Belshaw's World - return of New England

Documentary film maker Mathew Harvey (Kangabear Pictures) has begun the development of a film looking at the North and the question of Northern or New England identity, including the fight for self government.

Mathew was attracted to the project because he thought that there was a story there that had been neglected.

In an email to me earlier this week, he said that he had just been watching the YouTube the other day and had seen the 'Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall' song by Coldplay.

That song has been a considerable success.

The video clip has had 22 million views. Another clip with just the song has had close to 13 million views. The song has hit number 14 in the States and the band is the biggest rock/soft rock band in the world at the moment.

Now the point here is that the song heavily samples Peter Allen's 'I Go to Rio'. This led Mathew to wonder how many kids in the New England would even know this, or who Peter Allen was. He went on:

“Australian society in general doesn't know the impact of New England artists/musicians because most of them don't even know that New England exists outside of being the federal seat of 'that politician Tony Windsor'

who gave us the Gillard government’.”

Mathew is right of course, and that’s part of the reason for his documentary. However, there is an interesting sea change underway.

I began blogging on New England issues back in April 2006. By New England I mean the broader new state New England, not just the Tablelands. In turn, this led to this column, with the first Belshaw’s World appearing at the end of 2008.

When I began writing on New England issues it was actually quite lonely in the sense that nobody came. Our North really seemed to have gone for ever, swept by the tides into the dustbin of Australian history. We didn’t exist and nobody was interested.

Slowly that changed, so slowly that at first I wasn’t aware of the change.

Through the miracle of the internet I began to gather readers who also provided comments. I found that there was real interest in the history and character of the North, the broader New England.

Page views on the New England Australia blog grew from a few hundred a month to well over 5,000 a month. Once again, people were talking about New England issues.

I am not suggesting that the increase in interest was solely due to my efforts, although I think that I helped. Other things were important as well.

One was simply peoples’ desire to know something about their own past. A second was growing dissatisfaction with the way NSW was governed, meaning that people once again started looking for alternative structures.

Most writers, certainly all historians, draw from previous writers.

As I sit here in the early morning, it’s a bit after 4am, I think of those New England writers and especially political writers who have gone before me. You see, I draw from them all the time.

I think of Victor Thompson scribbling away in the cramped Tamworth Observer office penning the editorials that would launch a new state campaign.

I think of David Drummond seeking donations to fund the publication of his pamphlet on constitutional change and then telling Ernest Sommerlad not to destroy the type because Drummond hoped for a new print run.

“I have received your terribly fearsome letter”, Sommerlad wrote before patting Drummond down.

I think of Sommerlad himself writing the first ever book on Australian journalism, one that articulated the special role of the country press.

Then there was Ulrich Ellis whose typewriter went with him everywhere.

As we lost our history, all the many New England writers exited stage left. It wasn’t just political writers, but all writers.

Measured by theses and journal articles, interest in New England history actually peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s.

From the start of the 1980s it went into long term decline.

The University of New England, once the powerhouse of New England research and writing, lost its own focus. Even today, it has a much diminished view for an institution that once saw itself as the Sydney University of the North.

New England is back, but it will take time to rebuild. We are just at the start of the process. Yet I take great comfort in the fact that we are back.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 23 November 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.

The dead hand of Sydney myopia

My main post today, Dreams past: Collective Wisdom, education & the NBN, is on my personal blog. It is, as the title suggests, a memory of time's past.

In that post, I refer to a bid for funding under the the Commonwealth Government's Cooperative Multimedia Centre's program. There were five NSW contenders - two from Sydney, one each from Armidale, Lismore and Bathurst. I still remember how hard it was to get any interest out of Sydney at official level.

Straight after the  demonstration I refer to in my post, I left for Sydney to join my family. Later that year, one of my colleagues asked me to put forward nominations for people that might go onto the State Government's Information Industries Board. Based on my knowledge, I put forward a number of non-metro suggestions. They were all knocked back by the Department of State Development on the grounds that they weren't in Sydney, that they needed Sydney people because it made working easier.

One of the reasons why I sometimes despair is that the entrenched barriers that we have to work against to get effective Northern development are just so great. When I was a kid I thought that it was conscious neglect. That can happen, but what actually makes it so hard is that we are dealing with structures set up in such a way as to encourage neglect, to work against real change.

People aren't dumb or uncaring, they just don't see it. They go with what's easy or efficient at the time. To do otherwise requires a conscious act to break out, to see in different ways. There is really no incentive or even mechanism that will allow them to do this.

A lot of my readers will agree with me, I think, that self-government is the final answer. But we also have to deal with the now. And that won't change until change is forced.

New England new state car sticker, 1960s

This is a New England New State movement car sticker from the 1960s. I had it on my first car.

I have no doubt that if we had won the 1967 vote, we would have been a bloody sight better off. Even if we did not have a new state by now, we could not have been ignored in the way we have been.

North Star online

Do you know, I know New England pretty well, but I have never been to North Star, a small farming community in New England's north west. Nearby communities include Boggabilla to the north, Moree to the south. The Aboriginal community that I mentioned in Toomelah the movie opens in cinemas is not far away.

North Star is now the terminus of the branch railway line that once ran to Boggabilla from Moree. There is a story here. When the line was under consideration, one of the Progressive Party members for the then Northern Tablelands seat (David Drummond) fought to have planning for the line extended into Queensland to junction with the Queensland network. The move was opposed because it might divert wheat traffic from Sydney.

I mention North Star now because the community has taken to the internet in a big way via:

• a community web site
• a Facebook page
• and on Twitter (@NorthStarNSW)

Well done, but a suggestion. Do tell people where North Star actually is and how to get there!

Postscript:

To ask, sometimes,is to receive. Thanks to the miracles of twitter, the good folk at North Star added material to meet my suggestion as to the location of North Star.  

Toomelah the movie opens in cinemas

Another New England movie, Toomelah, has hit the screens, if again with limited release. The plot is described in these terms: 

The film is set entirely in the remote Indigenous community of Toomelah, located on the NSW, QLD border. It was created as a mission during the 1930s, bringing together Gamilaroi and Bigambal people from the surrounding area.

The story centres on Daniel, a small ten year old boy who dreams of being a gangster. He is kicked out of school and befriends a local gang leader, until a rival gangster arrives back from jail to reclaim his turf. A showdown ensues and Daniel is caught in the middle, leaving him with a choice to make about his uncertain future.

Toomelah is a deeply personal story, that intimately depicts mission life in contemporary Australia. The film reveals the challenges facing the young Gamilaroi people of the Toomelah Community. Robbed of much of their traditional culture by Government policy, it is a community on a cultural edge, struggling for an identity. It is a provocative and yet comic story that transports audiences inside the community, creating an authentic world and way of life that is "Toomelah"

I know that many Australians are actually put off by movies about Aboriginal people or issues, but this one is worth seeing in its own right and as a depiction of one aspect of New England Aboriginal life.  Further comments follow the trailer.

I have written a fair bit on New England's Aboriginal peoples. In this context, this post is actually the tenth in a continuing series introducing readers to past and present Aboriginal life in New England.

Those who are interested can find a full list of posts by either clicking New England Aboriginal life or, if you want, to read in date order from one up, click on Introducing New England Aboriginal life. I still have to do a consolidation of all my historical posts.

I have also done written a fair bit on New England films. Again, I need to do an update.

It's nice to have a film showing a very different aspect of New England life that should appeal to a wider audience.

APN ceases daily publication of Tweed Daily, Coffs Advocate

Yesterday's post, Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change, talked about aspects of the history of the media in New England.

Given this, I thought that I should record APN's decision to cease daily publication of the 123 years old Tweed Daily News and the 104 year old  Coffs Harbour Advocate.

In the latest set of Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Daily News was selling just 3,689 copies. The paper started life in 1888 as the Tweed and Brunswick Advocate. It became The Tweed Daily in 1914. At one point it was one of only two daily newspapers in Australia to have an offset printing press.

The Daily News will sell a print edition only at the weekends with a cover price of 50 cents instead of the current $1.30. It will go on offering readers online updates via the mydailynews across the week.

The Coffs Coast Advocate will  become a twice weekly freesheet, circulating on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On its paid for days it had been averaging 2,959 sales.

I have written a little on the history of the New England media. Maybe time to do an update.

Postscript

In a comment, the Armidale Express's Janene Carey (@janenecarey) pointed to the job losses involved - 30 to 35 of 85 staff, apparently mainly editorial.

Janene and I have talked about this one - the survival of the print press and the reporting that depends on that press - in posts and comments on a number of occasions. It's a very difficult issue.  

Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change

I am writing a short piece for the new Companion to the Australian Media on the remarkable story of the Vincent newspaper family.

It’s hard to fit the story into 500 words, for we are talking of three generations and multiple mastheads. Local mastheads included the Glen Innes Examiner and Uralla Times.

I will write a little more on the Vincents later. Immediately, my research drew me back into the past days of New England’s newspaper world.

Today we forget just how important the printing press was. It provided a vehicle not just for books, but also pamphlets and then newspapers. According to Wikipedia, by the early 19th century there were 52 London papers and over 100 other titles.

The political and economic impact of the printing revolution was just as significant as the internet today.

The authorities struggled to deal with new forms of political expression. New concepts emerged such as the fourth estate and freedom of the press.

Advertising was born, fuelling emergence of what we now call mass consumer goods. Advertising allowed the price of newspapers to be reduced. Mass circulation papers emerged.

The new papers fed an ever-growing demand for information and entertainment. The invention of the telegraph made news from far distant places accessible.

The public demand for information was remarkable.

On the moving frontier in the Australian colonies, newspapers were handed on, read in reading rooms but also by firelight in distant camps.

A single paper could be read by dozens of people until, finally, it met its end lighting fires, pasted onto walls as insulation or as toilet paper. In the days before toilet paper, newspapers were cut into squares as a substitute.

As towns emerged in the Australian colonies, they wanted their own papers. Powerful figures fighting for their commercial and political interests were often prepared to fund papers.

In the Clarence where either inclusion in Queensland or, alternatively, creation of a new colony was a hot issue, one paper was founded to support the cause, another to oppose it.

The new papers were highly unstable, opening and closing all the time. Often, they vanished without historical trace.

In Armidale, the presence of Frank Newton’s Armidale Telegraph is mentioned in the historical record. However, no copies were known to have survived until one was found, by accident, in the walls of an old Armidale house.

Start up costs were relatively low. All you needed was a press and some initial working capital. Those presses were constantly recycled, moving down the chain to new smaller papers as their original owners replaced them with new equipment.

By the first decades of the twentieth century, even small New England communities had their own newspapers, bigger towns had two.

Many of the names are gone now. Who remembers the Tingha Miner or even knows that Tingha once had its own paper? Yet their influence lingers.

The two decades following the First World War saw consolidation.

Newspapers merged in Inverell, Glen Innes and then Armidale. The Tamworth Observer changed its name to The Northern Daily Leader and launched a campaign to become the premier inland Northern daily, attacking the metropolitan newspapers on one side, the purely local papers on the other.

While many papers remained sole proprietorships, new companies emerged. Northern Newspapers and the Armidale Newspaper Company are examples.

The papers were in fierce competition and fostered that local parochialism that has always been New England’s curse. Yet they could also combine. The rapid expansion of New State agitation in the early 1920s was led by the papers.

When first radio and TV came to the North, it remained locally controlled. Even in the late 1960s, every media outlet in New England was locally or regionally owned.

Then everything changed. By 2,000, local ownership was limited to a handful of independents.

With that loss went the capacity to combine in any coordinated way. Newspapers were split between a Queensland looking APN and Rural Press, two organisations that barely talked to each other. Radio and TV were integrated into national organisations.

The newspapers themselves still represented the local interest, but it was a much diminished interest for it was now purely local.

Looking at the Northern Daily Leader as an example, the old Leader consciously positioned its coverage to provide a Northern focus.

The Leader still carries a limited range of broader Northern stories, but the days when it outsold the Sydney Morning Herald in Armidale are long gone.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 16 November 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.

Belshaw's World - cursive writing a critical tool in the modern world

From time to time, there have been suggestions that the teaching of cursive writing, what we used to call running writing, should be totally done away with. Better to teach children to touch type, or one of the other skills required for a modern world.

I really hated lessons in running writing at primary school. I don’t have especially good fine motor skills, nor eye hand coordination. Running writing lessons were a misery only exceeded by the obligatory craft.

Ultimately I learned to write and write fast. I had little choice if I was to complete exams. Then, too, at work I faced tight deadlines.

My writing was never neat. Not for me the old fashioned copper plate nor what was called a fair hand.

Typists and secretaries struggled to read my writing, although once they got used to it problems dropped away because I was at least consistent.

Once computers became popular, I stopped using hand writing on a regular basis. Like so many of us, I sat in front of a screen and keyed directly.

Without practice, my hand writing deteriorated quite quickly. My old problems with fine motor skills re-appeared. I also had a very particular problem in my right wrist, a repetition strain injury from all my previous writing.

By the early 2000s, my occasional handwritten notes had become an illegible scrawl.

There was one partial exception to this retreat.

Over the years, I have done a lot of facilitation and training. I enjoy it, while it has also been very useful and sometimes profitable.

As part of this, I used whiteboards and butchers’ paper all the time. This means hand writing.

Through a combination of printing and sometimes scrawl I got the message across. Indeed, I used my bad handwriting as a teaching device, something to entertain but also as an excuse to re-explain.

Had you asked me then whether I thought it necessary to still teach cursive writing in primary school, I could well have said no. Now I have changed my mind!

About three years ago, I started to keep writer’s diaries. I was spending up to three hours each day travelling by train or bus, and wanted to use the time productively.

Part of my writing was simply recording thoughts or notes on things around me. Part was also recording reactions to things that I was reading, including taking research notes for later use.

I actually became quite addicted to the process, beginning what I still call my train reading. This involved picking a book each week from my shelves almost at random that I had not read, or at least not read for a long time.

I got some funny looks on the buses and trains as I sat there absorbed in a book with my notebook in front of me, reading and then scribbling. Some of my best short writing came from this process.

Initially, my handwriting was literally a scrawl. However, as I wrote more I found that my running writing was coming back because it was both neater and faster.

Having re-acquired handwriting, I now find myself using it all the time. It’s just so useful for someone like me: I jot notes in parks and on benches; I use it as an excuse to leave my desk to sit somewhere else while still working; and I find that it’s increased my working speed.

In pre-computer days, you had to work out just what you were going to write before you really started. Too many people with computers just start writing, relying on the edit facility.

Sometimes that’s good. However, it can also lead to slower work, worse English. And that’s bad.

It seems that I have rediscovered the importance of handwriting as a tool. If you ask me now whether the teaching of cursive writing should be abolished in primary schools, I would say no!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 9 November 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.

Coal seam gas & the rise of political and policy stupidity

This is the first of two posts on New England's environmental wars with a special focus on coal and coal seam gas.

In yesterday's post on my personal blog, Carbon tax, the Sydney/Gunnedah/Bowen Basin & coal seam gas, I introduced the Sydney-Gunnedah-Bowen Basin, coal and coal seam gas.

While there is some overlap in readership and issues between Personal Reflections and this blog, the two blogs serve different purposes. The sidebar here reads:

This blog is dedicated to the history, life and culture of Australia's New England, that part of Australia stretching from the Hunter Valley through to the Queensland border and incorporating the Hunter Valley, the Mid North Coast, the Northern Rivers, the New England Tablelands, Slopes and Western Plains.

While New England has still to achieve formal political identity, it has its own character and identity and is, in the words of the Australian poet A D Hope, an ideal in the heart and mind.

The majority of the readers on this blog come from or have a connection with or at least an in interest in New England. This includes the great New England diaspora. By contrast, while regular readers on Personal Reflections are well aware of my New England interests, they could hardly be otherwise, they read the blog for its mix of commentary and analysis with the purely personal.

One issue common to the two blogs can be summarised as out of sight, out of mind.

On this blog, I talk about the way in which the submergence of New England identity has led to neglect. On Personal Reflections, I talk about the way in which current main stream metro dominated media reporting with its focus on a narrow range of issues impoverishes policy discussion.

Developments outside the relatively narrow circles in which politicians, reporters, commentators and indeed public servants move tend to be ignored until, suddenly, they explode on the scene. Responses to them are then conditioned by the culture and attitudes of the dominant groups. The results often include confusion and simplistic analysis.

If you think that I'm wrong, consider the confusions in reporting and analysis that arose over the formation of the minority Gillard Government. Lacking any real knowledge of New England's history or geography or indeed the history of the various country movements more broadly, really unaware even of the existence of the New England independents, commentators struggled to make sense of the whole thing. They had been bitten by a now unknown past.

Coal and coal seam gas is another such issue. You see, while important, coal seam gas is only one of a series of interconnected economic, environmental and land use issues that have been bubbling away for a number of years.

Isolated community or farm protests rose and fell. New movements emerged and died, with their media treatment depending on prominence and fit within the conventional left/right or apparent party political spectrum. Riven with conflicting views, apparently disconnected groups began to coalesce, looking for support elsewhere.

It must be four years now since I began to write on Personal Reflections about the growing disconnect between dominant, predominantly urban views and the rest of the country. About eighteen months ago, I started focusing on New England's own environmental wars.

I felt that all this was significant. I was also annoyed at what I saw as the sometimes contemptuous dismal of things as unimportant, as special pleading. I have been involved with the country movements most of my life. I have been researching their history for thirty years, during which time I have seen them largely vanish from the research agenda. Well, they are back.

The Government's ability to pass the mining resource rent tax largely depends not on all the policy papers, not on the views of the states, mining industry or main political parties, not on the views of the reporters or commentariat, not on the views of metro voters. It depends, instead, on a single issue, whether two New England independents and Mr Windsor in particular can be satisfied about coal seam gas. I find this sad and frustrating.

This is not in any way a criticism of Mr Windsor, nor is it a comment on the coal seam gas issue. Rather, it is my indictment of the way our political system and associated policy processes have evolved. To my mind, we no longer have the capacity to analyse a multi-faceted issue, to identify principles, to recognise the impact of variation outside certain now very stylised formats.

These are strong charges. To illustrate them, I am going to take New England's environmental wars in my next post and discuss principles and issues. It will be Sunday before the post comes up since I have to go away.

There are no perfect answers, no ways of satisfying everyone. But the best results in an imperfect world come from information and recognition of the issues involved. I leave it to you to assess the validity of my arguments.

Belshaw's World - Armidale is different and difference sells

Back in 2006, the then Labor Government introduced a new state plan. I did it the courtesy of actually looking at in detail because I thought that the concept was a good one.

To do this, I started by defining what I saw as New England’s needs. By New England I mean not the New England, but the broader new state New England from the southern edge of the Hunter to the border.

This took me quite a long time since this area does not formally exist. I collected statistics and prepared policy analysis. What were New England’s problems? What might be done about them?

I then examined the new State Plan against my analysis. Sadly, I concluded that even if every one of the thousands of targets was delivered, it would leave New England just where it was before in terms of key needs.

Blow me down, it seems to have happened again.

The trigger this time was some writing that I was doing on tourism.

A week back, David Whitley wrote a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald Sorry Australia, Europe rules. He compared Australia adversely to Europe, suggesting that things like the Opera House cannot compete.

These European attractions were always going to appeal. There was nothing Australia's tourism authorities could do about them. What they should do was differentiate and sing about what Australia could do better instead.

I suppose that we are all locals at heart.

Country people (and universities) cannot help comparing themselves with bigger fish. Armidale can offer good coffee, all the features you can find in Sydney.

Sydney people are just as bad. People should come to enjoy Sydney’s cosmopolitan life style. Our food is as good as anywhere in the world. Yawn!

Armidale or New England cannot compete with Sydney on Sydney’s own turf, nor can Sydney compete with global centres on their grounds. It is difference that sells.

This problem is not new.

Rod, one of my blogging colleagues, was at UNE in the 1990s. He got very angry when the then mayor and VC said things like “the area has all the features you could want in a city" or “this region can offer the same university experience as a city university”.

As Rod said, how dumb can you get! Armidale and UNE were so different and that difference was what made it worth more than studying at a city university or any other for that matter.

In writing on these issues I made the point that the broader new state New England needed its own tourism strategy, one that would promote the area’s specific features. Not the tablelands, not the country, but one that capitalised on the very specific differences, commonalities and linkages across an area larger than the UK.

Anybody who has been involved in tourism will know that NSW tourism promotion has been a mess for a very long time. There has been no coherence, no stability. Branding strategies come and go.

From a New England perspective using New England in both a narrow and broader sense, our own image has been destroyed in a greater mess.

As I said in one piece of writing, if you think I’m wrong just try to answer these question: what is NSW’s tourism message? If you say NSW, what core images come to mind? Then compare this to the other states and territories.

I thought that maybe I was being unfair in all this given a new government, so I went to the new state plan (http://2021.nsw.gov.au/).

There are differences in ideology and emphasis. In fairness to the National Party, there is a greater regional emphasis in the new plan. Yet it is still the same mess of disconnected performance indicators.

And on tourism? It doesn’t appear to exist. There is no tourism strategy, no indication of the ways this might fit in, not even a performance indicator that I could find.

Mind you, there is a new tourism body Destination NSW, which is developing another strategic plan. Something may come of this.

I accept that I am biased at many levels. Among other things, I believe that New England needs its own state to have any chance of making progress. I am also quite one eyed when it comes to the need for New England advancement.

Accepting this, my charge on tourism is simply this: it is up to the Sydney Government to prove that it can deliver on the things that will benefit the North. I doubt that it can.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express on 2 November 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.