Belshaw's World - the changing face(book) of communication technology

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 27 April 2011. 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, here for 2011.

Over the last month, my two oldest blogs turned five.

In the five years since then, I have written 3,828 posts, over two million words. That’s a long time and a lot of words!

Looking back, it got me reflecting on some of the changes that I had seen over the period.

Some eighteen years ago, my then Armidale consulting group did a study for Australia Post on the substitution of electronic for physical communications.

Our immediate focus was on the impact on physical mail. However, one of our most interesting conclusions at the time was the likely death of the fax machine at the hands of email.

Email had yet to take-off properly, but it was clearly reaching critical mass in some of the large organisations we surveyed. The only thing holding it back was the unwillingness of many senior managers to learn how to use it.

Within three years, email usage exploded. It did kill the fax for other than niche uses, while also reducing telephone usage.

The death of the fax is a sign of one feature of successful new technologies, the way that they can devour their predecessors. At the same time, it can be very difficult to predict just what is likely to happen.

Take the mobile phone as an example.

When we did our first work in this area back in the late 1980s, it was quite clear that mobile usage was going to grow. However, what we did not properly understand at the time was the way in which mobiles would substitute for fixed lines in countries with poor fixed line services to become the dominant form of telecommunications.

The interesting thing about this is that a fair bit of the mobile technology that has exploded over the last five years has actually been driven in part by the needs of people for whom mobile communications was the only form of available telecommunications. It was then been picked up and extended in the developed countries, but consumers in those countries were not the original drivers.

When I began blogging, the blog or web log had been around for a while, but had just entered the explosive growth stage.

Like all major new technology applications, its dedicated exponents saw it as the wave of the future. It would become an important business tool, create fortunes and lead to a new era of citizen journalism. It didn’t quite work that way.

One reason is that existing website approaches incorporated some of the elements of blogs and blogging. The main stream media or MSM, for example, increasingly incorporated blogs and blogging features into their on-line coverage.

A simple example is the comments section at the end of on-line stories, allowing readers to provide instant responses. Suddenly, the blogging world found its readers being attracted back to the MSN. Many of the highest traffic blogs were now MSM blogs.

The ABC’s the Drum, Tim Blair or Andrew Bolt are current Australian examples.

Then came Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook had just entered the public space when I began blogging. Focused on the human desire for interaction, Facebook’s friend system and user friendly interface led to explosive growth.

Facebook stripped much of the weblog component from blogging. Blogging aged as younger users moved to a Facebook system that better met their needs. Older bloggers, too, started spending more time on Facebook.

Twitter continued the process because it took many bloggers away from blogging – there is only so much time – into tweeting. However, things are never as simple as this.

Just as Facebook effectively devoured earlier social networking tools such as Bebo and MySpace, now Twitter began to devour Facebook because it provided an alternative means for short self-expression to either blogs or Facebook. Its hash tag system also challenged Facebook’s special pages that had previously provided a vehicle for subject specific content.

Facebook is aging as blogging did before it. This has not been helped by changes to the Facebook user interface, changes that many users disliked.

Again, the mainstream media has incorporated Twitter as it did blogging.

The full flowering of this arrived with the Japanese earthquake and recent middle east troubles. There the MSM used tweets and YouTube posts to gain instant information that could not be acquired by normal reporting means, while blogs were used to provide continuous news updates.

I will continue this story in my next column.

New England Aboriginal life - sounds of Gamilaraay

Note to readers: This is the fourth in a continuing series introducing readers to past and present Aboriginal life in New England. Those who are interested can find a full list of posts by either clicking New England Aboriginal life or, if you want, to read in date order from one up, click on Introducing New England Aboriginal life.

My last post in this series, New England Aboriginal life - introducing language, provided a general introduction to Australia's Aboriginal languages using New England examples to illustrate.

To the untrained ear, Australia's Aboriginal languages sound much the same. It's a bit like French, Spanish and Italian and their myriad dialects. Further, the high number of consonants and the use of double consonants makes life difficult for English speakers. How do you pronounce ng or nd?

My own email address, ndarala, is an Aboriginal word from the Anaiwan language meaning medicine man or knowledge holder. It looks as though it should be pronounced n-da-rala, but in fact its n-dala. I won't attempt to give the full phonetics. Indeed, I couldn't! But you see what I mean.

I am personally very bad at languages. I have set myself the task of learning the basics of one language just to help me when I have to use Aboriginal words. But that's going to take time!

Very few Australians have actually heard an Aboriginal language spoken outside a few welcomes to country or the occasional media report. Very few New Englanders have any knowledge of New England's Aboriginal languages in general or of the language or languages spoken in their own area. I think that's a pity.

I thought that some of my readers might be interested to listen to a story told in an Aboriginal tongue. 

Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi to use another name, was spoken on New England's western slopes and plains. It is closely related to the adjoining language Yuwaalaraay.

The story of the loss and partial recovery of Gamilaraay is a story I will tell in another post. It is a sad story, but also a glad one.

For the moment, if you would like to hear both Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay spoken, please go to Guwaabal, stories. The main narrator is John Giacon, a person who played a major role in the recovery and revival of Gamilaraay.          

New England Aboriginal life - introducing language

Note to readers: This is the third in a continuing series introducing readers to past and present Aboriginal life in New England. Those who are interested can find a full list of posts by either clicking New England Aboriginal life or, if you want, to read in date order from one up, click on Introducing New England Aboriginal life.

My last post in this series, New England Aboriginal life - Collarenebri rap, was as the name says.

I wanted to follow that post with some other visual material. However, I have been having continuing and frustrating download problems. For that reason, some text.

Language is central to life. New England's Aboriginal languages were progressively destroyed by European intrusion and then re-emerged much later as a consequence of the language revival movement.

The following material introducing Aboriginal languages is taken from a paper I delivered in Armidale last year. I still have some editing to do on the paper to incorporate comments received, but the core is okay.

Please note that I am not a linguist. I still struggle with pronunciation!   

In 1788 there were perhaps 250 Aboriginal language groups in Australia incorporating perhaps 700 dialects[i]. The precise distinction between language and dialect can be a difficult one. In general, speakers of different dialects within a language group are likely to be able to understand each other or at least recognise that they speak different varieties of the same language.

The distinction between languages and dialects has become an issue among some Aboriginal people who object to their language being classified as a dialect of another. I will talk a little later about classification problems. From my perspective, the question of the relationship between languages and between languages and dialects should be seen as a technical one.

In considering languages, we also need to make a clear distinction between language and political or territorial boundaries[ii]. The broad language groups often covered substantial areas in geographic terms. There were a variety of shifting territorial and political boundaries within each language group. Just speaking the same or a related language did not make for everlasting friendship.

All Aboriginal languages share some common features. In grammatical terms, they have relatively free word order, allowing all possible ordering of subject, verb, object. Words show case, tense and mood by the addition of meaningful segments. Verbs and nouns have markers added to indicate who does what to whom, when and how. New words are formed by adding other meaningful segments. This can make for very long words, really sentences in themselves.

Most Aboriginal languages have only three vowels – i, a and u – although a few have four or more. As a New England example, the Bundjalung language group occupying territory stretching from the Clarence Valley into Southern Queensland uses four vowels – i, a,u and e - each of which can be pronounced as a longer vowel[iii]. There are also two semi-vowels in many languages, y and w

Words generally begin with a consonant, although Yaygirr (the Gumbainggiric language spoken around the mouth of the Clarence River) contains many words beginning with vowels such as aagal, sea[iv].

Within this language diversity, all the New England language groups now appear to belong to what has come to be called Pama-Nyungan, the dominant language grouping over much of Australia. I say now because one New England language, Anaiwan found on the southern New England Tablelands, was for a long while seen as distinct, not related to other Aboriginal languages. It took the pioneering work of linguist Terry Crowley to show that Anaiwan was in fact related to adjoining languages.[v]

Coined by the linguist Kenneth Hale from the words pama (person in Cape York) and nyunga (one in south western Australia), Pama-Nyungun languages have commonalities in the structure of words and the way words to relate to each other.

All the almost 190 Pama-Nyungan languages suffix their verbs and nouns to show grammatical relations. They are grouped into perhaps twenty major language groups.

It is clear is that with so many languages and dialects, only a few languages had many thousands of speakers, with numbers tailing away to hundreds in other cases. In some case, contiguous related languages or dialects covered large areas like links in a chain. People easily understood their neighbours because they shared vocabulary and could at least understand structure and pronunciation. As the chain lengthened, language difficulties increased; people at opposite ends might barely understand each other.

New England illustrates this pattern in an interesting way.

The Anaiwan or Nganyaywana Aboriginal peoples from the southern areas of the New England Tablelands appear to have been relatively homogeneous and limited in number although, as we shall see a little later, even here there is debate about the number of dialects. By contrast, the larger Bundjalung language group may have had as many as twenty separate dialects[vi].

To the west, the Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi), the peoples occupying a vast sweep of territory from the Upper Hunter through the western slopes and plains into what is now Queensland, may have had at least five major dialects, seven if the related languages of Yuwaalaraay and Yuwaaliyaay are included[vii]. Bigambul, the language group on the slopes and plains in Queensland to the north was also reported to be close to Gamilaraay[viii].

The following map drawn from Austin, Williams and Wurm 1980 and cited by Peter Austin (2006) shows one estimated distribution of Gamilaraay dialects[ix]. Note that the map terminates the Gamilaraay language at the Liverpool Ranges. In fact, it seems likely that Gamilaraay was spoken in the Upper Hunter.

Apart from any shared language features, communication among different languages was also made easier because most Aborigines were multi-lingual. Marriage partners were commonly exchanged with other groups, while groups mingled as well for social, ceremonial and trade occasions. This was to facilitate European expansion because many explorers and settlers made use of Aboriginal guides to bring them into new country.

With so many languages and dialects as well as the very different sounds, it is not surprising that the expression of things such as group names into English should lead to widely varied spellings and to subsequent confusion about the exact distribution of peoples and language.

If we take the Dainggatti or Dhanggati language group spoken in the Macleay Valley and its headwaters, alternative spellings given by the Austlang data base include (among others) Djaingadi, Dang-getti, Danghetti, Danggadi, Dhang-atty, Thangatti, Thangatty, Dangati, Dangadi, Dunghutti, Thungatti, Tangetti and Tang-gette[x].

This was further complicated by attachment of names reflecting location or particular groups rather than language.

Michael O’Rourke’s study of the Kamilaroi, draws this out very clearly[xi]. As an example, he points to the case of the Barradine area north of Coonabaraban which was assigned to both Burrigalu and Gamilaraay.

Burrigalu – burrie+galu: literally myall-tree + human plural – meant those who inhabit the myall country or myall dwellers. To O’Rourke’s mind, this was primarily a group or locality name. However, it could also mean the local variant or dialect of a larger language.

In contrast, the name Gamilaraay itself - gamil + array: literally no + having or having gamil for no – denoted a form of speech, the broader language spoken by the Kamilaroi as a whole. Even here, Gamilaraay could describe the language (that speech which has gamil for no) or, by implication, its speakers (those who use gamil for no).

The Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative points to the same issues with Bundjalung.[xii] It notes that it was thought that the term ‘Bandjalung’ was originally used to describe the dialect spoken around Bangawalbin Creek and was only later used used as a general term for the whole language, as well as as a term to refer to certain individual dialects. The Co-operative also notes that each dialect has a specific name of its own. Dialects include: Wahlubal (also known as Western Bandjalang), Yugambeh, Birrihn, the Barryugil dialect, Bandjalang, Wudjebal, Wiyabal, Wuhyabal, Minyangbal, Gidhabal, Galibal and Ngarrahngbal. Many of these names point to some characteristic peculiar to that dialect. For example, Gidhabal means ‘those who say gidha (alright)’, while Wiyabal means ‘those who say wiya (you)’.

Importantly, and as Tamsin Donaldson puts it, the Aborigines used several etymologically distinct naming systems, with different naming systems calling forth different names[xiii]. This way of classifying languages was not unique to the Australian Aborigines. All people have ways of drawing distinctions between us and them by distinguishing particular speech or territorial or political associations.

---

[i] The introductory overview material is drawn especial from John Mulvaney & Johan Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 1999 pp 69-75; and Peter K Austin, Article MS 1711 Countries and language – Australia, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics ELL2, pp 2-9,. accessed on line 19 August 2009

[ii] In using the term political boundaries I am not implying formal structures of the type associated with, for example, nation states. A closer analogy would be the type of relationships found in mediaeval Europe, in Scandinavia or indeed in Homer’s Greece. The 18^th century Kamilaroi war leader the Red Kangaroo provides an interesting case study. Having taken control from the previous elders, he had built the Gunnedah mob up into a strong force by absorbing other groups. Raids from the Bundarra mob on the Goonoo Goonoo and Manaella mobs led them to seek support from the Red Kangaroo. The Red Kangaroo argued that support should be provided because the power of the Bundarra mob posed a threat. A joint war party was formed that defeated the Bundarra group. The case shows how political alliances were formed and used in Aboriginal Australia. (Michael O’Rourke, “Sung for Generations”, published by the author, Canberra 2005, pp 306-311).

[iii] Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, Bundjalung, http://www.muurrbay.org.au/bundjalung.html, accessed on line 19 August 2009.

[iv] Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, Yaygirr, http://www.muurrbay.org.au/yaygirr.html, accessed on line 19 August 2009.

[v] W G Hoddinott, The languages and myths of the New England area, in Isabel McBryde (ed), Records of times past: Ethnohistorical essays on the culture and ecology of the New England tribes, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1978, pp 52-64, pp 56-57.

[vi] Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, Bundjalung, http://www.muurrbay.org.au/bundjalung.html, accessed on line 19 August 2009.

[vii] The material on the Gamillaraay is drawn from Peter K Austin, The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) Language, northern New South Wales — A Brief History of Research, SOAS, University of London, 2006, accessed on-line 17 December 2008.

[viii] Flick Isabel & Heather Goodall, Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary woman, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2004, p3.

[ix] Austin 2006 p 2

[x] Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Australian Indigenous Languages Data Base (Austlang), http://austlang.aiatsis.gov.au/main.php, accessed on line 6 May 2010.

[xi] Michael O’Rourke, The Kamilaroi Lands: North-central New South Wales in the early 19^th century, Michael O’Rourke, Griffith 1997 especially pp 26-32.

[xii] Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, Bundjalung, http://www.muurrbay.org.au/bundjalung.html, accessed on line 19 August 2009

[xiii] O’Rourke, 1977, p 28

NEA blog performance April 2011

The graph on the right shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the period to end April.

During April, the most popular individual posts were:

• Margaret Olley's New England connection, 296 page views
• The Poetry of Judith Wright - South of My Days, 99 page views,
• Discussion on re-imagining Newcastle continues, 77 page views
• Wednesday Forum: Re-imagining Newcastle, 76 page views
• Results from Wednesday's forum on overcoming division, 73 page views
• Wednesday Forum: Overcoming division, 67 page views
• Wednesday Forum: Leveraging Newcastle's inclusion in the Lonely Planet global top ten cities, 55 page views
•  Wednesday Forum: improving public transport, 54 page views
• The Poetry of Judith Wright - Bora Ring, 52 page views

I am struggling at the moment to post and respond to emails and comments. I would like to see more comments with other people responding. Can you help me?

Round the New England blogging traps 22 - a few personal blogs

A while since my last full blog round-up, although I have referred to a number of blogs since then.

On Canons of Medicine 2.0 my first experience with death in hospital ... records just that. I have been following this blog for a little while. It's simply a record of the life of a medical student at the University of Newcastle. It's unusual as a student blog, and is also a blog written from the perspective of the Muslim faith. 

John George Archer's blog is a relatively new one on my list. John is from somewhere on the North Coast. Short posts with a high visual content.

Sophie Masson's A la mode frangourou, another new one on my list, is an absolutely luscious blog, perhaps one of the best in Australia. French-Australian, Sophie is one of the better known New England writers and writes about food and lifestyle from a French and New England perspective.

All her posts are good. However, I want to mention one because it bears upon something that I have been writing about on and off for several years, the failure of regional areas to develop their own cuisines for both life style and tourism purposes.

The best French-style cheese outside of France looks at food in Tasmania where, to Sophie's mind, a regional cuisine is evolving. I won't go on at this point, but will come back to the issue later.

Denis Wright's My Unwelcome Stranger is another new blog on my list. I knew Denis at UNE, but did not know that he had a blog until very recently. Have a look at More Calliope tales (pt 4): Aunty Anne’s TV for a rewarding look at Australia's past. Denis is fighting am aggressive brain tumour; his writing is one response. 

Shayrn Munros'  The woman on the mountain continues to provide a picture of nature and life in the countryside of the Hunter Valley.

This photo shows a rather large Eastern Grey Joey having a feed. I have to say mum looks very patient!

Moving to the Mid North Coast, Paula's life perchance is?

I don't quite know how to describe this blog, it's sort of a moving somewhat surreal story involving a cast of strange characters.

You are either going to like it or hate it! If you haven't visited before, I suggest you go back a few pages and then read forward.

Finally, some time ago I mentioned that Bellingen blogger Pip Wilson had been badly bashed in an apparently random attack, so badly bashed that recovery was uncertain. Pip is still suffering from the effects of the bashing, but has resumed posting on Wilson's Blogmanac. 

Belshaw's World - coming up thistles in government wasteland

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 20 April 2011. 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, here for 2011.

I wrote in a blog post during the week that I seemed to be in a cranky, irritable, mood at the moment

I’m not sure that I can be blamed.

One cause was the hike in electricity prices. I thought blow this. Well, that’s not quite the word I used. Indeed, I used several words that I fear this paper might not publish.

Two reasons were given for the price increase.

One was the excessive costs of the renewable energy program. Well, that was a policy failure, but it was one I could understand.

The second was the need to catch up on maintenance. This was the one that made me swear in a most uncharacteristic fashion.

Back in 1995, the wise gnomes of the NSW Treasury – may their tunnels collapse and submerge the lot of them – concluded that electricity distribution needed to be restructured. So they ripped out local assets from county councils such as our own New England County Council and put them into larger State Controlled Enterprises.

Now there were in fact some practical reasons why change might have been needed, but the overall approach was actually ideological. The Councils were, Treasury said, not subject to market discipline and were under borrowed. Why, financial modelling showed that they could carry debt levels of 50 per cent!

The problem was worst with the country county councils. They had been over investing in the network and had little or no debt. What a shame!

So Sydney grabbed the assets. The new businesses were instructed to cut costs and increase profits. There was no new shareholder investment; all this had to be funded in other ways, while maximum cash was stripped out through dividends.

Having milked the cow, Sydney sold what they could. Now we all have to pay for the whole thing. And the increases are reportedly biggest in the country, just those places where the County Council’s lazy assets were worst.

Okay, that made me crabby, but we also had the Federal Minister for Sustainable Population and a rag bag of other titles ruling out any transfer of public servants to regional centres. Growth centres are dead, he said.

Now there are some issues with growth centres that I will come back to in a moment, But Mr Burke went further.

The country was, he said, at a unique stage in its history because the mining boom meant the growth in regions was commercially driven rather than led by government.

"We have a really different opportunity because regionalism is being market-driven," he said.

I wonder what planet he is living on.

I wasn’t aware that Governments at any level had been driving regional development.

To the despair of many of us who actually believe that Government can play a proactive in regional development, all Governments for over thirty years now have been saying that the market must decide. Further, were they do provide some form of support, it is always generalised, universal.

Growth in regions has been led by government. Hah!

In the words of modern jargon, you facilitate and remove impediments and a thousand flowers will bloom. Somehow, it’s mainly thistles.

In fairness to Governments, they do try to react to specific problems. They just don’t do it very sensibly nor in a coordinated way.

Worried about problems of education and deprivation among our Aboriginal peoples, the Government builds new houses and trials different forms of service delivery in Bourke. Then the previous Sydney Government, with Federal support, buys Toorale Station and closes it down.

One can argue for or against the environmental arguments used to justify the purchase. Leaving that aside, the reality is that, in one stroke, Governments put a bullet through their entire Bourke Aboriginal initiatives.

You see, the thing that the people in Bourke most need to address social deprivation is jobs. No jobs and nothing that you do is likely to have much impact.

The large direct and indirect job loss from Toorale’s closure affected Aboriginal people most of all. There was no significant local compensation that I am aware of, I stand to be corrected, that might help Bourke adjust. The town and its people just had to grin and bear it in the name of the greater good.

I said that I would come back to growth centres in a moment. There is, as is so often the case, an Armidale connection.

Perhaps next week.

Tinkler rides to Newcastle's rescue - again

I have to say that it's helpful to have a local billionaire.

I have written about the future of the Newcastle CBD a number of times on this blog. I am not a Novocastrian, but as a New Englander interested in Newcastle as the North's big city, I have mourned the loss of Newcastle's CBD as a vibrant centre.

Having saved the Jets and Knights, it appears that Newcastle billionaire is interested in the CBD, with Buildev apparently acquiring a large section of the CBD from GPT. Buildev is not just owned by Mr Tinkler, but he is the person attention has focused on.

Neil Goffet's Newcastle Herald story,Tinkler town: mall and all, provides the details.

Have a browse through the comments. There are a lot of them. The sense I get is an overwhelming feeling of relief that someone is actually doing something after failures by Newcastle City Council, much more by the Sydney Government, to actually do anything to help. I hope that Mr Tinkler and his colleagues can deliver. 

Victory Camp & the Casino Boys

In Bellingen, writing, obituaries and skills I referred to the obituary by Strath Gordon of Dutch born Jack Dalmayer. I quote from that obituary:

In July, 1945, Dalmayer found himself in a camp in the northern NSW town of Casino, an establishment known as the ''Victory Camp'', which had been declared Dutch territory by the Australian government early in the war and was occupied by the 1st Battalion, Netherlands East Indies Army, consisting of Dutch and Indonesian soldiers. The new group came to be known as ''The Dutch Boys'' or ''The Casino Boys''. But a month later, the war in the Pacific ended.

The Casino Boys, to put it mildly, were at a loose end. The RAAF had no further interest in them. With the proclamation of Indonesian independence on August 17, 1945, many of the Indonesians felt they could no longer serve under Dutch command. The Australian union movement, supporting independence, refused to allow the Dutch servicemen to be shipped to the East Indies.

The Dutch colonial administration started jailing citizens who refused to serve with the Dutch armed forces. They chose Victory Camp to incarcerate them along with Indonesians who had been training as airmen. Suddenly the Dutch who had been training for war found themselves guarding former colleagues.

Relationships between the prisoners and their guards were relaxed. The Dutch Boys began to take part in the Casino social scene, seeing movies and playing sport. Eventually, the Indonesian soldiers were allowed to return home and the Dutch were sent back to the Netherlands.

As I said at the time, I had no knowledge of this camp, nor of the Dutch or Casino Boys, so I did some digging around.

This photo shows, I think, a picture of Dutch Surinam soldiers at the camp. 

I didn't find a lot on-line, but what I did sounds interesting. As the obituary suggests, Casino and the camp became embroiled in the Indonesian struggle for independence. The references I have so far found:

• Workers Online, issue 106, 10 August 2001
• Connie Healy, Recollections of the 'Black Armada' in Brisbane, Vintage Reds
• Rupert Lockwood, The Indonesian Exiles in Australia, 1942-47, Indonesia
  Vol. 10, (Oct., 1970), pp. 37-56.

• Suriname in WW II

Not a lot, but enough to hint at an interesting story. I wondered if any readers might know more.

German internees, Evocities, skills & Academy Games

A few notes.

Back a long time ago, 19 September 2006 to be precise, Trial Bay and German Internees, looked at a little known story in New England history, the internment of German civilians at Trial Bay goal during the First World war. The story was drawn from an on-line exhibition at the NSW Migration Heritage Centre. 

The photographs used in the exhibition came from the Paul Dubotzki Collection. Monday's ABC 7.30 report  carried a short report on the discovery of the collection. The story was triggered by the publication of a new book by historian Gerhardt Fischer and Nadine Helmi about the Dubotzki collection. I have yet to find publication details.

On 23 April, the Sydney Morning Herald carried a short piece by Stephen Nicholls and Susan Wellings on the Evocities program. This is a combined campaign by seven NSW inland cities - Albury, Wagga Wagga, Dubblo,  Bathurst, Orange, Tamworth and Armidale - to attract new settlers. According to the article, almost 200 hundred families have so far been attracted:

• Dubbo 56
• Bathurst 42
• Orange 32
• Armidale 22
• Wagga 20
• Albury 12
• Tamworth 10

Another story from Janene Carey, 500 hear Garnaut’s take, as Ross Garnaut talks to a packed audience in UNE's Lazenby Hall.

The Sydney Morning Herald worries about (and here) the impact of the mining boom on skills shortages in NSW (aka Sydney from the examples). 

The third and last Academy games have been held in Armidale. Last because the venue now moves to another centre. The games are quite big time - 850 athletes supported by  140 officials. I want to write something linked to this.

All for now.

A New England family war story

A number of my fellow New England bloggers have reflected on ANZAC Day including Denis Wright (Beating the odds: the amazing ANZAC story of Arthur Miles) and Paul Barratt (Anzac Day roundup). My own contribution was ANZAC Day, national identity & the power of images.

Thinking about war and New England, the following is an edited excerpt from my biography of David Drummond. David Drummond was then share farming at Oakwood near Inverell, an assignment organised by brother Morris. Other family members mentioned include brother Will, their younger half sister Ellie or Bid and Pearl, David Drummond’s wife.

Excerpt Begins

On 1 July 1914, the assassination of Sarajevo of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife set in train a series of events that led inexorably to war. News of the outbreak of war reached Australia on 5 August and led to an immediate outpouring of loyalty to the Empire and Australia. The resulting heavy enlistments from the districts around Oakwood (including David Harper and his two Scottish friends)[1] significantly affected local life. Not only did everybody have friends or relatives in the army, but the very fabric of social life changed. Many of the organisations around which community life had revolved, such as the Farmers and Settlers' Association branches, were forced to close down for the duration because of the loss of members to the front.[2] New community events emerged to take their place, such as France's Day, Allies Day, Belgium Day and Anzac Day.[3]

War brought other changes as well. On 25 August, just twenty days after the news of war reached Australia, Will Drummond enlisted.[4] It had been an agonizing decision. His Christian beliefs would not allow him to take life, but he also felt that he must do his duty. His solution was to join as a stretcher bearer: 'I have tried to play the game and to live up to the ideas Jesus has set before me', he wrote to Morris on the day of the Gallipoli landing (25 April 1915).[5]

  Morris (photo) and David did not enlist immediately.

The three brothers had agreed that David, as the only married one, should stay to be in a position to look after their sister should that prove necessary. Later, when David did try to enlist, he would be rejected twice. For Morris's part, he followed events closely, finally deciding in August 1915 that he too must enlist. He wrote to David:

Perhaps you will not be altogether surprised but I have felt it coming on - like a bad cold... while I have the conviction that men are really required I cannot hang back and let someone else carry my bundle ... I've taken the step and hope it won't be labour in vain, but at any rate I've no delusions about the fun and glory of it.[6]

Morris had a somewhat magnetic personality and was offered an immediate commission but declined it.[7] Officer training would have delayed his passage, and he also wanted first to know something about the men he would command.

The three brothers had always been very close, with Morris and Will forming a close knit team providing support to both David and Bid (the brothers' pet name for their sister Ellie). The photo shows Ellie Drummond at David Drummond's farm, Maxwelton. 

Throughout the war Morris wrote regularly to brother David; cheery letters full of details, such as descriptions of French farming methods, intended to interest the younger brother. However, they also gave a clear picture of the hardships and dangers associated with the war.

The war had marked the start of general troubles for David and Pearl. The 1914-15 season brought a short but severe drought which forced Drummond and a neighbour to combine together to move their 3000 sheep along the crowded stock routes to Hazlegreen, a Tablelands' property which still had grass.

1916 started well. Seasonal conditions improved, while brother Will returned to Australia to convalesce. The photo shows Will at that time.

But now  the family was struck by personal tragedy. In July 1916 David and Pearl's eldest child Phyllis contracted flu and died suddenly. She had been an attractive and much-loved child, and her death was a severe blow to them all.

Family problems continued into 1917. Going to bed late one night, Drummond saw a fire in the hayshed. The men and the neighbours - who came from near and far - were able to save a big wagon and some stacked lucerne nearby, but 102 tonnes of fodder were destroyed. The loss was a disaster, for 1917 turned into a bad drought year.

Worse was to follow, for in May 1917 the news came that Morris (now a lieutenant) had been killed in a brave but futile attempt to force the German lines in front of Reincourt.[8] 'Maurice was ... the most fearless officer in the Battalion, he was exceeding his duty at the time, very typical of him', one of his fellow officers wrote to Will.[9]

The loss of Morris was a blow for the whole family and especially Ellie and David. Ellie idolised her half brother, while David had depended heavily on Morris for support during his times of trouble as a ward of the state. Over forty years later, Morris would be as fresh in their memory as he was at the time he enlisted.

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[1]Interview with Mrs Morris, 1 October 1982.

[2]Interview with A.E. Cosh, 24 June 1982.

[3]Cosh, Jumping Kangaroos, p.46.

[4]The Australian Army's Central Records Office (CARO) provided enlistments details for Will and Morris Drummond. (CARO to author, 5 February 1982.)

[5]Copy in Family Papers (FP)

[6]Morris to David, 7 August 1915. In FP.

[7]Interview with Mrs Morris, 1 October 1982.

[8]This incident is described in C.E.W. Bean, 'The Australian Imperial Force In France 1917', Volume IV, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1933, Note 88, page 456.

[9]Lt. Jim Harrison to William Drummond, 6 May 1917. In FP.