Only in Armidale - a church organ crawl

We have all heard of pub crawls. But this variant could, I think, only happen in Armidale.

On Facebook, ABC Radio New England North West advises that there will be a church organ crawl in Armidale tomorrow.

Starting at 2pm, there will be a mobile concert like a pub crawl, but instead of a beer you get a 20 minute recital in each church before walking to the next one. Warwick Dunham, Jan-Piet Knijff and Lena Schmalz will play progressively in the Catholic Cathedral, Ursuline Chapel, Anglican Cathedral and Presbyterian and Uniting Churches.

I would love to go!

Postscript

In a comment, Janene Carey said...

At the eisteddfod this afternoon I overheard someone saying that a staggering 200 people turned up for the organ crawl!

Wow!

Belshaw's World - New England masterchefs ponder regional dish

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 11 May 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.

In a moment, I want to introduce you to Armidale’s most luscious blog. I know most of my readers are not bloggers, but this is the type of blog that will make you salivate – literally!

But first, a story.

I was trying to find out a little about traditional New England food. In this case, not the broader way I usually use the term, but The New England, the Northern Tablelands.

The only uniquely New England dish that I could find, one shared with parts of Queensland, was a variant of French Toast. Indeed, this is the French Toast I cook myself. I just hadn’t realised that it was a local variety.

Now the blog. Sophie Masson’s A la mode frangourou - A French Australian look at food is an absolutely superb food and lifestyle blog that ranges from New England to France and presently Russia.

French born, Sophie combines the food from her childhood with excursions into her local garden and beyond. When I tweeted the blog to my fellow New England bloggers Paul Barratt and Denis Wright, their reactions were just the same – mouth watering.

For those who are interested, the web address is http://www.alamodefrangourou.blogspot.com/.

Now in one of her posts, Sophie said of Tasmania that, unlike other parts of Australia, had begun to develop a uniquely regional cuisine. Always sensitive, I thought hang on a minute, what about the New England! That started me searching.

Then I realised after only finding French Toast that there wasn’t anything there in writing. Yet I know that some of the food I have eaten I haven’t seen elsewhere, or at least not in the same combinations.

A uniquely regional cuisine does not mean that the dishes or variants of the dishes are not to be found elsewhere. It’s the use of local ingredients, the combination that counts.

A uniquely regional cuisine also does not mean that every dish is good. Bad cooking is bad cooking. You try travelling around Greece and you will see what I mean!

So, now that I have set this challenge, what do I think of as New England cuisine? Like all of us including Sophie, it’s memories from childhood that are most powerful.

Now the first thing to note is that most meals were two or three courses, not the one of this time poor world.

The meal often began with soup, sometimes made from left-overs. Some soups like chicken broth were light, but most were rich, designed for a cold climate.

The main courses took into account what was available.

Lamb and especially mutton was common and cheap, for this was a sheep area. Steak was very expensive, so the cheaper cuts were used. Chicken, too, was expensive.

Roast lamb or mutton was common, with roast chook on special occasions. This came with wonderful baked vegetables – potatoes, pumpkin, sometimes turnips and Swedes – and with whatever greens were in season. Peas were especially popular, served with mint, but there were various forms of beans.

Most people had household gardens, many had hens. They supplied a much higher proportion of the food we ate.

Beyond roasts, there were a variety of casseroles and stews suited to available food stuffs and to the climate as well as grilled meat. Mind, you some of these were pretty ordinary: TAS mutton stews almost put me of stews for life! But the best were very good.

Leftovers were used – bubble and squeak and lamb pikelets. I loved the last.

Desert and betweens was often fruit. New England had lots of stone fruit. This was bottled and then served later. I loved cold black cherries with cream in the morning before I went to school. I loved raspberries even more.

Fruit might be served with cream, but was often put into pies or other deserts of one type or another.

Then there was the baking. Cakes scones, biscuits, all served in different ways. And the jam!

Now in all this I am not saying that our cooking needs to be stuck in the past.

A limp lettuce leaf does not a salad make.

I am saying that regional cuisine focuses on and draws from its past.

Have we lost that? Certainly, I miss it.

NBN & Armidale

I had not intended this to be my main post today, but I couldn't resist it!

In a post this morning on my personal blog, A blogging pot-pouri, I mentioned that today's mainland launch of the new national broadband network would be in Armidale. As I write, the Armidale Express is sending visual material around the Fairfax network, while the first main media coverage is going on line as in this Australian story.

As I watched the SKY News Report included in the Australian story, I realised that the Sky reporter (and many others)had probably never been to Armidale before and had no idea of the background.

The first photo from John Lindsay on Twitpics shows the launch held at the Presbyterian Ladies College. The caption reads simultaneous NBN choirs pulled it off.

This was not a small show in local terms. Armidale has had lots of PMs and ministers before, but this was a major local event.

Armidale is a major national educational centre. Education is the city's core business. However, it is a business that has struggled in the face of changing fashions and economic trends.

Declines in school boarding and the rise of boarding schools elsewhere, Government policies in Queensland that subsidised Queensland country kids to go to Queensland boarding schools, reduced the number of Armidale boarders. Inconsistent Federal Government policies towards tertiary education that favoured the big badly affected the University of New England.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Armidale lost a thousand jobs because of these collective changes. That's a lot. The population of the city has only just recovered.

This photo from Gordon Smith on twitpics shows Julia Gillard with the UNE VC (bald) just to the right.

To many in Armidale, the NBN became a critical vehicle that might assist the city to recover its educational prominence. The university, the schools, the chamber of commerce, the local newspapers, all combined to sell the concept. Not surprisingly, take up of initial connections was high, although only seven are in the full trial at this very early point. This will grow rapidly.

You will get a feel for some local reaction from this internode story.

To suggest as some commentators have done, that the launch was in Armidale because it's in Tony Windsor's seat is to completely miss the point. To a degree, the Government is in power because Armidale wanted the NBN and Armidale people convinced Tony Windsor that it was important.

Equally importantly, Armidale is a superb test bed site for the NBN. Not only does it want the NBN, it's a geographically contained location with a high technology base and key potential users in education, health and business.

If it doesn't work in Armidale, it won't work anywhere. If it does work, the NBN will have actual case studies to educate others.

I hope it works!                     

New England coastal stream

I really love the New England countryside.

This photo is from Mark Bellamy's wonderful photo blog, Clarence Valley Today. Many is the time I have stopped by stream like this to boil the billy with water from the stream. It's just a time to relax!

In his story Old Glen Innes Rd: Wintervale and Farewell, Mark records that the new road from Glen Innes to Grafton went through in 1961. This was the first ever fully tarred road from inland New England to the coast.

1961! You can see why battles for better transport have been such a constant in New England's history.    

Do you want a career in archeology or heritage?

Short notice I know, but this Thursday 19 May there will be a special session in Armidale on careers in archaeology and heritage.

There are now hundreds of practitioners around Australia, with demand for more. That's a far cry from the days when I was a member of Australia's first ever Australian prehistory honours class. 

The session is being run as part of  National Archaeology Week, something I covered in National Archaeology Week at UNE.

The details are:

• 6.30 pm Thursday 19 May
• Lecture Theatre A2, Arts Building, UNE

The session is being sponsored by the Heritage Futures Research Centre of which I am a member.

Pilbara cities, New England & royalties to the regions

Have you ever heard of the Pilbara Cities plan? No? Well, I knew only vaguely. WA gets about as much coverage in the eastern states as New England does in Sydney, and for the same reasons. It's not seen as really relevant to the media audience.

In simple terms, the WA Government is spending a billion dollars over four years on housing and infrastructure in the Pilbara. The intent is to help the area accommodate growth from its present population of about 36,000.

I don't know whether or not the plan makes sense. I haven't done the analysis to form a judgement. Yet I couldn't help wincing.

In WA, a resurgent National Party forced the allocation of royalty payments to the regions. This was in fact much criticised by mainstream political commentators. In NSW, the growing mining royalty stream went straight into consolidated revenue to be frittered away across the state.

I wonder how people in Newcastle and the Hunter coal towns with their straining infrastructure would feel if they actually knew about the WA example? I bet they don't. The same level of additional spend in NSW in those areas would absorb less than a quarter of of NSW royalty payments over four years.

How about it NSW Nats? Feel like joining in? 

Newcastle is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring

My post New England & the death of a thousand semantic cuts drew quite long comments from Greg. The following is an edited excerpt from Greg's comments. My own views follow at the end.

Greg wrote:

The thing that gets up my nose is the way that the term "regional" is used as a general term for non-capital city Australia.

I interpret regional as referring to towns and small cities of less than 100,000 people.

So where does a city like Newcastle fit into that picture? It is neither a large capital city nor a small regional city. It is a metropolis of about 1/2 million people with particular (neglected) needs in terms of transport, police, health care etc. Yet it does also have a hinterland which is rural/country/regional with which it is closely connected. It has elements of both city and country but is probably neither. It is in a no mans land and falls between the cracks of such broad descriptors Over the last of city/country or metropolitan/regional.

Because of not really fitting either category but having elements of both it's needs nearly always go unaddressed when discussions of metropolitan vs. regional issues emerge.

It is probably obvious what I am driving at in the comment above, but just to put it another way - Newcastle tends to be regarded as regional whenever there is discussion of city issues (ie. capital), but it also tends to be equally regarded as being city when there is discussion of regional issues (ie. country). So it tends to fall through the cracks as being neither one nor the other.

Greg is right, of course, and it's a real problem. Let me illustrate.

Over the last twenty years in Government tourism promotion there has been a two brand strategy, brand Sydney and brand NSW. Newcastle simply gets lumped into brand NSW.

In terms of many State Government planning strategies, Newcastle is simply lumped in with Sydney as part of Greater Sydney. This actually puts a divide between Newcastle and its hinterland. It affects not just planning, but the statistical data on which planning is based.

In terms of the ARIA remoteness indicators on which so much planning and funding is based, Newcastle is lumped in with Sydney as major city. Nearby Maitland is inner regional. Parts of the Hunter are outer regional. For funding purposes, Newcastle is sometimes classified as regional, at other times not.

Where does Newcastle really fit into all this? The answer is that it doesn't. It is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. In all, it's a mess. 

    

 

Belshaw's World - newspapers not sentenced to death in digital age

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 4 May 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 finished my last column talking about the way that the MSM or main stream media had incorporated the new media into its reporting.

I suggested that 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.

In the battle of technologies that featured in my original post, can the print media survive? After all, newspapers are closing around the world.

My view is yes. I say this for a very simple and practical reason. It comes back to fitness for purpose.

Email destroyed the fax because it proved to be a better way of transmitting documents.

Facebook took people away from writing and reading blogs because it was a better vehicle for the purely personal. Twitter took people away from Facebook because it offered a better broadcast messaging capability.

Twitter itself is aging and has become clogged with ephemera. However, it has proved to be remarkably good at some things, and those are the things that will survive, focusing on needs that a short message length with broadcast and retweet capacity best serve

By contrast, the core strength of the newspaper lies in its printed page and broader content.

As a rough rule of thumb, you can only put about 60 per cent of the content of a printed page onto an equivalent web page if you want the same effect.

The reason for this lies in the way we read. We simply can’t absorb web presented information as efficiently as print.

In my own case, I am a very fast reader. I find that my web speed, while still fast, is about half that when reading the printed page.

Now the new technology with all its very different feeds and forms of expression is not bad at keeping people in touch in a fast moving situation such as Japan or the Middle East as compared to the traditional newspaper, radio station or TV. However, it is not good when it comes to matters requiring a little more depth and reflection.

To see what I mean, compare the printed version of any newspaper of your choice with the on-line version. TV web sites including the ABC are worse.

The on-line versions are all shortened, condensed, light on content. They also have far more visual material, much supplied by readers or viewers.

I check up to a dozen news sites every day. It takes me just half an hour, for example, to scan read the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC and Australian websites. Useful, but unsatisfying.

Further, content shifts so quickly on most sites that it can be hard to find a story again, thus destroying one of the key online values. Frustrating and not at all useful!

To my mind, problems in on-line delivery means that newspapers are likely to survive in printed form as part of an overall but much more differentiated pattern in which the specific features of individual technology modes are used to deliver content best suited to those modes.

I don’t think that any of the newspaper groups have yet got the mix right, largely because they continue to think of the different transmission mechanisms as different ways of delivering the same content to the same audience. That’s self-evidently not the case.

If different forms of content better suit different modes, then content needs to be tailored to those modes. Further, while there are commonalities in audience, the audiences for the different modes are not the same. Again, content needs to be tailored.

Each newspaper has a different actual and potential reader base. Herein lies another part of the problem, for the way many media groups organise themselves around modes such as print press or digital media, the way they centralise, actually makes tailoring hard.

In the end, the success of all forms of for-profit media comes back to control over a regular reading, viewing or listening audience that can be delivered to advertisers. If you don’t properly tailor your content, then you can’t tailor your advertising.

While none of the newspaper groups have got the mix right, there are some fascinating signs of what might come. I will pick this up in a later post.

Please hire Lou the Movie DVD

Back at the end of May last year in 4th Dungog Film Festival - New England films I spoke of Lou the Movie.

Despite good reviews, the film gained only limited release. It's really very hard for an independent to break through the distribution barriers.

A movie likes this requires time for viral marketing to bring audience, and with limited distribution its simply not given time. Just a reminder as to what the film is about. The Dungog Festival Program described it in this way:    

Eleven-year-old Lou's life was instantly turned upside down when her father walked out on her mother and two sisters. She has coped by building a tough shell around her heart - afraid to let anyone hurt her again. Lou blames her mother for her father's departure and refuses to let her in. Life suddenly changes when her estranged Grandfather moves in to the family's rented home. Doyle is ill and befuddled and in his confused state, Doyle mistakes his granddaughter for his long departed wife. Lou, intrigued, plays along with the fantasy, using her bond with Doyle against her mother. As the game progresses, Lou's tough exterior is chipped away and ultimately she understands what it is to be loved - in the most unexpected of circumstances. Shot around the North Coast of NSW and inspired by Chayko's own family, Lou is not to be missed.

Since its limited release, the film has slowly been gathering awards. These include most recently two prizes at the Creteil Women's Film Festival. The Prix Graine de Cinephage for best feature chosen by the young jury, and the Prix du Public, the audience award for best feature.

Lou has now travelled to France, where it will screen in Cannes Cinephiles (a series of public screenings alongside the main competition of Cannes). There it will also be competing in the Ecrans Juniors - to be judged by a jury of young cinema-lovers.

I understand that the movie will be in Australia's Blockbuster video stores from tomorrow. The Blockbuster promo is here. May I encourage you to hire it and then promote it if you like it?

I really think that you will like it, and we do need to promote our own product.

The Lou Facebook site is here, the movie web site here.

New England passings: Peter Gray, Maurice Kelly, Wilf Dews & Kevin O'Donohue

In this post I just wanted to record some New England passings. I try to do so from time to time because it captures some of the New England experience.

Peter Gray (1980-2011) became a national figure when he threw his shoes at John Howard on the ABC's Q&A program in a gesture of contempt for Howard's decision to embroil Australia in the war in Iraq.

Peter Robert Gray was born on May 10, 1980, in Newcastle, one of five children of Bob and Lyn Gray.

He went to Merewether High School then divided his time between study at the University of Newcastle (which he left with a bachelor of arts, majoring in classics) and the defence of biodiversity in the forest.

He became a dedicated environmental campaigner, one of the more swashbuckling members of Newcastle climate change action group Rising Tide. Rising Tide had a talent for the visual. Their blockades of coal ships in Newcastle Harbour attracted considerable attention.

For more see the obituary by George Woods with Harriet Veitch.

Former UNE academic Maurice Kelly died in April. I do not think that there is an obituary yet. Many UNE people will remember Maurice very fondly. His role in the promotion of classics and in the development of UNE's Museum of Antiquities is marked by the annual Maurice Kelly lecture series. One of the reasons why classics has survived at UNE when it has vanished at so many other places is because of people like Maurice. The survival of classics is part of the reason why UNE still offers a broad university experience when so many other have become little more than degree shops.

My thoughts are with wife Gwen, a well known New England writer, daughter Bronwyn and all the family.

At one stage Bronwyn was friendly with Henry Person, a friend of mine.  Gwen wrote an entertaining piece for a women's magazine, I think that it was the Women's Weekly, about her daughter's blond haired, blue eyed boyfriend Henry. Henry was into many strange things, including (as I remember it) the construction of a phone system from his place to the Kelly house. One line that stands out in my memory: "Henry said, hold this, Mrs Kelly, and you will get an electric shock. I did and I did!"

Hunter Valley coal miner Wilfred Dews (1909-2011) loved planting trees.

Rohen Conners obituary tells the simple but remarkable story of a man who persuaded the BHP to develop colliery gardens and went on to have a major impact in preserving the Hunter environment. The photo shows Wilf Dews in the 1950s with a tree plaque, part of the program he started for BHP.

Kevin O'Donohue (1934-2011) was a well known Sydney radio identity and maverick. His connection with New England was peripheral, two years at Armidale's 2AD radio station. Why, then, am I including him?

For several reasons, in fact.

This year is 2AD's 75th anniversary. Former manager Don Thomas has been preparing a history to go onto the station web site. It's not yet officially on-line, but you can find the initial and still to be completed version here. Then Peter Davidson's obituary provides a short but interesting picture of the radio scene in NSW. This includes the movement of people between stations.

This is important to me, because some of the research and writing that I am trying to do looks at the New England radio scene, the rise of the medium, its influence and then its transformation over the second half of the twentieth centuries.