Bellingen organises to save hospital

While I have never lived in Bellingen, I have known the town all my life and written about it on this blog a number of times.

Bellingen now faces a threat to its hospital services and the locals have organised to try to save it. You will find the Save Bellingen Hospital web site here.

The Bellingen Hospital case is an example of the increasing conflict that has arisen between the needs of centralised service delivery on one side, local needs and indeed history on the other.

To health planners concerned about value for health dollars at a time of budget stress, the idea of rationalising services across broader areas appeals greatly and has done so for a number of years. However, there can be a fundamental conflict between this and local aspirations and needs.

To the health planner, a local hospital is a piece on a chess board to be moved or given up in the interests of the greater game. To the local, the hospital is an integral part of their life. They have worked for it, they were born there, their children were born there, family and friends have died there, they have visited it many times, they know the staff.

You can see this clearly if you look at the newly established Save Bellingen Hospital public Facebook page. Just a few quotes:

• Marguerite: Bellingen Hospital was a very decisive factor in my sea change from Sydney to Bellingen over a decade ago. As a single mother with a young asthmatic child I needed to know that I could access an emergency service, that was close by, no matter what time of day or night. I have indeed used the service many times and wou...ld feel that the community would be robbed of this asset . Although my daughter has since grown up and moved away. I would like to see the hospital survives this senseless closure, ensuring its fantastic care for others with high health risks.
• Briony: I broke my shoulder bone, from a horse riding accident way back when I was about 12. I was treated at Bellingen hospital, they were very good to me!!
• Hannah: I had may major asthma attacks at Bello , they saved my life more than once, and there was never a wait x.
• Laura: My mother and auties were born in Belligen Hospital, all my 7 brothers and
  sisters and I were born at Bellingen Hospital, 2 of my 4 children were
  born at Bellingen, For 1 i was forced to go to coffs due to bellingens
  services being down graded and just 7 months ago I gave birth at home
  because it was the only option that suited my family situation. Neither me or my husband drive and many a time we have needed to catch a taxi to make the 4minute trip to the hospital in
  the middle of the night when our little pumpkins have been ill. Catching a taxi to coffs or having to wait for a ambulance in the middle of the night is not only unnecessary but could be life
  threatening. Please keep the hospital services we have and my wish is
  that they will go back to what they were.
• Tokana: I know that I've always gone to Bellingen Hospital, even f I needed to be transferred. I will have my children at Bellingen Hospital one day. I love and appreciate the wonderful staff who put in long hours and never complain at what they do -but they do complain about the wages not being enough for the amount of time they put into the hospital and their patients. They also make you feel welcome and important. They're always friendly to patients and each other, and they tend to your needs. SAVE BELLINGEN HOSPITAL!!!!
• Carol: They should go back and read or listen to the The Elders from the Indiginous people of this land as a lot of our relatives use to walk the back road from Bowraville to Bellingen Hostpital to have there babies. My three grand children were born in Bellingen Hostpital and all the Doctors and Staff have always been there for me when I neeed there help SOOOOOO p[LEASE don't close our wonderful hostpital down as the whole Community needs the doors to be kept opened.
• David: As we recently had our hospital closed down in Cowes, I feel for you. Can't these idiots get their priorities right?

If you look at these comments, you can see the way people still love and trust their local hospital at a time when distrust in health services and hospitals has been on the rise.

Over time, the inexorable centralisation of health services has weakened local hospitals. All country people know this. They have seen services withdrawn, forcing them to travel increasing distances for service if indeed they can travel. Not everyone has a car, and public transport is often poor.

This has economic and social effects and actually increases the normal dangers of life. If the Bellinger River floods as it does so often, then access to Coffs may be cut. It becomes harder to attract people to live in specific communities. It becomes harder for older people who may need care to stay in their communities.

One might accept some of these outcomes if country health services were delivering better results. However, the reality appears to be a growing gap in health outcomes between country and metro areas.

Given the fundamental disconnect between the models currently used in health planning and community needs and aspirations, the only weapon available to locals is protest. This is the reason why the Bellingen community is looking to attract as much support as possible for the preservation of the local hospital.

You can help them and also follow the cause by joining the Save Bellingen Hospital Facebook page.        

Distant memories of a now vanished North Coast - Bellingen

This painting by Elioth Gruner (1882 - 1939) shows the Bellinger River stretching back towards the escarpment.

Gruner in fact called the river Bellingen, but the river itself is the Bellinger, the main town on the river is called Bellingen.

The Bellinger Valley is one of the most beautiful river valleys in New England, although most travellers on the coastal Pacific Highway never get to see the true beauty.

I do not know how many times I have been through Bellingen over the years, but it is a lot.

The road from Dorrigo down the escarpment was always a fascinating trial, especially when still dirt. Narrow and winding, the way was often blocked by timber jinkers sometimes carrying a huge single log.

These were seriously big trees.

The Alma Doepel was launched into the Bellinger River in 1903. Hard to believe looking at the river at Bellingen now that an ocean going sailing ship could be launched there. Even then, the river had to be dredged for the launch.

The keel of the Alma Doepel measured 14 inches by 6 inches (35.5 x 150 cm) and is 100 feet (30.5m) long and was cut from half a tree. The ship survives today and can be visited at her moorings at Port Macquarie.

The road from Dorrigo really enters the Bellinger Valley as you cross the bridge at Thora. Suddenly, the Valley begins to open out. The river here is low, wandering over the stones.

Soon after after Thora on the left was a farm house belonging to the family of a university friend. This was perched on high ground, a very necessary location.

The Bellinger River here seems so small and peaceful. However, the Dorrigo mountain is one of the wettest parts of New England. Sometimes the cyclonic systems coming south from Queensland can dump huge amounts of rain in very short time.

One year we were staying at Sawtell on the coast near Coffs Harbour. A cyclone was coming. It was wet and drizzling as we walked along the beach with large but very choppy waves. There was no one else on the beach.

We walked into the water, but only up to our ankles. Even then, the rip threatened to tear our feet from under us.

That night the heavens opened. At Dorrigo, there were 24 inches (610mm) in 24 hours. Walking in the rain on the beach next day, we found that the high sand dunes had been turned into sharply edged cliffs by the waves. The Bellinger rose and rose, spreading out across the coastal plains.

A few days later we had to drive home. The river had dropped, but the country was still sodden. I had just got my driver's license, and was driving for practice. The car slipped and slipped in the wet mud. We were going so slowly that my father finally took over the driving.

Bellingen itself was a quiet rural service centre, a place where the wooden buildings in the main centre crowded close to the road.

This quietness saved Bellingen. Down on the coast itself, the later development wiped out a lot of the past. Not so in Bellingen.

Unscarred by development, located in a beautiful river valley, Bellingen became a centre for alternative life styles. This is the Bellingen of Pip Wilson.

This photo by the inimitable Gordon Smith is simply called Bellingen: the chess players.It captures one aspect of Bellingen today.       

Gordon Smith's views of Bellingen

I was reading an official document a day or so ago and I read a description of Bellingen as a declining community lacking services. I wonder if Bellingen people would share that view?

I spoke of Bellingen and the Bellinger valley in Saturday's post,  Distant memories of a now vanished North Coast - Bellingen. In some ways, Bellingen is like a town time forgot, but it is much more than that.

Consider the following picture by the inimitable Gordon smith of the old Hammond & Wheatley Department Store located in Bellingen’s main street. Magnificent, isn't it?

I described Bellingen as a town time forgot because it's distance from the coast preserved things lost elsewhere. That is also the reason why Bellingen has become such a centre of alternative life styles, something of a cultural hub.

Long may it continue.  And so may Gordon's photos!

Update on The Save Bellingen Hospital Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bellingen Hospital, Facebook and the costs to the community

Yesterday in Bellingen organises to save hospital I reported on the campaign to save services at Bellingen Hospital.

It's been very interesting watching the unofficial Facebook page formed to support the official campaign site. This was created on Tuesday 9 February. As of this morning, it had 812 fans. That's a very rapid growth in such a short time.

The first challenge in a local campaign of this type is to demonstrate local support. The Facebook provides a tangible measure of this.

The second challenge is to spell out the reasons why people want the particular result, in this case saving the hospital's facilities. The official campaign has been doing this, but the Facebook page provides lots of specific examples. It personalises the general arguments.

It also provides information that can be used directly in scoping need. Let me illustrate this by example.

  Health planners work with the statistical data they have. This includes census data and health system data including hospital admissions. They are concerned not just with the now, but also the future. Here they use projections that by their nature reflect the past.

There are several difficulties with this approach: one lies in the weaknesses of the statistics themselves; a second is the inability to identify and properly analyse the on-ground effects of decisions.

Looking at the Facebook comments, the examples might be used to draw up a table of adverse effects.

It is clear from the comments that Bellingen Hospital serves a catchment extending from Ebor in the west to Urunga in the east. This broadly but probably not exactly equates to the LGA boundary. In broad terms, the catchment boundaries are set by the travel time to Bellingen compared to the bigger hospitals in Armidale on the west, Coffs in the east.

The first effect of any reduction in services will be an increase in travel time. This will be differential across the catchment and can be mapped.

Dorrigo, for example, is roughly 29k or 26 minutes by car from Bellingen, 124k or 1hr 40 from Armidale, 66k or one hour from Coffs. So any reduction in Bellingen services means increased travel time for Dorrigo people of 1hr 14 in the case of Armidale, 74 minutes in the case of Coffs. The extra cost to patients can be calculated. 

Travel times then need to be adjusted for the availability of public transport for those who do not have cars or who must travel by public transport or, alternatively, taxis. Extra time and costs here can also be roughly estimated. Another health cost may be the failure of people to seek treatment when they should, simply because its too difficult.

Travel times also need to be considered in terms of type of illness or accident. Again, the Facebook pages provides personalised examples to be considered. For example, what happens if your child has a sudden asthma attack?

The extra costs of ambulance travel can also be roughly estimated.

This analysis addresses just the direct costs. There are also broader community costs, including access to other Government services. For example, the supply of social housing may be affected because one of the key criteria here is access to services.

No doubt many of these issues have already been picked up by those fighting to save services at Bellingen Hospital. However, the new Facebook page provides extra evidence.

Finally, one of the points that I always try to make in cases like this is that Government policy focuses on the savings to Government on one side, the broad nature of services on the other. The cost shifting to local communities is rarely taken into full account simply because it is harder to measure.   

Bellingen - what was the flood of 1870?

Photo: the Bellinger River at peace.

Looking at searches that had led people to this blog, my curiosity was caught by one search "1870 flood in bellingen".

Flood are not uncommon in Bellingen since the town is bisected by the Bellinger River. This rises in the escarpment to the west of the town around Dorrigo, one of the wettest places in Australia.

I remember one time when staying at Sawtell on the coast north-east of Bellingen, a cyclone dumped 24 inches in 21 hours on Dorrigo, creating a vast flood that stretched across the lower Bellinger Valley blocking all north-south and east-west access for a number of days.

So given that floods are not uncommon, what was it about the flood of 1870 that made it significant? This took me on a web tour trying to find out.

My starting point was the 2001 Bellingen CBD master plan. This reminded me that Bellingen was originally known as Boat Harbour as the head of navigation on the Bellinger River. By the 1930s, the river was no longer navigable as far as Bellingen. However, a reminder of the town's shipping past is provided by the three masted topsail schooner, The Alma Doepel. Launched in 1903, this is now a popular tourist attraction at Port Macquarie.

The plan appears to contain one reference to 1870, a simple statement that by 1870 all the cedar trees that had lined the river has been cut out.

My next port of call struck pay dirt. This was the SES Bellingen flood safe guide. From this we learn that November 1870 was indeed the largest flood since records began, topping out at 11.55 metres.

This would indeed have been a huge flood. In the main town, the river is constrained within a relatively narrow channel with 10 metre high banks. So the 1870 flood would have topped those banks by over a metre and a half.

Round the New England blogging tracks 15 - protests, politics and a taste of nostalgia

Starting with matters political, at Bellingen, the Save Bellingen Hospital Campaign continues to gather strength. That is one energised community! Bellingen young people have now composed their own protest song. I quote just the chorus:

Because a town is built of wood and stone
But it takes commitment to build a home
The river changes, but it still flows on
Community grows, but it still stays strong

You can see the full words and hear the song here. The Bellingen Hospital Action group also organised a very successful 350 strong protest demonstration. The video follows, showing also the young composers singing part of their song. 

For those who don't know Bellingen, Lynne's new (well, relatively new) Bellingen blog provides a picture of a slice of life in Bellingen Shire.

Continuing with matters political, the New England New State Movement Facebook Page and indeed this blog are now generating a bit of discussion on matters new state. Mark Zaicos picked up a reference to the registration of a new political party in North Queensland dedicated to gaining statehood for that part of Queensland. The new party's web site can be found here.

Peter Firminger also provided a link to an a very well done protest video from Gloucester opposing the extension of coal mining, one of the environmental wars now raging across New England. I provided one perspective on these in four consecutive Armidale Express columns.

• Belshaw's World - New England a climate change front line?
• Belshaw's World - scoping New England’s environmental wars
• Belshaw's World - beware oppression by majority
• Belshaw's World - what say you to transparent government, Sir Humphrey.

There are no easy answers. What we can say, I think, is they have become further complicated as a consequence of the Federal Government's proposed resources tax.

Staying with linked matters, North Coast Voices has been much concerned with the proposal to build a McDonalds in Yamba.You can read NCV's reaction to the go-ahead decision by Council here; it includes a link to the various NCV pieces on the issue.

In McCaffery says councils don’t buy Minister’s Joint Regional Planning Panels spin, NCV also picks up Sydney's decision to wind back to some extent the role of the Joint Regional Planning Panels.

Turning to other matters, congratulations to Archives Outside on turning one. This NSW State Records blog, one much to be praised, has run a lot of stories with New England connections, including Bill Oates material on the New State Movement. Some of their stories include:

• From Uralla 1916 to Europe 2010 – Anzac Commemorations & New England
• Hidden Stories: Acknowledging World War One Nurses as Soldier Settlers
• Archival detective work in action at the University of Newcastle
• Macquarie 2010: the search for the Macquarie Pier Foundation and Inscription Stone (Newcastle)
• Grant of Arms – The University of Newcastle’s Declaration of Independence
• “This is all very silly” : An interesting start to a regional archives
• Old State – New States: New England and the New State Movement
• New England remembers through the archives: World War I

Paul Barratt had a nostalgic piece, What a privilege it was ..., remembering his time at the University of New England. My own post Walking down nostalgia lane had a similar feel to it.

It's hard now to remember the days before the mass universities when so few New England students had access to university education. The establishment first of the New England University College and then Newcastle University College, gave many students their first real access to university. Even now, the proportion of regional young going to university is below the city average.

Staying with Paul, he has begun investigating the remarkable war story of Jock McDairmid, school sergeant at The Armidale School (here and here), who was in the SAS. Digging around for some material that might help Paul, a lead from Harry Pidgeon led me to the story of Popski's Private Army. This has absolutely nothing to do with this post or probably with Jock, but is quite fun to read!

Dear me, I have run out of time this round and have barely scratched the surface!

Round the New England blogging traps 12 - peace and protest

It's been a while since I did a blog round-up.

Since starting last Tuesday, the Save Bellingen Facebook page has reached 1,444 fans as of 10.22am Sunday morning. Quite remarkable, really.

I noticed several familiar blogging names appear among the fans: my old friend Sydney blogger Neil Whitfield, Lynne Sander Braithwaite who actually started the Facebook page in the first place because her daughter lives in Bellingen and has just had a baby and Bellingen based blogger Pip Wilson.

  Pip has several sites in addition to Wilson's Blogmanac -    Wilson's almanac and the Feel Good Manual. He is a member of the Rainbow Region Flikr group.

Pip, who describes his role as web content provision, writing, journalism, editing, came to Bellingen in 1971 attracted by the alternative life style. He has very firm views:

The hospital drama is part of the strategy to make Bello (Repton, Mylestom, etc) suburbs of Coffs, through shire amalgamation, for $$$$$. The battle to save our hospital is SO important. Bello's not Coffs in culture, climate, history & BIOREGION. Coffs was built on a swamp only recently. Less than 100 yrs ago, Coffs people came to Bello to do their shopping at Hammond & Wheatley's. We MUSTN'T let the sharks Californicate our valley. Population explosion/subdivisions is part of the macro strategy - we must wake up to this. Save the hospital, & save Bello.  

I can see his point. In Distant memories of a now vanished North Coast - Bellingen, I mentioned that Bellingen's slight remoteness meant that it escaped the sudden development that affected the nearby coast.  Gordon Smith's views of Bellingen contains a picture of the store Pip is referring to.

Staying with protest, the North Coast Voices collective has been somewhat stricken with illness and injury leaving Clarencegirl alone at the fort. Hard to get the Premier's attention? Well life's like that in regional New South Wales reports on the continuing efforts to gain political support to improve the Pacific Highway.

Driving on this road north of Kempsey can be quite frightening because of the trucks among other things. Prior to the opening of the road bridges across the Clarence some years ago, interstate truck transport used the inland New England Highway route. Now the ever increasing volume of trucks combines with increasing interstate and local traffic to create a real mess.

I am not sure why people actually use the coastal route. The route that I follow to Brisbane from Sydney is just over one hour longer ( 13hrs vs 12 hrs), but is much easier driving because it avoids the heavy traffic. Mind you, it may not be in my interests to provide details!

Turning from protest to peace, I have just discovered The woman on the mountain. Like Pip, Sharyn Munro is a writer who moved for life style reasons. Now she lives in a solar-powered mudbrick cabin on her mountain wildlife refuge in the Hunter Valley. Here she is, and I quote, "regenerating her property’s vegetation at a pace dictated by ageing knees". This is a gentle blog combining photos and short descriptions.

I discovered Sharyn through Wollombi Valley Online.  

Staying in the Hunter, Gaye's Snippets and sentiments continues her exploration of life and nature in the Hunter and Beyond. Like Sharyn and Lynne, Gaye is a grandmother who recorded the birth of her sixth grandchild in January in And Ava makes six. . .. Congratulations.

Mulubinbi Moments, another Hunter bog, does suffer from irregular posting, but is worth checking. I enjoyed the Kakadu posts, while  Blogging, internet search engines and privacy contained some thoughts that I actually need to review in a professional sense.

I see that Newcastle Rugby League player Kurt Gidley has taken his blog off-line, so that's another blog down. Last night's initial and very successful  Australian All Stars vs Indigenous All Stars saw a thundering tackle from Newcastle and Indigenous second-rower Cory Paterson on Kurt Gidley force his club captain to leave the field.     

Craig Wilson's Media Hunter blog continues to provide some remarkably interesting material on media, the internet and advertising.

Finally, Gordon Smith on LookAndSee has been dusting off photos from his archives.

Is Bellingen hospital safe?

I received an email during the week from a colleague concerned that the campaign to save/redevelop Bellingen Hospital was losing traction in the face of national changes to health services, apparent promises from the authorities and, I suspect, sheer tiredness.  In this context, the Bellingen Hospital Action Group (BHAG) apparently put out a statement at the end of last year saying they had a commitment from the North Coast Area Health Service to keep the acute beds in the hospital and that the job was done. You will find some of my past posts on this campaign here.

I am not close enough to on-ground issues to make a response on the specifics in the email. However, noting that the BHAG web site is now down, I thought that I should make some general comments based on my own experience. In particular, I feel that now is just the time when those served by the Hospital need to be most focused. This post explains why.

Impact of National Changes  

Back in April last year in Implications for New England from health reforms I took Bellingen Hospital as a case study. There I said in part:

One of the problems for New England from the changes is just what the changes might mean at local level. This is quite complicated, but I think that locals need to watch this like a hawk 

Since that post, I have tried to monitor the on-ground effects of the changes across New England, but it is quite difficult without detailed investigative reporting of a type beyond the resources of a part time blogger. However, my view remains the same. We just don't know how things will work in practice.

Mid North Coast Local Health Network & the formation of Government Policy

The new Mid North Coast Local Health Network came into operation on 1 January 2011. Very little information is yet available on its web site. Members of the Governing Council are listed, but no information is provided that I could find as to their background.

In two Armidale Express columns last year,  Belshaw's World - true wisdom rarely the sum of bland numbers and then Belshaw's World - round holes, square pegs and a region cruelled, I looked at the way Government policy is formed. 

While the new Network is smaller and has its own Council, while there is meant to be greater local input, the reality is that it is still operating in a highly centralised system, all the statistical data and planning reports on which past policies were based are still there, as are the people who made the planning decisions.

All the national agreements governing the new system with their myriad of performance statements were negotiated and will be implemented by just the same officials involved with previous policies. You can think of all this as an inverted pyramid whose point rests on the hospital. It would be unrealistic to expect much to change.

Continuity of Official Memory

Officials have quite long memories. If they fail to get things up one way, they will do so another. Let me illustrate by example.

Some years ago, the Commonwealth Government formed the view that Australia needed fewer but larger tertiary institutions. As so often happens in health, this was applied as a one size fits all approach.

As part of the process, the Government announced that the Armidale College of Advanced Education and the University of New England should merge. There was no justification for any small centre to have two tertiary institutions. Further, merger would save money by reducing the overhead associated with two institutions, the economies of scale argument.

I was opposed to the decision because the culture and missions of the two institutions were different, while I doubted the validity of the policy arguments. A friend and I organised a protest that culminated in a public meeting attended by several thousand people. The proposal was shelved. However, the official view had not gone away.

The proposal was resurrected a little later by the subsequent Hawke Government on advice from the same officials. This time it went through. Since it was intended in part to achieve economies of scale, the combined funding of the two institutions was reduced by an amount equal to the expected savings. No allowance was made for the costs of merger. The end result of all the changes was something of a disaster that almost destroyed the University of New England.

The Importance of Persistence

If what I say is true, why bother? Surely locals are powerless? Not so.

If you want to do something new, if you want to achieve change, then you have to be persistent. It may be that you will fail in the longer term, in which case you only get some short term gains as happened in the Armidale case. Still, in writing the history of the broader New England as I am at the present time, a remarkably large number of things were achieved by local or regional action undertaken in the face of entrenched opposition.

The Problem of Capture

Anybody dealing with Government faces a problem of what we call capture.

Ministers and officials have positions, refined arguments and lots of supporting information. Faced with entrenched opposition on a matter, they try to find find a path through. This includes giving concessions. 

On the other side, those dealing with Government generally cannot help being influenced by discussion and argument. Depending on persistence and relative power positions, the outcome moves towards some form of compromise. One side-effect of this is that the opposition actually ends up being captured by official thinking.

This is not necessarily wrong. However, it carries the risk that people will give up at just the time they should be persistent.

I am not suggesting opposition for the sake of opposition, nor that compromises should not be reached. Indeed, from my experience, one major problem with local activism can be the unwillingness to accept any middle path. Sometimes this works. More often, it can lead to total failure. It's a matter for judgement as to the best path.

The key thing is to be aware of the strategic issues involved. Some issues, a dam for example, may be yes/no. Others like a hospital are much longer term. These issues inevitably involve both compromise and persistence.

Burn-out and the Long Term Activist

Unlike governments, lobby groups or political parties with their full time staff, community activism depends upon volunteers. This makes it very difficult to keep long term pressure up. People, and I am speaking from my own experience, just burn out.

There is no easy answer to this. Sometimes it just happens. At other times, changes in direction are required to give people a break. Bellingen may well be in this position now.

Looking Forward

I think that BHAG has actually done a pretty good job through its own efforts and in providing a centre around which others could coalesce through, among other things, the Facebook page. There is no doubt in my mind that Bellingen Hospital would have lost more services without this effort. However, the story does not end here.

The fight over Bellingen Hospital was never about a single service. Rather, it was an attempt to maintain the best range of possible services. The fact that the old North Coast Area Health Service has given an undertaking re emergency beds is a first step that needs to be monitored. The focus should now shift to other services and the maintenance of community  support for the hospital.

I have written this post just from a Bellingen perspective. However, there is a broader issue.

Australia is short of doctors. The desire of the NSW Government to save money, to gain greater economies, has actually led to a sharp decline in certain types of medical training. The positions have gone.

Here we have a conflict between two objectives, immediate economy and efficiency on one side, longer term doctor supply on the other. Today, there is a fair bit of discussion about the best way of re-building medical training to increase supply. This requires new approaches.

Training cannot be done just at major base hospitals. We need a hierarchy of hospitals linked to different types of training. This is where a hospital like Bellingen could come in.

Bellingen, writing, obituaries and skills

A brief round-up this morning on various issues.

By all accounts, the first Bellingen Writers' Festival was a considerable success.  You can find an Armidale perspective from Janene Carey here, a longer Bellingen perspective here. 

The photo shows part of the audience in the Bellingen Library for the Digging Up the Past session on Sunday morning. Given my interests, this is one session that I would have liked to attend. I quote from the Armidale Express coverage:

One particularly well attended, thought-provoking session was ‘Digging Up the Past’, featuring Linda Neil, Leslie Cannold, Armidale’s Sophie Masson and Wendy James.

Facilitator Ron Howard asked the panel, all of whom had written novels incorporating historical research, about the power of fiction to bring the past to life, and then got them talking about the question of whether historical fiction simply projects contemporary issues back onto people who would not have had the same concerns as us.

A lively discussion ensued, with the authors describing their experiences as readers and writers, and agreeing that their present-day preoccupations necessarily influenced the fictional histories they produced.

I thought that facilitator Howard's question was a pretty fair one, and one relevant to my own writing.

Staying with Bellingen, I see from the Courier-Sun that the next stage of restoration work on the Alma Doepel has begun, The ship is a three masted topsail schooner originally built as a shallow drafted coastal trader in Bellingen in 1903. There is a gap here that I do not understand between the time I visited the ship at Port Macquarie where it was a tourist attraction and the present. Something to find out.

Adam Fulton reports in The Sydney Morning Herald that Hunter Valley artist Hadyn Wilson has won the $20,000 Gallipoli Art Prize with a montage addressing the human costs of war. My congratulations.

There were were two interesting obituaries in the Sydney Morning Herald with New England connections.

The first was the remarkable story of  Dutch born Jack Dalmayer. Did you know that there was such a thing as Victory Camp in Casino which was 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. I did not. Jack was part of a group came to be known as ''The Dutch Boys'' or ''The Casino Boys''. I leave it to you to read more.

The second obituary also has a Northern Rivers connection, the story of community activist Bess Dwyer.

Meantime, fellow New England blogger Paul Barratt who has written a fair number of obituaries for the metropolitans media has posted a new one, Vale Rex Robert Budd, DFC (1935-2010). Rex was a TAS (The Armidale School) old boy.

This followed an earlier obituary of another old boy, Duty Done: Flight Lieutenant Colin Russell Leith AM DFC.

If you look at the various obituaries I have mentioned you will get a feel for my liking for them. They are all so very different, but are also part of the varied tapestry of New England life.

Over on my personal blog, Poker machines, Windsor and Joyce is a follow up to an earlier story I did on Andrew Wilkie and the proposed poke machine tax.

I must say that I take a really evil pleasure in the way that political events have made New England from the Hunter to the border once again politically relevant in a way that we haven't actually seen since the 1960s. Long may it continue!

In State fragmentation & the meaning of NSW economic statistics I referred in part to problems in attracting skilled labor, especially in inland New England. Much earlier in my column in the Armidale Express I made the suggestion that for at least some migration should be attached, a residency requirement should be attached to get people to the country.  Last night's ABC 7.30 Report carried a story on labour shortages in the Queensland town of Roma. You will find the transcript here. I quote from one part of the transcript:

SAUL ESLAKE, GRATTAN INSTITUTE: But given the long-term nature of any effective solution to this kind of problem, it's one that the Government ought to be working on solutions to over the next two or three years because if they don't, then some of those consequences in terms either of opportunities foregone or unsustainable upward pressure on wages could come home to bite us in a very nasty way.

If I took a certain evil pleasure in the return to prominence of Northern New South Wales, my broader New England, I took no pleasure from Mr Eslakes' comment. I have been banging away at some of these issues for a number of years. To my mind, there has been no progress over the last twenty years.

The key problems lie in lack of continuity, of focus, of integration. The lead time to train a specialist medico now has blown out on the shortest route to eleven years, more normally fourteen or fifteen years. Whereas most people once gained their trade qualifications at twenty, they are now twenty three or twenty four.

With long lead times as well as structural impediments, If you really want to fix some of these skills issues you need to adopt a twenty year planning horizon. That's how long it will actually take. With the average Government policy having, at best, a three year life expectancy before major modification, it's no wonder that we end up reacting to the current squeaky wheel!

I said that this was going to be a brief round-up. I find that I have barely scratched the surface, but I am far out of time.

Postscript

Janene Carey, the writer of the Armidale Express article came in with a very interesting comment. This led me to write this post, George Negus, watermelons & the meaning of words. Have a look at Janene's comments first, and then my post.

Implications for New England from health reforms

I have just finished a post on my personal blog, Unpacking the Rudd Government health care changes. I wrote it to try to clarify my own thinking.

One of the problems for New England from the changes is just what the changes might mean at local level. This is quite complicated, but I think that locals need to watch this like a hawk. I thought that I might tease this out a little, taking Bellingen Hospital as a case study.

By way of background for those who don't know Bellingen, the services at the local hospital have been cut back. The fight now lies in the best way of recovering some of them, preventing further erosion.

The new health care approach provides for direct funding to local hospital networks. Generally, this will be on an activity basis - a specified price paid for a particular type of service delivered. The more services, the more paid. However, there is provision for bulk funding for regional/rural hospitals in some cases that might otherwise be disadvantaged under the arrangements.

In addition to these changes, the Commonwealth is taking over full responsibility for primary health care and for aged services.

Now what might this mean for Bellingen and the surrounding area? Well, based on my experience we can put forward some tentative conclusions:

1. The decline in services offered at Bellingen hospital means a decline in the potential revenue from activity based funding.
2. The ability of a hospital network to access bulk funding depends upon the way the network is defined. A network that includes a relatively large base hospital such a Coffs is less likely to receive bulk funding, more likely to be on a fee for service basis. This applies across the whole network. In this event, the capacity of smaller hospitals to get any extra cash will be reduced because it means taking cash away from bigger hospitals who have "earned" that cash from bigger volumes of services.
3. This adds to the urgency for Bellingen Hospital to re-build its service offerings in advance of any move to the new arrangements. It's now become an absolutely time critical issue.
4. The issue of just what local hospital network and the boundaries of that network Bellingen might belong to also becomes quite critical.
5. Given that the existing area health services are to be abolished, this will affect their planning and willingness to do new things. I do not mean this in any way as a criticism. It's just going to add to inertia.

Continuing troubles at Bellingen Hospital

Just a very short one today.

I see that the problems faced by Bellingen Hospital have now made the Sydney Morning Herald. Reading this story and all the previous stories over recent months, I do wonder about the North Coast Area Heath Service.

I don't mean anything sinister by this, nor is it a criticism. It's a genuine question.

Looking back, it's an interesting case of a problem that seems to have spiraled out of control. The Area Heath Service has made several statements and has apparently sent representatives to Bellingen, but things just seem to get worse.

I don't believe that North Coast Area Health Service staff are either incompetent or uncaring, yet they really seem to have been blind-sided. In saying this, I accept that I am working from imperfect information.

The North Coast Area Health Service is a big organisation. I do wonder whether in trying to run a big system under financial constraints that effectively force them to rob Peter to pay Paul, the small Bellingen Hospital was simply so far down the pecking order that they couldn't focus until too late. And then they tried to temporise.

Looking at the newspaper reports on obstetric services, for example, the Area Health Service appears to have stated that it did not intend to close them, but were struggling to find trained staff. There were no reports that I found that explain what they were doing to resolve the problem. In the meantime, obstets at Bellingen has been effectively closed.

From the viewpoint of locals, there appears to have been a constant gap between official statements and the way that things are actually working out on the ground. The result is a loss of trust.

In saying all this, I emphasise again that I am working from limited knowledge. While I know a bit about the world in which the North Coast Area Health Service has been forced to work, I simply don't know enough about its internal workings to be sure of the dynamics.

Round the New England blogging traps 15 - crowdsourcing and the texture of life

I have really been enjoying Lynne's new nellbellingen blog, although it should perhaps be bellinger, since it is much about the valley as the town.

For those who don't know either, the town of Bellingen lies on the Bellinger River. The small spelling difference between the two is a constant source of confusion.

The Bellinger Valley is not a big one, a bit over 3,400 square kilometres. On the map, Waterfall Way marks the centre of the Valley. It runs from Urunga up through Bellingen to Thora. Beyond Thora, the road climbs the escarpment.  

 

The Valley is very beautiful. Bellingen itself has become a counter culture centre. Lynne's posts bring out the texture of life in Bellingen and the Valley rather well. Bello Bards deals with another aspect of local life, poetry. 

One of the things that I love about New England is the depth and texture of its life once you drop below the broad patterns imposed by main highways or well know tourist centres. I have tried to capture a little of this in my writing, but a constantly struggle with the size of the task!

The Bellinger Valley is one example, the Wollombi Valley in the south another. The Great North Road runs through Wollombi. I drove this convict built road a lot at one stage in my past, but have to revisit.

In the Valley, Peter Firminger continues to campaign for local interests. Peter is a member of the Cessnock-Kurri Greens, but is happy to recognise contributions from all sides. Conversely, he criticises those who ignore Valley interests.

The big issue at present relates to local planning powers. There are two related dimensions to this. One is the way in which Cessnock Council works. The second is the willingness of the Government in Sydney to over-ride local representation whenever they conflict with Sydney plans.

Further north, Gordon Smith continues his search for the Diggers Graveyard mine. Gordon lives on a block  with partner writer Bronwyn Parry to the east of Armidale. He spends a fair bit of time exploring the gorge country that forms the divide between the Tablelands and coastal strip.

This is country that I knew quite well growing up. However, I did not realise the extent to which it had its own history. Gordon draws a little of this out in his posts. Diggers Graveyard: pest control is, I think, the first of the posts in the Diggers Graveyard series. If you go there and then follow the posts forward, you can follow Gordon's journey.

Archives Outside had a rather interesting article on Crowdsourcing for Archives and Libraries. I mention this not only because Archives Outside does carry New England stories, but because crowdsourcing itself is relevant to the New England web scene.

Crowdsourcing simple means using the web as a vehicle to capture mass volunteer involvement in preserving and documenting material. Wikipedia itself is an example of crowdsourcing.

The effect of crowdsourcing is to broaden content and contribution. For someone like me concerned with the preservation and presentation of past and present life in an area, the results are quite wonderful.  Gordon Smith's Old news from Armidale and New England is an example.

Drawing from digitised newspaper material, the blog has restarted the newspaper presses of the past. Lynne also uses this source.

I find this completely distracting. It's not just the references from time to time to members of my own family and especially my grandfather, nor even the fact that I knew or knew of so many of the people, it's the detail of local life. This is my country and I love it!

I have often complained about the way in which problems of selection, perception and bias in Australian historiography have cut so many of us off from our own pasts.

The internet in combination with techniques such as crowdsourcing actually give us control back. We can access our own past independent of the decisions of researchers, writes and publishers. As we take control, we build our own content that can then be used by others.

I think that that's quite a wonderful thing!   

New England Australia Film - entry page

Photo: Christopher Horsey, Adam Garcia, Matt Lee and Lee McDonald in Fox Searchlight's Bootmen (and here, here), a New England film released in Australia October 2000.

Updated 22 July 2017

One of the difficulties we face in not having our own New England Government is that there is no mechanism to promote the film industry in New England.

In saying this, I am not saying that New England can have its own unique film industry. That would be just plain silly at a time when the Australian film industry as a whole is still struggling to establish a viable commercial identity. However, a New England Government could do two things.

First, it could facilitate film making, including the use of New England locations. That way, we get at least a small slice of the pie.

Secondly, it could ensure that New England people at least have some access to visual material set in or about their own area. This is totally lacking at the present time. New Englanders have no idea as to what films have in fact been made in their own backyard.

As a first step in addressing this gap, I am establishing this page as an entry page for posts about New England films.

The Films

1921. The Guyra Ghost Mystery, one of a number of films produced by writer and director John Cosgrove in the early 1920s. The film centres on the apparent haunting of William Bowen's house in Guyra.

1933. Most of the exterior shots (but not the spectacular bush fire scene) in Ken Hall’s epic The Squatter’s Daughter were shot on Goonoo Goonoo Station near Tamworth.

1937. Lovers and Luggers. While set in the Torres Strait, some shooting took place at Port Stephens.

1949. Sons of Mathew. This Charles Chauvel film was filmed mainly in South East Queensland but combines the history of two adjacent areas. Entry point to the posts here.

1953. Captain Thunderbolt. The Cecill Holmes film Captain Thunderbolt is about the life of the legendary bushranger. It was shot in and around Armidale and Uralla with a cast including Grant Taylor and Bud Tingwell. Post here.

1957. Smiley. Filmed at Gundy in the Hunter Valley, Smiley is a classic Australian children's film about a mischievous boy living in the small Australian country town of Murrumbilla. Always getting into pranks, Smiley wants a bike. This he finally gets, but with many misadventures along the way. The film's cast includes Ralph Richardson, John McCallum, Chips Rafferty and Bud Tingwell, with Colin Petersen as Smiley.

1957. The Shiralee. Filmed at Gundy in the Hunter Valley and based on the novel by D'Arcy Niland, The Shiralee tells the story of a man and his daughter. When Jim Macauley (Peter Finch) finds his wife with another man, he takes their young daughter (Dana Wilson) and hits the road. With a young child as his responsibility, he finds he can't be quite the fancy-free wanderer that he had been. Nominated for two BAFTA awards, the film has become another Australian classic.

1958. Smiley Gets a Gun. Again filmed at Gundy in the Hunter Valley, sequel to Smiley (1957).

1968. Koya No Toseinin (The Drifting Avenger). Filmed on location at Nundle, this Japanese western starred Ken Takakura, the Clint Eastwood of Japanese film., in search of revenge for his murdered family. The movie was apparently never released in Australia.

1977. The successful  The Picture Show Man, was not only based in part on a Tamworth story, but was also shot on the Liverpool Plains and the Clarence.

!977. Based on the novel by Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was filmed in part on the Tablelands and had its premier at the Capitol Theatre in Armidale.

 1977. Based on the novel by Peter Carey, the story of Oscar and Lucinda finishes at Bellingen. Modern Bellingen was seen as too modern so the New England scenes were filmed on the Mann River at Jackdagery not far from Grafton. Carey conceived the idea of the novel while living at Bellingen.  

1978. Little Boy Lost was based on the story of Stephen Walls, filmed at Guyra and premiered at the Capitol Theatre in Armidale.

1978. Newsfront. While a Sydney film, Newsfront includes footage of the 1955 Hunter Valley floods, while the script was written in part by the Lismore born writer and playwright Bob Ellis.

1978. The Umbrella Woman (also know as the Good Wife) directed by Tenterfield born Ken Cameron was shot in and around Bowraville.

1983. Based on a Mills and Boon novel, The House in the Timberwoods by Joyce Dingwell, The Winds of Jarrah was set in WA but filmed around Dorrigo. Wikipedia states that it never achieved cinema release, but Neil Rattigan suggests that there was limited release to country cinemas in NSW.

1994. Muriel's Wedding. Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by P. J. Hogan drawn from his life growing up in the Tweed Valley.

1997 Blackrock. Drama based on the play by Hunter Valley playwright Nick Enright inspired by the murder Leigh Leigh. Enright wrote the script for the film.

1998. A Little Bit of Soul was shot around Glen Innes but has nothing to do with New England beyond the location.

2000. Bootman. Newcastle connections. Links above.

2002. Beneath the Clouds. New England film maker Ivan Sen's first feature film. Lena has an absent Irish father she longs to see and an Aboriginal mother she finds disgusting. When she breaks away, she meets up with petty criminal Vaughn who's just escaped from low security prison to reluctantly visit his dying mother. Blonde and light-skinned, Lena remains in denial about her Aboriginal heritage; Vaughn is an angry young man with a grudge against all whites. An uneasy relationship begins to form as they hit the road heading to Sydney, taking them on a journey that's as emotional as it is physical, as revealing as it is desperate. The film reflects Ivan Sen's own experiences growing up in Inverell with an Aboriginal mother and a European father who was not around.

2003, Danny Deckchair was to be set in the Clarence Valley but filming was moved to Bellingen because the Clarence locations did not look sufficiently idyllic.

2007. Streetsweeper. Set in Newcastle and directed by Neil Mansfield, this film explores the beauty and ugliness of city street streets through the eyes of a "a loner who finds poetry in the ordinary", played by actor and co-writer Marin Mimica. Mimica is the only actor. All others are pedestrians who become unwittingly involved in the streetsweeper's journey.

2008. Newcastle is a surfing drama set, as the name says, in Newcastle.

2009. Charlie & Boots is a road show film Shane Jacobson plays Boots who takes his father (Paul Hogan) on a trip to fish on the northernmost tip of Australia because of something his father told him when he was a kid. They travel from Victoria to the Cape York Peninsula in a Holden Kingswood, visiting different towns, hang-outs in different restaurants, and visiting famous attractions. On their way, they start to reconcile and express their emotions about the recent death of Gracie, Charlie's wife and Boots's mother, and the drama unfolding around the death of Ben, Boots' son, by drowning. They even help a young 16-year-old girl named Jess by allowing her to escape her boyfriend Tristan and aid her in her dream to go to the famous country city of Tamworth. New England locations are Tamworth and Tenterfield..

2010. Lou. Set in Murwillumbah  and made by Murwillumba born director Belinda Chayko, Lou is a tender story about the relationship between 11-year-old Lou and her grandfather. Not long after Lou's father walks out of her life, her irascible and befuddled grandfather crashes in. But when Doyle comes to stay, Lou discovers, against all her expectations, the healing power of love.

2010. Tomorrow, When the War Began was shot in Maitland, Raymond Terrace and Dungog as well as the Blue Mountains.

2011 Toomelah. Made by New England film maker Ivan Sen, the film tells the story of Daniel, a 9 year-old aboriginal boy living in the community where Sen’s mother was born and grew up in. After being suspended from school for threatening to stab a classmate with a pencil and finding there is little to do in his town, he decides he wants to be a part of the gang controlling the drug trade in his township, so he decides to help Linden, a well known local drug dealer. Bruce, one of Linden's rivals, is released from prison and a turf war erupts.This hybrid of documentary and fiction follows Daniel as he roams around the “mish” trying to make sense of expectations of his family, his friends, and of he himself. Much of the script was based on notes Sen took of the inhabitants’ own words, expressions, ideas and emotions, trying to translate the immobility from which Toomelah suffers.

2012 Mental  Another Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by P. J. Hogan drawn from his life growing up in the Tweed Valley

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! 

Bellingen's Commercial Emporium - a further example of North Coast architecture

This photo by Gordon Smith shows Bellingen's commercial emporium, reportedly the first commercial cement brink building in Australia.

I love the way in which Bellingen has been preserved as something of a time warp!

New England Festivals, Shows & Events

Photo: Bohena Olives, Nosh on the Namoi, 2006

This is an updated list of New England festivals, shows and events. I still have more than thirty to add, but thought it better to get this list of 38 in all up.

When I started this list I was focusing just on Festivals. I have now added in shows and events. In preparing the list, I have tried to focus on things that I think might be of interest to those outside the immediate district.

• 12-14 January, Craftathon, Taree


• 19 - 28 January, Tamworth Country Music Festival, Tamworth. Australia's premier country music event. The Golden Guitar Awards will be on 27 January.


• February, Hunter Valley Music Festival


• 3 March, Comboyne Show, Comboyne


• 4-12 March, Festival of Whales, Nelson Bay


• 9 -11 March, Minerama, Glen Innes. Four day mineral and gem show.


• 10-18 March, 23rd Annual Lasiandra Festival, Wauchope


• 17-18 March, Wingham Show, Wingham


• 18 March, Port Stephens - Jazz At the Winery.


• 23 -25 March, the 5th Annual Newcastle Blues Festival


• 31 March, Nosh on the Namoi, Narrabri. Food and wine from multiple exhibitors.


• 7-8 April, Easter Powerboat Classic, Taree


• 5-9 April East Coast International Blues and Roots Music Festival, Byron Bay


• 22-30 April, Camden Haven Music Festival, Camden Haven


• May, New England Bach Festival, Armidale
• 3-6 May, Australian Celtic Festival, Glen Innes. One of Australia's largest festivals celebrating celtic culture.


• 11-13 May, New England Wool Expo, Armidale. Showcasing New England's fine merino wool, the industry that grows it and the fashions produced.


• 9 - 11 June, Non Conventional Homes Eco Tour, Taree. The Envirofair on the Saturday is followed by a two day self-drive tour featuring privately owned homes, commercial buildings and gardens constructed using earth friendly methods.


• July Hats Off to Country Festival, Tamworth. Mid year country music event.


• 3-5 August, Byron Bay Writers Festival, Byron Bay
• August, Newcastle Jazz Festival, Newcastle


• 17-19 August, 18th Bellingen Jazz and Blues Festival, Bellingen


• September, date TBA, Tastings of the Hastings, Port Macquarie. Annual food & wine Event


• September 7-9, Morpeth Jazz Festival, Morpeth


• 1-6 October, Watermark Literary Muster, Kendall. Writers & readers from Australia and around the world celebrating the literature of nature & place.


• October long weekend, This is Not Art, Newcastle. Australia’s premier independent arts and new media festival held in Newcastle each year over the October long weekend


• 13-14 October, Taree Show, Taree
• October, New England Regional Wine Show, Glen Innes. Story
• October, Saphire Festival, Inverell.
• October, Surfing the Cold Stream, Yamba. Arts fringe festival.
  October, Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival, Dorrigo
• October, Armidale Women's Comedy Festival, Armidale
• October/November: Jacaranda City Festival, Grafton.The world-renowned Jacaranda Festival is held yearly from the last weekend in October to the first weekend in November. Inaugurated in 1935, this was the first of Australia's folk festivals and is based upon the magnificent spectacle of the hundreds of lilac-blossomed trees which grow in Grafton's broad tree lined avenues. It expresses the people's thanksgiving for the generosity with which nature blesses this part of the globe.
  November.


• 3-4 November, Wingham Campdraft Weekend. Wingham


• Land Of The Beardies Festival, Glen Innes. Each spring, Glen Innes celebrates its unique Celtic heritage with its Land of the Beardies Festival, a rare and entertaining mix of Celtic culture, typical Australian pastimes and traditional events. Story
• November. Thunderbolt Country Fair & Talent Quest, Uralla. Story
• November. Tenterfield Food and Wine Fesitival, Tenterfield


• 1-16 January 2008, Stamping Ground Dance Festival, Bellingen ?Coffs Harbour)

New England Australia - Writers and Writing Continued

Robert Drewe and Michael Sharkey, New England Regional Art Museum, photo New England Writers Centre.

I mentioned Michael Sharkey in New England Australia - Writers, my first post on New England writers. Michael has sent me a very kind email saying that he likes my new England site: "very classy."

I had not intended to run another immediate post on New England writers and writing, but Michael's email included some interesting material.

Michael pointed me to the AusLit data base, an electronic bibliographic database project currently maintained at the University of Queensland. I mention it here because while I did know it and had referenced it, it is a useful public data base, if most accessible to those in tertiary institutions. It requires a subscription for full access.

Michael also pointed me to another site, one that I knew nothing about, lyrikline, a German based poetry site. A German site? It is actually an international poetry site with poems in four languages. The site also includes poets reading their own poems, although for some reason I have yet to work out I could not download. Les Murray (and here), another New England poet, and Michael were the first Australians to be included.

Subsequently other Australians were included including Peter Skrzynecki, another writer with New England connections, teaching at at Jeogla on the Tablelands, Kunghar on the Tweed River. Peter also completed a BA plus a Master of Letters at the University of New England. You can find out more about Peter's fascinating history here.

Returning to Michael, I had forgotten that he was chair of the New England Writers Centre and had been so since its formal inception in 1993.

The Centre is actually an example of the two definitions of New England that I referred to in early posts, the New England Tablelands and North Western Slopes as compared to the broader New England area covered by the Northern or New England separation movements.

The New England Writers' Centre opened in 1994. Funded by the NSW Ministry for Arts and formally opened in 1964, the Centre is situated in Armidale but serves the New England Tablelands and Northern Slopes from Wee Waa in the west, Bellingen in the east, Tamworth in the south, and Tenterfield in the north.

The inclusion of Bellingen is interesting because the town is actually located on the Bellinger River in the humid coastal zone, not the Tablelands as such. However, Bellingen is only two hours (153 kilometers) away from Armidale and has become a significant centre for those seeking alternative life styles.

The Centre maintains an active program of activities using local writers, while also bringing the best external writers for readings, forums and workshops. The Centre's contact details are:PO Box 1219, Armidale NSW 2350, Email newc@northnet.com.au, Ph 02 6772 2710.

Tamworth GPs close their books

The Tamworth Statistical District - this includes the main urban area and its immediate surrounds - had a population of 42,499 at the 2006 census, so we are not talking about a small centre.

The Northern Daily Leader now reports that existing Tamworth GPs have effectively closed their books, unable to accept new patients. The story takes place at the same time as debate about the future of Bellingen Hospital reaches a new peak (here and here). As an aside, the Save Bellingen Hospital Facebook page has now reached 2,440 fans!

The NDL story includes some very thoughtful comments from Graeme Kershaw, CEO of the North West Slopes Division of General Practice.

I thought that I might take Graeme's comments as an entry point for some comments of my own, focusing on the different elements of the complicated mess we have created for ourselves. These draw from my own experience as CEO of a specialist medical college, as well as later work force analysis.

Graeme refers to the monumentally stupid decision of the Federal Government to cut back on the number of places for doctors in training back in the 1990s. Then Minister for Health Michael  Michael Wooldridge concluded that there were too many GPs and that this was leading to over-servicing, increasing Medicare costs. Training places were cut as a result.

While this was a silly decision, Graeme is correct to suggest that it is only part of the problem. He says first:

“Many trainee doctors are going into the specialities like surgery and internal medicine – not surprising really; while they are training in hospitals they are taught by these same specialties that encourage them to follow in their footsteps”

“Even in doctors who are raised and trained in rural areas, up to 50 per cent choose not to become GPs.”

Let's disentangle this one a little.

In general, not always, specialists get more money than GPS and attract higher prestige, so it's understandable that doctors, and especially those with an academic bent, should be interested in specialisation.

The attempt to create a speciality of general practice has not, to my mind, worked very well. This "specialisation" has in fact added to the hoops that those interested in general practice have to jump through, without affecting the relativities between general practice and the more traditional specialities. To this extent, it may have actually reduced the incentive to become a GP.

I can't judge the validity of the comment on rural training without knowing the equivalent figures for metro trainees.

The extension of medical training at non-metro universities is actually quite recent. My feeling is that things such as the new rural medicine course run by the Universities of Newcastle and New England in combination will have a positive impact.

A central problem, one that applies even more to longer specialist training, is the interaction between partner and family formation and the location and length of training.

People acquire partners from those they are in contact with. As time passes, it is more likely that partner relationships will become long term, including marriage and kids. Increasingly, locational decisions have to take partner considerations into account.

It seems clear that metro born kids are less willing to move to regional areas than country kids. The longer the training in metro centres with their heavy preponderance of metro students, the more partnerships form, the less likely subsequent movement.

This actually affects less prestigious areas in the metro centres as well, with surpluses of doctors and other health professionals in some areas, major deficits in others.

Graeme continues:    

Doctors from the “baby boomer” generation received their medical education for free.

“Generations X and Y come out of their training with large HECS debts to repay and they won’t feel the same obligation to the give back to the community that ‘boomers’ once did,” Mr Kershaw said.

This one is hard to measure, although I suspect that Graeme is right. People are influenced by a sense of altruism and community obligation. If you have paid for yourself, the obligation is reduced.

Graeme then looks at service cut backs in local hospitals:

A lot of hospitals in small communities no longer provide obstetric services locally, so they won’t attract the type of rural doctor they once would; someone who wants to deliver babies as well as look after the diabetes and the heart problems.

This is part of the Bellingen Hospital case. Take obstetrics away, and you reduce the practice range of local doctors. However, there is a broader issue as well.

The "specialisation' of medicine in combination with changing approaches to medical indemnity has reduced the willingness and probably capacity of GPs to provide certain services. My tonsils were removed by a GP. Today my parents would have taken me to a specialist. That's fine, but doesn't help much if a specialist is not available.

Graeme finishes:    

“GPs are treating much more complex problems, often associated with long-term diseases, than they were 10-20 years ago,” Mr Kershaw said.

“They are doing this at a time when hospitals are developing therapies that mean that people are not in hospital as long as they used to be, and they are discharged back into the care of their GP.

“As a result, GPs cannot see as many people per day as they may have been able to 20 years ago and so, with less people seen and less doctors available, waiting times are increasing.

“GPs realise that they have an ongoing obligation to their existing patients and because of this, have to stop taking new patients.”

Again, I suspect that Graeme is right and the that the problem is going to get worse with an aging population. This adds to the complications, especially in inland areas with limited doctors and an aging population.