let the market decide which regional areas should boom."

The first major move of Government jobs to a country region was in a place now known as Canberra, a move that had major locational effects. I know of no evidence that those moves that have taken place - and there haven't been all that many of them - have failed in getting people to move over the long term.

"I won't try to fix it by picking winners," Mr Burke said. "What I don't want to do is to get into some direct centralised-control argument about the commonwealth somehow determining which will be the growth centres and which will not. That argument will always fail."

Now that's an interesting comment. Most people who read this won't know the history. As it happens, I'm writing something on it at the moment.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the Australian Government turned its mind to post war reconstruction. After the turmoil and rigours of the war, there was genuine national interest in new ways of doing things. One part of that was the need to achieve effective community development and decentralisation.

In New England, Drs Belshaw and Voisey launched a regional councils movement. To Belshaw in particular, regional councils were the best way of achieving effective decentralisation. In January 1948, the Australian Institute of Political Science held its annual summer school in Armidale. The topic was decentralisation. It was a well attended meeting attracting great local interest. It was also the meeting that re-launched the New England New State Movement.

Unlike his son, Belshaw was not a new stater. He believed that regional councils were a more effective solution. Disillusioned by the failure of the NSW Government to grant the new regional bodies any real powers, convinced that it never would, he turned to the idea of selective decentralisation. Let's concentrate resources on the development of a small number of major non-metro cities.

This idea was picked up, developed and popularised by Professor Neutze and others at the Australian National University. It then became the basis of the new Whitlam Government's growth centre strategy. Two growth centres were picked in NSW - Albury-Wodonga and Bathurst-Orange. For a number of reasons including the demise of the Whitlam Government, the policy did not deliver the desired results.

Since the Whitlam Government, all Australian Governments have refrained from picking winners, all have said let the market decide, all have provided generalised regional development initiatives open to all. None of the policies had delivered effective results. This is not to say that selective decentralisation is a better approach, simply that it seems that Mr Burke is unaware of history.

The minister said the national population strategy, due to be released in the middle of the year, would instead focus on how to address "barriers" to people living in booming regional areas where there are housing shortages.

He described mining towns where people were well-paid but had to pay $2000 a week rent and could not get a sandwich as a "market failure".

"It's a case of trying to work out how we, at a commonwealth level, look at where those failures are and unlock some of the constraints," he said. "We need to be able to find ways to work out what is the market failure that is causing a massive demand in employment and a supply gap in allowing people to live locally and take those jobs."

Mr Burke's approach seems totally driven by the current mining boom. If Mr Burke were to argue for studies and approaches that attempted to address and remove the barriers limiting decentralisation, he would have my full support.

As I have tried to demonstrate on many occasions, those barriers are structural and are directly related to the locational impact of state and federal policies. Even in housing, and again as I have argued, the problems are not so much market failures but the outcomes of generalised state government policies whose effect is to make the release of new land and houses very expensive. You need a big market price to recover the costs, and development takes a long time,    

Mr Burke, who is approaching his 12-month anniversary in the portfolio, said the country was at a unique stage in its history because the mining boom meant the growth in regions was commercially driven rather than led by government.

"We have a really different opportunity because regionalism is being market-driven," he said.

This is absolute bullshit. Regional growth has rarely been led by Governments, often occurring in spite of governments. Australia has experienced many mining booms.

If Mr Burke wants to argue that Government action is required to ensure that regional communities from the Hunter to the Pilbarra get the best local gains from mining while minimising costs I would support him. But that's not what he is saying.

In fairness to the man, I should note that I suspect that none of his advisers have any knowledge of history. If they did, they would correct his remarks. 

Postscript:

I probably shouldn't have used the word bullshit, but I was cranky!

Why Newcastle is important to self-government

  I realise that I have been running a lot of Newcastle and Hunter material - the two are not the same! - on this blog, to the point that one link classified me as a Newcastle region blogger! 

I want to make a comment on why Newcastle is important to New England. But first an excerpt from my original PhD thesis on the life of David Henry Drummond. Comments follow at the end. The photo shows Newcastle Harbour in 1900.

"In 1907 Northern New South Wales was, in relative terms, an important part of Australia. Its population was then around 400,000, only one-third less than that of Queensland, roughly equal to that of South Australia, and far higher than the population of Western Australia or Tasmania.[1] One New South Welshman in four, and thus just under one Australian in ten, lived in the North. The local world that these people knew was in many ways very different from that existing today.[2] The biggest urban concentrations in the North were, and still are, in the lower Hunter Valley: this area includes the North's biggest city, Newcastle, which had a population of 59,319 in 1911, as well as Maitland (12,377) and Cessnock (5,102). Coal was dominant in the lower Hunter, with the mines providing the main source of income. As a result the very texture of life was different from that found elsewhere in the North. Newcastle, along with Bunbury in Western Australia, was one of the last Australian ports in which sail was still a rival to steam.[3] The tall ships in the river, the lumpers who loaded them, the boarding-house proprietors who looked after and exploited the sailors, and the merchants who supplied the ships all helped create a different atmosphere. But beyond all this was the stark reality of a life dominated by the harsh rhythm of the mines. The end result was a close-knit, inward-looking and clannish community which had little in common with, and less understanding of, life elsewhere in the north. This lack of understanding was fully shared by those living further north, for they distrusted and even feared the mining and industrial interests of the lower Hunter: the tensions flowing from these differences form one of the themes of Northern history.

Further north, the population structure was very different from that existing today. Although there were at least fourteen urban centres with populations exceeding 2,000, the main towns were very much smaller. Lismore, the largest centre in 1911, had a population of only 7,381, while there were only three urban areas with populations between 5,000 and 8,000. Equally importantly, the countryside had not then been depopulated. The rural population, that is people living on farms and in centres with a population of less than 600, varied from area to area but generally made up between 43 and 60 per cent of the total population.[4] A further 16 to 23 per cent lived in towns and villages whose populations ranged between 600 and 2,000, while the proportion living in the bigger urban centres themselves ranged from 17 to 41 per cent.

The end result was a diversified population structure, ranged in a distinct hierarchy. At one extreme was the locality or rural district, whose total populations could reach several hundred. Such localities were usually, as at Arding near Uralla, centred on the school, church and tennis courts. At the other extreme were the larger towns such as Lismore, offering a relatively wide range of urban services. In the middle came a variety of towns and villages. These ranged from small settlements with perhaps just a hotel, bakery and general store, to mining centres based on tin and gold, to timber towns nestling in the hills with their small collections of unpainted weatherboard houses huddled around the mill, to medium size towns offering a wider range of services to the surrounding countryside. No matter how small, these centres generally sustained a range of community activities, such as church groups, sporting clubs and farmers' organisations. The result was a complex web of relationships, linking together both those living within the communities and the communities themselves.

Associated with this different population structure were very different transport patterns. The coast was not then linked together by railway, so that for many journeys it was easier and faster for passengers and freight to travel by coastal steamer. Inland, the train was the key form of transport, channelling passengers and freight first to Morpeth (originally the main river port on the Hunter) and Newcastle, and then, by 1907, to Sydney. However, away from the railways and steamer routes, the horse and bullock were still king. The first cars had begun to appear, but most towns were still linked by stage coach, with a posting station or inn every sixteen to twenty-one kilometres. In addition to the roads themselves, the North was linked by an intricate web of stock-routes, along which mobs of sheep and cattle moved continually.

These different settlement and transport patterns helped mould human thinking. Even with the fastest horse-drawn transport, the distance covered in a day was roughly equal to that covered by car in one hour on a modern highway; travelling as the stock moved, that hour's drive becomes a journey of more than a week. To the Northerners of 1907, their immediate world was huge, measured as it was in days, or even weeks, of travelling time. It was also more sharply focused: slower transport meant that the knowledge of the landscape was greater; insignificant valleys that today vanish in a few minutes then stood out in clear relief. Beyond all this, even though there were large areas with few or no people, it was a populated world. The posting stations and inns, the slower transport that allowed travellers to stop and chat, and the many farming settlements, meant that human life was spread across the landscape.

The heightened awareness of their immediate world helped develop strong emotional attachments between people and the districts they lived in. 'South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country,' Judith Wright later wrote of the Tablelands.[5] Such emotional links strengthened local loyalties to the point where they hindered cooperation with other towns or districts within the North. But over time they also played an important part in the development of a wider Northern loyalty. The Northerners' perception of the large size of their immediate local world was normally associated with a deep-seated belief in its development potential. When this was continually frustrated, strong local loyalties were transformed into a sustained attempt to unite the North in order to radically restructure the existing governmental system. For David Drummond, who gave his total love and loyalty to the North, this fight would provide the central cause of his political life.

---

[1]The North's ill-defined boundaries make population estimates difficult. In 1924 the North's population, based on 1921 census data and excluding the lower Hunter but including a greater proportion of the western area, was estimated at 359,000. (Report of the Royal Commission Of Inquiry into Proposals for the Establishment of a New State or New States, formed wholly or in part out of the present territory of the State of New South Wales, Government Printer, Sydney, 1925, p.19.) Adjusting this figure downwards by deleting the population growth in the main Northern towns (ex lower Hunter) during the period 1911 to 1921 (6,000), and then adding the lower Hunter main town population in 1911 (76,000), gives a Northern population estimate for 1911 of about 429,000; in these circumstances 400,000 for 1907 seems a reasonable population approximation. New South Wales as a whole had a population of 1.4 million at the 1901 census and 1.6 million at the 1911 Census. Population figures are taken from: Official Year Book of New South Wales, No. 56, Government Printer, Sydney, 1959, pp.65-66; R. Ward, A Nation For A Continent: the history of Australia 1901-1975, Heinemann Educational Australia, Richmond, 1977, p.446.

[2]The description of life in the North contained in the following paragraphs has been compiled from a variety of sources. A detailed list is set out in the bibliography; the following references are some of the main ones. For autobiographical accounts see: R.J. Doolin, A Boy From The Bush Goes To Town, Published by the author, North Star, 1973; A.E. Cosh, Jumping Kangaroos, Devill Publicity, Armidale, 1978; P.A. Wright, Memories of a Bushwacker, University of New England, Armidale, 1971; and E.C.G. Page, Truant Surgeon: The Inside Story of Forty Years of Australian Political Life, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1963. For a description of life in a smaller settlement see B.L. Cameron and J.L. McLennan, "Scots' Corner": A Local History, B.L. Cameron, Armidale, 1971. H. Brown's Tin at Tingha, Brown, Armidale, 1982, deals with life in one of the mining towns, while E. Wiedemann's World of its Own: Inverell's Early Years 1827-1920, Devill Publicity, Inverell, 1981, deals with life in a larger urban centre. N. Braithwaite and H. Beard (eds.), Pioneering in the Bellinger Valley, "The Bellinger Courier-Sun", Bellingen, 1978, give a particularly vivid feel for life on a portion of the coast. J.C. Docherty, 'The Second City. Social and Urban Change in Newcastle, New South Wales 1900-C1929', PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1977, provides an interesting analysis of Newcastle.

[3]G. Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Sun Books, South Melbourne, 1966, p.279ff.

[4]The figures in this and the next sentence are drawn from: D.A. Aitkin, The Country Party in New South Wales. A Study of Organisation and Survival, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1972, p.5. Since Aitkin's figures are mainly drawn from the 1921 census, they probably understate rural populations for the pre-war period.

[5]From 'South Of My Days', J. Wright, Collected Poems: 1942-1970, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1975, p.20."

Comment

One of the themes in the history of Northern NSW, the broader New England that I write about, are the tensions and differences between Newcastle and the areas further north. My purpose in writing in the way I did in the excerpt was to paint a scene, to set a framework, for things that would be important later.

Newcastle was always different, but always part of the North. The differences meant that those seeking self-government for New England often excluded Newcastle from the proposed area. They felt, correctly, that the political, cultural and economic differences were such that it could imperil the self-government cause. The problem was that Newcastle was part of the North, making it difficult to exclude the city.

Today, similar issues arise. To accommodate that, those of us seeking self-government for New England argue that the final boundaries must be based on the will of the people expressed through referendum. If Newcastle wants to stay part of NSW, then so be it. Further, if the difficulties involved in getting a meld, then maybe there should be two states, once centred on the Hunter, one further north. Again, it comes back to the will of the people of New England.

I write wearing different hats. When I write as an historian, I must write on the history of the North including Newcastle. It makes no sense otherwise.    

The next photo shows the construction of wool stores at Newcastle. Wool selling did not come to Newcastle because the merchants of Newcastle wanted it, although they did. It came because those further north wanted it so badly that they were able to overcome the opposition of the Sydney wool merchants.

The campaign for self-government for Northern NSW, New England, is now 160 years old. Today, a cause that seemed dead after the 1967 no vote in Newcastle and the southern coal mining and dairy electorates and the collapse of the then new state movement is slowly building. This time, there is support in Newcastle.

I am not blind to the difficulties involved in re-creating a movement that, by its nature, is opposed or even ridiculed by the status quo. We have been there before. The immediate aim now is to get another referendum. Let us vote again.

This time, however, we must have support in Newcastle. Further, and regardless of one state or two or final boundaries, we have to rebuild the links across the North. Nenco, wool selling at Newcastle, shows the way. If those further north are prepared to support Newcastle, if Newcastle people are prepared to support those further north, then real change is possible.

Idealistic? Maybe. But the existing system certainly hasn't worked.  

Central Coast becomes official region

This heading may make you blink as it did me. The Central Coast not a region? 

A tweet from My Central Coast led me to this story from the Central Coast Express Advocate. 

It's official at last - the Central Coast is to be recognised as a separate region by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) from July 1.

Gosford and Wyong councils and the Central Coast NSW Business Chamber have welcomed the decision after years of lobbying by the community.

The coast will be recognised as a “statistical area 4”, the largest type of region below state level.

“Being included as a separate region is a great win for the region and the last significant classification required to get regional recognition for the Central Coast,” business chamber president Ken Baker said.

“We’ve proudly believed that the Central Coast deserves a better go from government and getting the right ABS data sets in place will help support our campaigns in the future.”

Gosford Mayor Laurie Maher said: “This is a victory for common sense considering that the coast has a population larger than Canberra and is expected to grow significantly over the coming decades,” Cr Maher said.

Wyong Mayor Doug Eaton said the recognition would place the coast in a better position to support its growth and development.

Mr Baker said the recognition would get its first big test with the Australian 2011 Census due to be collected later this year.

For the benefit of readers who don't know Australia, the Central Coast lies between Sydney and Lake Macquarie and the Hunter Valley. So it's just to the south of the traditional New England or Northern NSW boundaries.

I have often spoken of the way that official structures and classifications have on-ground effects. Clearly, the Central Coast is and always has been a region in geographic terms. However, it has suffered greatly, as has the broader New England, from it's statistical treatment.

For ABS purposes, it has been treated as part of the Sydney Statistical Division. For many planning purposes, it has simply been added to Sydney. Indeed, the boundary of Metropolitan Sydney, the way that areas are treated for planning purposes, has been progressively pushed north to include the Lower Hunter. Not only does this ignore one region, the Central Coast, but it actually bifurcates a second, the Hunter.

So long as planning centres in Sydney, areas like the Central Coast or the Lower Hunter will be treated as outliers of the metro centre. That is why many in the Hunter want the the present Sydney city rail system broken up to create a Hunter Valley equivalent.

Many in the Central Coast had reservations about the creation of a new state in Northern NSW because they feared that it would lock them out, lock them further into Sydney. The reverse is true.

In reality, the links between the Hunter and Central Coast mean that with the creation of a New England state, the Sydney Government would be forced by the very existence of New England to look at the Central Coast in new ways. We have seen this already in other border areas. The position of the Central Coast would actually be greatly strengthened.    

Discussion on re-imagining Newcastle continues

On 8 December 2010 I ran Wednesday Forum: Re-imagining Newcastle as an initial attempt to get discussion going on future directions for the North's largest city. I followed this with Re-imagining Newcastle - and the North and then Re-imagining Newcastle - suggestions.

Last week the last post attracted a new comment that I thought that I would run in full.

Newcastle has been deliberately left down trodden by the policies of labor governments that siphon money away to Sydney and the subsequent brain drain that occurs to Sydney.

Newcastle can never replace Sydney but it can offer an experience of a culturally rich, sophisticated smaller city perhaps like Cardiff in the UK, Lyon in France or Barcelona in Spain.

To achieve this it needs two things - infrastructure and jobs. The train line needs to be maintained and expanded upon. New (old) lines put out to the suburbs to improve connectivity and bring life style benefits.

A new world class sporting stadium, to host national rugby, union and league teams and soccer and cricket. Better train connectivity to Sydney and most of all jobs.

The public service needs to have some head departments in Newcastle. Some of the Coal companies based in the valley need to have corporate head quarters there, etc. Once you get these high end jobs then money and investment as well as lifestyle bonuses such as good restaurants will flow!

Good luck with your new state campaign.

As it happened, I was in Newcastle today for a new state meeting, and my colleagues were talking about many of the same issues, as was the Newcastle Herald. I thought therefore that I would run the comment in full to continue the discussion. 

DIY urban development

Interested to discover this story on US based Techpresident, DIY Urban Development: Step One is to Start a Facebook Group, reporting on Newcastle urban renewal. The trigger was a visit to New York by Marcus Westbury.

Wednesday Forum: Re-imagining Newcastle

While this post will still appear with a Wednesday date, it is in fact coming up later because of other pressures.

Last Forum, Wednesday Forum: improving public transport, drew no comments. That happens.

This time I want to deal with a different issue, the best way of re-imagining Newcastle. 

To help you here, assume that there is suddenly a New England state. Newcastle as the biggest city, bigger still if we include the surrounding urban areas, suddenly has an opportunity to carve out a new and independent role free of previous constraints. What would you advise?

To further help you here, a few questions:

1. As one of Lonely Planet's new top ten global cities, how would you promote Newcastle's role not just as a destination in its own right, but as entry point to New England?
2. Should Newcastle aim to turn its airport into a promoted international airport? This has benefits, but there may also be environmental implications.
3. Newcastle has its own gritty cultural tradition, one not well recognised outside the city. How would you promote this?
4. There appear to be rivalries and tensions among Hunter Valley councils. How do you promote Newcastle in such a way as to benefit other areas?
5. While Newcastle has its own business community, the city is in many ways a branch office economy. What might be done to encourage the creation of new Newcastle or Hunter headquartered businesses?
6. What are the main impediments to be overcome if Newcastle is grow not just in economic but in life style terms?

Results from Wednesday's forum on overcoming division

Last Wednesday's Forum on overcoming division in New England (Wednesday Forum: Overcoming division) attracted some interesting comments.

My old consulting colleague Neil Davidson likened the way that towns or areas had fought for things against each other to the mutual disadvantage of all to the old cold war MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) concept. He suggested:     

Instead of 'divide and conquer', what if we actually considered what a working regional system under a peak oil, peak water, climate instability, global financial collapse style but collective regional resilience model might look like? What if people actually got together to discuss what each could bring, not what each would get? What if people deliberately set out to develop collaborative and collective mutual advantage, rather than independent MAD-style 'advantage'?

It strikes me that if there are individuals that are interested (but perhaps can't admit it openly, for fear of showing their less-than-combative colours to their 'comrades'!) perhaps there is an opportunity to look at how to develop the capability and maturity to collaborate and innovate in the face of some pretty mutually assuredly destructive and compounding future threats. Sooner or later it is those within our regions that we will be turning to - not those potential investors to whom we competitively bid for contributions from outside our regional systems.

The vagaries of the existing process should forewarn us that when we need them most it is unlikely that we will receive any assistance from them - my bet would be on building local collaborative and interdependent trust, capacity, capability and maturity.

As consultants, Neil and I have worked together on a variety of regional development issues. However, there are some issues in what Neil says that can be illustrated from other comments.

The idea of regional sustainability is something of a common theme in regional discussions. It features in the Northern Inland Regional Development Plan as an example.

My first problem lies in the way we seem to be going in the opposite direction. Here I want to quote part of what Lynne said:

Having just done the Armidale - Bellingen drive, there is surely need for cooperation.
Bus only 3 times a week at $50 each way and rather hectic as well as odd times. Coming back in son's car we faced the shambles of Dorrigo Mountain.

Old issue I know and it seems in even further decline to me. Even to the matter of public toilets on the way. esp now that Ebor Servo had their doors locked. The three councils involved in this distance plus RTA can surely find some common points.

I can see quite a lot of the problems but, as usual, not the remedies.

Another recent issue for us was an emergency dental situation for one of the little children who was injured at an Armidale School and had to go to Tamworth for treatment. No dentist available at Armidale that day or for follow-ups. Public transport was not available either.

To achieve immediate economies in service delivery in areas such as health, we are reducing services in certain locations, centralising in others. All this depends for its success upon the motor vehicle.

As Lynne indicates, we already have a problem with public transport that can make access difficult for those without cars. But what happens when, as Neil suggests, peak oil hits us and private transport costs rise sharply? Are we, in fact, deliberately creating non-sustainable systems? Is the only solution then re-location of people?

Clearly, improved public transport is important, a broader issue. However, we also need to look again at the structure of services.

I have argued previously that one problem with current approaches to service delivery is that it saves costs on one side by shifting costs into consumers. The first is measurable, the second less so. The money saved in the delivery of a specialist service can be calculated, the extra time and travel costs imposed on patients is ignored.

Lynne also raises a smaller point, the need for agencies, councils, to cooperate. The three councils Lynne refers to are Guyra, Armidale-Dumaresq, Bellingen. Why must one council pay the costs if benefits are shared?

In a different comment, Mark wrote:

On a bureaucratic government level, there are government departments that are broken up into regions that include the "Northern/New England/Norhern Tablelands-coast" such as NSW Police and Hunter-New England Health. These bureaucracies have many workers who see Macquarie St as an enemy. Also, these workers, represented by unions, may start a campaign against Macquarie St. Unions are quite hostile towards the current govt.

There is also the common issue of coal seam gas extraction and the wholesale coal exploration on the Liverpool Plains. This is an easy unifying issue.

Transport, health, education and law enforcement are other common issues.

The newly introduced Metropolitan Transport tax grab on every NSW resident who owns a car is directly subsidising Sydney projects. An easy unifying issue.

Yes, divide and rule can be exploited with the examples above however, if we were to petition each LGA and each state member with similar demands irrespective of their political allegiances, this would at the very least show that the region, as a whole is united in their stand for a better deal collectively.

Mark is obviously putting together different things, but his comments do illustrate a number of issues 

I know from my own experience that many regionally based public servants do get very frustrated at the way they perceive head office as ignoring their regional needs.

Part of the problem lies in the way that any any integrated, centralised system has to make judgements about priorities across the larger whole. Inevitably, this means ignoring or over-riding local or regional interests. Part of the problem lies in the concentration of resources in head office. Part of the problem lies in the absence of any effective mechanisms for integrating across administrative divisions.

If you map all the agency boundaries onto a single map, New England emerges as an entity simply because New England or Northern NSW is a geographic entity. But with differing boundaries for each agency, with no recognition of the broader entity, with an absence of integration, the broader identity is lost.

One of the reasons that I argue that we need a broader New England or Northern focus is simply to force fragmented agencies to respond.

My support for New England self-government will be clear to anyone who reads this blog. Equally, it won't be surprising that my focus attracts others who support the same cause. However, this is a longer term objective. We are stuck with what we have for the moment, we have to try to do what we can to force existing systems to respond.

In another comment, Rob Cannon wrote:

The most common way to unite the people of this region is MONEY. Show them what is gathered by both levels of Govt. and how and where it is (not) being spent and they will gather around to change things. To see the grabs for money by the state govt. so that they can fix up the mess in Sydney is harming this area a lot.

Rob is right. Similar arguments have been advanced by Ian Mott, among others. The growth of new state support in the Hunter is directly related to the way that the area's mining royalties support Sydney. Yet there is also a problem.

Because so many of the head office jobs are in Sydney, because New England now has so many poor areas (fourteen of the poorest localities in Australia are now located in New England), the raw data will show that at least some areas of New England are being subsidised by tax payers elsewhere.

This is comparative static analysis. It ignores, among other things, the dynamic effects that can come from shifting jobs. Yet the reality is that the stats will be quoted and used against us. Again, this illustrates the need for us to develop a common position, to force others to respond.

I think that last Wednesday's forum generated some useful results. I will pick up some of the issues raised in later forums.

A final note on the NBN

I have been holding of posting to allow comments on  Wednesday Forum: the NBN and New England. I think that this one is quite important.

From my experience, too many of of us react in a reactive, sometimes passive, usually localised way to the problems facing our own broad region. We do fight on issues, but rarely set the agenda. We get a win here, a win there, but too often we fall divided.

I have now bought David Carse's comments up into the main post, and have added some of my own. I don't want to fight or focus on the broad generalities of the NBN. Rather, I have been trying to get us focused on what it might actually mean in a practical sense.

Normal posting will resume tomorrow. 

Greek lessons for New England tourism - the importance of experiences

In my first post in this series, I wrote:

When I was chair of Tourism Armidale, we spoke of attractions and events. This narrow focus, then and still (I think) part of NSW tourism orthodoxy, lies at the heart of tourism failure in New England.

Tourism is not about attractions and events. This is simply a way of categorising certain tourist activities. Rather, tourism is about experiences. This is what Greece has done, and done well.

Objectively, there is a certain sameness about Greek tourism. You find the same touristy things in every place; the jewellery stores, the postcards, narrow streets in old towns, ruins, the inevitable archeological museum or museums, beaches; even the food tends to be similar. Yet somehow it comes together into a package.

Consider the beaches on the Greek Island. Many are very pretty. However, by Australian standards the sand (if there is sand) is poor, the water still. They are also very crowded.

To the European tourists who throng the beaches, they are a marvelous contrast to home. Sun, heat, sparkling water. To Australians, this is less true. Yet Australian visitors still throng there because they, the beaches, are seen to be different. They are part of the experience.

The scenery on the Greek Islands is barren, rocky and scrubby to Australian eyes. There are scenes of great beauty, no-one could deny the superb views from Santorini, but that is not universally true. Yet again, things are packaged. The tourists who flock to see the sun set at Fira or Oia see sunsets no better than those seen in parts of New England, yet (as we did) they come for the experience.

History pervades Greece, with Greece itself deeply embedded in Western consciousness. The millions of tourists that throng the ancient sites including the Acropolis, Delos and Delphi are not just visiting attractions, but also entering into the Greek and often their own pasts.

In the midst of the ancient monuments, it is easy to forget that much Greek history is quite recent. Greece obtained initial independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, the capital was transferred to Athens in 1833. The various tourism guides refer to aspects of this modern history as it relates to individual areas. Thus we learn, for example, that the Ionian Islands were governed as a British protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands, from 1815 to 1864 then being ceded to Greece. This is linked to attractions and visible signs.

The net result of all this is a totality of experiences that really has no Australian equivalences with our focus on attractions and events.

In my last post in this series, Greek lessons for New England tourism - information, I compared the paucity of Australian tourism information and especially at regional level with the Greek equivalent. The Australian Lonely Planet Guide does have a general history section, there is some material on NSW, but once we drop below this there is absolutely no integration between history and the area.

If we look at the fifty or so pages on different parts of New England, the area is essentially treated as a thoroughfare between Sydney and Brisbane along the Pacific and New England highways. This dictates an attractions/events focus. It also means that parts of New England are left out entirely. You might be able to use the guide to decide what places to stop at while visiting, but it is hopeless in planning a New England tour.

In fairness to Lonely Planet, Australia is a very big country and the guide has to be related to dominant visitor interests. That is small comfort to those like me who are concerned to promote New England. That is also why we need a stand-alone New England tour guide, one promoting the New England experience.