Belshaw's World - Patrice Newell’s The River

Jim Belshaw is on holidays. While he is away, Jim’s column is featuring some of his previous writing. This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on New England Australia in August 2006.

In my last post, New England Australia – writers, I mentioned that I was reading Patrice Newell's book the River, the story of the Pages River in the Upper Hunter. I can hardly wait to finish to read her next book, Ten Thousand Acres.

I did not realise when I started reading that Patrice was quite famous. I bought the book because it was another book on New England. Now I am loving it.

It's not just that she writes well, and she does. It's not just that I am learning new things, and I am. Here, and so far, I especially like her catchment stories. But her writing is (unexpectedly) like an old and familiar friend.

I began this blog because I wanted to save and present the broader New England that I loved, a New England that I feared was becoming lost. While Patrice may not realise it, her writing is saturated with that New England, reminding me also of just how integrated New England was though links and cross links.

I may not always agree with her. I have a more positive view of former State National Party Leader George Souris, and not only because we went to the same school. But whether I agree or not, so much of her writing creates particular resonances.

Patrice writes of the architect Horbury Hunt who designed a number of buildings in her immediate area.

Hunt's building across New England include St Mathias's Church, Denman (1871), St John's, Branxton (1873), the Anglican Cathedrals at Armidale (1871) and Grafton (1880) and Booloominbah at Armidale (1888). Along with the Maitland Pender family who designed buildings such as Belltees and Saumarez, Hunt has left an indelible imprint on New England's built landscape.

Patrice also speaks of the Burning Mountain near Wingen where a long burning underground coal seam creates a volcano like area.

I first read of this in a 19th century news magazine held in The Armidale School library, then a repository of many ancient publications that today would be antiquarian finds.

Many years later, I dragged my then very young daughters up the hill, standing in the spot Patrice describes looking over the Pages.

This, mind you, was not a success. It was very hot, and they did not share my enthusiasm.

She describes the Wright family graves. I have not seen these, but years ago after having read Judith Wright's Generations of Men for the first time I searched for and found Dalwood, the family home described in the book. It was then semi-derelict, but enough remained to give a real feel.

She mentions excursions with Helen Brayshaw to find Aboriginal sites along the Pages.

Many years ago I trained with Helen under Isabel McBryde.

In 1960 Isabel was appointed to Australia's first titled position in Prehistory and Ancient History at the University of New England.

Up to that point the few pioneering Australian prehistorians had worked in a scatter gun fashion on isolated sites across the country. From these digs they tried to create cross-country cultural sequences. This made sense if but only if the Aborigines were homogeneous across the continent, which was not the case.

Working under the influence of her mentor, John Mulvaney, Isabel pioneered the study of Australian prehistory at regional level. In doing so, she gathered a group of students around her including Helen and myself to provide help.

We went on weekend survey missions across the North Coast, Tablelands and Slopes, took part in digs during some vacations, worked as research assistants during others sorting and recording Aboriginal implements. It was fun.

In 1965 Sharon Sullivan completed the first pre-history honours thesis under Isabel's guidance. 1966 saw the first full pre-history honours class. Many of Isabel's students including Helen and Sharon went on to distinguished careers in Australian prehistory and archaeology.

My own route was different, taking me into economics and work with the Australian Treasury. But I retained my very fond memories of the earlier period.

Patrice's writing brought this whole past flooding back.

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

Newcastle's spring of discontent

Sitting here in Santorini so far from home, Australia seems very remote. Still, I did finally get to check emails plus do a limited media search.

I won't be able to post properly until I get home, but I was struck by the rising tide of agitation in Newcastle against Sydney control. There comes a point when the totality of errors and neglect reaches critical mass, when no matter what a Government does it's all just too late. I think that Newcastle is at that point now.

It's actually quite interesting in a historical context. Each wave of new state agitation since the 1850s has come from a different area. It seems to be Newcastle's turn now.

Anybody who reads this blog will know of my personal support for New England self-government. Speaking objectively, it is difficult to know with certainty how Newcastle discontent will play out. What can be said with certainty is that, for the first time in several decades, a Northern or New England new state is back on the Newcastle agenda. It is going to be fascinating to watch developments.

Belshaw's World - Simon Crean, Dr Rob and my daughter's 21st

As I write, Ms Gillard is announcing her new ministry.

By the time you read this column, the details will be far clearer than they are just at present. Still, I could not resist a few comments.

I know that many people in the electorate were upset by Mr Windsor’s decision to back Ms Gillard. The comments’ columns on the Northern Daily Leader dripped a fair bit of vitriol.

Regardless of individual views, Regional Australia is back on the political agenda in a way we have not seen for a number of years.

Mr Crean as the new minister is a very experienced operator with a known interest in the area. I think that’s good.

In a short historical post on his blog, fellow campaigner for regional development Paul Barratt wrote:

When the Coalition came to office in 1996 one of the departments established under the new administrative arrangements was the Department of Transport and Regional Development. In 1998 this was changed to the Department of Transport and Regional Services. Someone had taken issue with the thought that a Coalition Government would have any role in regional development (presumably the market would provide, as it always does) – it would just play some sort of a role in relation to service delivery in the regions (for which there was always precious little money).

Paul is right, of course. Semantics is very important in public policy because of what it signals about thinking. To my mind, this 1998 change in wording marked the end of any real focus on regional development.

Now that we have regional development and decentralisation back on the mainstream political agenda, Minister Crean can expect a fair bit of unsolicited advice and analysis.

I think that this is very important. If newspapers, columnists, bloggers and researchers, to name just a few, don’t respond, then the issue is likely to slide again.

I think that most agree that current policies have not worked so far as Regional Australia is concerned. The challenge now is to find new ways of working.

Friday, Gordon Smith emailed me of the death of Rob Robertson-Cuninghame. I felt quite sad.

As my mother grew older, she used to say “it’s getting drafty round here, dear.” By this, she simply meant the way in which the inexorable process of aging and death was taking away the people she knew.

Dr Robertson-Cuninghame was not just a nice bloke, but an intelligent man who made an enormous contribution to this community.

From time to time in this column, I have written about the challenges facing us in preserving and developing the University of New England.

For those few people who read this column on a regular basis, I can sound pretty obsessive about UNE. I am not alone in this, for UNE has a remarkably loyal group of alumni. However, without Dr Robertson-Cuninghame, I am not sure that I would have had a university to be obsessive about!

Early September is the heavy birthday period in the North-Belshaw household, with three birthdays in two weeks. This year it’s youngest’s twenty-first.

When I was a kid, twenty-firsts were a very big deal. Now kids get two shots at parties: at 18 and 21, yet twenty-firsts are still a big thing.

Catherine, one of Clare’s friends, came round to collect photos for the inevitable rolling slide show. Looking at the photos brought back so many memories.

There were the girls at Marsh Street, the shots at Montessori. Eldest in her Newling uniform, then both girls in their NEGS uniforms on the day they started there.

Talk about a trip down nostalgia lane.

As I listened to the speeches while watching the slide show, I thought how proud I was of my daughter, of how far she had come.

I am sure that all parents will understand how I felt.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 15 September 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

Travelling on a jet plane

If you read this today, I will be in the air somewhere towards Europe. I don't think that I will be able to post while away, although I do hope that I will be able to respond to comments, if with a lag.

Just to keep my regular visitors interested, I have written a few posts to come up while I am away. This includes my Armidale Express columns. These, too, have been written in advance.    

New England's Aboriginal artists

My thanks to Peter Firminger for this one.

One of my favourite blogs is Will Owen's Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye. This blog is an education on Aboriginal art and beyond into Aboriginal culture and history. However, it does have one weakness from my perspective, its remote area focus.

While I am interested in Aboriginal art in a general sense, I also want to know more about Aboriginal art connected with New England.  Like many other aspects of New England life, this is actually quite hard to do because the information is not readily available.

Now we have Storylines, a three-year (2007-2009) ARC funded survey of ‘non-remote’ Indigenous artists that includes material on New England Aboriginal artists. Before proceeding, two quotes from the research: 

 To give a sense of where within each state these artists came from, the various birthplaces supplied to the researchers were categorised into regions, based on ABS divisions. Of the artists with birthplaces in NSW, more were born in Sydney than anywhere else in the state (27), followed by the North Coast 14, the New England/North West 12, Richmond Tweed (Northern Rivers) 11 and the rest scattered across the state or with only ‘NSW’ given as place of birth. In every other state in the survey, the opposite pattern was found.

Then on language groups: 

There were some startling disparities in the numbers of people identifying with particular language groups. In NSW, 36 of the 126 people who provided this information gave Wiradjuri (Waradgerie, Wirradjeri) as at least one of their language groups, 29 gave Kamilaroi (Gamilaroi, Gamillaroi, Gamilaraay, Kamileroi, Kamillaroi, Gamilarray, Gamiaraay, Goomeroi)[1], 16 Bundjalung and 15 Dunghutti. Smaller numbers, often as few as one or two persons, reported affiliation with another 32 NSW language groups.

If you look at these two quotes, you can see the New England influence. In terms of birth place, the identified New England regions (North Coast, the New England/North West, Richmond Tweed (Northern Rivers) total 37. In terms of identified New England language groups (Kamilaroi, Bundjalung and Dunghutti), sixty out of 126 NSW artists had a New England affiliation.

The raw statistics need to be treated with care. For example, artists born in Sydney may actually come have affiliations elsewhere in the state given earlier in-migration to Sydney. I say earlier, because there is presently Aboriginal migration from Sydney to home country.

The growth in Sydney's Aboriginal population now primarily comes from natural birth among those who have previously made their homes there in combination with self-identification. If an Aboriginal person has a non-Aboriginal partner, their children may choose to be classified as Aboriginal.

Further, the earlier disruptions to Aboriginal society that forced groups together, mean that a number of Aboriginal people can claim connection to more than one language group, so that the number of reported language affiliations may be greater than the number of artists.   

Accepting all this, the relatively large numbers with New England connections is not surprising, given that Aboriginal New England had a very large population relative to other parts of NSW. What is more surprising is the distribution of painters. The number of Kamilaroi linked artists is larger than the relative size of the Kamilaroi population, while the very big Gumbainggir language group is not separately identified. We cannot know whether or not this is represents the on-ground position, or is simply a skew in those responding to the survey.

The report itself contains information and conclusions that provides a framework for analysis. However,  movement beyond this to look in more detail at area linkages, probably requires more detailed sorting at individual artist level. 

New State arguments 13 - too many politicians

One of the standard arguments against the creation of new states has always been that it will increase the number of politicians. This has always been a hard argument to attack, not on the facts but on the prejudices embodied in the claim.

Back in the 1920s, the New State Movement responded with a double barreled argument.

Barrel one was that each person would still vote for the same number of people; state members, federal members plus whatever system of local government was in place. Whether the actual number of politicians increased depended upon the number of members in the New England parliament as compared to those in the NSW parliament representing the same area.

Barrel two was the actual cost per head to taxpayers of our system of representative government. This was quite low, an insignificant amount in the totality of Government spend. It would remain tiny even if the number of members was greatly increased.

Today, we have a further argument.

In both state and federal houses, the number of electors per member has greatly increased compared to the past. If you accept, not all do, that a key role of the MP is to represent his or her electorate, then the increased size of electorates makes it harder for the MP to actually represent that electorate. Yes, we have increased resources available to MPs meaning that costs have risen, but actual representation has dropped for most electors.

You can argue whether or not this is a bad thing. I think that it is. Regardless of that, it is hard to mount an objective argument against new states on the grounds of increased number of politicians.           

Let the fight for regional development begin!

Second Gillard ministry sets out ministers in the second Gillard ministry  as sworn in. It includes a link to the administrative arrangements, the formal document setting out who is responsible for what.

In various posts on this blog, I have suggested that the new environment provides an opportunity for new approaches to regional development, including a chance to address New England problems. By New England I mean the broader New England, not just the Tablelands or Mr Windsor's electorate.

This will not be easy. In an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Our highly taxed and deprived country folk, and other myths, economics editor Ross Gittins sets out what has in fact been the dominant conventional wisdom. I have great respect for Mr Gittins, but his writing ignores systemic factors that have discriminated against regional Australia including New England.

In another story, this time in the Australian, Sean Parnell says in part:

Treasury modelling and briefings obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws show that northwestern and far western NSW, and the Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria, are expected to have fewer people in 2031 than in 2006, despite the nation's population rising by 8.8 million during that period.

"Although the focus has been on population growth, there are large areas of Australia, especially in the wheat-sheep farming areas, where there is projected to be only small population growth or even population decline," Treasury officials told Mr Burke in an executive minute in April.

This is a small example of what I mean.

I deal with demographic projections all the time. The problem is that when used for planning purposes, they ensure that those who are expected to have will be given. In that sense, they become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Don't get me wrong, We have to to use them, but we also have to recognise their weaknesses. As an example, the ABS projections for inland New England on which Treasury bases their advice are, on my analysis, highly unlikely to be correct.

There is a further problem. Planning based just on projections actually accepts the past as the status quo. It addresses what has been, ignoring what might be.

We are not going to change thinking through emotion, although emotion has its place. Rather, we have to challenge both the conceptual underpinnings and the use of evidence.

This is not easy.

It's partly a question of resources. There just aren't very many people available to crunch numbers in alternative ways. Consider, as an example, two posts I wrote in April:

• New England demography 1 - rise of the coast
• New England demography 2 - problems with projections 

These posts challenge aspects of conventional thinking. Behind them, lay hours of number crunching, sitting with spread sheets sorting and analysing in different ways. I am not pretending that I am right, simply that I an consciously trying to test. For every person like me, there are one hundred working with numbers in the conventional way, who have to deliver outputs set within conventional bounds.

This brings me to the second problem, the way in which conventional ways of thinking determine the questions to be asked. The problem here lies in the way in which those ways of thinking condition action and analysis in often unseen ways. I use the word unseen advisedly.

All forms of thinking are based on logical structures. Thought builds up from a base of assumptions and ideas. Mostly, these are simply taken as a given.

If you challenge a conclusion on evidentiary grounds that is in fact really based on ideas and assumptions buried deep below, then the person challenged is highly unlikely to accept your views. Rather, they will try to massage your conclusion into a form that fits with those deeply buried assumptions and ideas.  

This adds to the difficulties for those of us trying to present alternative views. We have to constantly disentangle, to deconstruct, to work out not just what is being said but why, what does it really mean?

As I said, not easy. Still, if we are to take advantage of the way that things have opened up, we have to try. We have to fight with logic and evidence, using this to support arguments based on emotion and feeling.

Let the fight begin! 

Belshaw's World - winds of change blurred lines in the sand

At present, I am trying to revise and finalise the paper I delivered in Armidale in July on New England’s Aboriginal languages.

One of my problems in so doing is that modern Australians have been trained to think in discrete units. We see boundaries, for example, as firm lines on a map, languages as single entities – English, French and so on. We recognise the presence of dialects, but we see these as part of a bigger whole.

Aboriginal New England was not like that. Languages shaded into each other, while boundaries could shift and overlap depending on the nature of relationships.

I hadn’t realised how much my own thinking had been affected by current approaches until I came to try to understand the distribution of Aboriginal languages across New England. I had to consciously challenge my own thinking, to try to think of land and relationships to land from an Aboriginal perspective.

The interesting thing about our tendency to think of things in discrete sharply defined units is that it’s actually quite new.

In medieval Europe, for example, power was personal, cascading down from the pope through church lords, kings and princes to a variety of lower level feudal relationships.

In this world, political, administrative and territorial boundaries shifted all the time like an ever changing patchwork quilt. Boundaries were often shaded, shared and could overlap.

While boundaries have always existed in one form or another, the emergence of the idea of boundaries as fixed lines on maps was progressive and directly associated with the rise of what we now think of as the nation state. Boundaries were there to delineate national territory, to help enforce central control.

One side effect of this was the way in which language came to be associated with political boundaries. Germany equals Germans who speak German. During the age of Empire, fixed boundary lines spread across the global map.

By the time I went to school, all this was well entrenched in thinking. It seemed the natural order. This meant that I struggled a little in trying to understand European history at school.

How did I make sense of a world in which the Holy Roman Empire, for example, was made up of some 300 territorial entities linked in a whole series of relationships?

One of the things that’s interesting at the present time in looking at Europe is that many of the older relationships from that past, less defined world, have been coming back.

Languages that had been in decline are being rediscovered. The very nature of the nation state is under challenge, squeezed to some degree between a rising sense of localism whether based on ethnicity, language or geography and the larger sense of European identity expressed through the European Union.

I hadn’t realised how complicated all this had become until I had cause to look at modern Spain. There you have a variety of types of territorial units where the desire for local autonomy or even independence jostles uncomfortably with the sense of Spanish identity.

You can map Spain in various ways – territorial units, ethnic groups, language. The result is a mosaic of overlapping entities on which the fixed if changing lines of administrative and political entities sit quite uncomfortably.

Aboriginal Australia is no different.

The desire of modern Australia including law and politics that things be measurable, that ownership be proved, sits quite uncomfortably with the actual realities of traditional Aboriginal life.

As happened in Europe with the growing dominance of hard line, fixed boundaries, those affected try to adjust to fit the new reality. New entities sometimes described as Tindale tribes emerge.

Tindale tribes are named after the anthropologist Norman Tindale who attempted to map Aboriginal tribes on the assumptions that such entities existed based on common language and occupying defined and mutually exclusive territories.

The problem is that there really were no such entities in the rigid and mutually exclusive way defined by Tindale. However, legislative and administrative requirements have in fact forced Aboriginal people to behave as though there were.

I do not have an answer to this type of problem.

It is extremely hard to define more flexible, boundary free approaches in areas such as Native Title when the administering system depends upon the existence of defined boundaries that can, in some way, be proved in a court of law.

Still, I would like to think that more flexible approaches could be developed.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on Wednesday 8 September 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

Round the New England blogging traps 18 - mainly political

Richard Torbay paid a rather nice tribute Dr Rob Robertson-Cuninghame AO (1924-2010). Because I know that many people are interested, I am using my post UNE Passings - death of Rob Robertson-Cuninghame as an entry point to add information as I get it.

Staying with Richard Torbay, I see that he has agreed to chair a NSW Joint Parliamentary Committee to review parliamentary procedures. Because this also bears upon what is happening in the Federal Parliament, I am quoting the release in full:

Speaker Richard Torbay has welcomed the move by the Premier, Kristina Keneally, to further reform parliamentary procedures in NSW.

He said he would accept her offer to chair a Joint Select Committee on the issue and is pleased that it has the support of the Leader of the Opposition, Barry O’Farrell, and other Members.

Mr Torbay, who was appointed as an Independent Speaker in 2007, said that a number of reforms had already been put in place and Standing and Sessional Orders have been previously amended to include:
• The Legislative Assembly already reads each day the prayer and Acknowledgement of Country at the commencement of the Parliament.
• Family friendly sitting hours have been introduced and Friday sittings of parliament have been formally incorporated into the parliamentary program.
• Several changes have been made to the way Parliamentary committees operate including a requirement for the Government to Committee recommendations to report within six months
• Proceedings in the House have been streamlined by introducing the ‘consideration in detail’ stage
• Legislation in NSW has already been passed allowing the Speaker to exercise a deliberative and casting vote and allowing the Speaker to speak on the floor of the House as required.
• Re-written Standing Orders into plain English
• The Government is now required to formally respond to petitions signed by 500 or more persons.

Mr Torbay said the Premier had contacted him and asked him to consider, among other procedural matters:
• the Speaker be Independent of the government and if the Speaker is a member of the government for the Deputy Speaker to be drawn from the Opposition.
• time limits on questions and answers in Question Time and requirements for answers to be responsive to questions
• Opposition leaders be entitled to ask supplementary questions
• appropriate time be allocated to debates, member’s speeches and consideration of private members bills
• recognition of traditional owners be made at the beginning of each sitting day
• there be oversight of bills by committees
• the number of sitting weeks be set.

Mr Torbay said, “I welcome this opportunity to further improve Parliamentary Procedures and processes and I am keen to work with all Members of Parliament.

“As soon as I receive the Terms of Reference I will convene the first meeting as soon as practicable and look forward to presenting the recommendations to the Premier and Leader of the Opposition,” said Mr Torbay.

On North Coast Voices, Clarrie Rivers reported on a trip inland. The posts in order are:

• The journey of a modern day Marco Polo
• A view of Armidale 
• Uralla, Walcha and their hinterlands
• Walcha to Bingara via Manilla and Barraba
• Walcha news
• What's in the news in Armidale? Part 1: UNE
• What's in the news in Armidale? Part 2: The New State Movement ... still!
• In and around Bingara 
• News and Views in Bingara
• Myall Creek
• Farewell to New England

In Armidale, Clarrie Rivers coincided with my column in the Armidale Express: Belshaw's World - time to repeat the new state question. I think it fair to say that CR's reaction as expressed in What's in the news in Armidale? Part 2: The New State Movement ... still! was somewhat under-whelmed.

The post attracted comments from fellow new staters, two of whom are on my blog list, Ian Mott and Peter Firminger.

In a post on his Regional States blog, The myth of new state duplication costs, Ian attacked the idea that new states must increase costs through duplication. A related argument, but not from a commenter on the NCV post, was expressed by Paul Barratt in Australian Observer: Over-governed, yes, but not in the way you think.

Peter Firminger is an environmental and community activist in the Hunter Valley dedicated to building the Wollombi and Broke communities. I often mention Peter in these round-ups because he highlights stories and ideas relevant to his area. Now in Rural Blogging he looks at a new topic, in so doing identifying general sites that I had not seen and will follow up.

I do like the way in which my fellow bloggers broaden my knowledge!

I realise that I have run out of the time allocated for this post without even having scratched the surface. Still, I will have to leave things here.   

Welcome to visitor 40,000

Welcome to visitor 40,000 who arrived today. He or she searched on Google for Bellingen blog, found Bellingen organises to save hospital, and appears to have left for the Save Bellingen Hospital face book page.

40,000 is not a bad number. I feel quite pleased!