New England Australia History Research Report August/September 2009

In August my meanders took me in a new track.

In Introducing the Armidale poets I started a new series looking at one recent stream of New England writing. I followed this with  Hockey and the Armidale poets. Pea and ham soup and poetry and then  Armidale poets - beginnings. At this point, and as so often happens, I got sidetracked.

I want to continue this series because, apart from pure pleasure, it fills another little gap.

Train Reading - Michael O'Rourke's Kamilaroi Lands then Train Reading - Michael O'Rourke brings the Kamilaroi to life and Belshaw’s World: A closer look at Kamilaroi and language continues my discussion of the Kamilaroi people based around three of Michael's books. Michael's writing really has been very helpful in developing my thinking. The only problem is that I have on some ways bogged down in this one element of New England. I have a lot of part written material, but I need to bring it to the point that I can make it available.

As I indicated in one of the Kamilaroi posts, one thing that has been helpful was the decision to draw a line in the Aboriginal New England section of the history at the time of colonisation. This makes it easier to focus on the Aboriginal story. I was finding that later events kept on interfering with my thought and writing.

 Armidale Air Show 1959 was triggered by a post from Paul Barrett. The link to his post is included in my post.

In Saturday Morning Musings - weird history and other meanders I quoted (thanks to Christopher Moore's Canadian History) US historian and writer Jill Lepore:

To be a public historian, not a public intellectual, not a popular historian, not a pundit, but a public historian, is to be a keeper of our memory as a people. And that, if I had my druthers, and the capacity, is what I would want to be.

I am not sure that I could claim to be a pubic historian. I think that that would be pretentious. But certainly I am trying to record and present aspects of New England's past. You see, the problem is that while there are still some historians writing at local and regional level, there seem to be none writing at a broader New England level.

The North exists. If you overlay maps of the current administrative divisions of NSW Government agencies with other boundaries such as the TV aggregation boundaries you will see it emerge. Yet no-one is writing about it as an entity. No-one is preserving and re-presenting the collective memory.

The Armidale Airshow of 1959 is one very small element, as is Belshaw’s World: The Palais Royale and memories of a Newcastle past. When I write about the Palais or Newcastle past I write not as a Newcastle or Hunter Valley person, but as a person from elsewhere who still sees Newcastle as part of his personal  historical world.

I accept that my approach including my continued support for New England separation raises its own issues in terms of objectivity when writing as an historian. But so long as I give my sources and express my arguments clearly, then others can critique what I write.

Sunday Essay - Farming, green house gases and the importance of practical experiments- Part One and  Sunday Essay - Farming, green house gases and the importance of practical experiments- Part Two are both explorations of current issues. However, both also link to another element of New England history, rural science and experimentation.

Just another thing to write about!        

New England Australia History Research Report July/early August 2009

I have been bogged down and not able to post. Just a brief update on my thinking.

In The Australian Aborigines - problems with personal perceptions I reported on a shift in my thinking brought about by a discussion with an Aboriginal colleague. I extended this discussion somewhat in "Wild blacks" and other interesting things.

Following my visit to Canada, A Belshaw family photo marked the another stage in my interest in Belshaw family history.I followed this with Saturday Morning Musings - more on the Belshaws. The Belshaws themselves are one small thread in New England's history.

In Saturday Morning Musings - Aboriginal languages and the return of Kamilaroi I returned to my musings on Aboriginal New England. This was followed by Sunday Essay - language, history and Australia's First Peoples and then A note on New England's Aboriginal languages.

In Memories of Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Stadium I looked at one aspect of the New England experience from a personal perspective.

Sunday Essay - church, state and social change in Australia and Belshaw’s World: Views of a past world – Barool, Treefield and Highcliffe took me in a different direction, an exploration of some aspects of the religious experience within New England.

Train Reading - Keith Leopold's Came to Booloominbah dealt with another aspect of the New England experience.This led me to write Getting balance (and interest) in New England's history.

Finally, Armidale Air Show 1959 is just a note.

New England Australia History Research Report - May/Early June 2009

I have been down many by-ways and meanders since my last research report, some new, others familiar. A lot of the resulting posts have been on my personal blog.

I have already mentioned on this blog North Coast Memories - SS Fitzroy. A little later in Saturday Morning Musings - the challenge of writing good history I looked at the challenge of writing good history.

I followed this with Invasion, massacre, murder and just death in battle looking in part at the way words affected perceptions.

Saturday Morning Musings - New England's Ogilvie dynasty looked at one New England pastoral family. This is actually linked to the previous post because the relations between the Ogilvies, and especially Edward, provides one prism in reviewing Aboriginal-European relations.

Then in Belshaw's jottings - 27 May 2009 I used the device of a Daingatti man to try to tease out elements of thought on the other side of the frontier. I then continued the Aboriginal theme in Saturday Morning Musings - access to an Aboriginal past.

Despite the huge gaps remaining in my knowledge, I am in fact starting to get more comfortable with the Aboriginal side of New England's history. By this I simply mean that I know where most of the gaps are.

In history, as in most of my professional work, I try to point and counterpoint between the particular and the general. I use the particular to develop an initial framework that I then test by returning to the particular. Sometimes I discard the framework in light of new evidence. More often, I extend and modify.

Knowing the gaps does not mean the end of hard work. In the case of the Aborigines, I am conscious of just how much work I have to do on the Holocene period up to European arrival. I now have to develop a sub-framework, and that means looking at all the work done since I did my first work in this area all those years ago.

I simply don't know enough. Because this is a general history, I am hopeful that I can avoid re-visiting primary sources. That would make the whole thing a mammoth task. I also have to remember, and this applies across the scope of the whole work, that I have perhaps just 20,000 words to cover the Holocene up to and including the European arrival. Some of the stuff that I am writing now, thousands of words, has to shrink to paragraphs!

In Train Reading - E Lloyd Sommerlad's Serving the Country Press I returned to the twentieth century.

I am fortunate that a fair bit has been written on the country press. We have to think of these newspapers as businesses as well as propogandists and journals of record for their communities. We also have to think of the biases of their metro competitors who were just as parochial.

Again, I am reasonably comfortable with the country press story. It's just a question of filling out the details and then selecting the key points.

In a post on this blog, The Chinese in New England 1848-1853, I looked at the early history of the Chinese in New England.

I am interested in the Chinese in part because I have Chinese friends and colleagues. So I am writing for them as well. Once I have written up the story of the mining rushes I can return to complete the Chinese story. While the Chinese are very much a sub-sub theme, they do form part of the texture of New England life that was quite important at particular times.

On Sunday I finished a major post - over 3,000 words - on my personal blog, Sunday Essay - church, state and social change in Australia, looking at some elements of social and cultural change within New England through the prism set by three very different books, one on Methodism in a country town, the second a history of the Ursuline Order, the third an organisational history of the NSW Country Party.

While the books are very different, their spans overlap, so they actually reveal many of the same type of change processes.

The sectarian divide that developed between Catholics and the rest of the Australian community was (is) very important from a national viewpoint. It was also important at a local level.

I am actually in a better position to understand the Roman Catholic position than I once was because one of the major orders became a consulting client a few years ago. Just attending a meeting of the order with its opening prayers gives me an emotional context that can, I think, help me understand and present the varying elements in the religious position.

I think that I have done a fair bit over the last month. So much more to go! Onwards!

Notes in passing.

• 1883, Dr. Elzear Torreggiani invites the Sisters of Mercy to Grafton, then part of the Armidale diocese.
• 1886 Lismore Presentation Sisters. Note as with the Ursulines the way local conditions affected structures and in the same way.
• History of Bishop T here.
• More on the Ursulines here.

New England Australia History Research Report - April 2009 2

Over the last few weeks, my reading has been largely focused on the western tablelands and slopes. I have to complete that, as well as finish writing up my earlier notes on New England's prehistory before I attempt anything else. However, a comment by Jim Simon on New England Airways - Postscript reminded me that I had yet to read  Virtue In Flying written by Joan Priest.

The reading I have been doing on the Aborigines means that I am close to putting a comma in this part of my research in that I now have at least some idea of the flow of England's Aboriginal history from 50,000 years ago to the present. Obviously there are still huge gaps, but the framework is there. So my reading is now deepening my knowledge.

I already had something of a framework for the western tablelands and slopes. Here my recent reading has been fleshing this out a little more. Once I write up my notes, I will have at least base material for mining and the Chinese, as well as much more detailed material on the patterns of settlement as well as town life.

I cannot afford to open a new front until I have bedded existing reading down. However, I then plan to switch focus to the North Coast and especially transport.

One book I have to find and read is North Coast Run: Men and Ships of the N.S.W. North Coast, By Michael P. Richards, Mike Richards. Published by Turton & Armstrong, 1977' ISBN 0908031025, 9780908031023. I started looking at shipping some time ago, but then put it aside. I need to fill this gap. In checking publication details for this book I also found an archaeological report on the PS Rainbow.

I have already written a little on the fascinating history of New England Airways. Virtue in Flying: A Biography of Pioneer Aviator Keith Virtue By Joan Priest, Published by Angus & Robertson, 1975, ISBN 0207132305, 9780207132308, will allow me to flesh this out.

When I first started my attempt to write my history of New England all those years ago, my work had a strong focus on politics. The political theme is still there, but there is now a much stronger focus on social history and on people.

It's not always the prominent, although there are many fascinating larger than life characters. The real challenge is to bring the history alive through the eyes of ordinary people.

Much of my work draws from secondary sources. This is synthesis, rather than research based heavily on primary sources. I worry about this sometimes, but there is really no practical alternative. The task is just too big otherwise.

I am very conscious as I read as to just how many of the secondary sources are out of print. Time moves on, and fashions change. This remains one of the drivers for my own work, the need to redress the balance in some way. 

New England Australia History Research Report - April 2009

It is just over one month since my first research report.

I have spent a fair bit of time on an update of New England in the Pleistocene Period. I have decided with referenced posts like this one to progressively update in Word and then re-post, so I will do so over the next day or so.

To avoid confusion, I will need to put a header on past posts alerting readers to changes. The alternative would be to just update the previous post. I may go this route ultimately, but for the present I like to be able to see how my thinking has evolved.

As part of my thinking on the Pleistocene period I have been much concerned with the sea-bed. We are dealing with major shifts in sea levels. To understand the impact of this on New England's coastal strip, we need to understand what the sea bed is like in structure and depth.

The maps that I have found on-line to this point have limited coverage of the sea bed. While they are helpful in showing that major bays or harbours such as Port Stephens or Trial bay would have been either dry land or river valleys, they do not allow me to look far enough out to sea.

I really need maritime maps showing depth contours up to at least 140 metres, maybe more.

The sea-bed slopes quite steeply. As sea levels fell, the rivers would have pushed out through progradation. However, the extent of the estuaries and wetlands - good food areas - would clearly depend on the slope of the land. Too steep, and a falling sea level, while still expanding land, might actually have reduced food supply. 

Turning to more modern times, I remain heavily entrenched in the Inverell region.

I spoke of Elizabeth Wiedemann's work in Book review - Elizabeth Wiedemann's World of its own: Inverell's early years 1827-1920. I know that she has published another book covering the later period, but have yet to find it. 

Following Elizabeth's book, I turned to Helen Brown's Tin at Tingha (Brown, Armidale, 1982).

What a fascinating book this is, although I wish she had used footnotes. She was criticised at the time for this. She makes it clear that she promised not to identify sources because of the need to get people to speak freely. Still, it does create problems.

Using Wiedemann and Brown together will allow me, among other things, to write a first slice on the Chinese in New England. I do not know whether the Chinese presence was important outside the Tablelands and Western Slopes. That is something that I will need to find out later.       

New England Australia History Research Report - March 2009

It has been a long, long, break since my last post, but I have not been completely idle.

To begin with, I have established that my idea (however limited at present) of creating entry pages for the different Aboriginal language groups is of value. My original reason lay in my frustration with the fragmented nature of on-line material. However, I am doing some contract work at present in an Indigenous organisation and have found that many Indigenous people in fact share my frustration.

Linked to that work, my recent train reading has included "Clean, Clad and Courteous" - Jim Fletcher's History of Aboriginal Education in New South Wales. I want to write this up further with key dates; that way I have filled in another building block in my history of New England.

As part of my recent work I have also been looking at NSW discrete communities - this is the name applied to the old missions and reserves that now form the heart of the NSW Land Council system. Just having a list is of itself helpful, but I have also been looking at some of the individual histories. At the moment I am not doing this in a very structured way beyond my immediate work needs, simply filling in gaps.

I have also finally purchased John Mulvaney & Johan Kamminga's Prehistory of Australia (Allen & Unwin 1999). I wanted to do this to provide a broader national framework for my New England work. It won't exactly meet my needs, it is actually quite weak at a regional level, but it does provide a start.

Not a lot to report, I know, but I am still making at least some progress.