Curley Brydon flies to new heights

No. 78 Squadron members: Squadron Leader "Curley" Brydon, Jack Gibbons, probably Corporal Alfred John Gibbons, and Arthur Jones. Photo: Australian War Memorial.

After so many history columns, I am sometimes asked how I can still find things to write about. Part of the answer is that I am a bower bird, constantly looking for new sticks or trinkets to add to my ever growing nest!

In today’s case, it was the Tamworth Aviation Facebook page that informed me that on 25 October 1944, Squadron Leader Adam Howie “Curley” Brydon was awarded a Bar to his Distinguished Flying Cross. Attention caught, I started digging.

Adam Howie Brydon was born in Armidale on April 14, 1921, to Dr Adam Gibson Brydon and Marjorie (nee Mallam) Brydon. The couple were well liked and very active in community activities, while Dr Brydon was also The Armidale School (TAS) doctor.

I do not know where Curley went to primary school, but he enrolled at TAS in June 1931. There he was involved in the model aero club, was in the swimming team and played in the TAS 2^nd Fifteen.

Curley left TAS in 1939. When War broke out in September, he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), completing flying training at Point Cook.

The Air Force suited Curley who seems to have had a love of fast planes and fast cars.

The Armidalian records that just after the War he decided on impulse at 9pm that he must visit Armidale. Leaving at 3am in his black MG, he arrived in Armidale for breakfast. The next year, the magazine records that he had come second in the Bathurst road race for the second time!

Curley served first in Number 8 Squadron and then in number 78 Squadron. Number 8 which flew Hudson light bombers took heavy casualties during the Japanese invasion of Malaya and then the Netherlands East Indies. forcing retreat to Australia for retraining and re-equipment.  

Number 78 Squadron was formed in July 1943 as one of the new squadrons being equipped with Kittyhawk fighters and took an active role in the fighting over New Guinea.

By October 1944 when Curley received the Bar to his Distinguished Flying Cross, he was Squadron Leader in charge of Number 78, the youngest Squadron Leader in the RAAF.

The citation for the award read in part: “Squadron-Leader Brydon displayed outstanding courage, keenness and initiative in carrying out extremely hazardous operations which have proved of inestimable value”.

At the end of the war, Curley joined the Fleet Air Arm before moving to the private sector. After establishing Diners Club in Australia, he joined News Limited holding multiple senior executive positions first in Australia and then the United States.

Curley died in September 1986. It had been a long and varied journey from the quiet streets of the Armidale streets of his birth in 1921.

Update 10 November 2018

In comments on the Armidale Families Facebook page, Ken Williams wrote "Howie made fame by setting a new record for road travel from Sydney to Armidale in his MG TC, just after the end of WWII. My recollection was that he made the trip in 6 ½ hours. Not impressed? Remember - hardly any bitumen then!"

Reading Ken's comment, I was taken back into my past when I spent a lot of time driving on dirt roads. I could imagine him pointing the car and drifting round the corner! Susie Dunn who knew him well remembered him flying spitfires as well. I hadn't picked this up from the squadron material.

Another commenter said that Dr Brydon was the doctor when she was born.    

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 31 October 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018.

The families of the New England University College

Workmen, Booloominbah 1938. There was great pressure to get the College open quickly. Alterations were still underway as the first staff and students arrived.  

This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the foundation of the New England University College in 1938, the first university institution in Australia outside the capital cities. As part of the anniversary, over October 2018 I ran a short series of columns on the families of the College.

Institutional histories focus on the institution. That's understandable. However, the NEUC could not have survived without the sacrifices made by the wives. For most, they were far removed from family support and had to manage with uncertainty and sometimes primitive conditions. The children of the NEUC families, the siblings, grew up in an amalgam world that was intensely local while also being global. Sydney was remote, more remote in fact than Oxford or Cambridge or Manchester.

This post gathers the family columns together so that you can follow the story through. Many things are left out, suppressed in order to fit within tight newspaper word limits, but they will give you a taste of a small but unique part of Australia's history. I have also included some links to earlier pieces that tell a little of the history of the NEUC, as well as a short UNE video made to celebrate the College's anniversary.

The family series is:

• New England University College: building an academic institution 
• Armidale's university family grows 
• Dedicated beginnings to New England's college
• University college 'siblings' experience a rich life

Earlier in 2018, I completed the first part of a series of columns on the Pacific Belshaws. This includes a number of columns on the early days of the NEUC.

• The Pacific Belshaws 5 - Belshaw appointed to Armidale 
• The Pacific Belshaws 6 - Brothers immersed in Depression economics
• The Pacific Belshaws 7: Fast-paced start for uni college
• Intense first days for new College
• New England University College fights to stay open.
• University college ‘starved'
• Building university into a regional power house
• 1954: University of New England finally achieves autonomy

On 1 November 2018, the University held a morning tea for the alumni of the NEUC This is the short video prepared for the occasion. I note one error. In redoing a short grab I said that my mother, Edna Belshaw, was David Drummond's grandaughter. She was, in fact, his daughter. Felt a bit silly when I spotted it later!

University college 'siblings' experience a rich life

Overseas Students' Week 1960: The Columbo Plan brought many international students. By the early 1960s, they formed a significant part of the student body.This is the fourth and final of a short series telling you a little of the story of the wives and children of the New England University College. 

This last column in my present series focuses on the siblings, the children of the early University College academic staff.. I don’t know when this word first emerged, but it does capture one element of life, the interaction between children linked though their parents. There weren’t a lot of us; we were of differing ages and of different interests; but many of the links created survive to this day.

Life wasn’t always easy for the siblings. This was an intensely local world. We were new fish in a still small pond, the children of academics. This sometimes created expectations at school that we would, somehow, be brighter than average, expectations that I resented.

We also had to navigate our way through the social structures of life in Armidale and the broader New England beyond. This was a complex stratified world with varying interests and connections. How were we to fit in? What did we talk about to people whose backgrounds were so different to ours?

We managed as best we could, with varying degrees of success.

Our immediate world may have been intensely local, but it was also international in a way that is less true today, despite easier travel and greater media coverage. Sydney seemed and was remote. Our connections were more global.

In some ways, it was a remarkably privileged world, one that I have struggled many times to explain.

We had access to very good education for the time, with many of us following the same route from the Misses Coopers’ Kindergarten through Armidale Demonstration School or Ben Venue, both demonstration schools, to Armidale High or sometimes TAS for the boys and then to university. Many of us met people and had access to experiences that were not available to most Australians. 

In my own little world, I sat and listened to the political and economic arguments about decentralisation, about state and national politics. I listened to intellectual debates on academic and cultural topics. I listened to discussions about the events in the University College or young University. There were books, papers and current periodicals everywhere..

Then there were the visitors who had to be entertained at home in the absence of local restaurants. I was allowed to sit in on the early parts of dinner and to ask questions. I met people such as Spanish intellectual Salvador de Madariaga or the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal who was a particular favourite of my father’s.

We also mixed with students and staff, including the growing number of overseas students and young staff who came to Australia with the Columbo Plan. This introduced many of us to new foods and cultures.

In all, it was a remarkably rich if sometimes difficult experience, one unique to a particular place at a particular time. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 October 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 . 

New England Travels: journeys through space and time

Paper delivered by Jim Belshaw in the University of New England’s Humanities seminar series, 13 April 2018

This morning I am going to take you on a journey through the history of New England {1} It’s a vast canvas spanning more than 30,000 years of human history. I can do no more than give you a taste. Think of it as a history dégustation:  the careful, appreciative tasting of elements of our history that might encourage you to go further, to explore for yourself.

I talk as a public historian. While I am connected with the academy, I remain somewhat outside. My primary audience is those interested in or who might be interested in New England history. My platforms are my newspaper columns, my blogs, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as my sometimes academic papers and book contributions such as my chapters in Came to New England published to mark the 75^th anniversary of the foundation of the New England University College (2).

I seek to attract, to entertain, to involve, to teach. My readers give me feedback and leads. Some become very close to research assistants.

First threads: introducing social change, New England thought, the influence of UNE

When I write as a professional historian, I try to observe the canons of the discipline as taught to me at this place all those years ago. It was a very strong department with 16 staff excluding three vacant positions. Student numbers were smaller, making for an intense experience. Today we talk of history method. Then all honours students were required to study a course on the theory as well as method of history, a philosophy of history course taught by Ted Tapp.

A poet as well as an historian, Ted was a quiet, serious man who sometimes went beyond his students’ comprehension. I’m not sure quite how much I understood, but that plus Philosophy I were two of the most important courses in forming the intellectual views I now hold.  They told me how the towering intellectual constructs we work with, all the frames of our intellectual and moral beliefs, are humanly determined and can be analyzed. I learned the difference between correlation and causation. Perhaps most importantly from Ted, I learned following Karl Popper that we cannot know for certain, that all knowledge based on evidence is only knowledge if it is potentially refutable. If it cannot be refuted, it is not knowledge but belief. For that reason, the professional historian must provide the evidence on which conclusions are based so others can check and follow up.

In saying this, I am not denying the importance of faith, nor of ideas based on faith. This was a matter of considerable interest to us as students, for we were a religious lot. In my case, I was an active member of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, attended Student Christian Movement activities including its national conference in Adelaide and had friends who were active in the Evangelical Union. We argued and debated about religion and its implications for life, action and reform. Then came great changes, changes documented in part by Don Beer, a member of the history department, in his article, ‘The Holiest Campus’, its Decline and Transformation: The University of New England, 1946–79(3)

.

These changes were profound and deep, part of a broader set of changes that affected every aspect of New England life. Mathew Jordon’s book Spirit of True Learning: The Jubilee History of the University of New England explores some of the changes at the University, while Kenneth Dempsey's Conflict and Decline: Ministers and laymen in an Australian country town (4), a sociological study, looks at the impact  in the Barool Methodist parish, in fact the Uralla-Arding parish. Dempsey, a postgraduate student at UNE, the son of a Methodist minister and himself a Methodist minister, places local changes and tensions in the context of broader changes taking place in the Methodist church.

In This Land of Promise. The Ursuline Order in Australia 1882-1982(5), Ursuline sister and history department staff member Pauline Kneipp in part considers the impact of global changes on the order and on the life of the sisters. One effect was the shift of the Ursuline’s national headquarters from Armidale to Canberra and the closure of the Armidale school that had been the original reason for their existence in this country.

Don Aitkin's What was it all for? The Reshaping of Australia takes a different approach (6). Don did the Leaving Certificate, the precursor of the High School Certificate, at Armidale High School in 1953 before studying at UNE. Fifty years later, he went back for a reunion of the class of 53. This led him to think of an article that became a book looking at change in Australia since the Second World War through the prism set by the experiences and attitudes of the class of 53. It’s a fascinating book, one that draws out a deep weariness in the group at the pace and extent of change.

I may seem to have drifted, but I have just given you an initial taste of number of threads in New England history, threads that will recur. One is the nature and importance of social, cultural and economic change across the history of New England from Aboriginal times to today. A second is the existence of New England thought, a distinct cultural, political and intellectual tradition. A third is the influence of the Armidale Teachers’ College, UNE and later the other colleges and universities on New England thought, culture and life, as well as on students who carried the New England experience across the world.

Second threads: geography, environmental change, new states, what’s in a name?

To this point, I have been using the term New England without defining it. So where and what is New England? There are two parts to this question: the geographical area covered and the names attached to that area. My answers will introduce you to further threads in the history of this place that I call New England.

In geographical terms, the area covered is the Northern or New England Tablelands and the river valleys that extend from the Tablelands to the north, south, east and west. Defined in this way, we have a natural geographic unit that exists independent of political or administrative boundaries.

This is a large area. From Lake Macquarie in the south to Tweed Heads on the Queensland border is over 700 km (434 miles), from Coffs Harbour on the coast to Bourke on the Darling River is almost 900 km (559 miles) by road. To provide an international comparison. London to Edinburgh is around 666 km (414 miles) by road, New York to Washington a mere 364km (226 miles). Putting this another way, depending upon the precise boundaries adopted, New England at around 166,000 square kilometres (64,000 square miles) is 25 per larger than England.

This large territory contains a number of distinct bioregions each containing multiple micro-environments. This creates a hierarchy that cascades from the broad area down to the bioregions and then the microenvironments within them, each with its own history.

We can see this pattern if we look at Aboriginal New England at the time of European occupation, something I explored in more detail in my 2010 paper to the Armidale and District Historical Society on the distribution of Aboriginal languages across New England (7). To the west, we have the riverine language groups extending down the Western Slopes and flowing onto the Western Plains of which the Gamilaraay were the largest. On the east, we have coastal language groups such as the Bundjalung, the Yaegl, the Gumbaingirr and the Daingatti to name a few. Then in the middle we have the smaller Tablelands languages such as the Anaiwan squeezed between the bigger language groups on each side.

The territories of the main language groups are related to river catchments, while within them we have a cascade from the main language groups through dialects to hordes or clans and then family groups whose territory is determined by both catchments and local environmental conditions, my microenvironments. The nature of interaction between groups within the hierarchy including trade were determined by relative resources and cultural links, making for a complex pattern that we do not fully understand.

We now come to another thread in New England history, the nature of environmental change. We do not know when people first arrived in New England. My present best guess based on dating patterns is between 30 and 32,000 years ago (8). The millennia since have seen many dramatic environmental changes. Sea levels have varied from perhaps 60 metres below current levels to 120 plus metres below to one to two metres above. Rainfall, wind and temperature patterns have varied greatly over this long period, with consequent changes to vegetation and animal life. Water courses have shifted, changed.

There is a saga here of human adaptation, of survival and change. To understand this, to explore the deep New England past, requires us to drill down, to look at the detail of change. It also requires us to put aside sometimes deeply held preconceptions. The geographic and human patterns that existed in 1788 were not the same as those that existed 6,000 or 30,000 years before. The visual images we hold today provide no real guidance to that past.

To illustrate this, take your picture of the Tablelands and strip away most of the current vegetation, replace it with tundra with periglacial conditions in spots. Or perhaps as an even more dramatic example, replace your images of the beaches, rivers, forests and estuaries of the entire North Coast with a more rugged coastline dropping sharply to a cold and more distant sea.

I now turn to the second part of the question I posed earlier, the names attached to that area I am calling New England, in so doing introducing further threads in the history of New England.

I note that  my use of the term “New England” is broader than current usage which tends to limit the term to the Tablelands or to Tablelands and Western Slopes. The broader entity has been variously called the North, the Northern Provinces, the Northern Districts and then, increasingly, New England from 1932 when the New State Movement first adopted the name for the North. This created a distinction between the Tablelands, the New England, and the broader new state area.

The Northern Separation, later New England New State, Movement is another key thread in the history of New England in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.(9). It began in the period leading up to the separation of the Moreton Bay colony, now Queensland, in 1859. It continues today if in a presently low key way especially via Facebook, making it the second oldest political movement in Australia after the union movement.  

Agitation has proceeded in surges. The colonial period saw separatist agitation established as a vehicle for protest. Then last century came major surges in the 1920s, the 1930s and then in the 1950s and 1960s culminating in the narrowly lost 1967 plebiscite. The waves created by each surge ultimately crashed against the barriers created by constitutional structures and existing vested interests, but each left a benefit behind. We would not be at this place today without those waves.

The effective collapse of the organised new state movement after the plebiscite loss and the political infighting that followed coincided with dramatic social and economic change from the 1970s including loss of industry, progressive structural decline and the rise of the coast. The regional social, cultural, political and media infrastructure that had supported cooperative action collapsed. The local parochialism that been one of the bedevilling features of New England life since the emergence of the towns reasserted itself, while the sense of Northern or New England identity declined, as did external recognition of that identity.

At a personal level, I find the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of this century hard to research and write about because of a pervading sense of personal loss at our relative decline.(10)  I hope as a professional historian that I do follow those tenets I talked about before, allowing the evidence to dictate conclusions. However, as a public historian, I see part of my role as equivalent to a historical rescue dig, seeking to preserve and present a past, to show its texture and value before the next range of social and economic change rolls over the top.

With the decline, use of the term New England shrank from its broader coverage back towards the Tablelands. However, while I use other terms such as the North where appropriate, I retain New England for practical as well as sentimental reasons.

The terms Northern Districts, Northern Provinces or just the North all have their own problems. To begin with, they are Sydney centric terms defined by their relationship to Sydney. Initially, the use of the terms expanded with European occupation progressively extending towards the Gulf of Carpentaria. The separation of Queensland in 1859 put a hard barrier in place. Queensland now had its own north.

Some years ago I coined the term border myopia to describe the way borders affect our thinking, blinding us. Queensland promotes the Granite Belt as a special unique area. Few realise that the Granite Belt is in fact part of the New England Tablelands. Tenterfield is about 44 minutes by road south of Stanthorpe. Had the border been shifted south just a little bit, Tenterfield would now be the southern part of the Granite Belt and part of Queensland tourism promotion.

The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony featured in part the Yugambeh Aboriginal nation because of its Gold Coast linkages. Less well recognised is that Yugambeh-Bundjalung, also known as Bandjalangic, is the Aboriginal language group that stretched from the north bank of the Clarence into South East Queensland including what is now the Gold Coast. When the Queensland border was created, the hard political line created not only divided Aboriginal groups placing related people under different legal jurisdictions but also affected the way we see relationships. You cannot write a history of the Aboriginal peoples within Northern NSW without addressing cross-border linkages.

Following the creation of Queensland, the coverage of the terms Northern Districts, Northern Provinces or just the North shrank in NSW to the area up to the new political border, setting up its own inconsistencies. You can see this easily if you look at terms in use today.

What does the term the North mean? It doesn’t mean all of Northern NSW but actually the north-east of NSW. The term North Coast was used to describe the area from the border to the Hunter. Then came a short gap to the Central Coast followed by another gap around Sydney and then the South Coast. Today we have the term Mid North Coast to describe the area from the Northern Rivers to the Hunter. But where is the South North Coast? Or, indeed, the North Coast? It remains easier to use the term New England unless the context demands otherwise.

Third Thread: prehistory and Aboriginal studies, multidisciplinary studies, challenges for regional historians

I have already referred to the importance of  geography and the environment in New England history and thought. I now want to extend this discussion using my own experiences as a base, placing it in the context of multidisciplinary studies and the challenges faced by regional historians in integrating and tailoring broader research to regional stories.

In Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, Billy Griffiths explores the history of Australian archaeology (11). There he wrote of the work and influence of Isabel McBryde at the University of New England and beyond.

Isabel came to UNE in 1959 as the first tenured lecturer in Australia to carry the word prehistory in her job title. Her 1966 honours class in prehistory of which I was a member was, I think,  the first honours class of its kind in Australia.

Isabel was introduced to archaeology and Australian prehistory by John Mulvaney at the University of Melbourne who became her mentor[12]. Like Mulvaney, she went to Cambridge to study in Professor Grahame Clark’s Department. Clarke is arguably the most important global prehistorian of his generation. He emphasised the importance of exploring economies and environmental conditions if you were to understand prehistory.

Later, Clarke and the Cambridge School would be criticised by Mulvaney and others for its geographical determinism and its excessive influence on Australian prehistory. A particular criticism was that the approach ignored the way in which culture and human choice affected life. Prehistoric peoples were not just passive actors, but active participants in the ways they chose to respond to and manage the world around them.

I don’t think that Isabel was ever limited by the Cambridge School. I say this, partly from my direct personal experience, partly from what I learned later about her overall approach. There were four distinct elements in her approach:

•  A belief under John Mulvaney’s influence that prehistorians and archaeologists had to move away from generalised continent wide conclusions to focus on regional sequences
• A focus on the collection of existing historical and ethnographic material that might inform prehistoric research
• The deliberate use of local contacts, historical societies and increasingly Aboriginal people themselves as informants and guides
• A conscious choice to tap the widest possible range of specialist support within UNE and beyond that might inform her research.

The result was a period of incredible productivity. By 1978, UNE students had written at least 22 theses on the Aborigines. Isabel herself was awarded her PhD in 1967, laying the basis for a 1974 book  Aboriginal prehistory in New England: an archaeological survey of northeastern New South Wales (Sydney University Press).  This was followed in 1978 by book of essays, Records of Time Past: ethnohistorical essays on the culture and ecology of the New England tribes (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies) mainly written by her former students. There were also journal articles and monographs, including her 1972 study with geologist R A Binns, A petrological analysis of ground-edge artefacts from northern New South Wales (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies) This pioneering multidisciplinary study analysed the chemical composition of stone artefacts in various collections to determine their original source, thus indicating patterns of trade and contact in prehistoric New England.

Isabel’s approach fitted with my own interests. I chose as my history honours thesis topic a study of Aboriginal economic life in Northern NSW as revealed by the ethnographic and historical record (13). This was totally consistent with Isabel’s approach in seeking to mine all the early contact records, the later anthropological and ethnographic studies, to create a picture that might help inform the deeper past. I also wished to apply tools and approaches drawn from economics to inform the questions I asked.

I was influenced here by a previous debate between my cousin Cyril Belshaw, then professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and the economist, historian and anthropologist  Karl Polanyi. Polanyi took the view that economics was only relevant to societies that used money as a means of exchange. Belshaw disagreed, drawing in part from his experience in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. I took Belshaw’s side because I believed that the questions asked by economists were relevant.

My approach took me outside the conventional bounds of history, something that I think made some of the department including Russell Ward uncomfortable. Isabel backed my approach. It was productive as you can see from the topics I addressed: population distribution, the patterns of seasonal movement, trade, private property, specialisation, capital formation and farming. These are all topics of current debate.

In writing, I drew from the work of UNE academics outside the history department. Geographer Eric Woolmington was of particular importance, introducing me to a concept that I still use today, that of the marchland.

Eric and Jo Woolmington came to Armidale in 1956 when Eric accepted a lecturing position at UNE (14). Jo enrolled at UNE and became part of our history group. One of our first if not the first assignments was to prepare a summary of some work by Gordon Childe on prehistory - Jo did hers in verse! Later, Jo became a member of the history department and principal of Mary White College. Her sensitivity to the Aboriginal cause, and its ambivalent relationship with Christianity, focused her research for two decades on the Aboriginal situation and the state of religion in the first half of the 19th century. This work remains relevant today.

In 1958, UNE’s Belshaw Block was destroyed by fire. “Belshaw’s done his block” said the sign in Prosh, the student procession later that year. That was funny, but the fire was no laughing matter for those affected. In Eric Woolmington’s case, it destroyed all copies of his about to be submitted PhD thesis and his research notes. He had to begin again.

Eric’s new study was an examination of the geographic basis of support for the New England New State Movement (15). This choice was partially determined by events at the time but also reflected the University’s role. Its founders had seen it as the university of the North, a view shared by the foundation staff. It was, in the words of Acting Warden Belshaw, to be a powerhouse of the North. Both founders and staff saw it too as an international community of scholars.

Outside the academy, there was considerable interest in educational advancement, decentralisation, economic development, regional studies, local history, scientific farming and environmental protection among the Northern leadership group. Organic farming can be taken as a little known example. This term appeared first in Lord Northbourne’s manifesto on organic farming, Look to the Land, published in London in May 1940. The book reached Australia quite quickly and was widely and favourably reviewed, attracting attention from that linked group of New England farmers and graziers already interested in scientific farming  as well as other Northern causes.

In 1944, the world’s first organic farming organisation, the Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society, was formed. Its periodical, the Organic Farming Digest, was the first organics advocacy journal. Harold White from Bald Blair was a key figure in its formation and became an avid contributor to the journal.

The self-government movement itself had to explain why separation was desirable, justified. In doing so, it articulated a theory of governance based partly on geography. Writing in 1926, David Drummond, the Movement’s main constitutional theorist, suggested that constitutional entities must be based on community of interest (16). Without that, oppression of the minority by the majority was inevitable. By this, Drummond was not referring to the democratic process whereby the majority view on particular issues triumphs, but circumstances where particular groups are consistently disadvantaged because their interests will normally conflict with the majority. The solution lay in restructuring government to better reflect community of interest.

The net result of all this was a flood of New England studies inside and outside the academy: conferences, pamphlets, theses, books and articles.

In exploring the geographic base of separatist support, Eric's central thesis was that New England was a marchland area, an area of economic competition between Sydney and Brisbane. Using a variety of techniques, he attempted to measure the natural economic boundary and then compared this to the actual boundary. The natural economic boundary lay far to the south of the actual boundary. He suggested that this area of overlap, contested territory, represented the natural heart of the movement.

I took Eric’s marchland concept and attempted to apply it to what Professor Iain Davidson has called that bit in the middle, the Northern Tablelands during Aboriginal times. Some aspects of my then interpretation were wrong, the tablelands were occupied during winter, but it remains a useful tool in explaining the relationship between Aborigines on the Tablelands and those in the river valleys to the west and east.

  

The Tablelands remain a bit of a mystery in archaeological terms because of the absence of evidence. Faced with this, Professor Wendy Beck (a fellow member of the Heritage Futures Research Centre),  adopted an approach that Isabel would have approved of: looking at the Tablelands’ lagoons and wetlands, she asked what population they might have supported? Wendy will be talking later in this seminar series so I will leave the answer to that seminar!

I spoke earlier of multidisciplinary studies and of the challenges faced by regional historians in integrating and tailoring broader research to regional stories. The last ten or so years has seen an explosion of research results, an explosion that has accelerated over the last two years, about the deeper human past including new skeletal remains, DNA and linguistic analysis. These results have changed, in fact upset, our understanding of the processes of human evolution and dispersal across the globe, replacing our previous linear picture with a still emerging multi-linear one. They include:

•  The discovery of new hominid species including Homo Floresiensis, Homo Naledi and the Denisovans
•  The realisation that other hominid species overlapped with modern humans far more than was previously realised and that modern humans include various admixtures of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes
•  Dating evidence from the Madjedbebe rock shelter that has pushed back  the date of human occupation of Sahul, the name given to the previous mega-continent combining New Guinea, the present Australian continent and Tasmania to 62,000+ years ago
• The discovery that modern Aboriginal and Papuan people carry some Denisovan genes, suggesting contact with a South-East Asian branch of the Denisovans prior to occupation of Sahul.

This is all fascinating stuff. However, as a regional historian I seek to understand how the emerging patterns might mesh with my evolving synthesis about Aboriginal occupation of New England. Here I confess to a degree of discomfort because of conflicts between different types of evidence.

In March this year, for example, Remco R. Bouckaert, Claire Bowern & Quentin D. Atkinson released research results suggesting that the Pama-Nyungan family of languages, the languages spoken in New England, arose just under 6,000 years ago around what is now the Queensland town of Burketown (17).. They suggest this language family spread across Australia as people moved in response to changing climate. I really struggle with this conclusion because I cannot reconcile it with other evidence.

Final Threads

I said at the outset that this talk was something of a history dégustation, a tasting of different elements in our history. In these last few minutes I want to stand back to look briefly at some broader issues, pulling threads together.

It will be clear, I think, that my historical focus is not local or even regional but rather the study of a group of interconnected regions joined by geography. Here I am concerned with patterns, with relationships, linkages, similarities and differences that can only be seen in a broader study.

In chronological terms, the study breaks into three parts. Aboriginal New England up to 1788, colonial New England and New England in the twentieth century. I chose 1788 as a cut-off for the first part to avoid entanglement in later issues such as the frontier wars. We know the darkness is coming, but we can still see the sunlight. I chose the end of the twentieth century as a cut-off to give a degree of separation from later events. Even then, later developments do intrude. When I began work, questions of paedophilia and child abuse had yet to emerge. Now I have to decide how much weight to place on them within the overall work.

  

Major events or periods broadly dictate a chronological framework across all three parts. However, my focus is specifically New England. External events are dealt with only to the extent that they affect New England. Within the broad chronological framework there are also themes that link periods.

The new state movement is an example. This movement along with the Progressive later Country Party form part of what I call the country movements. There is a second stream, the industrial union stream that began in the coal mines of Newcastle and the lower Hunter. The interaction between the two forms one of the recurring motifs in New England history.

As the project  proceeded, I became more aware of the distinctive elements within New England history and life including the existence of distinct forms of thought and culture. As a consequence,. the scope has widened from an original political and economic focus to one more broadly reflective of social, cultural and intellectual life.

There are issues here of balance and focus. I can’t cover everything!

As an historian, I am dependent on the hundreds of pieces of previous work expressed in theses, books and articles, work that encapsulates the New England historiographic tradition. Not all this work is to be found in academic studies, for it includes local and family histories, memoirs and autobiographies. We are truly blessed to have such depth.

---

(1)Paper delivered by Jim Belshaw in the University of New England’s Humanities seminar series, 13 April 2018

(2) James Belshaw, “A university for the north”, pp14- 34, “The Parthenon on the Hill”, pp287-292, in J S Ryan and Warren Newman (eds), Came to New England, University of New England, Armidale 2014
(3) Don Beer, “The Holiest Campus’, its Decline and Transformation: The University of New England, 1946–79”, Journal of Religious History, Volume 21 Issue 3, Pages 318 – 336, published on-line 09 October 2007

(4) Kenneth Dempsey Conflict and Decline: Ministers and laymen in an Australian country town, Methuen Australia, North Ryde, 1983 .

(5) Pauline Kneipp, This Land of Promise. The Ursuline Order in Australia 1882-1982, University of New England History Series 2, Armidale, 1982

(6) Don Aitkin's What was it all for? The Reshaping of Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005

(7) An Exploration of New England’s Aboriginal Languages, Paper delivered to a meeting of the Armidale & District Historical Society, Armidale 20 July 2010

(8) We know from dating at Warren Cave in Tasmania that the Aborigines had reached Tasmania around 35,000 years ago while dates from Willandra Lakes in South West New South Wales suggest occupation as early as 40 to 41,000 years ago. The dates we have for New England are all later.

The Cuddie Springs site near Brewarrina suggests occupation as long ago as 35,000 years BP. However, dates here have been subject to considerable dispute and there appears to be no agreement on the issue. Excluding Cuddie Springs, we have a date of greater than 20,200 years BP from a hearth at Glennies Creek 35 kilometres north of Branxton in the Hunter, while a site on a former terrace of Wollombi Brook near Singleton suggested a date range of 18,000-30,000 years BP. At Moffats Swamp near Raymond Terrace, a date of 17,000 years BP was obtained. On the Liverpool Plains, Aboriginal occupation has been dated to at least 19,000 years BP. Further north in South-East Queensland, the Wallen Wallen Creek site shows continuous occupation from about 20,000 years ago.

The dates suggest a consistent pattern of Aboriginal occupation across New England from perhaps 20,000 years ago, with possible visits if not occupation from perhaps 30,000+ years ago

(9) One of the surprising gaps in New England historiography given its importance is the absence of a full history of the self-government cause.

(10) Social Change in Australia’s New England 1950-2000, the seminar paper I gave in the Humanities seminar series, 8 April 2011, looks at social change in more detail. The paper is currently in revision.

(11) Billy Griffiths, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia,. Black Inc, February 2018). The section on Isabel McBryde  is repeated in Billy Griffiths, “Haunted Country”, Inside Story, 23 March 2018 http://insidestory.org.au/haunted-country/

(12) I reflect on John Mulvaney’s life in a post on my history blog, Reflections on the life of John Mulvaney, 5 November 2016. http://newenglandhistory.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/the-death-of-professor-john-mulvaney-on.html. The post includes links to some key documents for those who would like to read further.

(13) Jim Belshaw, The Economic Basis of Aboriginal Life in Northern New South Wales in the Nineteenth Century, BA Hons thesis, University of New England, 1966

(14)  A post on my New England blog, More UNE Passings - death of Jo Woolmington (7 January 2008) provides a personal perspective on Jo including some of her work http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com.au/2008/01/more-une-passings-death-of-jo.html

(15) E R Woolmington, The Geographical Scope of Support for the New State Movement in Northern New South Wales, PhD thesis, University of New England, 1963. See also E R Woolmington, A spatial approach to the measurement of support for the Separatist Movement in Northern New South Wales, Monograph Series No.2, Department of Geography, University of New England, 1966.

(16) Drummond, D.H., Constitutional Changes in Australia: Current Problems and Contributing Factors, Glen Innes Examiner, Glen Innes, 1926.

(17) Remco R. Bouckaert, Claire Bowern & Quentin D. Atkinson, “The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia”, Nature Ecology & Evolution, volume 2, pages 741–749 (2018) Published online:12 March 2018 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0489-3

Creating the Parthenon on the Hill; establishment and early life of the Armidale Teachers’ College

Presentation by Jim Belshaw to mark the launch of the permanent Hinton exhibition, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, Saturday 17 February 2018. 

The art gallery we stand in today was constructed on the old Armidale Teachers’ College playing fields[1]. The art collection that we celebrate today was donated to the Armidale Teachers’ College by that remarkable man Howard Hinton, a man that Michael Moignard will talk about in detail.

The College was the first successful attempt to decentralize higher education outside the capital cities. It would be ten years before the next successful move, the establishment of the New England University College, again in Armidale. There would then be another long gap before further action was taken.

The College’s story is a remarkable one.

Its establishment required a very particular combination of forces, people and events to overcome the barriers to establishment. The College was created with astonishing speed. The State election was on 8 October 1927, lectures began in February 1928. It’s hard to see any Australian Government managing that today outside wartime.

Construction of the College’s new building, the Parthenon on the Hill, was driven forward in the face of deepening depression and rising criticism with a determination that the building should in every way match if not exceed the facilities offered to students at Sydney Teacher’ College. This rush would save the College from Depression closure because Drummond’s white elephant, to use a phrase from the time, was too far advanced to stop.

The College’s establishment was linked to a clash in views about teacher education, a clash between those focused on the academic and those on the vocational. The College was established to prove the vocational case. To this end, the best lecturers were selected, the best supporting facilities created.

The combination of this with the  relative remoteness of the new College made for an intense student experience. To a degree, this experience and the College’s overall influence has been over-shadowed by the later establishment of the university college and the university.

That’s a pity, because the College had a profound influence on many, one that I have become increasingly aware of as my research has proceeded. Perhaps this short talk may redress the balance a little.

I now want to talk briefly about the College’s foundation. We can think of this in two ways, the broad trends that provided the context for establishment, the specific events that led to establishment. 

Context

What would later be called the drift to the cities was evident by the 1880s. The non-metropolitan population had grown greatly, but was thinly spread. With no countervailing forces, booms in city construction especially in Sydney and Melbourne drew people to the cities from country areas. Federation strengthened the drift to the cities because it created a customs union with relatively high tariffs. This redistributed incomes from primary production to manufacturing, from smaller states to bigger states and from country to metropolitan areas.

To indicate the scale of the drift, Sydney’s share of the NSW population rose from 27 per cent in 1871 to 35 per cent in 1891. After a brief pause during the depression of the 1890s, the proportion began to rise again, from 36 per cent in 1901 to 39 per cent in 1911[2].

Country people were aware of this trend, with increasing calls from the late 1880s for effective decentralisation. Country people also faced problems in accessing services. These were especially acute in education, with the Sydney Government struggling to provide schools and teachers to such a dispersed population.

Concerns about the drift to Sydney, about poor services, played into an already established narrative of an oppressed country, an oppressing city.

Farmers faced particular problems. The last decades of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century had seen a rapid increase in farm production, facilitated by closer settlement measures and the spread of the railways. Farmers faced rising costs, rising debt levels, but were increasingly exposed to international markets that determined the prices they received independent of costs.

The growing sense of discontent led to the emergence of two new political movements in Northern NSW. The first was the Progressive, later Country, Party which first entered the State Parliament in 1920. The second was a reborn new state movement.

The Country Party encapsulated country grievances about country neglect, including education. While a state wide party, its heartland was in Northern New South Wales.

The new state movement drew from similar grievances, but in pushing for self government for the North it articulated a common sense of Northerness that did much to overcome that rigid local parochialism that so impeded regional cooperation.

 1915: An apparently minor dispute over the Helen steam ferry re-launches separatist agitation

The twentieth century New State Movement began at Grafton in 1915. Grafton had been the major centre of separatist agitation during the colonial period. Now a dispute over the Helen, a steam ferry crossing the Clarence, created a new movement for self government and decentralisation. 

Earle Page used the Helen to campaign for decentralisation and new states. Page would became mentor to the younger Drummond    

Led by the Mayor of South Grafton, local doctor Earle Page, the movement spread rapidly and then declined because of the First World War. Page would later become Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister for a short while, foundation chair of the University College of New England Advisory Council and then UNE’s first Chancellor.  

Following the War, Page relaunched the movement. This call was taken up in 1920 by Victor Thompson, editor of the Tamworth Observer, now the Northern Daily Leader.. With the approval of his Board,

Thompson (photo) launched a newspaper propaganda campaign in favour of self-government that gathered support from most newspapers outside the Lower Hunter. It was also supported by every Progressive/Country Party parliamentarian from the North and by most business leaders.

By 1927, support for the new state cause had declined. However, ideas, links and beliefs were well established. In 1920, the first New State manifesto, Australia Subdivided, put a key problem facing the North in this way: “In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area.”[3]

It was time to do something about this.

Establishment

The state elections held on Saturday 8 October 1927 gave the Country Party the balance of power, resulting in the formation of a Nationalist/Country Party coalition government. The tightly knit Country Party team were determined to use this first time in Government to deliver on plans and policies developed over the eight years since the party’s formation.

Four men would prove critical to the events that followed. The first was David Drummond, the member for Armidale and now Minister for Public Instruction. During the complex coalition discussions there had been some suggestions that Drummond should become speaker. Drummond had reacted strongly. He was too young to retire and particularly wanted the education portfolio.  

Drummond was then 37. Born in Sydney on 11 February 1890, he had been forced to leave school at twelve, becoming a ward of the state soon after. To add to the boy’s difficulties, he was almost deaf following a school illness, a considerable impediment.

David Drummond, 1907, the year he came to Armidale as a farm labourer. 

After a time in a boys’ home and various foster arrangements with farm families, Drummond arrived in Armidale in 1907 as a farm labourer. In 1911, his elder brother arranged for him to become a manager on a share farm basis (that’s income based on a share of the crop) on a new block outside Inverell. This allowed Drummond to marry the following year.

At Inverell, Drummond became actively involved in the Farmers’ and Settlers’ Association and in the Methodist Church, becoming a lay preacher. An inveterate reader, he taught himself preaching and public speaking from how to do books while riding round the paddocks.

In 1919, Drummond was approached by a delegation from his immediate area asking him to run as a Progressive Party candidate for the multi-member Northern Tablelands electorate. Drummond agreed.

Drummond was not expected to win. He was young, deaf, lacked formal education and relatively unknown outside his immediate area. Indeed, some party officials placed great pressure on him to force his withdrawal. Drummond resisted this and to the surprise of most was elected as the third member after Labor’s Alfred McClelland and the Progressive’s Mick Bruxner.

An older Michael Bruxner, 1951. The more experienced Bruxner who shared Drummond's dreams did much to help and support the younger Drummond,     

By 1927 Drummond had established himself as a senior and respected figure in both the Country Party and the New State Movement. He had developed a particular interest in country education and had been involved in early moves to establish a university college in Armidale.

Drummond wanted to establish a country college for country kids. A Northern College would also provide a key building block in the infrastructure required to support a Northern State.

Just nine days after being sworn in, Drummond asked for an urgent report from our second key figure, his new Under-Secretary S H (Stephen Henry) Smith, on the possible establishment of country teachers’ colleges, suggesting Wagga Wagga and Armidale as possible sites.

Smith welcomed the request. The Department was struggling to find country teachers. Too many were refusing country postings after their Sydney training. The new college was also a chance to put his own ideas on teacher education into practice.

Smith with Drummond, Parliament House Sydney. The two men bonded in part because Drummond understood
and respected the older Smith. 

Smith was then in his early sixties [4} Handsome and intelligent, with a commanding presence and a beautiful speaking voice, he was also shy, fussy, sensitive and vulnerable to personal attack. Starting as a pupil teacher, Smith had worked his way though the ranks, becoming Under-Secretary in 1922 upon the retirement of the famous Peter Board. Smith knew that there were those who affected to despise him because of his lack of formal education and was deeply wounded by it.

Alexander Mackie at his desk, Sydney Teachers’ College. His clashes with S H Smith were critical to the establishment of the College

Smith had clashed with Professor Alexander Mackie, the head of Sydney Teachers, College.[5]. Mackie, a brilliant Scottish-born academic, had come to Sydney in 1906 to head the newly established Sydney College. He was a man of strong views who believed that that the main emphasis in teacher training should be academic, that the independence of Sydney Teachers’ College must be preserved, and who had little time for financial or other constraints on his activities.

Smith took a different view. Bound up in the day-to-day problems of State education, he regarded the College’s job as training those teachers the Department required in the way the Department required. Smith also disagreed with Mackie as to the most desirable form of teacher training: While not opposed to academic training, Smith thought that Mackie’s academic bias meant ill-trained teachers, and instead supported a more vocationally-oriented training. This would become important in forming the character of the new College.

These differences in approach were compounded by their differing personalities. After Smith made a surprise inspection of Sydney Teachers’ College in 1927, Mackie wrote to him that such inspections could ‘only be done competently by a person with the necessary qualifications.’ He went on: ‘The inspection of highly qualified specialists on the College staff should be entrusted to men and women with similarly high academic qualifications and with extensive experience of College work.’[6] Not surprisingly, Smith found this letter ‘offensive’[7]. Mackie, he later commented sarcastically to Drummond, had ‘that type of mind which is usually associated with the Scottish metaphysician.’[8] Drummond understood Smith, and the two men would become close.

Smith immediately recommended Armidale, a move that obviously appealed to Drummond, but was not without logic. Armidale was already a major education centre. It also had available land.

The old gaol in operation. Locals were determined to see it gone. 

The best building site in the city consisted of eight acres of crown land on South Hill with commanding views over the city. This was occupied by an old gaol set in gardens gone to wilderness.

Adjoining the goal site to the south were 100 acres of crown land previously used as agistment paddocks for the horses of the Gold Commissioner and District Surveyor. Diagonally opposite was another reserve, the Police Paddock, with another 44 acres of crown land. In all, up to 152 acres (60.7 hectares) were available for use at no cost to the Government, providing a magnificent site for a new college. However, this would take time to build. Other accommodation had to be found in the meantime if a college was to be opened in Armidale.

At this point our next key figures enters the scene, A W Hicks, the very able local school inspector. Hicks knew the city well and was close to Drummond and Smith. At Smith’s request, he began negotiations early in November 1927 about the possible purchase or rental of suitable sites in the city. This included “Girrahween”, a boarding house that had been on the market for some time and which would make an ideal hall of residence for women students. Strict secrecy was required – Drummond, Smith and Hicks were the only ones who knew what was being proposed - on both commercial and political grounds.

On 17 November, Hicks wrote to Smith outlining what was possible; “Girrahween” and “The Elms” could be purchased for £5,150; “Arran House” for £1,500; while “Whare-Koa” could be leased for £3 per week and its furniture purchased for £725. Smith now visited Armidale unofficially as a prospective buyer. By 9 December, Smith had prepared a Cabinet submission seeking approval for the establishment of the College and the purchase or lease of necessary buildings. By 12 December 2017, Cabinet had approved the proposal.

On that day Cecil Bede (CB) Newling, our forth key player, was summonsed to Sydney by telegram[9]. Presenting himself to Smith next morning, Newling was sworn to secrecy and taken to see Drummond. Drummond offered him the post of Principal, but .said that he would like Newling to go to Armidale for three days to see the place and consult his wife before agreeing.

That night, Tuesday 13 December, Newling left for Armidale on the night train. Hicks met him at the station the next day, giving Newling every assistance including full information on conditions, possibilities and potentialities.

Newling was then 44 and had had a distinguished career as teacher and inspector. While teaching, he had also completed both a BA and MA in history with first class honours and a university medal from Sydney University. Newling was known to and trusted by both Smith and Drummond. Both had promised him that academic standards were a matter for him, that they would always back his decisions, a promise both kept. Excited by the concept, attracted by the idea of developing his own curriculum, Newling accepted the offer after discussing it with his wife.

Newling's involvement with the College's establishment and development is outlined in his autobiography. His approach seems paternalistic today, but he was the right man for the time. 

With lectures due to begin in March 1928, just two months away, the pace was frantic. This included developing arrangements that would allow the College to at least begin operations in the absence of facilities. The modifications required to turn newly purchased Girrahween into the women’s’ residence could not begin until an existing lease on the building expired, while construction of the main college building was some time off.

During this frantic period, Hicks continued to handle all the on-ground arrangements. Newling initially split his time between Yass, Sydney and Armidale before his permanent move to Armidale, working on all the myriad practical and educational details associated with creating a new institution from scratch. Smith had to find the best possible staff for both the College and the newly constituted Armidale Demonstration School while ensuring the whole operation meshed with Departmental and public service requirements.

For his part, Drummond monitored every aspect of the project to ensure that his new baby would be health with every chance in life.. An activist minister, his ministerial letter books are full of instructions, suggestions and requests as he looked for resources for the new College.

Strict secrecy had been maintained for practical and political reasons in a way that would not be possible today.

The first break in secrecy came on 12 December when the Tenterfield Star reported that the Armidale goal was to be demolished and that rumour had it that the site was likely to be used for a technical college or teachers’ college that would serve the northern districts and not Armidale alone. This was followed by a well informed article in the Armidale Chronicle which effectively broke the story. On 7 January 1928,  the papers carried a short announcement from Drummond providing details of the proposal including the purchase of “Girrahween” and “The Elms”[10].

The publicity drew a mixture of praise and criticism. Drummond knew the country well and was well aware of the way that sometimes fierce Northern local parochialism had destroyed cooperative efforts. In both private and public he was persistent in emphasizing that this was a college for the north. This College, he told Armidale Mayor Morgan Stephens, must be seen as the College of the North, not just Armidale. The new state campaigns of the early 1920s had been led by key Northern pressmen. Drummond knew the editors and proprietors; he was now a newspaper man himself, so gaining friendly newspaper coverage was not hard. 

There was criticism from the Labor opposition, from some country towns elsewhere in the state who felt that they had a better claim, but the country press in general saw this as an early delivery of an election promise, while the Northern press all mentioned that this was a college for the North.

Perhaps the strongest criticisms came from prospective students and their parents who saw Armidale and the new College as second class compared to Sydney and the Sydney Teachers’ College. This was a significant problem because it might affect enrollments. Smith and Drummond were unmoved

The first class of 1928-29,. There were 33 women, 30 men in the group

The official inauguration ceremony for the new college took place on Friday 9 March 1928. The last students did not arrive until late the night before.

It was a gala affair, including a complimentary dinner in the Armidale Town Hall in honour of David Drummond and S H Smith attended by upwards of 230 people. It was, the Armidale Chronicle said happily, “the largest aggregation of political and educational personages in the history of the city.”[11]. Sadly, S H Smith could not attend because of illness.

“We are gathered here today”, Drummond said, “for the purpose of celebrating the opening of the first Teachers Training College in Australia to be established outside of the capital cities…..this is a historic occasion because it marks a departure in educational history ….fraught with the greatest possibilities for good, if the work …..is carried to its logical conclusion.” 

Building the Parthenon on the Hill

Meantime, work continued on the nuts and bolts issues associated with the establishment of the new institution. “Girrahween” may have been purchased, but it would be some time before it was ready. Lectures began for the initial enrollment of 63 (30 men and 33 women) in Siberia, a new two room building used for manual arts training at the renamed Armidale Demonstration School. “Whare-Koa” provided accommodation for 24 women under the supervision of Matron Bell, while the men students and the remaining nine women had to find private board. As would happen ten years later with the University College, everything was in short supply. Again as would happen ten years later, the standard of the new staff and their teaching made the difference.

“Girrahween” was finally ready for occupation by the beginning of 1929, with the female students moving in in February. This allowed the male students to occupy “Whare-Koa”, a use that continued until the lease expired in 1931. Lectures for the second year students could now be given in “Girrahween’s” west wing.

While the new College was settling into its temporary accommodation, work was underway on permanent premises that would come to be called the parthenon on the hill.

In December 1927, Smith had obtained approval for the transfer of the goal site to his Department once the buildings had been demolished. At first, the Government Architect proposed to utilise the old goal buildings, something that was vehemently opposed by the College’s protagonists. Drummond set out the case quite clearly in words that guided his overall approach throughout the project: “if the Armidale Teachers’ College were to be a Country College for Country Students then the Government should provide the amenities both architectural and cultural that the students would have if they were trained in Sydney.”[12]

On 10 February 1928, the decision was taken to demolish the goal and sell the materials. Drummond wanted the new buildings constructed as soon as possible. He called for sketch plans early in 1928, then on 5 April he wrote to the Departmental architect asking him to arrange for the Chief Architect to take the plans of Sydney Teachers” College to Armidale for personal discussions with Mr Newling to see what changes might need to be made to accommodate 250 students, taking local conditions into account.

With plans complete, tenders for the new building were called. On 1 March 1929, a contract was let to the Public Works Department. It provided for completion within eighteen months at a cost of £81,200. Drummond had wanted an iconic building and the plans provided for that. Externally, the style was free treatment of Italian Renaissance with meticulous attention to detail. Internally, there was the same attention to detail.

Construction began on 8 April 1929, with Drummond closely monitoring the whole project. In October 1929, for example, Smith recorded that the Minister had decided to proceed with the whole central section of the building comprising the gymnasium and Assembly Hall as originally envisaged. The gymnasium was constructed with special care, based on the then best models. It featured a floor specially mounted on elliptical springs to cushion impacts.

Drummond lays one of the foundation stones for the new building

On Saturday 29 November 1929 foundation stones were formally laid in a scene marked by flags and bunting thoughtfully provided by Drummond[13]. Two foundation stones were laid, one by Drummond, the other by the Premier.

A large crowd had gathered to watch events and the assembled dignitaries, including Premier Thomas Bavin, the Chief Secretary, the Director of Education, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney, the Director of the Tourist Bureau and mayors and shire presidents from across the North. The Armidale City Band played to entertain the gathering.

The Government, Drummond, told the crowd, was determined on the decentralisation of higher educational facilities and, in addition to providing the Armidale College, had purchased a fine site at Wagga to erect a college to serve the southern parts of the State. “Some people might cavil at the expenditure”, the Minister said, “but if they did it was due to ignorance. Actually, the cost of the college being erected was proportionately cheaper to that of the Sydney College.”

For his part, the Premier said that the tendency to concentrate public activities in the capital city had done an enormous amount of harm and the Government was determined to stop it as far as possible. The decentralisation of higher education was only one phase, but was proof of the Government’s commitment. Sydney University Vice Chancellor Professor Wallace said that he was amazed at the excellence of Armidale’s educational institutions. He could not commit the Sydney University Senate. However, he was sure that the Senate would view with the greatest sympathy any move made to have the College affiliated with the University. As the stones were laid, the Armidale City Band broke into a rousing rendition of “For he’s a jolly good fellow”.

As the work proceeded, dark clouds were gathering. Few realised just how vulnerable the Australian economy had become to any international downturn[14].  In November, Australia was in the grip of recession, although the scale was still not clear. By early 1930, the expected State deficit for 1929-30 had risen to over three million pounds.

Drummond lost office at the elections of 25 October 1930 with the return of the Lang Labor Government. With student numbers cut heavily because of the Depression, Drummond e faced a withering storm of criticism over what was now called Drummond’s white elephant., but was unrepentant. At first, it looked as though the College might be closed. However, Labor Minister William Davies visited Armidale in March 1931 to inspect the situation for himself. “You are very fortunate to be in such a nice institution”, he is reported to have told students. It is one of the finest buildings in New South Wales”[15].

The completed Parthenon on the Hill before the full development of the trees and gardens 

The building itself was finally completed in September 1931, although students had begun using it from February 1930 when the southern wing was opened. The playing fields were not developed, nor would the new building ever be officially opened. However, the College would survive as an entity, as would its iconic Parthenon on the Hill.

By the time Drummond returned to office in June 1932, student numbers had begun to recover. Within a few years, the College was full to overflowing.

The Student Experience

Scrub school south west of Tenterfield 1923. While earlier, this is an example of the type of schools the 19 year old graduates went to

The students who came to the College in the decades after its foundation found it an intense experience. They were all young, seventeen or in some cases sixteen, most came from Northern families that had no experience of post-secondary education. They were being trained for a career that would place many of them at nineteen or even a little younger as sole teachers in country schools, often boarding with local families, their actions under constant scrutiny.

Getting to Armidale was not always easy. Kempsey road 1920s, Caling family collection 

 Just getting to Armidale could be a battle because of poor transport linkages. For North Coast students, it could require a train trip to Maitland and then a further train north, Others took a bus onto the Tablelands and then caught the train. A few travelled to Sydney and then caught the steamer. The students who arrive late in Armidale on the night before the College’s opening came from the North Coast.

Woolgoolga Wharf. Some students went to Sydney by train and then north by steamer

The students in that first intake, the class of 1928-29, faced particular difficulties. Many had not wanted to come to Armidale. Some hadn’t even heard of the new College until they received a telegram offering them a place there. Many parents were outraged. The initial facilities were primitive.

At the end of 1929, Smith and Newling with the agreement of Drummond decided the make that class a one-off special offer, one that would never happen again. In recognition of their work, they could choose which school they would be sent to following graduation. Newling records that 52 of 54 students chose a country school. To Drummond, Smith, Newling and the others involved, this was a vindication of their work. Country kids going to a country college choosing a country school.

Today, we would think of Pop Newling’s approach as outlined in his biography The Long day Wanes, the nickname pop reflected the way that students saw him, as paternalistic. It was. He aimed to create a secure environment with rules. His aim, in his own words, was to “prepare students to be teachers and to glorify their “calling’ rather than to transform the college into a small university.”

In considering his approach, it is helpful to remember that today those student would be in upper secondary school with four years of professional training before them before they were allowed in the classroom. By then, many of the class of 1928-29 had been teaching for four years, many were married with children, many had been promoted and were engaged in further study.

Our attitudes today are arguably far more paternalistic!

I will finish this talk with a few slides dedicated to the student experience over the first decades:

Howard Hinton. The paintings he donated formed an integral element of College life and were used in teaching

ATC swimming Carnival 1937. Sport was an integral part of College life along with cultural activities. 

And some students:

Keith Bain, Wauchope, dancer and choreographer, inspiration for Strictly Ballroom, dux 1945

For writer Shirley Walker, the College was a way of leaving the claustrophobia of home and community.

Pat Devery started playing rugby league at Murwillumbah High, continued at ATC. He represented Australia in 1946.

Edwin Wilson, Mullumbimby, writer, teacher and artist, attributed his love of art to the Hinton Collection

This is just a tiny sample!

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Footnotes

[1] Public lecture delivered at the New England Regional Art Museum. Saturday 17 February 2018, to mark the opening of the permanent exhibition of the Hinton Collection. Unless otherwise cited, material in this chapter is drawn from Elwyn S Elphick and Lionel A Gilbert, Forty-Three and Seven: A Short Illustrated History of the First Fifty Years of Teacher Education in Armidale, Armidale College of Advanced Education, Armidale 1978: James Belshaw, “A university for the north”, pp14- 34, “The Parthenon on the Hill”, pp287-292, in J S Ryan and Warren Newman (eds), Came to New England, University of New England, Armidale 2014; C B Newling, The Long Day Wanes, L F Keller, Hunters Hill, 1973. Further supporting material including material on economics and politics including the country party and new state movements is drawn from Jim Belshaw, Decentralisation, Development and Decent Government: the life and times of David Drummond 1890-1941, PhD thesis, University of New England, 1983.

[2] The statistical material is taken from W A Sinclair, The Process of Economic Development in Australia, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1976, pp108 and 140; and Russell Ward, A Nation for a Continent, pp446-447

[3] E Page and others (eds), Australia Subdivided, The First New State, Examiner Printing Works, Glen Innes, 1920, p10.

[4] The description of Smith is largely drawn from a letter Drummond wrote to Elizabeth Campbell on 1 March 1965. Copy in Drummond Papers, University of New England Archives, A248/1087/6. A brief biography of Smith is provided in Alan Barcan, 'Smith, Stephen Henry (1865–1943)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-stephen-henry-8483/text14921, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 10 March 2018. I think that Barcan underestimates Smith’s influence.

[5] Material on the relations between Smith and Mackie is drawn from E S Elphick, Armidale Teachers’ College: Its Background, Foundation and Early Years, Litt.B thesis, University of New England, 1972, pp70-94. Smith’s views of the clash between himself and Mackie are set out in his minutes to Drummond of 17 November 1927 and 18 September 1928. These minutes (contained in Drummond’s Ministerial Letter Book, Drummond papers, University of New England Archives, A248/Vol.2133, p6 and pp 44-47) give a clear picture of Smith’s attitudes and personality. Mackie’s life is summarised in  A. Mandelson, 'Mackie, Alexander (1876–1955)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mackie-alexander-7396/text12859, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 10 March 2018.

[6] Mackie to Smith, 4 November 1927. Cited Elphick, op cit, p82

[7] Smith to Drummond, 17 November 1927. Ministerial Letter Book, op cit.

[8] Smith to Drummond, 18 September 1928. Ministerial Letter Book, op cit

[9] Newling  pp63ff. Additional details of Newling’s life can be found in L. A. Gilbert, 'Newling, Cecil Bede (1883–1975)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/newling-cecil-bede-7830/text13595, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 5 March 2018.

[10] The Manning River Times and Advocate for the Northern Coast Districts of New South Wales, 7 January 1928

[11] Both the Chronicle quote and the references to Drummond’s speech are drawn from Elphick and Gilbert, op cit, p31.

[12] Cited Elphick and Gilbert, op cit, p17

[13] Sydney Morning Herald, p12.

[14] Material on the onset of the Great Depression is drawn from Belshaw Decentralisation , Development and Decent Government, pp 258-264.

[15] Cited Elphick and Gilbert, op cit, p37.