I do love feedback, although it can be distracting. Two posts linked to New England's history:
I am cross-posting this post on both my Personal Reflections and New England Australia blogs.
In earlier posts on both blogs (Meander, with a special focus on Ulrich Ellis, Blogging meander), I mentioned that my my focus in the New England history project had switched to social change in the period 1950-2000. As part of this, I have been bringing up relevant past posts and then repeating them with an introduction on the New England History blog.
Doing it this way, the posts do not constitute rigorous history. They also have a high personal component. Still, collectively they do build a picture. I have gone back and included the comments that the original posts attracted because they add to the picture.
Doing it this way also reveals gaps. There are elements that I have written on in glancing fashion only. I have to decide how to handle this.
The material that I am presenting may be partial but is, I think, unique and maybe even important. This may sound a large claim, so let me explain.
I think that the material is unique because I am trying to address a wide range of changes in an integrated way within a frame set by one broad and varied but linked area. In doing so, I am also trying to put those changes into an historical context. I am not sure, I stand to be corrected, that anyone else has attempted this.
I think that the material may be important because, in writing, I am trying to show how decisions made in government offices in Sydney or Canberra, in board rooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Dublin, Newcastle, Tamworth or Armidale, in Vatican City, can change lives for ever.
This is not a story of conspiracies, although some in New England may see or have seen it in that way. Helplessness in the face of sometimes diabolical change breeds conspiracy theories. Rather, it is the story of the way in which fundamental changes at different levels work themselves out on the ground.
It is also the story of the way in which ideas, abstractions, influence the way things work themselves: economic policy, industry policy, competition policy, free trade, protection, neoclassical economics, privatisation, the market, efficiency, effectiveness, outcomes, outputs etc, are all abstractions.
This is all dry stuff, but the BHP steelworks in Newcastle closes; councils are merged; colleges of advanced educations closed; county councils vanish; assets are sold; eras end so fast that nobody has time to notice.
As an historian writing on New England, I am not concerned with the rights and wrongs of particular ideas or policies, although I have views that I argue in other contexts. My job is to try to explain what happened from a New England perspective.
I recognise that my claims to possible uniqueness and Importance are substantial ones. I leave it up to you to make the decision. You will find the entry point for the on-going series here: Social change in New England 1950-2000 Introduction.
This morning I did a short radio spot with Kelly Fuller on ABC New England North West on new state symbols, a spot triggered by When was the New England rampant lion first raised?. She had already followed up with Max Ellis, Ulrich Ellis's son. Ulrich both devised the flag and wrote the lyrics for the New State anthem.
Listening to the broadcast, Max apparently has a recording of the anthem being sung that he is going to lend to Kelly. I will follow up with her to see if we can have it put on line. Given my voice, I dare not try to sing it myself!
Those who are interested in the words and lyrics can find them in Battle Song of New England.
You know, it's interesting. Slowly but surely we are bringing New England's past back from the historical dump heap to which it had been assigned under the influence of changing historical fashions.
One of the things that's interesting but also a bit depressing about about the present growth of interest in new states is the way it draws out our own loss of history.
There are four major regions in Australia at sub-state level that have had a very strong sense of their own identity over time - Riverina, Northern NSW, Capricornia and North Queensland. Not coincidentally, these are also the regions where the desire for statehood expressed through separatist agitation has been a regular manifestation of the sense of identity.
In Australian historical terms, we are talking big sweeps of history.
In Northern NSW, the first new state agitation was associated with the agitation that resulted in the separation of Queensland (1859). From then until the turn of the century, there were sporadic outbreaks that laid down a separatist tradition. Then, in the twentieth century, you has a renewed demand for statehood at Grafton in 1915 that flowed through into a sustained wave of agitation that lasted until the mid twenties. Then there was another wave from 1930 to 1935, followed by a further wave from 1949 to 1967. Since then, demand for statehood has resurfaced from time to time, with another still small wave underway now.
How does all this link to loss of history? Well, if you look at the discussion presently taking place in North Queensland, you will see that there is very little reference to the past. To a degree, everything is being discovered afresh.
Does this matter? I think that it does and at several levels.
To begin with, there is no point in re-inventing the wheel. Most of the arguments for and against statehood have been well thrashed out and over a long period. Of course, their exact manifestation has changed as circumstances change, but the core arguments have not changed.
This loss of history is most damaging to those supporting self-government, for it allows the anti-side to present the desire for self-government as a strange minority view, a quirk, rather than the long running expression of regional desire. It also allows the anti-side to get away with flip and shallow expressions of opposition that have in fact been long-discredited.
The loss of history also matters because it accentuates divisions.
One feature of all the areas that have sought self-government in a sustained way is that they are large enough to have their own internal divisions. We can see this clearly in New England's history.
Attempts to gain east-west rail connections, for example, essentially foundered on the claims and counter claims of tablelands and coastal towns. Disputes over free trade and protection created divides between and within regions depending on the economic base, while political differences also divided. These divisions were in turn played on for purposes of power and politics.
The new state cause was one of the key unifying forces that helped create a unifying sense of identity. As the new state cause declined after 1967, so the knowledge of New England's history declined. The two fed on each other, accentuating division. I spoke of one aspect of this in a seminar paper I delivered in Armidale earlier this year. There I said in part:
This paper follows my personal journey in attempting to write a history of the broader New England. I will talk a little about names and naming later. For the present, I simply note that when I talk about the broader New England, I mean the Northern Tablelands and its surrounding rivers to the north, south, west and east.
I say unrecognised, because the area that I am talking about has no formal identity. You will not find it on any map. I say now almost unknown, because the tides of history, and of fashions in the writing of history, have overtaken the area, its interests and activities. Things once considered important have been increasingly relegated to a sentence, a footnote, or just ignored.
Writing about an entity that does not formally exist in historical terms is always problematic. Yet in all the research and writing I have done, New England keeps peeking through as an entity. It does so because of the combination of, the interaction between, geography and history.
From Aboriginal times, New England has been marked by north-south and east-west patterns of movement centred on the Tablelands and river valleys. The patterns of early European settlement strengthened both the north-south and east-west links.
The relationships between those two geographic axis is part of the New England story. The first new state boundaries centred on the east-west axis. The airline name East-West Airlines reflected the east-west focus. Yet East-West ended up flying north-south, as had the earlier Lismore based New England Airways. Driven by geography, the later new state boundaries progressively combined both the east-west and north-south linkages.
Today, the administrative boundaries and patterns of political influence within New England still reflect those old geographic patterns, although the east-west axis has become somewhat attenuated as Sydney and Brisbane have grown in influence relative to the North.
The naming of and boundaries attached to New England reflect the shifting sands of history and of historical knowledge.
Initially the area was simply called the Northern Districts, Northern Provinces or just the North, a geographical identifier based on relationships to Sydney. The creation of Queensland broke the geographic unity by putting a political boundary across the top of the North. The Aborigines suffered first, because that line bisected language groups; the same peoples were placed in different jurisdictions. Then the rest of the far North suffered because of the way that policies based on political divides came to affect the pattern of economic and social life.
From 1932, the name New England was adopted for the whole area as a specific local identifier independent of the previous Sydney connection. By 1967 there were two New Englands, the New England to identify the New England Tablelands and New England, the name for the whole area. Then, from 1967 as the new state cause declined and sense of Northern identity diminished, usage of the name New England diminished, shrank back towards the Tablelands and Western Slopes. The rise and decline of the name New England is itself a proxy for the rise and decline of the sense of Northern identity.
The term North or Northern NSW continued, if becoming progressively sloppier and ill-defined. Yet despite all the administrative boundary changes, despite demographic, political and economic change, despite the decline in New England historical writing (this peaked around 1980), the idea of Northern identity continues.
In recent years, the writing of history about New England has once again been on the rise. Reflecting the fragmentation of the North, it's more localised than in the past. Yet it's there and is providing a renewed base for broader analysis.
I find it interesting that the new interest in our history preceded the renewed interest in the North and the new state cause. You see, in the past, the new state agitation actually preceded and indeed caused the writing of New England history. This time, and building on that previous base, a renewed interest in our history is actually refuelling our own sense of identity.
I find that kind of satisfying.
I have really been enjoying Lynne's new nellbellingen blog, although it should perhaps be bellinger, since it is much about the valley as the town.
For those who don't know either, the town of Bellingen lies on the Bellinger River. The small spelling difference between the two is a constant source of confusion.
The Bellinger Valley is not a big one, a bit over 3,400 square kilometres. On the map, Waterfall Way marks the centre of the Valley. It runs from Urunga up through Bellingen to Thora. Beyond Thora, the road climbs the escarpment.
The Valley is very beautiful. Bellingen itself has become a counter culture centre. Lynne's posts bring out the texture of life in Bellingen and the Valley rather well. Bello Bards deals with another aspect of local life, poetry.
One of the things that I love about New England is the depth and texture of its life once you drop below the broad patterns imposed by main highways or well know tourist centres. I have tried to capture a little of this in my writing, but a constantly struggle with the size of the task!
The Bellinger Valley is one example, the Wollombi Valley in the south another. The Great North Road runs through Wollombi. I drove this convict built road a lot at one stage in my past, but have to revisit.
In the Valley, Peter Firminger continues to campaign for local interests. Peter is a member of the Cessnock-Kurri Greens, but is happy to recognise contributions from all sides. Conversely, he criticises those who ignore Valley interests.
The big issue at present relates to local planning powers. There are two related dimensions to this. One is the way in which Cessnock Council works. The second is the willingness of the Government in Sydney to over-ride local representation whenever they conflict with Sydney plans.
Further north, Gordon Smith continues his search for the Diggers Graveyard mine. Gordon lives on a block with partner writer Bronwyn Parry to the east of Armidale. He spends a fair bit of time exploring the gorge country that forms the divide between the Tablelands and coastal strip.
This is country that I knew quite well growing up. However, I did not realise the extent to which it had its own history. Gordon draws a little of this out in his posts. Diggers Graveyard: pest control is, I think, the first of the posts in the Diggers Graveyard series. If you go there and then follow the posts forward, you can follow Gordon's journey.
Archives Outside had a rather interesting article on Crowdsourcing for Archives and Libraries. I mention this not only because Archives Outside does carry New England stories, but because crowdsourcing itself is relevant to the New England web scene.
Crowdsourcing simple means using the web as a vehicle to capture mass volunteer involvement in preserving and documenting material. Wikipedia itself is an example of crowdsourcing.
The effect of crowdsourcing is to broaden content and contribution. For someone like me concerned with the preservation and presentation of past and present life in an area, the results are quite wonderful. Gordon Smith's Old news from Armidale and New England is an example.
Drawing from digitised newspaper material, the blog has restarted the newspaper presses of the past. Lynne also uses this source.
I find this completely distracting. It's not just the references from time to time to members of my own family and especially my grandfather, nor even the fact that I knew or knew of so many of the people, it's the detail of local life. This is my country and I love it!
I have often complained about the way in which problems of selection, perception and bias in Australian historiography have cut so many of us off from our own pasts.
The internet in combination with techniques such as crowdsourcing actually give us control back. We can access our own past independent of the decisions of researchers, writes and publishers. As we take control, we build our own content that can then be used by others.
I think that that's quite a wonderful thing!
I am not posting today in any substantive way because I spent a fair bit of time over the weekend getting the next chapter in the Drummond biography ready to post - Drummond's life 2 - Entry into politics 1907 - 1920.
I am bringing this material on now because with current interest in the revival of the new state cause, Drummond's life provides a perspective on some elements of New England history, the rise of the Movement, as well his own story. Sadly, very little has been published that can provide an entry point to this part of our collective history.
In a comment, Mark expressed surprise at the size of the Movement. This was not just a minority pressure group, a footnote in Australia's history, but a genuine movement that achieved considerable results.
Of course, my personal links mean that I can, with accuracy, be accused of bias. Still, in writing, I have tried to provide the evidence to support my conclusions.
Just at present, there is a fair bit of interest in what constitutes the New England sense of self-identity. Part of my problem is that, in growing up, I never questioned what it meant to be a New Englander, it just was, self-evident.
I might not agree, for example, with the ALP and some of the views expressed in Newcastle, but I never thought of Newcastle as being other than part of New England, our big city. It was only later when I came to do my research into Drummond and the history of the Movement that I found that there were debates and disputes about boundaries.
In the forty plus years since the defeat of the plebiscite, the concept of New England has become vaguer, more attenuated. The difference between the New England (the Tablelands) and the broader New England or North has also become an issue.
To some, New England now just means the Tablelands or perhaps Tablelands and Western Slopes. Even the very idea of the Tablelands itself has become blurred because of the way regional boundaries are drawn.
Now, when I look at some of the discussions on our sense of identity, I write because I must, to restate things that I used to take for granted.
In writing as an historian, my views are subject to challenge. Indeed, they should be. The craft of history is in part a dialectic between different ideas, a professional discourse. However, I like to think that the material I write will show people within New England something about their own past. I also like to think that my writing will make that history accessible to people outside New England, to challenge the deeply held assumption that Australia is, in some ways, a single uniform whole where variance links just to broad differences such as class, gender, party or race.
There is very little room for for regional difference in the way history is currently written. I would like to change that. We do have our own history, and need access to it.
In another comment Newcastle's Heritage Problems, Greg wrote:
All this confirms the depth of feeling that is running throughout the north against the Sydney centric government in Macquarie Street. The challenge will be to harness that and create a genuine sense of "New England" as more than just some vague, ill defined region in the north of the state, but rather a community of regions with shared history and common purpose.
The idea that Greg put forward of New England as a community of regions is a very important one. To show this, I thought that I would explore the concept within a framework set by New England's history.
In some ways, the concept of regional identity at a sub-state level is a shadowy one, formed within institutional and cultural structures that operate centrally whether from Brisbane, Sydney or, increasingly, Canberra. These determine what will be taught, heard and delivered. Further, in electoral politics and in delivering services, all Governments use administrative boundaries that vary with time. These, too, affect the way people think and feel.
All this can make it difficult to determine specific regional identities. Clearly they exist, but what do they mean?
This issue was a central concern in High Lean Country, the recently published history of the New England Tablelands and Western Slopes. Subtitled Land, People and Memory in New England, the various writers explore aspects of New England history including thought and writing through to present times.
The book ends on a somewhat uncomfortable note. In the epilogue, 'a high lean country/full of old stories', Iain Davidson asks the question whether New England can survive as a concept in a different world.
Noting that a region's identity depends on shared identities, on the importance of common icons, Ian suggests that that there was a time when David Drummond's vision of the unifying power of education might have achieved greater unity within New England through the proselytising power of the Armidale Teachers' College and the University of New England, adding and perhaps it did. However, times change and Ian is pessimistic about the future.
For reasons that I will outline in a moment, I have a somewhat different view to Ian. However, for the moment, the book illustrates the difficulties associated with the establishment and maintenance of regional identity. If the more narrowly defined New England is struggling, what does this say about the broader New England?
Within Eastern Australia, there are four broader areas at sub-state level that have had a persistent sense of broader identity - North Queensland, Central Queensland, New England and the Riverina. Not coincidentally, these are also the areas that have had persistent separation movements, seeking self-government. A key distinguishing feature of all four is size and distance from the state capital.
New England is the most geographically diverse of the four. It has its own hierarchy of regions, each with a somewhat different history. Yet despite that diversity, despite rivalries between and within regions, despite the cultural and demographic changes of the second half of the twentieth century, New England has retained an identity. Even now, if you look at the overlapping and ever changing combination of boundaries of NSW agencies, New England keeps peeping through the mists.
Further, the two great geographical axis that have dominated New England's history - east-west and north-south - are still there as they were in Aboriginal times. The present area health services reflect the two north-south axes, the New England independents the easy-west axis. It is no coincidence that it is only in New England that the independent movement established a clearly defined geographic footprint. To understand this, we need to look at geography.
The New England or Northern Tablelands, the largest tablelands in Australia, dominates New England geography. In geographic terms, New England consists of the Tablelands and the surrounding river valleys. This provides a fundamental if sometimes ill-defined unity.
Pretty obviously, there was no such thing as New England in Aboriginal times. New England is a European construct. Indeed, the name New England itself originally applied just to the Tablelands - the whole area in the first European period was called the Northern Districts, Northern Provinces or just the North. It wasn't until the 1932 Maitland New State Convention that the name New England was adopted for the whole of the North. From that point, people spoke of "the New England" to distinguish the Tablelands from the broader North.
In Aboriginal times, the Tablelands was a marchland area between west and east. To the west lay the extensive territories of the powerful Kamilaroi language group, one of a series of related riverine languages. Here geography facilitated north-south movements. To the east and south were a number of large language groups whose territories broadly reflected river valleys and extended into the Tablelands' river headwaters. The smaller Tablelands language groups sat between the two.
Aboriginal patterns of seasonal movement and human interaction were both north-south and east west. Today, Armidale has one of the most diverse Aboriginal populations in NSW because of the presence of people from Tablelands, coastal and western language groups all of whose original language boundaries were on or near the city.
With the arrival of the Europeans, settlement came in two broad streams, one inland from the Hunter Valley and then to the coast, the second along the coast and then inland. This created two sets of linkages.
From the entrepot centre of Maitland in the south with its nearby port at Morpeth, a stream of human and economic connections ran north. A second stream ran along the coast to the emerging northern river ports and then inland. I say human as well as economic connections because locational and family connections meant that many people had family or personal connections with other parts of the North.
Because of geography, the coastal strip from Taree to the Hunter Valley had fewer inland linkages. Here the orientation was more to Sydney. This explains why new state support was always lower in the Manning as compared to the river valleys further north.
The coming of the Great Northern Railway reinforced the north-south axis at the expense of the east-west one, but otherwise left the pattern unchanged. Initially the railway benefited Newcastle at the expense of Maitland, making Newcastle the economic hub for the inland-north south axis. However, the opening of the line to Sydney with freight rates set so as to attract Northern trade from Newcastle to Sydney, quickly reduced Newcastle's power. This led to continuing resentments.
The growth first of mining and then of industry in the lower Hunter Hunter introduced a new element with very different cultural, social and ultimately political attitudes from those developing elsewhere in the Hunter or further north. This became Labor Party heartland, whereas the Progressive/Country Party became dominant further north.
Progressive/Country Party dominance combined with the identification of that Party with the emerging New State Movement facilitated cooperative action further north, as well as the emergence of a Northern or New England identity. However, the divisions between Country and Labor Party, together with identification of Country Party and New State Movement as linked identities, was to be disastrous at the 1967 plebiscite. Drawing from the lessons of the 1930s when the Country Party and the New State Movements merged to form the United Country Party, the New England Movement formed after the Second World War was non-party political, but was not able to overcome the past.
Localism has always been pronounced in New England. The emergence of the towns created town merchant classes whose future was bound up with that of their town. Town fought town for trade and facilities. Attempts, for example, to gain east-west rail links failed because of rivalry over routes. No-one could agree. At the same time, the growth of farming in the second half of the nineteenth century introduced a range of different groups into New England serving different markets and different interests.
Unlike other areas such as Victoria where the Country Party remained a farmer party, the New England Progressive/Country Party was able to combine different farming and grazing interests across Northern New South Wales into a single party. At the same time, regional development campaigns launched by Earle Page focused on the Northern Rivers but then spread west along the east-west axis, creating the soil for the re-birth of new state agitation. This actually captured and combined town interests, providing a base for common agitation for development.
Much later, the creation first of the Armidale Teachers' College and then the New England University College reinforced the process because it bought together students from all over New England, while providing a coherent regional development focus.
Localism remained important, as did broader regional divides, yet the unity existed. When I was an undergraduate at New England I didn't worry about the sense of regional identity in the way Iain did later in High Lean Country. It just was.
My family was involved in New England development, I was a fairly fanatical new stater, I had close friends from all over New England and not just the Tablelands, and while I did visit Sydney from time to time, my personal playgrounds were all over New England. I have tried to capture some of this in my writing, however imperfectly.
Today the links that bind have declined. Even the regions in within New England have become fragmented. The once great Northern Rivers is increasingly subdivided into Richmond-Tweed with the Clarence, the big river, allocated to the Mid-North Coast. The once great Hunter Valley is increasingly treated for statistical purposes as Newcastle/Lower Hunter and the rest. Newcastle itself is classified for planning purposes as part of Greater Sydney. Yet the underlying unity imposed by geography is still there, still drives.
Finishing now by returning to Greg's point. New England is indeed a community of regions, as well as localities.
You cannot write a proper history of the Tablelands without referring to the Hunter and North Coast. You cannot write a history of the North Coast without referring to the Tablelands. The Universities of Newcastle and New England combine in a joint medical school that directly reflects one of the old north-south axis. You can't understand the rise of the New England independents if you do not understand history and the east-west axis. You cannot look at the history of any Aboriginal language group within New England without reference to adjoining language groups. And so it goes on.
The strength in Greg's idea of New England as a community of regions lies in the fact that it provides a framework for analytical purposes. You can look at the Hunter as a region with its own history and problems. You can then look at it as part of a broader identity. I think that this is helpful because it reveals new issues and approaches. In turn, this helps us manage if not overcome problems of localism and narrow regionalism.
I said that I was going off-line for a week and indeed have been, apart from posting my Express column on Wednesday. While off-line, I have been trying to complete a first draft of the seminar paper on New England history that I am giving at the university in Armidale on 19 March. This has taken longer than planned, but I now have the bulk of the first draft completed, leaving polishing and refinement.
While I am still working on the paper, it will be very much a personal paper, linking my own life, the people I have known, the work I have done, to my own journey through the history of the broader New England. In so doing, I hope to give a taste not just of themes, but of people and events. The underlying theme is the reason why I decided to write a history of the broader New England.
The paper starts with an introduction, then moves to Armidale and the University of the 1960s, introducing history and especially the pioneering work of Isabel McBryde in Australian prehistory. I use this as an introduction to two main themes, each with sub-texts.
The first is the emergence of a unique university culture melding the ideals of the founders with the views of the academics who brought to Armidale their own visions of a university. Isabel’s focus on the need for a regional approach to Australian prehistory fitted with this. The result over 18 years was a very large pioneering research output from she and her students that not only added to regional knowledge, but also made a major contribution to Australian prehistory in general. The second theme is geography. I start with Isabel’s definition of the area to be studied, then look at other definitions of New England, before using the distribution of Aboriginal language groups at the time of European settlement to demonstrate the importance of geography and the associated need to adopt broad coverage.
I then return to my own history, my work in Canberra and my re-introduction to New England history following the decision by John Knight (ex Armidale, then Billie Snedden’s senior private secretary, later ACT senator) and I to write a joint bio of my grandfather. John's election to the Senate and later untimely death stopped us proceeding. I decided to continue, coming to the topic from a very different perspective after a period as an economist and a senior public servant. I talk about the way my own views had changed, my re-discovery of my own past, using this as a way to introduce some more of the themes in the European history of New England.
I have also firmed up arrangements to deliver a paper to the Armidale and District Historical Society in July on New England's Aboriginal languages. I understand that the paper will be published in the 2010 edition of the journal.
This paper is already about 70% complete and is broken into five parts.
The first part sets a context, looking at Australian Aboriginal languages in a broader sense. New England examples are used to illustrate broader points. This is followed by an overview discussion of the languages’ decline, linking this to history on one side, factors in language survival on the other. Here I attempt to show the linkages between social and cultural dislocation and language decline.
I then review those who recorded New England’s languages in one way or another. This interesting and polyglot lot includes explorers, settlers, missionaries and amateur ethnologists. Later came professional linguists and then, today, local Aborigines themselves trying to discover their linguistic past. The pattern of recording itself provides further insights into the history of New England’s languages in the post-colonial period.
With this background, the paper then reviews the actual physical distribution of the languages, along with some of their key features. This is quite a complex exercise. Language boundaries were linked to watersheds, but the relationship was not precise. In many cases we simply cannot be sure.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the modern language Revival Movement. Extinct and now dormant languages are once again taught. Yet despite the successes, the Movement itself is arguably locked into past mind-sets that may limit its success.
All this means that my time to post here will continue to be very limited for the next week or so, although I will be posting on a regular basis. It also means that you are likely to get both here and on New England's History a fair number of posts with a personal and historical flavour while I am working issues through.
On 25 January in Fire guts Inverell's historic Byron Arcade I provided a report on this huge fire. I have updated this post a little to include later Inverell Times stories on the aftermath.
One of the things that I focused on in my original story given my interest in history was the loss inflicted by the fire on the Inverell District Family History Group. Fortunately, the Group has taken quick recovery steps. In a comment on the original story, Ann Hodgens wrote:
Jim,
On behalf of the Inverell District Family History Group I'm pleased to report that we have new premises and plan to re-open on Monday 8th February upstairs at 129Otho Street, opposite the Centrelink offices. Whilst we've lost our library,we've managed to salvage most of the material the wonderful fire brigade men were able to obtain from the building after the fire. Our insurance will cover furniture, computers etc. and we've had offers of replacement books. Information regarding several of our current projects was offsite,and the Pioneer Register will continue but may be delayed. Forms are available on our website www.inverellfamilyhistory.org.au.
Our members are determined to continue and we are working hard to rebuild as soon as possible. The support we've received from the family history and history world has been wonderful.
Ann Hodgens
President
In my original post, I mentioned that in 1912 my grandfather, David Drummond, came to Inverell to manage Maxwelton, a wheat block created out of the newly subdivided Bannockburn Station. Mum was born while they were living there, so I could claim a personal Inverell connection.
While living at Inverell, my grandfather became an active member of the Oakwood Branch of the Farmers and Settlers Association. This meeting notice is from cousin Jamie's collection. Eight year's later, this active involvement would lead to his entry to the NSW State Parliament.
The back of this photo also from cousin Jamie's collection is inscribed in my grandfather's handwriting "a squatter goes to town"!
While my grandfather was proud of the fact that at twenty two he was in charge of Maxwelton, managing a wheat block on a share farm basis was hardly a sure course to wealth. Still it did provide sufficient certainty for his marriage in 1913.
The photo itself is not a very good one. Still it's interesting. The young Drummond is quite dressed up, especially for the sometimes hot Inverell climate. You did get dressed up to go to town!
I know far less than I should about various horse drawn vehicles. It remains a gap in my knowledge. However, I think that this is a spider sulky,a light weight vehicle that allowed easy carriage. This was also probably the vehicle in which my grandfather drove his bride to her new home at Maxwelton.
The last photo from cousin Jamie's collection shows Pearl and David Drummond with daughters Edna (mum, left) and Phyllis. The photo would have been taken about 1915 or early 1916 not long before Phyllis's sudden death in July 1916 from flue.
Phyllis was an attractive and much loved child, you can actually see this from the ph
This short family story may seem to have wandered a little from the Inverell District Family History Group. However, all families have stories that reveal something about life. Their preservation plays a role in the preservation of history.
I would argue that this is especially important today many Australians - and I suspect others in other countries too - are more cut off from their past simply because fashions in history have changed towards the current and general thematic.
Certainly in my work in trying to write a history of New England, as well my writings on my own family, I depend upon the work of local and family history groups.
Congratulations to the Inverell District Family History Group on their courage and strength in responding to disaster.
I am cross-posting this on the New England's History blog as well as here.
On Friday 19 March 2010 I will be presenting a paper in Armidale as part of the University of New England's Classics & History Seminar Series. As the heading says, my topic will be “Unrecognised and now almost unknown: explorations through the history of the broader New England”.
This will be my first opportunity to report in an academic environment on the historical research that I have been doing into the history of New England, so I am quite excited.
While I have an idea of what I want to say, I now have so much material that choice is a bit of an issue.
One thing that I actually have to do is to demonstrate that there is such a thing as the history of the broader New England. This is where the unrecognised and almost unknown comes in. I also want to show why the history of the broader New England is important as a separate thread in Australian history. Last, I want if I can to share my joy in the methodological challenges involved and the pleasure of discovery.
At the moment, my thinking is to prepare two sets of material.
The first is a formal, fully footnoted academic paper. This is important because it allows people to check my research. I can then also use it as a source on things like Wikipedia articles. The second are powerpoints, because this gives me greater flexibility in responding to however many people come.
I mention this now not just because I am quite excited, but also because I know that a number of people are actually interested in our history. If you would like to receive a copy of the paper after delivery, email me ndarala(at)optusnet(dot)com(au) and I will add you to the list.
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.
A week or so back in Saturday Morning Musings - Aboriginal languages and the return of Kamilaroi I mentioned that I had been bogged down in New England's Aboriginal languages. It really has been something of a journey, one squeezed into my little available time. One side-effect has been further limitations on blogging time.
This week I loaded some of the things that I had written into a single document simply called New England languages. I hope to have this finished over the next few days so that I can load it as a working draft onto the New England History blog. It is now over two months since I last posted there.
In any form of research, the first part is nearly always interesting because you are looking at new things. Then come the dog days, trying to fit bits together to create a working narrative. I say dog days because this part is time consuming and often frustrating. Once past this point, life is again interesting because the structure is there. The process now involves test and extension.
I have been in the dog days on Aboriginal languages, the consolidate and write period. Only now can I begin to see my way through to the next stage. There is still a fair bit of effort to go, perhaps the equivalent of two full days research. Still, I at least hope to further flesh out the structure this weekend.
I think that it will be an interesting piece. I hope that you do too once it is finished.
I have just finished Keith Leopold's memoirs on his student days, part in Armidale, part in Sydney. Today I rushed through John Bach's A Maritime History of Australia.
So much to write about, but I am trying to limit myself to 100,000 words in my history of New England. More and more I am becoming fascinated, obsessive, about what to include, what to leave out, how to tell the story.
I was talking to eldest yesterday after a politics lecture. She did not fully understand the difference between the states and territories. It was the ACT gay marriage saga that bought this alive. She commented in passing just how boring she had found Australian history at school.
Boring? It's fascinating. So how, then, have we killed it?
The answer, I think, lies in the fact that we try to tell kids what they should know rather then telling a story. I am not talking just about narrative history here. All history involves stories.
New England's story is a fascinating one. But how to write it so that it is accessible to all?
History has to have framework and facts. It must be as accurate as possible and testable by other researchers. Yet, despite this, the best history should draw the reader into the story.
I think that people and examples are central to this. Each section of the narrative should build, creating a world that sweeps the reader along.
At one level this may sound a contradiction, for I am saying that the reader should be grasped, absorbed. If you are absorbed, how then can you be objective?
I think that objectivity and test comes later. The literary value of the work, and history is or should be literature, stands alone.
I know that in a sense I am setting myself up to fail because the absolute benchmark created cannot be met. But, surely, isn't it a good thing to aim high?
Photo: Inverell Times. Inverell District family History Group Inc members Julie Regan, Joselyn Griffey and Muriel Resta talk about the new history of Inverell's Byron Arcade.
The Inverell Times reports that the Inverell District Family History Group Inc. has produced Our Place, a comprehensive and colourful account of the history of Byron Arcade on the corner of Otho and Evans Streets.
Construction of the magnificent building began in early 1902 and was built for George Cruickshank, MP for Gwydir.
Named after his property, Byron Station, the arcade cost 13,000 pounds Sterling to erect and included 32 shops. Over the years it has seen dentists, photographers, music teachers and a myriad of other businesses operate under its roof.
Our Place is available through the Inverell District Family History Group Inc at a cost of $30 and contains a full history of the building and every resident and business that has occupied it since its erection in 1902.
There are full colour pictures of the beautiful building and old black and white images taken around the time of its erection.
To obtain a copy of Our Place, contact the Inverell District Family History Group on (02) 6721 1487 or (02) 6722 1893.
Postscript
For those interested in Inverell's history, Inverell On-line has a very useful local history page.
The predominant role of anthropologists from 1929 to 1945 (and indeed, to the present) in interpreting Aboriginal society, analysing its ills, and in recommending ameliorative policies, is remarkable. In fact, the Canadian historian K.A. MacKirdy commented in 1966 that ‘[Australian] historians generally have been content to leave the study of Aborigines to the anthropologists and then to ignore the anthropologists’! Adam Shoemaker
Any anthropologist who has worked on Native Title claims, or similar activity, in south eastern Australia is likely to have come across the anger of indigenous groups confronted with "academic" interpretations of their rights interests, customs and traditions which differ from their own view of these important aspects of their lives ....
Indigenous groups, not surprisingly , are highly indignant about having their claims, and the primarily oral traditions on which they are based, judged against the writings of the initial colonisers themselves and on occasion react even more strongly against later "academic" interpretations of territorial interests best epitomised perhaps by the work of Norman Tindale. Rod Hagen
I was browsing around to try to find out more on New England's Bundjalung people when I came across a reference to the papers of Malcolm Calley. This took my mind back.
Back in 1966 while I was doing my honours thesis on the economic structure of Aboriginal life in Northern New South Wales at the time of European intrusion I read Malcolm Calley's PhD thesis on Bandjalang Social Organisation with fascination.
My thesis was a study in ethnohistory, using historical records to try to understand the economic structure of aboriginal life. These were necessarily written from a European perspective. In writing I was also influenced by the conflict between Karl Polanyi and my cousin Cyril Belshaw on the applicability of economics to non-money using societies.
So while I was a member of Isabel McBryde's pioneer prehistory group at the University of New England, I was still writing very much from a European, anthropological and historical perspective. As an aside here, I was going to insert the link I had used before to a story about Isabel's work, but find that for some reason the Australian Archaeological Association has taken the page down. I must say that's a real nuisance.
At the time I was writing there was great suspicion among historians about the role of oral history and tradition as an evidence source. There was also a view that the Aborigines of Eastern Australia were too far removed from their tribal past for current memories to be a valid guide to traditional life.
To me, the striking thing about Malcolm's thesis was the way it demonstrated that oral tradition was still in fact worthy of study as a way of understanding past Aboriginal life.
The details I have on Malcolm's life are skimpy and I wish I could say more.
Malcolm John Chalmers Calley was born in Sydney around 1932. In 1955 he gained an M.A from Sydney University with a thesis ‘Aboriginal Pentecostalism', completing his PhD thesis in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland during which time wrote extensively about Indigenous Australians. He died in February 1983.
Malcolm's work with the Aborigines is typical of the important role that anthropologists as compared to historians played in academic Aboriginal research as well as the promotion of new views about Australia's indigenous peoples.
I can attest to this from my experience when I was doing my own limited work on the Aborigines over the period 1963 to 1966. All the academic writing I used came from anthropologists and, to a lesser extent, prehistorians.
I can also understand the Aboriginal position as summarised by Rod Hagen in the second of the introductory quotes. However, that quote also links to something that concerns me at a personal level, the nature of the interaction (at least as I perceive it) between the Aboriginal community and certain parts of the academic and intellectual elites in the broader Australian community.
There is no doubt that the treatment of Australia's Aboriginal people has been quite awful. This needs to be and is being addressed in research and writing. But it has led, again as I see it, to a kind of cringe on the part of certain researchers and writers that is adversely affecting both the subjects selected for study and the research itself. It is also leading to a negative response in parts of the Australian community that is equally distorting in the opposite direction. The net outcome is bad for all sides.
In saying this, I am not making a comment about political correctness, simply expressing a continuing practical frustration.
In writing about the history of New England I need to talk about the history of New England's Aboriginal peoples. I want to understand and express the sweep of New England Aboriginal life past and present. I cannot do so. The basic factual information is simply not there - or at least not easily accessible - because everything is being twisted by and to fit differing perceptions of Aboriginal-non Aboriginal relations.
