Round the New England blogging traps 26 - romance with a dash of geology

On Freedom and Flourishing, Winton Bates What is the case for government funding of mitigation research? looks at the justification for government funding of climate change research. Winton was co-editor of Neucleus with me back in those distant days.

Staying with the University of New England, on Northern Rivers Geology Rod has continued his fascinating analysis of New England's geology and geography. To illustrate my point, have a look at Where the river joins the sea. One of the reasons why UNE was so influential in its earlier days lay in its adoption of a broader regional focus. Sadly, it still has to recover that.

Still sticking with UNE, New England blogger and Armidale Express journalist Janene Carey had a fascinating profile of local independent MP and UNE Chancellor Richard Torbay. In a comment on an earlier post, Janene asked me questions for Richard. Personal events intervened. But, Richard, I would be a darn sight happier if you were to come out with a broader New England focus including support for self-government.

If you go to Canberra without that broader base, then you are likely to be ineffective.

Mark's Clarence Valley Today remains a superb photo blog. It helps that I know the areas that he writes about quite well, but he just has some fascinating stuff. 

Published by Penguin, Cathryn Hein's new book is described in this way:      

When a tragic horse float accident leaves young showjumper Brooke Kingston unable to properly manage her family's Hunter Valley property, she believes nothing worse can happen. Until she discovers her well-intentioned family have employed a new farm manager for her beloved Kingston Downs. But stubbornness runs in the family, and Brooke isn't about to leave her home or abandon her darling horse Poddy. Working on the principle possession is nine-tenths of the law, she digs in her spurs and stays put.

You will find her blog here. Now Cathyrn and fellow New England writer Bronwyn Parry are doing a rather effective job in cross-promotion. 

Cathryn describes Bronwyn's latest book in these terms: 

Trapped in rugged country in scorching summer heat, pursued by ruthless gunmen who can’t afford to fail, Jo and Nick will need all their skills and courage to survive.

The national parks where Ranger Jo Lockwood works, on the edge of the NSW outback, are untamed stretches of dry forest cut through with wild rivers. She’s often alone, and she likes it that way until she discovers the body of a man, brutally murdered, in a vandalised campground.

I have yet to read Cathryn, although I intend to do so as soon as I can get to a bookshop. I can tell you that Bronwyn is a bloody good writer. She really is, and her sales attest to that.

I know that I carry on about this, but we New Englanders really don't have access to our own cultural life because we don't exist! I try as best I can, recently not well, to feed back to you some of the depth and texture of our life, but it's hard.

The broader New England is a natural historical entity in the way very few Australian areas are. We exist because geography and history dictate that we do. Yet I would bet you London to a brick, to use a now ancient phrase, that the Armidale Express would classify Bronwyn as an Armidale or, at best, a Northern Tablelands' writer.

The Newcastle Herald would classify  Cathryn as a Hunter Valley writer. And yet they write in a common genre, draw from related geographical experiences, are understandable to each other and cross-promote.

I always knew about the commonalities and links. I did not realise until started writing in detail about the North just how deep and unique our history and cultural life has been. And damn all Australians or even New Englanders know about it.     

New England self-drive geology tours

My thanks to Rod from Northern Rivers Geology for this one. His Take yourselves on a tour focuses on the self-drive geology tours developed by Bob and Nancy. The tours are not limited to the broader New England, although that is their core focus.

I plan to take some of the tours. How about you?

You will find more details here.

New State arguments 3 - geographic basis of government

The new state movements throughout Australia challenged the existing basis of Government. In doing so, they faced a major challenge from those committed to the status quo.

It is a hard fact that all existing political institutions will defend themselves by all the means in their power, supported by those who for reason of sentiment or self-interest favour the status quo. The new state movements were required to develop arguments that would explain their case to a broader audience on emotional and logical grounds, that would challenge the arguments put forward by those opposing change. 

This led the New England Movement to develop the concept of the geographic basis of Government, a view later amplified by Professor Macdonald Holmes, Professor of Geography at Sydney University, in The Geographical Basis of Government (1944).

There were considerable links between Macdonald Holmes and the Movement's leadership. Macdonald Holmes saw geography as  'the study of land in relation to people'. This fed into Movement thinking and not just at the constitutional level.

Many of the senior Movement people had a deep interest in the conservation as well as the development of the land and in the application of science to conservation and primary production. In addition to the establishment of the New England National Park, this interest manifested itself not just on farm, but in the provision of direct financial support, including donation of land, to the University of New England to encourage the development of rural science. Macdonald Holmes himself promoted techniques such as contour ploughing as a way of reducing erosion, while maintaining moisture.

The idea behind the geographical basis of government was a simple one: geography helped determine the pattern of life; a geographically linked area was more likely to have the community of interest required for successful government.

NSW contained very distinct regions with limited commonality of interest. Further, it was dominated by one population centre with its own distinct interests that were very different from those holding elsewhere in the state. The inevitable result was a tendency to bad government in which the centre would tend to override, ignore or be unaware of the interests of the other parts of NSW.

By contrast, New England had a higher degree of community of interest in geographical terms because it consisted of the Tablelands plus the rivers originating on those Tablelands to the east, west and south, geographically linked entities. Further, those linkages in combination with its smaller size would made it easier for Government to understand and respond to community needs.

Like all simple concepts, the idea of the geographical basis of Government can be challenged by exception or argued in different ways. As an example, what do you do if history or particular aspects of geography have led to very different peoples occupying the same territory? Further, if New England has a commonality dictated by geography, wouldn't this be truer still of, say, the Northern Rivers or the Hunter Valley?

New England's geography has been central to its history.

The various names used to describe it during European times - the North, Northern Districts, Northern Provinces and New England are all geographical descriptors. The use of the word North defines location in regard to Sydney. The adoption of the name New England, the name originally applied just to the Tablelands that form New England's central geographic core, replaces a Sydney related descriptor with another geographical term.

During the long period of Aboriginal occupation of New England, the area's geography created a pattern of east-west and north south linkages and movements. This pattern was subsequently replicated during European times. The creation of Queensland put a political boundary through the top end of the unity, but otherwise left the pattern unchanged.

Within New England, the combination of history with geography made for divisions. This held true in Aboriginal times and is equally true today. However, the underlying entity keeps peeping through. If you map all the various and changing boundaries used for administrative purposes by the NSW Government and its various agencies and then overlay them on the New England new state area, New England still exists, however dimly.

NSW, by contrast, is a political not geographic entity. Outside history and constitutional structures, there is very little to unite. What unity that does exist is imposed. Further, that unity has become increasingly fragmented, a process that I described in The fragmentation of NSW.

If you want to test this, have a think about about NSW symbols. What symbolic things or even common ideas unite NSW? State of origin in the League is the one most commonly cited, but this only holds in part of the state.

Tourism is one of the most striking practical examples of problems that arise as a consequence, something that I dealt with in Why I remain New England New Stater 6 - conflicts in NSW tourism branding. Tourism is all about perception. It is very hard to sell NSW as a tourism destination because there is no unifying element. In tourism terms, if you ask people what NSW is you either get a complete blank or a list of specific localities or attractions.

This post is one of a series discussing issues associated with the creation of a New England New State. If you would like to look at the whole series, you can either search on new state arguments or go to the introductory post where you will find a full list of posts.  

The fragmentation of NSW

This piece is something of a thought piece, triggered by some recent trends. While I do refer to past posts, I am not giving links. I am simply getting ideas down.

Background

When the NSW Government first released its State Plan, I gave it the credit to take it seriously. I first analysed social and economic trends within New England to create a framework for the analysis of the Plan itself. I then looked at the structure and detail of the Plan itself and compared this with my analysis of New England's needs.

While I gave the Government full credit for its efforts, I concluded that the plan was too bitsy, simply an aggregation of existing targets and performance indicators. Even if every target in the plan was achieved, my conclusion was that its practical effect in meeting New England's needs would be negligible. I note that the Plan is presently being updated. This may change my conclusions.

Subsequently, the NSW Government released a series of strategies focused on actions required to meet projected population growth in Sydney and along the NSW coastal strip. Again I analysed them. I concluded that they were mechanistic. I also doubted that that the population targets were achievable, given that the assumptions seemed to imply a continued drift in population from inland NSW that I thought was unlikely to eventuate. If anything, and taking inland NSW as a whole, I thought that pattern of decline was beginning to reverse itself.

Since I wrote, higher levels of overseas migration have changed the equation somewhat.

Population growth in Greater Sydney has always been heavily determined by the combination of overseas migration with emigration from the city. Sydney has always attracted migrants, although its share of the total Australian migrant intake is, I think, showing signs of structural decline.  At the same time, Sydney has been loosing population for many decades from out-migration to coastal NSW and to Queensland.

Sydney's overall growth depends on the balance between the two. An increase in the rate of natural population combined with very high overseas migration levels means that rate of population growth in Greater Sydney has increased quite noticeably.

Assuming no change to current high levels of overseas migration, no further change in Sydney's share of the total migrant intake and no increase in the rate of emigration from Sydney, the original population projections look more likely. However, I remain cautious.

  If you look at my comments to this point, I am obviously critical of the way the NSW Government approaches its role. However, in saying this I am also conscious of the way in which the progressive fragmentation of NSW, something unique to NSW, has progressively constrained the freedom of the NSW government. Sydney still tries to manage NSW as though it was a meaningful unit, whereas it is in fact a a political and statistical construct made up of increasingly disparate parts.

It is this issue of fragmentation that I want to address in this post.

The Marchland Concept

In looking at the geographic basis of support for the New England New State Movement, the geographer Eric Woolmington suggested that this was greatest where the relative spheres of influence of Sydney and Brisbane overlapped. Using catchment analysis based on population distributions, he defined a theoretical boundary. This placed much of the Northern Rivers and the Northern Tablelands within the Brisbane sphere.

He then used a variety of measures to identify the actual boundary of influence. This placed the boundary much further north, if south of the formal geographic boundary. He concluded that the strongest new state support lay in the geographic area between the theoretical boundary and the formal boundary, with support rising as the formal boundary was a approached.

Similar analysis can be applied to the Riverina, the other area of NSW with sustained support for home rule. In the case of the Riverina, there is a further rough measure that you can use, the sporting boundary between Australian Football and Rugby League.

With time, the spheres of influence of Melbourne and especially Brisbane have expanded, moving north and south respectively. Increasingly, NSW Government policy and service delivery has to take into account Victorian and Queensland needs and positions.

Rise of the ACT

The real kicker in all this is the rise of the ACT, a rise concealed in part by State based statistics.

The following map shows what is now called the Australian Capitol Territory region. This is the area now classified as falling under the influence of metropolitan Canberra where coordinated action is required between the NSW, ACT and local governments. To put numbers on it, around 351,000 people live in Canberra, a further 256,000 people live in NSW in local government areas classified as belonging to the Australian Capital Territory Region, 607,000 people in all.                

The ABS population projections based on various alternative assumptions suggest that by 2056 the ACT's population will be in the range 374,000 to 683,000.

The lower figure is simply not credible given a current estimated population of 351,000. Canberra will grow as the Commonwealth Government grows, even allowing for a spill-over of population into adjoining regions. If the ACT were to reach 683,000 and if the surrounding area were to grow at the same rate, we are looking at an ACT region population of around 1.2 million sitting just next door to the Sydney conurbation. 

Impact of Fragmenation

The overall impact of the processes that I have been talking about can be summarised in this way.

In the North, the Tweed and Richmond River valleys are increasingly affected by and to a degree integrated into the growing SE Queensland conurbation. You can actually see this in some of the language used by the NSW Government. The traditional term Northern Rivers has dropped from use, with the Clarence River Valley increasingly classified as Mid North Coast. For planning purposes, the NSW Government now classifies the Richmond and Tweed Valleys as Far North Coast, while the Clarence Valley is Mid North coast.

In the South East, Canberra has increasingly become the driver. However, there real oddities here:

• Sometimes, the NSW portion of the ACT region - the South East - is called the South East and seems to be classified as coastal in NSW official material, when the coastal strip itself only has 29.5% of the NSW region's population. This actually distorts statistics and approach.
• Then, for NSW planning purposes, the South Coast is defined as Bega and Eurobodalla LGAs (Capital Region) plus Shoalhaven to the North. This is pretty much the traditional definition of the South Coast equivalent to the old definition of the North Coast as the coast north of the Hunter Valley. Also for planning purposes, there is another regional classification called the Sydney-Canberra corridor which includes six of of the 15 or so LGAs in the Australian Capital Region plus an Alpine Strategy focused on the resorts. The missed country LGAs appear to fall outside the land use planning process.    

Then to the west of the ACT region we have the area along the Murray increasingly affected by Victoria. This is covered by a Murray Planning Strategy that does explicitly recognise the need for integration on both side of the river.

Even at this level of analysis you can see how confused, confusing and fragmented the whole thing has become.

If we look at the rest of the state land-use planning documents, there are strategies for the illawarra, Metropolitan Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter. This means that planning documents exist for the full coastal strip that generally follow traditional geographical boundaries except, as already noted, in the Northern Rivers area.

All of the state west of the Dividing Range is, with the exception of those areas actually covered by existing plans such as Murray and the Sydney-Canberra corridor simply lumped as Western with a plan to be developed. This makes no geographic sense at all.

This has become quite a long post and has taken a fair bit of time to write. I have a fair bit more material, but this can wait.   

Border myopia and problems with maps

I have often complained about border myopia, the way in which political or administrative boundaries blind us to other things including underlying geographical realities.

I know New England quite well. However, I am really struggling just at present to come to grips with exact geographic patterns in the north eastern mountain and coastal section where the formal NSW and Queensland boundaries cross geographic features. I need to see the geography independent of these boundaries. This is remarkably hard to do.

Why is this important? Well, in looking at what would become New England in Aboriginal times, I have to write about what was independent of later boundaries. This means writing about the geographic extensions of New England within what is now Queensland and the interactions with the areas around.

Then, when the boundaries went through, I have to look the impact this had on life. From that time until today, the interaction between Southern Queensland and Northern New England affects New England life in a whole variety of ways.

In purely geographic terms, a political entity that stretched from the Hunter but included at least what is now the Gold Coast and possibly the Brisbane River on one side, the Darling Downs on the other, would have made a lot of sense. Of course, it would not be New England as we know it today, but it would have made for a far more cohesive system than we have today.     

New England's catchment areas

Short note to say that I have now completed uploading maps of the various river catchment areas within New England. My aim in doing so was to create a resource that I could use as a base for further analysis. You will find the entry page here.

In a different post, Sunday Essay - geography, history and our perceptions of our own past, I have continued my musings on the writing of history with a special focus on New England.

With limited time, I find that it takes a long time to sort my mind around issues. Still, without the pressure imposed by blogging it is likely that I would make no progress at all!

New England's Hidden Secrets - Mount Kaputar and the Nandewar Ranges

Photo: Sawn Rocks, Mount Kaputar National Park

In my post New England Australia - introducing the Liverpool Plains I wondered just where the Liverpool Plains ended. The answer is the Nandewar Ranges, one of the western spurs from the Northern or New England Tablelands.

The eastern part of the Nandewar Ranges starts in the Great Dividing Range south of Uralla. At this point the Ranges are simply part of the Tablelands so it is hard to see as a distinctive feature. A little to the west, the main road between Barraba and Bingara crosses the range. However, at the western end the Nandewar Ranges culminate in Mount Kaputar, (1,510 metres), a complex of volcanic origin, from which spectacular views of the flat inland plains of New England can be seen.

The Ranges form the divide between the Namoi and Gwydir River valleys.

Starting south of Walcha, the Macdonald River drains west to Warrabah National Park where it changes its name to the Namoi and is then added to by the Manilla River, Peel River and Mooki River. The Horton River runs north to the Gwydir.

The western edge of the Ranges is covered by the Mount Kaputah National Park.