A note on New England's Aboriginal languages

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.    

Belshaw’s World: Corrugations, pot holes and the Australian economy

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 29 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 have mentioned Gordon Smith’s great photo bog (http://las.new-england.net.au/) before. It really is a delight, especially for someone interested in Armidale or the Tablelands.

Gordon is presently running daily photos taken on his outback trip. At the time of writing, his most recent photo was simply called corrugations. It shows an outback road marked by corrugations across the road.

When I learned to drive, many of the roads around Armidale were dirt. I quickly learned that the only way to overcome the vehicle shudder created by corrugations was to drive faster.

This worked well so long as there were no pot holes. Pot holes required slower driving. Any road combining corrugations with pot holes guaranteed a bad trip.

I actually like dirt roads, although I don’t miss the clinging clouds of dust that used to rise on the more heavily travelled roads, nor do I miss the stones thrown up. Still, you actually have to dive on dirt roads.

My family, modern people that they are, regards my liking of dirt roads as strange. Give them a modern highway any time!

The Australian economy is a bit like all this just at present. The immediate stimulus packages have helped us maintain a degree of economic speed, thus minimising the impact of the corrugations, but can we avoid the coming pot holes?

Back in early February in Access Economics feeds the herd instinct, I suggested that Australia’s best known economic consultancy had got things wrong and that, worse, its very negative prognostications on Australia’s economic outlook were feeding a negative herd instinct.

I wrote the column against a background of analysis that I had done looking at the underlying economic data. I simply could not make Access’s forecasts stack up with that analysis.

Well, Access did get it wrong. The Australian economy has done far better than they allowed, far closer to my then conclusions.

Access now admits that their forecasts were incorrect. However, Access’s Chris Richardson is still expressing certain cautions about the future. In this case, I agree that we do need to be cautious.

Well, what are the potential pot holes?

The first is China.

It is not clear to me that the present stimulus driven Chinese growth is sustainable. The huge expansion in money supply and official bank lending has fed what appear to be asset bubbles in real estate and now on the stock exchange. There is a risk that China will, like Japan in the 1990s, hit a stagnation wall as the bubbles unwind. This would be bad news for all of us.

The second linked potential pot hole is the Australian balance of trade on goods and services. After a long period of deficit, this went positive last year just when the country needed it most. Talk about good fortune!

The balance of trade is now back in the red.

To a degree this was inevitable since the maintenance of economic activity of itself implied continuing imports at a time exports were going to come under some pressure because of the global downturn. Should pressure on exports become too great, and we do depend here to a considerable degree on China, then our balance of trade could move from support to pot hole.

The third potential pot hole is inflation.

The headlines on Australia’s most recent inflation numbers screamed the lowest inflation rate for years. However, if you drop down to the detail, things look a little different.

The things that went down included financial services and insurance and fuel. The big increases, all above the Reserve Bank's target inflation band, were education, health, housing, food and alcohol and tobaccos. What can we say about this?

Well, transportation is strongly influenced by fuel costs, so if fuel prices rise as the global economy starts to rise again, we can expect this item to rise. Insurance and financial services costs are strongly influenced by interest rates, and will rise with interest rates.

On the other side of the ledger, the majority of high rise items are in non-import competing sectors and will rise as the Australian economy starts to expand. Rents are already rising. In addition, there are built-in upward factors in education and health.

So increased inflation is a real risk, and with it comes increased interest rates.

In saying all this, I have not joined the negative crowd. I just think that we need to manage carefully at personal, business and national levels.

Getting balance (and interest) in New England's history

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?  

Our new house

Well, we have moved. If you read Moved at last. It should be a fun house you will see that I love the new place because it reminds me of home!

Belshaw’s World: Selling Armidale to international students

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 22 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.

One disadvantage of living in Sydney as I now do is travel time. I spend almost three hours in every twenty four, sometimes more, sitting in a bus, train or car.

I try to make the best use I can of this otherwise dead time. This is what I have come to call my train reading time. I sit, read and try to write.

Five mornings a week the train passes through Harris Park, one of the epicenters for recent attacks on Indian students studying in Australia.

A lot of the reporting on these troubles focused on perceived racism in the broader Australia community or, alternatively, suggested that Indian students had simply been victims of ordinary opportunistic crime.

I have no doubt that there have been cases of what is called curry bashing, as well as opportunistic crime. But, as always, the position is a little more complicated than this.

At the last census Harris Park had a population of 6,854.

Of this, just 29.2% spoke only English at home. The most common languages other than English were Arabic 10.4%, Gujarati 6.8%, Hindi 5.8%, Mandarin 4.6% and Cantonese 3.7%. Indian born made up 19.5% of the population of Harris Park. Those between 15 and 25, the main student groups, totalled 68.7% of the population.

The central problem in Harris Park has been the replacement of the previously dominant Lebanese population by new Indian students. This lies at the core of the troubles.

Whatever the reasons for the difficulties faced by Indian students, the whole affair has done great damage to Australia’s reputation as a safe and friendly place for international students to study.

This damage has been compounded by problems within the vocational education system. The combination of a proportion of unscrupulous “colleges” with bad official policies has created a growing scandal.

Granny Herald has been campaigning hard on this issue. The campaign may be required, but crikey that paper does damage to the city it claims to serve. Its constant stream of negative stories adds to Sydney’s growing tarnish.

These various difficulties lie at the core of my argument that Armidale has a real opportunity to attract more international students at all levels.

The current troubles will almost certainly lead to a drop in the total number of international students coming to Australia, but Armidale can increase its share of those that do come.

Armidale does not need an additional 10,000 international students, but 1,000 more spread across various educational institutions would be of considerable benefit to the local economy.

I mentioned in my last column that Armidale had a remarkable record of welcoming international students. I do not think that Armidale people properly realise what a great base this provides.

The story starts with the civic welcome that the city offers students each year. It continues through the thousands of interactions between the city, its people and its educational institutions and the international student and educational communities.

I read the UNE news blog. I have lost count of the stories that Jim Scanlan and his colleagues have posted on UNE’s international activities and interactions, many with a people focus.

Dropping down, I read the individual stories in the Express or in some of the school publications. This is good stuff, but few outside Armidale know anything about it.

Part of the problem is that Armidale’s good news stories are simply not news in the conventional sense. Nobody runs them as stories outside Armidale because they are seen as local. They won’t attract readers or viewers.

This won’t change. However, the way we approach the communications task can change.

Take a simple example.

Check out the various Armidale web sites connected in some way with education. How many mention the civic welcome, or indeed say much at all about international students and the local community?

If you do this check, you will see that the question exactly illustrates my point. Forget straight sales, we just don’t communicate.

Assume that you are parents in India making decisions about your kids’ education.

Where would you want them to go: to the new “university cities” of Sydney or Melbourne, or to a place that presents the whole community as welcoming?

Train Reading - Keith Leopold's Came to Booloominbah

In spare moments during this moving period I have been reading Keith Leopold's Came to Booloominbah: a country scholar's progress 1938-1942 (University of New England Press, Armidale, 1988).

When the New England University College opened its doors in 1938 there were just eleven full time enrolments, eight men and three women. Of the eight men, six were on Teacher's College scholarships. They and their schools were:

• Lewis Border (The Armidale School)
• Thomas Harrigan (Marist Brothers, West Maitland)
• Max Hartwell (Glen Innes High School)
• Keith Leopold (Maitland Boy's High School)
• Patrick Thompson (Taree High School)
• Leslie Titterton (Kempsey High School)

Just a list of names and schools, one private, five public. But they came from all parts of New England. The Maitland boys found Armidale very small. It was also a long way from home - eight hours by train. The Kempsey and Taree boys may have found the distance even longer - there were no train connections here. They either went home by motor coach over the rough roads or, perhaps, by train to Sydney and then steamer.

I will write more on the first NEUC intake a little later. I find it interesting that they did so well in later life. Their story is also a story of a very different world, one about to end with war.

Moving Time

We are moving again, so I am going to have some difficulty in posting. Posts will be irregular and come up after their official date. 

Belshaw’s World: Marketing Armidale as an education centre

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 15 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 see that there was a quality control problem with my last column. I use the previous column as a base and forgot to change the heading! My apologies.

This column returns to the theme of rebuilding Armidale’s role as an educational centre in its own right, not just as an extension of UNE.

In my last column on this topic, the importance of Collective Wisdom, I suggested just two things.

First, as far as possible get rid of the word regional. Armidale needs to sell itself as a national/international education centre. The word “regional” is the kiss of death for this aspiration.

Secondly, the need for all of Armidale’s educational institutions to combine to promote the city and to achieve joint educational objectives.

I used the Collective Wisdom project as an example of the way in which Armidale could combine to sell a story. It also illustrated the way in which disunity and competition could destroy promise.

I now want to look briefly at the marketing of Armidale as an educational centre.

We live in a competitive and crowded world.

Within the university sector the Gang of Eight constantly campaign on the theme that big is better, that resources must be concentrated to support those universities that can compete overseas.

Competition is just as fierce in the school sector as schools compete in Australia and internationally.

Even the very concept of a university city has been expropriated by the big. A recent global ranking of university cities commissioned by a taskforce on how the private sector, universities and government could build Melbourne as a university city used two million people as a cut off point!

Sounds dumb, actually, but the results dominate any Google search on “university cities Australia”. Armidale itself failed to make the top sixty search results.

In this competitive and crowded world Armidale fails to stand out as it should. With the right search you can find linkages to Armidale’s educational institutions, but there does not seem to be any coordinated material that I can find that might persuade a person to study in Armidale.

I stand to be corrected here. I only spent about five hours in all on web searches, so I may have missed something.

This brings me to my first two points.

The first is the need to coordinate so that common messages are put across in all advertising and in all on-line material. In doing this, I go back to my point to avoid the word regional.

The second is the need for common material about Armidale that all can use. This must be accessible on-line.

I recognise that there is nothing especially profound in these points. Better Armidale marketing does not require rocket science, simply the capacity to look outside the current box.

Once a common framework has been established, each institution can then develop or modify its material and especially its on-line material to reinforce points.

In looking at this, I want to look first at international students.

I am not sure how many Armidale people realise this, but Armidale and its institutions have a quite long and remarkable record of welcoming overseas students dating back to Colombo Plan days.

We can see this today in some of the student rankings on, for example, the hot courses for Singaporean students’ web site. To quote Narayana from India: If u want to be the best, come to this university and study.

I don’t think that we are at all good in selling this story. A better coordinated effort would assist Armidale educational institutions to attract students, opening new opportunities for all.

I will develop this argument in a later column, looking at what I see as some of common weaknesses at organisation level.

Textures of New England - frost

This photo by New England romance writer Bronwyn Parry shows the frosty west paddock.

Frost is one of my enduring memories of growing up in New England. Frost, rare on the coast, is an ever present feature of the Tablelands and Western Slopes. O cold the black frost night, Judith Wright wrote, and indeed it can be.

Walking to school in the morning with the frost crunching under my feet is an enduring memory. With black frost, damp ground itself freezes.

In another spot, Judith writes:

rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter

I find these lines remarkably evocative. They do capture the winter feel of the Tablelands with edge of the ranges sharp in the clear, pale winter light.

I see that Bronwyn's new book, Dark Country, is now at the printers, allowing her to start work on her third. I am looking forward to reading it. 

Gordon Smith's outback tour - another photo

This rather striking photo has absolutely nothing to do with New England beyond the photographer!

Gordon Smith has continued the story of his outback journey with daily postings. This photo shows Blanche Cup, essentially a mound in the desert where water bubbles up from the Great Artesian Basin below.

It's desolate, isn't it? I was really struck by the salt pans stretching away in the middle distance. You can find the whole outback series here.