Greyhound buses, the decline of inland New England and a challenge to Adam Marshall

The decision by Greyhound Australia to close its New England Highway bus route marked another stage in the relative decline of inland New England. It means that there is no longer an inland bus route between Sydney and Brisbane.

In a statement, the company said without the numbers the service, which runs through Tenterfield, Glen Innes, Guyra, Armidale, Uralla, Tamworth and down through the Hunter, could no longer continue.

“Despite trying multiple initiatives, in order to improve passenger volumes so we can continue to service the local communities on this route, they have proven to be unsuccessful,” National Sales Manager Dan Smith said.

“Our load volumes have been consistently under our breakeven point, which is the definitive reason for the suspension.

“So with this in mind, Greyhound Australia can no longer financially justify operating the daily inland service between Brisbane and Sydney via the New England Highway.”

I can understand the company's position. It also improves the viability of Glen Innes based New England Coaches three days a week Tamworth Brisbane service. That's not a bad thing, although its not a substitute.

Interesting on-going discussion on a Whirlpool forum about the relative speed of travelling between Sydney and Brisbane via the two routes. The Pacific route is shorter and with road improvements is now faster, if with some terrifying spots. So if it's a straight time choice, people tend to choose the Pacific. Mind you, the Thunderbolts Way route with its Pacific/New England combination is faster still, but we don't want to mention that too widely. It wouldn't be if everybody took it!

But what's really difficult is that choice has been withdrawn, that people no longer have the choice to wend their way along the New England by bus, stopping and going on. Its another blow to the tourist industry. Over the years there have been attempts to promote the the New England Highway route, but they suffer from the standard problems of Sydney governance that bedevils so much New England tourist promotion - too little, too late, too unfocused, too irregular.

A few weeks back, I persuaded a colleague to come back from Brisbane via the New England, over-nighting in Armidale. She and the children enjoyed the trip and loved Armidale. It was everything I had said. Obviously I liked that.

Responding to the Greyhound decision, Parliamentary Secretary for Northern NSW and Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall said the service loss would be felt by his electorate.

“It’s always disappointing to see the loss of services to regional NSW,” he told The Leader. “The coach service has had dwindling numbers as more people choose to drive, or fly or catch the train.

“I have no doubt constituents in my electorate will feel the effects of this.”.....Mr Marshall said he understood it was a business decision but said it was unlikely such a service would return.

“Once we lose services in regional NSW it’s very hard to get them back,” he said

That's not good enough, Adam. I know that you work hard and have achieved individual results, but you have not defined anything approaching a coherent strategy to address continuing structural decline in inland New England.

You don't have to accept my solution, self government, but you do need to offer more than a series of town by town small initiatives that at the end of the day get swamped in broader changes. What is the framework, the vision, you offer that will energise and provide a base for action? Its not going to be perfect, but we so need that base. So how about it, Adam? What have you to offer?  

Newcastle news - Knight's sponsorship, Muswellbrook coal mine extension universally approved, Pacific National job losses

Health fund nib is to be the Newcastle Knight's major sponsor for the next three years in a deal worth around $1 million a year.

Meantime, it is not clear just how the sale process for the club is going. After the financial collapse of Nathan Tinkler, the club was taken over by the National Rugby League (NRL).

The NRL launched the sale process two months ago, appointing Tony Garrett, the head of mergers and acquisitions at Deloitte Australia, to broker a transaction they hope will be completed by Christmas. Since then, all parties have been bound by confidentiality agreements, so whatever progress has been made behind closed doors appears a closely guarded secret.

In another Newcastle Herald story, it appears that Muswellbrook Shire Council has given the shire’s oldest mine a green light to finish what it started more than a century ago.At an extra ordinary meeting on Wednesday evening, councillors unanimously approved a Muswellbrook Coal Company development application to continue mining until mid-2022. Muswellbrook Coal senior operations manager Grant Clouten said there was three years of resource remaining at the site, and the company was doing the right thing by the community to continue its work. The motion was supported by CFMEU Northern Mining and NSW Energy District vice president Jeff Drayton who addressed council, and a full public gallery, presenting reasons why the expansion should be approved.

On a less positive note, Pacific National is reported as cutting another 121 jobs. Union organiser Steve Wright said 32 drivers’ positions were going from Port Waratah, with eight from Greta, 12 from Gunnedah, nine from Narrabri and 23 from Port Kembla. The company was also moving all of its “live run” planning and rostering positions to North Sydney, costing another 24 jobs at Port Waratah, nine at Greta and five in the Illawarra. Coal has always been a cyclical industry, so the losses are not surprising.  .

Bald Rock's new signage

I have still to visit Tenterfield's Bald Rock. It's a spectacular site; 1,300 metres above sea level, Bald Rock’s water-streaked dome is 500 metres wide and 750 metres in length, and is the largest granite monolith in Australia.
 

A 3.2km loop walk takes you the summit. It can be a slightly treacherous walk; wet granite gets slippery. Now I see from the Tenterfield Times that the National Parks and Wildlife Service has installed new signage to give visitors a clearer picture of potential hazards. That strikes me as a sensible idea. 

I wondered how they might do it. You can see from the photo that it's quite rugged. Apparently they used motorised wheelbarrows! Time for me to visit. 

NERAM's John Gale donation

NERAM, the New England Regional Art Museum has received a donation of 11 artworks by leading Australian artists which confirms its position as one of the leading regional collections of Australian art in the country.

The donation from Canberra based land-owner and arts benefactor John Gale OBE will be on display in the Dulce Lindsay Gallery at NERAM from Saturday 17 September 2016 until Sunday 5 February 2017 next to the exhibition Views of Landscape.

The donation of eleven artworks includes paintings by Sir Arthur Streeton, Rupert Bunny, Elioth Gruner, Adrian Feint, JJ Hilder, Hans Heysen, Herbert Badham, Harold Septimus Power and Desiderius Orban that have been selected to complement The Howard Hinton Collection at NERAM.

For obvious reason, NERAM thanked John Gale OBE and everyone involved in making this magnificent donation possible.

From my viewpoint, that's a very interesting collection of painters. I wonder which Badham they have?  As you can see from this BBC news story, Badham (he died in 1961) has really been growing in prominence as an Australian painter. 

The craziness of NSW's latest regional tourism structures

I despair sometimes. Over the last six years on this blog I have written many posts on failures in NSW tourism promotion, at least so far as Northern NSW is concerned. Just to summarise my previous complaints:

• the subdivision of tourism branding into Sydney and NSW doesn't work because NSW is too disparate to have an identifiable tourism brand and in any case hasn't been given the money to promote it
• the constantly fluctuating boundaries of NSW regional tourism bodies, the constant chops and changes in names, structures and branding strategies, has made it impossible to develop coherent sustained local or regional tourism brands and strategies. 
• The Sydney centric focus of branding conceals a fundamental conflict between the desire to maintain Sydney as hub and the needs of other areas that are, in fact, in competition with Sydney. 
• At least so far as Northern NSW, the broader New England,is concerned,  the various strategies and chops and changes have totally destroyed any chance of creating a strong brand to rival Sydney and have fragmented cooperative marketing and product development.

The latest Sydney Government changes just continue this process. Since I am being so rude, here is the link to the explanatory statement. Please read it and tell me that I am wrong. I would be very happy to debate the issues involved.

The following map sets out the latest boundaries. Comments follow the map.

Now when you look at the map, you will find that New England is subdivided into three areas:

• Destination Sydney Surrounds North (including the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and the Hunter)
• Destination North Coast (from the Mid-Coast to Tweed Heads including Lord Howe Island)
• Destination Country and Outback NSW with everything inland from Riverina Murray as defined to the border including all of inland New England. 

While Destination North Coast at least has the advantage of an historical geographic unity, the same cannot be said for the other areas. After years of struggling to maintain a distinct identity, Newcastle and the Hunter are now classified just as Destination Sydney Surrounds North. Can you imagine the board meetings where the Hunter tells the Blue Mountains to go away because we want to attract traffic from you?

Destination Country and Outback NSW is, if anything, worse. Can you imagine just three staff even with extra board members making sensible decisions across a such a broad area lacking any community of interest? Or any sensible decisions at all? And how on earth are the New England Tablelands and Western Slopes and Plains, areas that are different in their own right but have been jammed together by previous NSW Government decisions, going to form common views in competition with the Cnetral West or Dubbo? It beggars belief. 

And how are we going to get cooperative action that will promote Northern NSW as a whole? Well, I guess that we don't exist.

As I said, I have given you the links so that you can correct me.  So far as I am concerned. this strikes me as crazy stuff. 

Election sees status quo in the broader New England

It's becoming easier and easier to follow New England election results with the progressive decline in the number of our seats, state and federal. It's hard to believe, but New England now has fewer Federal seats than South Australia.

In 1967, our population was larger than Western Austraia's, well in front of South Australia. Now South Australia has eleven Federal seats, while New England has nine with part falling in the seat of Parkes.

With seats down one from the previous Federal election, the results this time were broadly status quo:

• Labor 5 (Hunter, Paterson, Richmond, Shortland, Newcastle)
• National 4 (Cowper, Lyne, New England, Page) plus part of the National held seat of Parkes. 

I will do a full report once we have the final figures.  

New NERAM exhibitions - Views of Landscape and Home

On Friday, the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale opened its latest series of exhibitions.

Views of Landscape looks is a new exhibition looking at the traditional genre of landscape. The painting from the exhibition is Elioth Gruner's Winter afternoon, Bellingen 1937.

Views of Landscape explores a number of themes related to landscape painting including a feature wall of rare paintings of local landscapes dating back to the 1930s including depictions of Bellingen, Coffs Harbour, Uralla and other New England locations .

“In 1921 the artist Elioth Gruner passed through the New England region on his way north, setting up his easel, painting the landscape as he went and reputedly staying with farmers and graziers in return for giving them an artwork to keep,” said curator Robert Heather, Director of the Museum. “Later in the 1930s he returned to the region and obviously travelled along the Waterfall Way because a series of gorgeous landscapes he painted then are now in the Howard Hinton Collection here at NERAM.”

“The Howard Hinton Collection was originally assembled as a teaching collection for Armidale Teachers College and Hinton wanted to make sure that it included all of the key painting themes of his era,” said Mr Heather. “Looking through this collection of over 1000 artworks we have wonderful examples of portraits, still life, nudes, landscapes and seascapes to choose from for our exhibitions.”

“In this exhibition we explore the way in which artist’s views of the landscape have evolved from the traditional English countryside of nineteenth century painter Samuel Palmer through to the contemporary interventions of Christo around Sydney Harbour in the late 1960s and the work of contemporary urban artists today such as George Gittoes.”

“This exhibition includes works by leading Australian artists including Arthur Streeton, Elioth Gruner, Adrian Feint, Margaret Olley, Lloyd Rees and many others that will enable our visitors to experience a range of high quality landscape painting, prints and drawings.”

A second exhibition explores the idea of Home. This is Raphaela Rosella's One day I’ll go home and meet my mother 2016, colour photograph.

This exhibition brings Armidale’s international communities together with the Aboriginal and broader communities by creating connections around the idea of ‘home’ through art, music and stories.

The exhibition opened with a welcome to country by Aunty Barbra and a performance by the HOME drumming group.

It features large scale photographic portraits by award-winning photographer Raphaela Rosella with images, personal stories and creative contributions collected from and created by community members during Beyond Empathy’s HOME project in 2015.

HOME was a multi-arts project that included the creation of a community choir and drumming group, photographic portraits and storytelling, with the choir and drumming group creating a forum for connection by meeting and performing regularly.

“Raphaela Rosella’s powerful photographic portraits form the heart of this exhibition which explores how a number of different communities have made their home in Armidale and the New England region,” said NERAM's Robert Heather.

Beyond Empathy use ar tforms that resonate with participants and aims to disrupt old ways of thinking and empower marginalised people to engage with their communities, create new narratives and shift perceptions.

The HOME project was supported by the Multicultural NSW Unity Grants program and will be on show at NERAM until Sunday 14 August 2016.

Reflections on Joyce v Windsor in New England in the context of New England's fight for statehood

This looks like a Tony Windsor billboard, but in fact its the opposite. It's one of dozens on both sides that has sprung up across New England.

This reflection began with a private Facebook post that Helen Dale suggested that I should publish. 

The post first. 

"I really should put this one on my public FB pages, but its a really personal comment. 

I have just watched on ABC iview the 4 corners program on the contest between Joyce and Windsor for New England. If you want to see what a real election campaign looks like and not the ersatz stuff you so often see in the city you should watch. 

This is a very large electorate now that stretches from the Upper Hunter to the border. Its also a very diverse electorate in which the locals and, to a lesser extent since local ownership vanished, the local media have strong views and expect their candidates to know them. 

The hot button issues here are different from those you would expect from the national campaign. The NBN is a real sleeper issue in the country. Armidale got the NBN, Tamworth was next, but the election of the Abbott Government and Mr Turnbull as communications minister and the consequent changes to the NBN cost Tamworth their connection. The people who are hurting, the Tamworth business community, traditional National supporters are angry. It doesn't matter what national arguments are mounted, when your business is hurt by a Government decision, you react. Why can't we have decent coms? 

This is an electorate where climate change, coal seam gas and coal have become important sectional issues because of the Liverpool Plains where prime and beautiful agricultural land and livelihoods are affected. The audience at the Tamworth Q&A program was not representative nor did Mr Joyce handle certain questions well, but it caught the passion. 

This is also an electorate where the refugee and border election issue does not play out quite in the same way as Western Sydney or, at the other end of the spectrum, the inner suburbs of the metros. The pro-refugee groups are quite strong, while there are many local connections with individual refugees. This tempers the migration debate in what is, in some way,s a conservative if independent leaning seat. 

The hurts and resentments created by My Windsor's support of the Gillard Government, the sense of betrayal, are still there, if somewhat moderated by time. So is the National Party base, as well as national issues like jobs, health and development. This is an area that in many ways has simply not shared in Australia's economic growth. So they want results, tangibles, specifics, not generalised policies or programs. A program for jobs doesn't help if the result is no jobs in New England. 

Polling suggests that the Labor vote at around 7% and the Green vote at around 4% have collapsed, actually eclipsed by the non-Windsor independent vote. Mr Joyce is holding in the high forties, but he has to be in the very high forties with so many preferences against him. 

This is not an unsophisticated political campaign. You don't mount a potentially successful campaign against the Deputy Prime Minister without substantial resources. Mr Windsor's own reactivated political machine is backed by volunteer and special interest groups inside and outside the electorate. They are expert at the use of social media. Mr Joyce is fighting back, but is struggling a little. 

I hesitate to pick a winner. Personally, and even though I have such a high opinion of Mr Windsor, I hope that Barnaby wins. 

Whichever way it goes, I couldn't think help thinking how much I love electoral politics, how many scenes in the Four Corners program I recognised. Professionally, I can accept generalised performance measures. Personally, I need to translate the things that I still strive for into results for people."

In a comment, Carlo Ritchie wrote:

"I have to say that I'm on the other side of the fence to you Jim. Though I respect your thoughts on the matter. As someone who is very passionate about the potential and future of the New England, I do not see the vehicle to the future being driven by Barnaby Joyce. The last four polls have all predicted that a hung parliament is likely, in which case, Turnbull will maintain the government until a no confidence vote. In that circumstance, the seats that will be the most strongly advantaged will be those on who's vote the Government depends. A vote for an Independant isn't a vote for the Labour Government, or a vote for the Greens, or a vote against the current government in fact. It's a vote for New England. It's a vote for an independant vote and it's a vote for our voice to be taken to Canberra, not for the voice-piece of Canberra to come to us.

Like me, Carlo is a supporter for self-government for the broader New England, In a letter to the Glen Innes Examiner, Carlo wrote:

The North should be Independent. 

A vote for an independent is not a vote for the Labor Party. Nor is it a vote for the Greens, or the Nationals for that matter. It is a vote for the New England. It is a vote for an independent voice amongst the bickering of the two party system. It is a vote for our voice, rather than the voice of Canberra. 

The North should be independent. I am not the first person to think it, nor to suggest it, in fact it’s biggest proponent was Sir Earle Page, founder of the Country Party. Back when the Country Party first formed government in 1922 they used their political leverage to remove then sitting Prime Minister Billy Hughes. The highest office in the country brought down by a handful of land holders who wanted a better deal for their constituents. 

That is the power that the National Party once wielded. Now, in 2016, our voice in Canberra, Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources and the Deputy Prime Minister, the man legally and constitutionally empowered as the final say on Agriculture and Water for this country, can’t stop a mine on the doorstep of his own electorate.  

As we get closer to the election, polls are telling us that in all likelihood we may end up with another hung parliament. In which case, Malcom Turnbull will remain as leader unless a no confidence motion is successful. A motion that both Rob Taber and Tony Windsor have said they would not support. In that case, it is those seats on whom the Government depends for their vote that will benefit the most. In such circumstances, it is the Independent Voice that will be heard against the din.

Debbie asked in a question:

Jim, why, personally, do you want Barnaby to win? For "party political" reasons? or policy?

Now Debbie knows that I am traditional Country Party. I describe myself in that way because while I tend to support the National Party since I believe that regional Australia needs a voice, I am far from a died in the wool National Party supporter.

In response to Debbie, I said: 

It's complicated, Debbie. Carlo set out the alternative view below. At a national level, the most likely outcomes at the moment are a coalition return, a less likely Labor win or a minority coalition government dependent on the Xenophon block - the polls suggest that they could end up with up to three seats. 

At electoral level, Barnaby has supported New England self government, while the possible shift to Armidale of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority would be a major local game changer for the city and university. On Tony's side, I am supportive of a number of his stances but would be more comfortable if he had a clearer Northern vision. If the coalition is returned with a majority but Tony elected, then I don't think that he will have a major influence. Hence Barnaby. If Labor wins, then the pendulum shifts towards Tony. If its a minority coalition government, it could go either way. 

Note that I haven't really mentioned national issues. I am pretty one-eyed, I guess, but for the life of me I lack the skills to work out how to balance the differences between the two sides. I straddle them. Whichever one gets in is likely to leave me dissatisfied!

In an election where all parties are focused on the marginals, where Nick Xenophon's rise for is creating benefits for South Australia, where we are told we must focus on "national" issues, I come back to this point. Northern NSW has been in long term structural decline.

Politicians respond on a seat by seat basis, never addressing the question of what, if anything, can be done to address the decline. Even Mr Windsor is actually focused on his narrow patch. He goes local, or national, but forgets the bit in the middle.

Why should I be happy just because South Australia is a state and gets attention, New England is not and does not? We have wanted to manage ourselves for over 150 years.  

The poetry of Les Murray 1 - introduction

I have been reading Les Murray, The best 100 poems of Les Murray, Black Inc, Collingwood 2004. I have referred to Les Murray before on this blog, but this was is first time that I have taken the time to really taste his poetry. 

Wikipedia records that Leslie Allan "Les" Murray was born on 17 October 1938 at Nabiac on the Wallamba River, 24 kilometres south of Taree and 25 kilometres west of Forster/Tuncurry on the Mid North Coast. 

Today Nabiac has a population of around 600 and services the surrounding communities of Wootton, Failford, Rainbow Flat, Dyers Crossing, Krambach and Coolongolook.

Murray grew up in the neighbouring district of Bunyah. He attended primary and early high school in Nabiac and then attended Taree High School. 

In 1957 he began study at the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Arts and joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve to obtain a small income. Speaking about this time to Clive James he has said: "I was as soft-headed as you could imagine. I was actually hanging on to childhood because I hadn't had much teenage. My Mum died and my father collapsed. I had to look after him. So I was off the chain at last, I was in Sydney and I didn't quite know how to do adulthood or teenage. I was being coltish and foolish and childlike. I received the least distinguished degree Sydney ever issued. I don't think anyone's ever matched it."

Murray developed an interest in ancient and modern languages, which qualified him to become a professional translator at the Australian National University where he was employed from 1963 to 1967). During his studies he met other poets and writers such as Geoffrey Lehmann, Bob Ellis, Clive James and Lex Banning as well as future political journalists Laurie Oakes andMungo McCallum Jr. Between times, he hitch-hiked around Australia and lived briefly at a Sydney Push household at Milson's Point. He returned to undergraduate studies in the 1960s and became a Roman Catholic when he married Budapest-born fellow-student Valerie Morelli in 1962. They lived in Wales and Scotland and travelled in Europe for over a year in the late 1960s. They now have five children.

In 1971 Murray resigned from his "respectable cover occupations" of translator and public servant in Canberra  to write poetry full-time. The family returned to Sydney, but Murray, planning to return to his home at Bunyah, managed to buy back part of the lost family home in 1975 and to visit there intermittently until 1985 when he and his family returned to live there permanently.

On his poetic inspiration, Wikipedia notes that twelve years after Murray's induced birth, his mother miscarried and died after the doctor failed to call an ambulance. Literary critic Lawrence Bourke writes that "Murray, linking his birth to her death, traces his poetic vocation from these traumatic events, seeing in them the relegation of the rural poor by urban élites. Dispossession, relegation, and independence become major preoccupations of his poetry". The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature writes that:

The continuing themes of much of his poetry are those inherent in that traditional nationalistic identity – respect, even reverence, for the pioneers; the importance of the land and its shaping influence on the Australian character, down-to-earth, laconic ... and based on such Bush-bred qualities as egalitarianism, practicality, straight-forwardness and independence; special respect for that Australian character in action in wartime ... and a brook-no-argument preference for the rural life over the sterile and corrupting urban environment.

I think that description is about right. However, what is perhaps less well recognised is Murray's role as a regional poet. He captures the cadences, the rhythms, of a life departed or now departing or at least threatened. He mourns and celebrates aspects of that life, descriptions that would be instantly recognisable to most people in New England, especially to those of an older generation.   

In my next post in this series, I will introduce you to some of the poems selected by Les Murray for his 100 best poems and link them to aspects of New England life. 

The story of Edward Trickett

The latest History Revisited column tells the story of Edward Trickett, a rower and Australia's first world champion. who is buried in Uralla.

Uralla's  McCrossin's Mill Museum has a display on Trickett and his life among its various exhibits.