The different textures of New England - Ulmarra

I do so love the very different textures of New England. Most people miss these because so many just drive through on the main highways. 

The Clarence River tourism people describe Ulmarra on the Clarence as one of the best preserved 19th century river ports in Australia. I think that they are right. I first visited Ulmarra when I was staying at Maclean, stops that I described in Distant memories of a now vanished North Coast - Ministering to Maclean.

Today Lynne Sanders-Briathwaite has moved to Ulmarra and has been describing her experiences in her blog. So small is the town that its Wikipedia entry is but a stub. 

This photo by Lynne shows Ulmarra's mains street. Hard to believe that this quiet scene was once the location of fierce commercial rivalry as rival merchants from different places fought it out.

I haven't had time to check the details, but if my memory serves me correctly, the Edward Ogilvie that I described in Saturday Morning Musings - New England's Ogilvie dynasty was one participant in these battles. 

Belshaw’s World: The strange world of the Belshaws

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

I was going to continue my discussion on Armidale’s future as an educational centre, but I feel the need for a break and so, probably, do you. I will hold further discussion until my next column or the one after.

I mentioned in my last column that I was just back from a week in Canada. I had planned to go for longer, my wife is still overseas, but the need to find a new place to rent limited my time to just the Vancouver leg.

I really enjoyed Vancouver. I had only been to Canada once before and then just for a few days. This time I had a longer period in one spot, aided too by the presence of family on the Belshaw side.

We Belshaws are a funny lot.

To begin with, we are a very small family. In our branch of the family there have been just twenty seven of us over what is now four generations in the longest chain. There are so few of us that everybody is simply cousin.

Then, too, the family has been divided by time and space across three continents and five countries.

Uncle Horace was born in England, cousin Cyril in New Zealand, his two children in London and Canberra, their children in Vancouver and Toronto. Dad was born in Christchurch, his two children in Armidale, my daughters in Armidale, my brother’s children in Melbourne. The eighteen surviving family members live in eleven different places in three countries.

Despite dispersion in time and space, the striking thing about the Belshaws is the way patterns have carried across generations linked by genes and a common ancestry forged in working class Lancashire of the 19th century.

The first generation saw one teacher and two university professors. The second generation included one teacher and three leading academics. This is my generation, and I fit the pattern in interests if not formal position.

The pattern continues into the third generation with more teachers and academics, although now the dispersion is becoming greater.

Teachers and academics, but also writers.

Last night my nineteen year old gave me a full copy of her latest novel to read. Called the Guardsman, it is a fantasy story. In writing, she joins others in the third generation who also write.

I am not quite sure how many books have been written across the first three generations, but there are a lot. From utopian ideas to formal works in anthropology, economics or history to the story of adoption of Rumanian babies, the range of writing slowly spreads.

Dig down a bit and the patterns become even more striking.

Dad was an economist and historian with a special interest in development studies. Described by John Maynard Keynes as the brightest student ever to come to Cambridge from the dominions, Uncle Horace too was an economist with a special interest in development studies.

In my generation, cousin Cyril combined economics and anthropology, as did cousin Michael. I combine history and economics with an interest in anthropology.

In 1939 Uncle Horace organised the Maori Young Leaders Conference. In 2009, seventy years later, I have joined a mentor program for Aboriginal public servants, Clare has chosen to study ancient history at University, one of Helen’s favourite subjects is development studies.

I think that one thing that has puzzled all of us from time to time is just how all this came about.

My Belshaw grandparents were both born in Wigan around 1867. This was the harsh industrial world that George Orwell was later to make famous in the Road to Wigan Pier. Both grandparents left school at twelve, one to work in the pits, the second in the textile mills.

How, then, did we spawn generations of academics, teachers and writers?

I think the answer here lies in the combination of two things.

The first was the strict Primitive Methodist religious code of my grandparents with its emphasis on personal responsibility, achievement and focus on education. I think that all the first generations of Belshaws are a bit driven, I know that I am. I cannot help it.

The second was the decision to migrate to New Zealand. This freed the family from the constraints and class structures of the old world, opening new opportunities.

Can all this continue? I don’t know, but I would like to think so!

New England and Hunter Mutual Credit Unions to merge

I see from the Armidale Express that the Boards of New England Credit Union (NECU) and Hunter Mutual have agreed to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding that, pending member approval, will lead to a merger between the two credit unions.

NECU is already the largest inland credit union in Australia and, upon completion of the merger  will have 73,000 members, 28 branches, four agencies, 240 staff and around $1 billion in total assets.

Under the agreed terms of the merger, Armidale will remain the headquarters of the new entity and Hunter Mutual’s trading name, branches, agencies and existing employees will be retained.

Round the New England blogging traps - 8 a professional, media and political focus continued

This post continues the discussion I began in Round the New England blogging traps - 8 a professional, media and political focus.

I ended the last post with a passing reference to the blog Michael Osborne: Greens Councillor on Newcastle City Council. Continuing the discussion, I want to focus on two issues raised by Michael.

The first is the proposed termination of the heavy rail connection to central Newcastle. I have to be careful what I say here because I lack access to the on-ground facts, including the full arguments put forward in favour of the change by the Hunter Development Corporation. However, I would be very cautious about ending the line because, once ended, it will be impossible to recreate.

Michael has also continued the campaign against the Tillegra Dam.I wrote about the decision to build this dam back in January 2007 in Newcastle, the Lower Hunter & the Tillegra Dam. I have seen no evidence that would cause me to shift the position expressed in that post.

Poor Newcastle. As New England's biggest city, it deserved a better fate than its current position as a pimple on the bum of Sydney Government planning for what is now defined as the greater Sydney area.

One of the difficulties I face in deciding just what constitutes a New England blog.

A blog written by someone in New England is a New England blog. But what about a blog written by a New Englander now living outside New England? This category in fact includes this blog. The dividing line that I using here is a simple one: no matter what the content, does the New Englander retain his/her links in some way?

I make this point because I have just added Paul Barratt's Australian Observer the blog list. Reflecting his experience as a senior public servant, Paul's blog has a defence/public policy focus. However, he retains his Armidale links. See, for example, The Alex Buzo Company.

Over on Media Hunter, Craig Wilson has continued his informed comments on marketing and media issues. Among other things, I had not caught up with the fact that, as outlined in Jerry Seinfeld in ad campaign for Greater Building Society, Jerry Seinfeld had agreed to act as front man for the Greater Newcastle Building Society.

Craig has also commented on the criticisms of blogging by Australian News Ltd supremo John Hartigan. I agree with Craig!

Well, I am out of time once more. I will report again on the New England blogosphere in about a week's time.  

The role of the arts in presenting New England's life

Train Reading – Jonathan F Vance’s History of Canadian Culture looks at elements of Canadian cultural history in part from an Australian perspective. Reading this book, I have been musing over part of the role of the arts in presenting us back to ourselves. I have also been musing over the Canadian recognition of regional identity.

There is a commonly help perception in Australia that there are limited regional differences and that, to the degree that there are, they reflect state or metropolitan differences.

I cannot agree with this simply because I grew up in a world that was not the same as conventional stereotypes or accepted wisdom as presented in, for example, the Sydney papers. Or, for that matter, the various state history curricula.

Consider, for a moment, this painting by Tom Roberts, Bailed Up.

Canadians worry a lot about the influence of the US on their culture. They try to present their own culture back so all Canadians can recognise it.

New England has not been so lucky.

Bailed Up was painted near Inverell. It is an instantly recognisable scene.

Like Roberts' painting of Edward Ogilvie that I featured in Saturday Morning Musings - New England's Ogilvie dynasty, this painting is part of New England's history.

Roberts himself was not a New Englander, nor does he have to be. My point is that the visual imagery he created of New England, the historical context surrounding that imagery, is largely lost to New Englanders.

When images are re-presented, they become internalised in new ways, carrying a culture forward. When images including their written are excluded, the culture suffers.

Some, New Englanders included, say there is no such thing as a New England culture. They are wrong, because geography an shared history does create links. The culture is not harmonious nor uniform, but it does exist. 

Belshaw’s World: The need for Collective Wisdom

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

Just back from a week in Canada and still very jet-lagged. The QANTAS flight out of LA was much delayed. It was 2.50am their time before we finally got away.

Looking back over my last column, it is very easy to pontificate. It is even easier living in Sydney, as I now do, to underestimate the work being done locally.

That said, I think that the starting point in any action to grow Armidale’s educational base to is to delete the word “regional” wherever possible.

I have come to bitterly resent the application of the word regional to Armidale or its institutions. I want the word cut out.

I grew up in a world in which Armidale was a major educational centre, not a regional education centre, just an educational centre. Certainly a country educational centre, we were located in the country and were bringing education to the country, this was a matter or pride, but not a regional centre.

We got first the Teacher’s College and then the University College because we were an educational centre. Yes, we fought for it and there was strong political support. But we were an educational centre. That was the start.

The way that the word regional is used today has come to mean provincial, not city, second rate. Each time we use the word regional we put ourselves into a second class box.

Let me ask you a question. Where would you prefer to go to school or university?

Case one: Armidale is a national education centre, Australia’s only university city, drawing students from X countries.

Case two: Armidale is one of regional Australia’s major educational centres.

I think that the answer is clear. Who would want to study at two? Unless, of course, you had too.

This is not a parody. I find the use of the word regional now pervasive in Armidale material.

This brings me to my second step, the need for Armidale to reclaim its place as an educational centre in its own right, not simply an extension of UNE. This actually helps UNE because it reinforces the University’s own marketing activities.

The last thing I did before leaving Armidale in 1996 was to work with Martin Levins on what we called the Collective Wisdom Project. This centred on Martin’s dream of a cooperative electronic network linking all Armidale schools, private and public.

At the time, UNE was going through one of its periodic crises. Part of the Collective Wisdom dream was to build and promote Armidale’s school sector as something of a counter-weight to the University.

We mounted a display in the Armidale Town Hall showing the use of internet technology at school level. This involved students from private and public schools, primary and secondary, preparing web pages based on material sent in to the Town Hall.

This was leading edge in 1996. To make it work, TAS provided technical support, including training kids from Drummond in web page design. Hundreds of students were involved, while senior Commonwealth officials were invited and attended to see what Armidale could do.

I left Armidale the following week. My family was already in Sydney and I had stayed to support the display.

Nothing seemed to happen after that. When I asked Martin and others what had happened, I got a very mixed story.

A bit like Waiting for Godot, the UNE plans for its own network being developed in conjunction with Telstra had come to naught. The unity that had been building among the schools to support collective action had collapsed as the schools competed for a declining local student base. The resources required to push forward could not be found.

Had Collective Wisdom succeeded, it would have positioned Armidale (among other things) to compete in the growing market for international students that was then emerging. To my mind, and I stand to be corrected, its failure was due in part to localism and lack of broader vision.

Collective Wisdom may have failed in the broadest sense, but it remains an example of the type of action that can build Armidale’s position as an independent educational centre if we but have the vision and the courage to grasp the opportunities.

I am out of space. I will continue later when I am a little less jet-lagged!

Round the New England blogging traps - 8 a professional, media and political focus

Round the New England blogging traps - 7 Hunter Valley focus was as the name says.This time I decided to move from geographic to a somewhat broader focus.

When the University of New England started its senior management blog I thought that this was a very good idea. I still think that it was, but I don't think that it's really gelling down as a blog. Four posts in May, one in June, one so far in July is simply not enough to attract any meaningful traffic. I do find the material interesting for its occasional insights, but would like to see more.

Unlike the senior management blog, Klaus Rohde has been maintaining his UNE blog with regular posts, sometimes in German. There is some quite serious stuff on Klaus's blog, including his use of knols. I had only seen references to knols, or units of knowledge. I am still not sure how well they work as a new approach. I would be interested in comments.

Like me, the Armidale Regional Aboriginal Centre and Keeping Place has been experimenting with Twitter. I suspect that someone like the keeping Place can use Twitter effectively, but I also think that Twitter only works if you have a clear vision as to how you want to use it. I do not. That is why I have been experimenting. My feeling remains that Twitter is not for me.

It might be different if I was writing full time because I would then have more to say and more time to say it

Still on social networking, I see that there is an Armidale page on Facebook. I haven't checked to see what other places might have equivalent pages.

If the UNE senior management blog suffers from irregular posting, the same cannot be said for North Coast Voices. Hard to believe that NCV will be coming up on its second birthday a little later in the year. Its team has settled down into a regular mix of posts generally from a left of centre perspective, mixed in with local news.

In Jock's Blog, Jock Laurie as president of the NSW Farmers' Association continues to post regularly on rural issues. Down in Newcastle, Michael Osborne as Greens councillor on NSW City Council has posted regularly over June.

I have just looked at the time. I will continue this post a little later. 

The New England Diaspora

I think it helpful in considering New England to remember that for every person presently living in New England there are at least three, perhaps as many as as ten, people living outside New England with some connection to the place. Living as I now do in Sydney, I belong to this group.

Those who now live outside New England do not lose contact with the place simply because they are gone. Their memories may change, may become attenuated, but they still remember.

I suppose I am in a special case because my personal links are still so intense. But even here I am not alone.

Not everybody uses the name New England. I do so because it has particular historical links. Some just talk about Northern NSW. Yet I find it interesting that if I meet someone from Newcastle and say that I come from Armidale they automatically see a link.

I am constantly reminded of this through my daily contacts. I wonder sometimes if there is any way of capturing this migrant loyalty in support of New England as it now stands.

Gordon Smith's Outback Adventures

Gordon Smith, one of my all time favourite New England photo bloggers, is now publishing the photos of his trip to out back NSW and Queensland.

This quite spectacular photo shows the road up to the Warri gate on the NSW/Queensland border. It really captures the vastness.

I have spoken many times on this and my other blogs about the way we are ripping the guts out of inland Australia. I have had little impact.

In looking at this photo remember not just its beauty, but the fact that fewer people now live in areas like this than was the case at the time of European settlement.

You will find Gordon's full series here.

Belshaw’s World: Can Armidale’s educational base survive?

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 24 June 2009. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the columns by clicking here.

Armidale’s core business is education. We all know this, but a few numbers just as a reminder.

At the last census, 12.1 per cent of the workers in the Armidale/Dumaresq local government area were employed in tertiary education, a further 7.8 per cent in school education, making a total of 19.9 per cent. They were followed by primary production on 5.7 per cent and then cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services on 4.9 per cent.

Within this mix, the university is especially important because it brings income and people to Armidale. While boarding is still important, the school sector itself depends heavily on the local population and hence on the University. When UNE catches a cold, Armidale gets flue.

Armidale’s core education business is under threat. Again, I think that we all know this.

The problem is to find the best way of responding to the threat. This depends in turn on understanding the dynamics that lie behind it.

Armidale is presently caught in a three way squeeze between demographic change, current approaches to public policy and sectoral change.

The demographic trends are well known and I won’t dwell on them.

The population base surrounding the university is simply too small to provide the necessary internal undergraduate numbers. To survive, UNE has to draw its students from a broader catchment. This has always been the case.

UNE’s ability to do this has been seriously constrained not just by recurring internal problems, but also by the way higher education is funded in this country.

Most students have to work to fund their university education, and Armidale has very few part time jobs. This means that students coming to UNE need some other form of financial support.

The problems created for UNE by current public policy do not end here.

One of the features of public policy over the last twenty or so years has been a remarkable instability. Governments keep tinkering and changing their approaches.

We can see this in Armidale very clearly because the effects are so marked. It makes any form of sensible planning at institutional level very difficult.

Problems are made worse by an increasingly mechanistic command and control approach to public policy. We live in a world today dominated by measurement, benchmarks, targets, outputs and plans all over sighted by the great modern public gods of efficiency and effectiveness.

I have argued that our current system is neither efficient nor effective.

Putting that aside, the practical effect at institutional level is that the more dependant you are on public funding, the less real freedom you have to do new things outside those mandated by Government. And UNE is especially dependant on direct funding.

The combination of demographic change with ever-changing approaches to education policy has set in train wave after wave of structural change within the higher education sector.

Again, this has worked against UNE.

The creation and then break-up of the network university not only drained UNE funds, but also cost it much of its traditional North Coast base. The University was also very slow to respond to the emergence of new and effective competitors in distance education.

The latest challenge that UNE faces can be summarised in two words, Charles Sturt. CSU is seeking to position itself as the national regional university and in doing so has attracted considerable interest and financial support from Canberra. That support provides a sign of official Commonwealth thinking; big is still better.

I do not envy UNE’s senior management over recent years. The University has done some good things, things I have written about, but it must be very hard working under such severe constraints in an ever changing environment.

There is too much public investment in Armidale to close the Armidale campus entirely. The real risk is that UNE might be forcibly merged with someone else, with the Armidale campus becoming merely a declining branch campus.

I don’t think that this is yet inevitable.

In my next column I will suggest some things that Armidale might do to protect its core education business.