Wednesday Forum: Overcoming division

I spend a fair bit of time researching New England's history. Division is one constant theme, division between towns and regions.

The Northern Tablelands' towns fought each other over the best location of the railway to the coast. The end result was no railway.

Towns fought each other over the location of facilities. The end result was poorer facilities.

Regions such as the Tablelands or Northern Rivers regarded each other's problems as separate even where particular activities or facilities actually depended on achieving a greater mass, one that could only be achieved through combined action.

Politicians and political parties have played off these divisions. In a world where power depends upon enough individual seats to gain a majority, they gave something here, took something there, all driven by the need to be in power. Today it is called the marginal seats approach, but it's not new.

Charting New England's relative and in some cases absolute decline over the last fifty years, I keep seeing things that could have been addressed by cooperative action, but failed in the absence of that action.

What do you think might be done to encourage unity on common problems? I have my own ideas, but would like to hear your views before putting pen to paper. 

No post today

I did not post yesterday nor will I be posting today. I need time to catch up on other things, especially emails where I am miles behind. 

More on New England's Battle Song

Back in February 2010 in Battle Song of New England I talked about  the New England New State anthem. I have reproduced the original post below so that you don't have to click back. Now I have more information on derivation.

Ulrich Ellis's biography (Ulrich Ellis, A Pen in Politics, Ginninderra Press, Charnwood ACT 2007) records:

One day, following my return to Canberra from the Armidale Convention (1949), I travelled to an East Gippsland development conference in Orbost. My companion was Leo Barry, of the Snowy River Shire Council, a tall, heavily built cattleman with a limp who called me before breakfast, at 6 a.m., waking me with a glass of whiskey. It was after my return journey with him from Orbost that I conceived the idea that I should write a song for the New England campaign. I transferred at Bombala to an old train and, while travelling towards Queanbeyan, at snail's pace, wrote on a piece of paper in my bag with the letterhead 'National Council of Women of the ACT' - my wife had been president of this body - the lines and chorus music of a battle song for New England. One of our friends in Canberra, Joy Harvie, wrote the music to accompany my verses but it was a long time - 1952 - until the song was endorsed by the New England Movement's executive. Since then other versions have been arranged, one of them by John Antill, who composed the music for the ballet Corroboree. (pp 212-213)   

I had no idea that there were other versions. Having heard the original, I would like to hear them.

The original post follows:       

The words and melody of the Battle Song of New England, the anthem of the New England New State Movement, were composed by Ulrich Ellis and arranged by Joy Harvie around 1952.

I first heard it as a sixteen year old at the convention in Armidale that launched Operation Seventh State, the major campaign that finally forced the first plebiscite. I say the first, because I still hope that there will be a second.

The Town hall was darkened, a spot light was shoe on the flag, and the battle song was sung by a very good singer. All very melodramatic, but effective none the less.  

The words of the New England Anthem follow:

Everywhere we hear a rousing song
Half a million people march along
New England is decreed
From the Hunter to the Tweed
Our cause is justly strong

Chorus:
We will raise the
Banner of New England
Work for New England
Fight for New England
We will raise the
Battle cry of freedom
Fight for our Liberty

Buccarumbi to Coraki
On the mountains you will hear the cry
Out upon the plain
You will hear it sung again
At Collarenebri

From the western borders to the sea
Tamworth links her fortunes with Taree
Thy join us in the fray
On the Hunter and Macleay
New England will be free

Where the Clarence sparkles in the sun
Where the Northern Rivers swiftly run
Where the Gwydir flows
By the cold Ben Lomond snows
Our Victories will be won

Soft Pacific breezes on the shore
Drive the fleecy breakers to a roar
Multiply and rise
Till they echo in the skies
They sing for evermore

The following reproductions from the Australian National Library show the original with music.

Sheet one

Sheet two

What's in a name - the case of New England

It's very interesting the way definitions affect perceptions. The use and abuse of the name New England in Australia is a case in point, one that causes me constant problems.

Growing up, there were two New England's. The first, often called the New England, covered the Northern or New England Tablelands. The second, the name of the prospective new state, covered the Tablelands and the surrounding river valleys in NSW including the Hunter River.

This map from the Sydney Morning Herald (1954) shows the boundaries of the broader New England as I knew them. This was also the map used on the back of new state envelopes and in publicity material.

When I began this blog to record, discuss and promote the life, culture and history of New England, I automatically used the broader definition. These are, with a few exceptions, the broader boundaries that set the geographic coverage of the history I am writing at the present time.

However, I now find that I face a real and continuing problem in the active denial of the validity of my use of the word New England.

The Wikipedia page on New England (New South Wales) can be taken as an example. While a little of the wording from my first personal edit explaining the broader concept,survives, my wording keeps on being edited to get rid of or limit any explanation or discussion of the broader concept. There, and in other discussions, there is an active denial that my use of the word New England has any validity. So let's look at a few facts.

The New England Tablelands, Australia's largest tablelands, does not as is often presented finish at the Queensland border, but extends into Queensland. If you want to talk about the New England region of NSW then it stops at the border. If you want to talk about the Tablelands in geographic terms, then you need to include the small portion in Queensland. Its actually very hard to find material on the Tablelands as a whole because of border truncation.

One of the issues I faced in defining the coverage of my general history was just how to treat the state border. It makes no sense to use a line on the map when that line did not exist for the Aborigines or for the early European settlers. For that reason, I define the broad field as the Tablelands and the river valleys to the east, west, south and north flowing from the Tablelands, linked geographic units. Once the border goes through and acquires political meaning, my focus narrows because of the political and other impacts of the border. Even then, I still have to deal with some Queensland issues.

One side effect of this is that I cannot call the book a history of Northern NSW because it both is and isn't.

Initially, the areas covered by the book were called variously the North, Northern Districts or Northern Provinces, a geographical descriptor obviously based on relative location to Sydney. The area covered by these terms essentially covered the area from but including the Hunter north and initially extended into what is now Queensland.

From the 1850s, the emergence of various pushes for self government for the North introduced another set of boundary issues, for the borders proposed varied over time. The early twentieth century movements all used the term the North, but the discussed boundaries often excluded the Hunter and sometimes the Manning. So now we have two if varying definitions of the North.

I had thought that the first recorded use of the name New England for the whole area came at the Maitland Convention in April 1931. However, I was wrong. It was the precursor Armidale convention in February 1931 that decided that the name New England should be applied to the whole area seeking self-government. The boundaries set included the whole North with the exception of a small area around Newcastle, with the proposed boundaries dissecting the Hunter.From this time, the name New England as well as the North came to be used for a variety of purposes.

The 1935 Nicholas Commission recommended boundaries for New England that included all the Hunter, but cut out some parts of the far west. These boundaries were accepted by the movement, 

New state agitation died down, but then resumed again at the end of the war. Again, the naming issue was addressed. At the 1949 Armidale convention delegates considered a range of names. New England topped the poll with seventy five votes, followed by Oxley with thirty-one. Use of the name New England to describe the whole of the North in a particular context continued.

Following the defeat at the 1967 plebiscite, the movement maintained the name but redefined the boundaries to exclude the Hunter. There were now three geographic versions of New England, again two versions of the North. When the movement collapsed exhausted, use of the name New England progressively contracted towards the Tablelands. The name North continued if, in a somewhat attenuated form, to describe the whole area up to the Queensland border.

All this creates considerable complications from my viewpoint.

At a purely personal level, I continue to use the names New England and the North interchangeably as I have done all my life, using the term that makes the most sense at the time.

At a professional level, I use the term New England in discussions on developments prior to 1788. It's not a perfect term, after all it is a European descriptor, but it has the advantage of geographic specificity. From 1788 to 1931 I generally use the term the North since that was the most common descriptor unless the context demands another term. After 1931, I use both New England and the North, with the term used depending upon the context.

At both a professional and personal level, I find that I get annoyed when people want to apply current usage to the past despite the sometimes invalidity of so doing.

New England is not just the Tablelands. The North is not just Northern NSW. The New England Tablelands do not finish at the Queensland border. And so it goes on.          

Blogging meander

This morning I had to go into the city for a meeting with a client on an on-line information project, then to Ashfield for lunch. Tomorrow I go to Newcastle for a new state meeting, so I'm kind of time squeezed.

There is just so much wonderful stuff around to write about that time is an issue.

In Is the New England lion Finnish? I reported on follow up to my radio interview on ABC New England North West. A little later Max Ellis contacted me and then sent me a copy of his Dad's autobiography, A Pen in Politics, a book that I had wanted to get for some time.

I reported on my initial reactions to the book in a post on my personal blog, Meander, with a special focus on Ulrich Ellis.I read the book on the bus this morning, I read it wandering through the city streets to the office, I read it on the train to Ashfield and then waiting in the office foyer for my colleague, I finished it on the train back to Central. 

Part of the interest, of course, lies in my own knowledge of history and of Ulrich and the people he was writing about. These are not just names, but people who occupied a place for both good and evil in my own personal firmament. But it's still a good read.

  The book will force me to change some of my writing, for in spots I can see that I was just wrong.

In terms of my New general England history project, and as I mentioned in the Ellis post, I have shifted my focus for the moment to the social history of New England in the period 1950-2000. Social Change in New England 1950-2000 2: Don Aitkin's What was it all for? reports on a study that is both a local story, that of the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate Class of 1953, and a major piece of work on social change at national level.

I am the type of person who needs a degree of externally imposed deadlines to keep me focused. I therefore emailed colleagues at UNE offering to give a seminar paper on New England social history 1955-2000 in the School of Humanities Classics and History Seminar Series next year. If I give the paper, it will be co-badged with the History Futures Research Centre; I am an adjunct of the School and a member of the HFRC.

Miss Eagle liked my post Round the New England media 13 Nov 10. She wrote:

I just l-o-v-e-d this post. As a small town girl trapped in a big city (Melbourne) I loved this round up. My favourites were the Tweed Heads tourist road idea and the need for the scales at Byron. Please keep up this excellent work.

Now, I wonder if there could be imitators for a communal blog with round-ups (rounds-up?!) like this. But then perhaps the northern NSW coastal strip is a world of its own!

I tried to answer the second as best I could.

It's actually quite difficult to do both media and blog round-ups because of the time involved. They tend to slip for that reason. Still, I might aim to make them fortnightly on alternative weeks.

I am not sure who J Bar is beyond the fact that he has a photo blog, Sydney - City and Suburbs, that I sometimes follow. It was therefore nice to get a general positive comment attached to one story, Wollombi Corroboree 2010.

Over lunch at Ashfield, my colleague commented on just how much I wrote. There is a serious purpose to my writing, but I also write because it's fun!  

Wollombi Corroboree 2010

My thanks to Peter Firminger for this one. This is the video from this year's Wollombi Corroboree. You can learn more from the Wollombi Valley Arts Council web site. 

Belshaw's World - inner city dwellers put the choke on car ownership

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 10 November 2010. 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 for 2009, here for 2010

The city of Sydney describes itself as a city of villages. I would argue that Sydney as a whole is better described as a city of tribes.

Saturday we drove to Galston, an hour’s drive north from where we live, for an engagement party for one of Helen’s school friends.

It was raining as we battled our way through the traffic, finally reaching the far Northern suburbs.

This is mixed country on the urban fringe. Huge houses on tiny blocks sit cheek by jowl with the semi-rural.

Sydney has been wet, very wet. The party was held at an old nursery; its established old gardens were very green and really quite beautiful in the drifting rain.

The engagement itself was a mixed one, crossing two of Sydney’s most deeply entrenched tribal barriers.

The groom to be comes from Galston , the bride to be comes from the Eastern Suburbs, a geographically bound area that looks to the sea and the shops.

Galston and the surrounding areas are very different. Here people have been attracted by somewhat cheaper housing and the chance to enjoy a more rural life style.

I drifted between the two groups, listening to the differing conversations: the importance of the sea and good coffee (Eastern Suburbs); getting eggs from a neighbour (Galston); school stories from both, but again very different in terms of location and topic.

Today, Sydney dominates the NSW population. This was not true in the past.

Sydney once had less than half of the state population. The population of Northern NSW alone was once larger than that of Sydney. As a consequence, a remarkable number of Sydney families actually have a country connection.

The grandfather of the bride to be grew up in the dairying areas of the North Coast where his father managed butter factories. The other side came from the central west. Again, there were differences between the two tribes.

The Eastern Suburbs’ country connection is more remote.

When we first moved there, I was struck by the number of people who were second, third or even fourth generation Eastern Suburbs, whose partners were also Eastern Suburbs. You just don’t get the population turnover that you find in, say, Armidale. This makes for a certain parochialism.

The Galston country connection is more recent. Some of those I talked to still had working farms. Unexpectedly, I found myself rolling a cigarette (I can still do this, just) and chatting about shooting, feral pests, water buy-backs, the ending of the drought and current grain prices.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater.

One of the things that fascinates me as a social analyst is the way that Sydney’s tribes reinforce themselves. Take the Inner West as an example.

Those coming here are attracted by the inner-urban life style. They are likely to be less interested in the sea, more by certain ways of living. They are also likely to come from certain occupations such as the public service and the caring professions and have certain common attitudes. In turn, this attracts more people of like minds.

After each census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes a social atlas for Sydney. This looks at a whole series of statistical indicators. You can actually map the tribes of Sydney from those indicators.

Sydney’s tribalisation is interesting, but it also creates problems for those who live elsewhere in ways we don’t always see.

Take a simple thing like car ownership.

Cars are important to those in the country. Statistically, the proportion of the population with driving licenses and cars is very high.

By contrast, in the inner city with its better public transport, the proportion of the population owning cars is lower and declining. This affects public policy.

Inner city attitudes to the car are very different from those holding elsewhere. They seek to control and limit motor vehicles, they support restrictions intended to reduce death rates, they are pro-pedestrian.

The things they argue for are not necessarily bad. It’s just that their needs and attitudes are different from those who depend on the car.

Objectively, they can see the importance of motor vehicles to people who do not have access to public transport. Subjectively, they downplay this in their own minds.

Inner city people are articulate and, on average, better educated than the population as a whole. They also have better access to the levers of influence, including the public servants who live among them. Increasingly, they set the agenda in this area.

While one can debate the costs and benefits of each measure, the practical effect is to make it more difficult and expensive to get and hold a license, more expensive to buy and run a car. This disadvantages those most dependant on the car and especially those on lower incomes.

Paul Barratt's Travelling North

Like me, Paul Barratt is a New England émigré. Like me, he bangs the drum on New England issues.
Travelling North tells the story of his latest return to his homeland.

Update on The Save Bellingen Hospital Campaign

It's been a while since I reported on the campaign to Save Bellingen Hospital.

If I understand the campaign Facebook page and official website correctly, real action on the official side appears to have been in a state of stasis pending the formation  of the area health network, with campaign actions focused there plus continuing efforts to help the hospital.

In the meantime, problems at Coff's Harbour continue the pressure to re-open Bellingen Hospital's Emergency Department. I thought here that I would just quote a recent entry from the Facebook page.

Jenny Edman: Have just read todays Advocate, so a few weeks ago Coffs Campus was inundated with sick people, surely that should send a message to the NCHS that Bellingen needs to open it's ED department, if our locals had to travel all the way from Dorrigo or Bellingen to have to wait up to 9 hrs to be seen by a Dr is ridiculous, shame a 100 fold on NCHS, until next year it is still working for the mid north coast.

Frank Bolte: What do you mean Dorrigo people can't even get to bello or C/h Monday to fridays during the day. Waterfall way is closed. I feel sorry for them

Mary Peters: i waited five hours / ambulance refused to take me to bello hosp! i wasnt seen i got back to bello myself for injection because of anaphalactic reaction! im disgusted... as i could see for myself how many ppl in waiting and in ed / no one saw anyone in that five hours where was the doctors! four nurses pushing an empty bed laughing and police standing there with ambos discussing how bad the system is all in earshot of the patients / simply a disgrace really!

Tasha Lee: What about dundurrabin thats 20 mins from dorrigo. i am due to give birth in febuary thats a looong drive to a woman in labour and i read last week there wasnt even a peadeatrician on duty for a full week they were sending women to john hunter hospital to give birth. now if i even make the hour and a half trip down the mountain into coffs im not going to make it to john hunter especialy considering my last daughter was born in bello 20mins after i arrived total labour time 1hour 20 mins. not knowing where my baby will be born is causing a great deal of anxiety for me

For those who don't know the area at all:

• When the mountain road is closed, the nearest hospital to Dorrigo is in Armidale, 124k or 1hour 40 away by car. 
• When the mountain road is open, Dorrigo is 29k, roughly 21 minutes, from Bellingen. If you come from other parts of the Dorrigo such as Dundurrubin, then extra travel time is involved; Dorrigo sits at one side of the Plateau adjacent to the escarpment to the coast.
• Bellingen is 35k, 32 minutes from Coffs. Dorrigo is 64k from Coffs, 53 minutes, plus any travel time from elsewhere on the Plateau.

All distances and drive times are approximate depending on location and weather.

Some of these drive times may not so sound long to Sydneysiders with the city's traffic congestion. However:

• Those in the area have seen the closure first of the Dorrigo hospital and then the downgrading of Bellingen Hospital through centralisation of services, adding to the time and difficulty of accessing hospital services. Obviously, those on the Dorrigo plateau have suffered the greatest impact.
• Coffs Harbour Hospital is large and over-stretched. There are simply not the alternative nearby base hospitals that you would find in Sydney. John Hunter, the other hospital mentioned, is in Newcastle, a five hour drive away. If you have to travel that distance, I would have thought Armidale a better option, although it may not have the capacity.
• Not everybody has access to cars. Public transport is limited, taxis expensive. I am not sure how many ambulances are available, but I would have thought that the number was not large relative to potential peak demand.

The crux of the Bellingen argument, then, is not just that they have been losing services, but that everybody in the Valley and on the Plateau, and indeed the whole Coffs Harbour hospital catchment area, would be better off if certain services were restored to Bellingen Hospital.

Round the New England media 13 Nov 10

It's actually been five months since my last snap shot of some of the stories across New England.

In Lismore, the Northern Star reports that about one-fifth of Lismore’s water is being lost because of cracks in the council’s ageing pipes, with almost 60 per cent of water in Nimbin leaking before it reaches homes. The water lost, about 18% of the total, is worth an estimated $1.5 million per annum. In a comment on the story, Cletus huffed:

Why worry about infrastructure in a crumbling city when we could have a shiny new art gallery so the hobnobs and city officials can eat cheese and drink wine while getting their pictures taken for the local papers.

The Northern Star also reports that the police had a weighty problem when their scales proved inadequate to weigh a crop of seized cannabis. Fortunately  a local green grocer came to the rescue!

In nearby Bryon Bay, environmental issues continue to be important. Here the Echo quotes State Green's member David Shoebridge on planning issues:

‘It is simply outrageous that the developers can choose to bypass Byron Council and have their development assessed by the Minister for Planning. Why should a Minister in Sydney decide West Byron development?’ said Mr Shoebridge.

In an opinion piece, Echo editor Michael McDonald calls for the legalisation or at least decriminalisation of marijuana. "It’s probably flogging a dead horse", he says, " but we ageing Bohemians tend to swim against the tide of conformity as a matter of habit."

I find that Michael has an Echo blog. I have added it to the list. I do like like the idea of an aging bohemian!

North in Tweed Heads on the border, the Tweed heads Daily reports that three decades after Simon Anderson revolutionised surfing with his thruster surfboard, surfers are returning to the board designs it almost wiped out. It is, apparently, good news for shapers like Full Force owner Scott Barber because it makes working life a lot more interesting: "thrusters didn't suit everyone", Scott said. Now "many surfers had turned back the clock and wanted to ride single fin and twin fin boards again."

Staying in the Tweed, Tweed Tourism is hoping a Federal Government-funded project will put Tweed on the map for driving holidays. Richmond MP Justine Elliot and Senator Nick Sherry have joined forces to create the $670,000 project named the Legendary Pacific Coast Touring Route.The aim is to encourage people to jump in their cars and drive the corridor between Sydney and Brisbane.

I was a bit surprised at this one. As expressed, it didn't seem to make a great deal of sense given existing congestion on the Highway. Maybe I'm missing something.

Staying in the Northern Rivers but moving south to the Clarence, the Grafton Daily Examiner reports that Doctors are keen on the new GP super clinic due to begin construction shortly. According to the project manager, one "remote doctor is looking forward to moving closer to the coast and Grafton is very appealing in itself ... it has good schools and is a nice town.”

This seems a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Grafton is indeed a nice city. However, the attraction of doctors from one area of need to another is a zero sum game. We need more doctors in New England full stop, something that I have commented on before.

Moving west to Moree, the Moree Champion reports on the death Maynie Mavis Jean Saunders, nee Cutmore, who played a significant role in improving local race relations over the last 60 years. Moree has a very large Aboriginal population, over 22% of the total Shire population. It was the centre of the famous Sydney University student rides of the 1960s. It would be nice to see a fuller obituary on Mrs Saunders' death.

Staying in Moree, a steering committee has been nominated to help oversee an operational future for the Dhiiyaan Indigenous Centre. I have written a little on this one before. I don't understand the local issues surrounding the Centre. I do understand that the Centre has played an important role in family reunion, family history and the promotion of Kamilaroi identity. Hopefully, the new steering committee will make some progress.

At a time when so many small country communities have been in decline, it is good to see from the Champion that Pallamallawa has been growing. Located some 30km east of Moree on the banks of the Gwydir River, 2km off the Gwydir Highway between Moree and Inverell, the village seems quite dynamic. 

The photo shows English backpacker Matt Simpson with Golden Grain Hotel owner Adrian Johns, open and ready for business. Good to see a backpacker get that far west.

Staying in the inland, I don't think that the weekly Coonabarabran Times is online, something that is unusual in this day and age. However, ABC New England Northwest certainly is. 

In a sign of the times, Glen Innes based Eastmon Photos will close its six retail stores in Armidale, Bathurst, Dubbo, Glen Innes, Inverell and Tamworth with the loss of 30 jobs. Eastmon can no longer compete with the on-line photo developing market.

ABC also reports that Armidale born chemist and microbiologist Professor Jillian Banfield has received two of the world's most prestigious scientific awards.They are the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science, plus one of five L'Oreal-UNESCO awards recognising exceptional women in science. Congratulations.

It has been a long time since the Murray-Darling system experienced a really big flood. For this to happen, you need saturated ground followed by more rain. A report in the Northern Daily Leader suggests that Tamworth now risks a perfect flood. The entire Peel River catchment, from the head of the Peel at Nundle, and all tributary rivers all the way to the Tamworth levee bank, is at saturation point. Every on-farm storage, dam, creek and Chaffey Dam are at full capacity. And the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts Tamworth is likely to receive up to 300mm by the end of January.

The rain also threatens the grain crop. After the best winter season in living memory, continued wet conditions are now damaging the crop.

It's not just in the Hunter Valley that coal gas seam projects are causing trouble. The proposal by Eastern Star Gas to build a pipeline to carry gas from ESG’s Narrabri coal seam gas project to a proposed gas-fired power station at Wellington has been met by protests from local farmers. However, the Eastern Star approach seems a little different from that adopted in the Hunter. Eastern Star's John Anderson stated: "As a home-grown Narrabri company which plans to have a long-term presence in the region, we are determined to work closely with the local community on a permanent basis.”

Turning now to the Mid North Coast, the Bellingen Courier-Sun reports on the planned opening of the final 400m stage of the Urunga Boardwalk which now extends for almost 1km from Urunga township to the Pacific Ocean, terminating on a viewing platform resting on top of the training wall.

In Bellingen, around 100 residents gathered in Church Street Friday 5 November to oppose a proposal by Council to progressively remove camphor laurel trees from the café precinct.

This one pits different environmental views against each other. Greens Councillor Sean Tuohy (the only councilors present) said he voted for the removal of the camphor laurels because “I regard them as a weed that destroys the environment”. This view was not shared by those protesting. “If you’re a Green, stand up for the trees.”

Staying with environmental issues, the Macleay Argus reports on the spread of the noxious tropical soda apple weed in the upper Macleay.

Farmers first noticed the weed growing in the area about three years ago, but it is the past 12 months that have been of most concern. A five-fold increase in the number of plants led the Mid North Coast Weeds Committee to develop an emergency control plan to try to halt the spread which threatens prime agricultural land.  Crews from all over New England have joined the effort, but more help is needed.