History Revisited - how one TAS Old Boy took to the skies

P G Taylor and Charles Kingsford Smith welcomed in Hawaii on the first Australia-US plane flight

“Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” captures in comedic form some of the strangeness and excitement associated with aviation’s early day. A number of the early Australian pioneers had connections with Northern New South Wales.

Sir Patrick Gordon Taylor (1896-1966), more commonly known as PG or Bill, was born at Mosman, Sydney, on 26 October 1896. His father, also Patrick, was a successful businessman who built up considerable business interests fuelled by urban growth on Sydney’s North Shore assisted by judicious company re-arrangements.

Taylor early acquired a sense of adventure and a love of the seas, roaming Pittwater in his dingy including an expedition to uninhabited Lion Island, site of a major Little Penguin Colony. Taylor’s parents chose to send the boy to The Armidale School to complete his education. There he finished his schooling as senior prefect.

Rejected by the Australian Flying Corps, Taylor went to Britain and was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps in August 1916. There he served with distinction, winning the Military Cross and being promoted to Captain.

Like many First World War pilots, Taylor acquired a love of flying. During the 1920s, he flew as a private pilot, completing an engineering course and studying aerial navigation. He was drawn into the circle around Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm.

In 1933 and 1934, he flew between Australia and New Zealand as Smithy’s second pilot and navigator on the Southern Cross, acted as navigator on Charles Ulm’s return flight to England and with Smithy completed the first Australian-US flight. However, it was the events of May 1935 that established Taylor as a heroic figure in the public mind.

On 15 May, a heavily laden Southern Cross took off for New Zealand on the King George V jubilee airmail flight with Kingsford Smith as pilot, Taylor as navigator, John Stannage as radio operator.

Six hours into the flight, part of the exhaust manifold on the centre engine broke off, badly damaging the starboard engine propeller. Smithy closed down the engine, applied full power to the other two engines and turned back for Australia while the crew jettisoned the cargo.

This is one of the few airmail letters that survived the flight.

 The oil pressure on the port engine began to fall rapidly, dooming the flight. Climbing out of the fuselage, Taylor edged his way against the strong slipstream along the engine connecting strut and collected oil from the disabled starboard engine in the casing of a thermos flask. He then transferred it to the port engine.

Assisted by wireless operator, John Stannage, Taylor had to repeat this process six times before the aircraft landed safely at Mascot some nine hours later.

In 1946, these events were dramatised in the Columbia Pictures/Ken Hall production Smithy, with Taylor playing himself. Not unexpectedly, the film was popular at the Saturday night films put on for TAS boys!

Taylor went on to a long and successful career as pilot, businessman and, perhaps less expectedly, writer, publishing eight successful books with adventure, flying and sea themes.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 August 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

Postscript

Coincidentally, at the time this column came out,  freelance writer and film maker Rick Searle released a biography of Patrick Gordon Taylor, The Man Who Saved Smithy. You can hear an interview with Rick here. .

History Revisited - mixed beginnings for a household favourite

POPULAR PET: Cats weren't always well accepted in homes. Some rulers ordered them killed because of fear of vermin, others because of fear of witchcraft.

It is not clear when cats were first domesticated. The earliest date we appear to have is from a grave in Cyprus dated to around 7.500 BCE. Since the cat in question was not native to Cyprus and was buried with great care near a human burial, the assumption is that it may have been imported as a pet.

Unlike dogs who were useful in hunting and herding and were therefore domesticated first, the domestic cat emerged in the Fertile Crescent with the development of farming. Farming required food storage, creating a vermin problem. The domestic cat was the outcome.

Unlike dogs, the cat lives solitary in the wild. As a result, it has been able to take what it wants from humans (food, shelter, play) and to pay its dues in return (pest control) without losing contact with its original identity.

By the time of the Pharaos, the cat had acquired a very special place in Egyptian mythology as a sacred animal. To kill a cat was an offence punishable by death.

From Egypt, the cat colonised the expanding Roman Empire. Cats become common and valuable assets to those who harvested crops and had problems with rats and disease. They were introduced to Britain around 100 AD. The King of Wales, Hywel Dda, declared them protected by Law as sacred and valuable animals. Killing a cat could again be punishable by death.

The cat’s special mythological place did not always work to the animal’s advantage. During the Middle Ages in Europe, cats became associated with superstition and witch craft. They were considered animals of sin and were thought to be associated with Satan.

In 1348 when the Black Death (The Plague) broke out, cats were suspected as causing the disease or were in some ways associated with the devil’s work. Some rulers ordered the killing of all cats, in so doing encouraging the spread of disease.

Cats made a European comeback because of their anti-vermin usefulness as well as their attractions as pets. They were frequently carried on ships, in so doing encouraging their spread. 

The first cat probably arrived in Australia around 1804 as a ship cat. Cats breed rapidly. By 1820, Sydney had a significant feral cat problem. I have wondered how quickly and how far cats spread beyond Sydney in advance of European settlement. We know livestock spread, so a cat spread is possible.

As with dogs, cat ownership grew rapidly over the nineteenth century, associated in part with the growing middle class now able to afford pets.

Growth in pet ownership was not limited just to dogs and cats. Birds, for example, became extremely popular. The first pet food to go on the market was, in fact, bird food, with the first dog food marketed in England around 1860.

And the most important technological advance so far as cats as house pets is concerned? Arguably, kitty litter! This first became available from 1947. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 July 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - the long history of man's best friend

NATIVE CANINE: It is thought that the dingo reached Australia 4,000 ago to become the first Australian dog variety.

Continuing the story of the dog from my last column, the RSPCA suggests that Australians have over four million pet dogs. That’s a considerable number. However, the role of dog as pet is quite recent.

There appears to be considerable dispute as to when the first dog diverged from wolf ancestors. However, a date range of 27,000 to 40,000 years ago appears most likely. It also appears that population shifts during the Late Glacial Maximum, that cold period when the Northern Tablelands displayed semi-glacial conditions, helped spread the dog.

Archaeological remains suggest that the first Australian dog variety, the dingo, reached this continent somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 years ago. We know that the dingo had reached Northern NSW around 3,200 years ago because of the presence of a canine tooth found in a shell midden at Wombah in the lower Clarence.

Dogs and humans seemed to have formed a natural pairing, in so doing changing the dogs in the process. Dogs are intelligent pack animals, fitting into the natural life style of hunter-gather societies.

With time, they came to be used in a variety of roles – hunting, guarding, herding, transport and, in some cases, food. The dingo could well have reached Australia as live food on off-course voyages.

The role of dogs as guards and hunters is well incorporated into mythology, showing the ancestry of the relationship. In Greek mythology, Cerberus is a three-headed watchdog who guards the gates of Hades. In Norse mythology, a bloody, four-eyed dog called Garmr guards Helheim. In Hindu mythology, Yama, the god of death owns two watch dogs who have four eyes.

NUISANCE: Barking in urban areas has become a problem in modern times. It's just a question of selection.  

Time, space, natural selection and breeding with related species created a variety of dog types. Breeding to achieve or preserve particular characteristics has a considerable history, Barking, now seen as a major problem in an urban environment, is an example of a trait that seems to have developed through breeding for guard purposes.

A major change took place over the nineteenth century with the creation of dog breeds through selective breeding and breed promotion through kennel clubs and dog shows. Increasingly, dogs came to be selected for attractiveness and distinctive features, resulting in a vast variety of breeds.

Growing up in Armidale, few people had dogs for pets. Those that did generally kept their dogs outdoors. There was a clear distinction between the working dog and pets, creating a rural urban divide.

From around the start of the 1980s, there was an explosion in the number of domestic pet dogs and cats. The dog became an urban phenomenon. This was reflected in changes in the veterinary profession and especially the rise of the small animal vet. Today, the majority of veterinary students see their practice in terms of urban clinics catering to pets.

The rise of the urban dog has created its own rules and problems, including the rise of the puppy farm. The puppy farms are an urban, not rural problem. There would be no puppy farms without the urban buyer.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 22 July 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - cattle dog legacy born in our own backyard

NEW ENGLAND UPBRINGING: Many people are unaware of the blue heeler's origins in Northern NSW

I wonder how many people know that the Australian Cattle Dog was developed in Northern NSW?

The breed owes its existence to George Hall who arrived in Sydney in 1802. By 1825, the Halls had established two cattle stations in the Upper Hunter Valley, and had begun a northward expansion into the Liverpool Plains, the New England and what would become Queensland.

Frustrated at cattle losses on long droves through unfenced and often rugged country, Hall needed a better dog to help control the cattle. He therefore imported several of the dogs used by drovers in Northumberland and crossed them with dingoes that he had tamed to create what became known as Halls Heelers.

There were an effective stock dog giving Hall an advantage and he guarded them. It was not until Hall’s death in 1870 that the dogs became available, forming the core of what would become the Australian Cattle Dog also known as the Blue Heeler.

The development and recognition of the Australian Cattle Dog as a distinct recognised breed did not occur immediately. However, by the 1890s, the dogs had attracted the attention of the Cattle Dog Club of Sydney, a group of men with a recreational interest in the new practice of showing dogs competitively who began a breeding program centred on Halls Heelers.

Central to the program was Robert Kaleski, a remarkable young man.

Robert Lucian Stanislaus Kaleski was the son of a Polish mining engineer, John Kaleski, and his English wife Isabel, née Falder. Political pressures in Poland led John Kaleski to move to Germany where he held academic appointments and from there to Australia where he re-built a career as a mining engineer and assayer.

Born at Burwood in 1877, Robert Kaleski’s initial ill health led to him spending much time with a relative at Holsworthy near Sydney where he acquired a love of the bush. He began studying law, but then at the age of 21 he abandoned his studies to go droving. After a series of bush jobs, including timber getting on the Dorrigo Plateau, he took up a small selection at Holsworthy in 1904.

I said that Kaleski was a remarkable young man. That’s the only way I can describe it. In 1903, he was only 26, his breeding work led to the recognition of the Australian Cattle Dog as a distinct breed, followed by the Kelpie in 1904.

Kaleski founded the Cattle and Sheepdog Club of Australia. He also worked his dogs with stock, and both exhibited and judged dogs in the show ring. However, that’s only part of the Kaleski story.

Drawing from his experiences during the great Federation drought, Kakeski turned the small run down farm that he bought at Moorebank in 1907 into an experimental farm. There he trialled new land management processes, patenting some of the results.

In his spare time, he wrote extensively on bush, breeding and agricultural issues. He also tried his hand at fiction, writing for the Bulletin magazine under the pen name Falder, his mother’s maiden name.

Robert Kaleski died on his farm in 1961. At the age of 84, he was still experimenting. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 July 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - women in the exchange

INFORMATION HUB. The telephone exchange became a centre for community information.

When the first telephone exchange opened in Armidale in August 1901, there were 24 subscribers connected to a 100 line switchboard. By 1910, the number of subscribers had increased to nearly 250.

The new telephone system was far more capital and labour intensive than the telegraph system. Lines had to be connected to premises, phones installed with new switchboards purchased to handle the growing traffic.

In Armidale, the new exchange was open twenty-four hours. This required the appointment of what came to be called telephonists who managed not only the calls, but also the detailed paper work required to ensure proper billing.

The first NSW switch attendants were all men. It was not until August 1896 that the first women were appointed to the Sydney central exchange, all selected from the ranks of the Education Department’s pupil teachers. It would be 1913 before the first female telephonist was employed on the New England Tableland.

The move to employ women was not welcomed by all.

In April 1908, a letter writer in the Sydney Morning Herald complained that females “are physically unfit to endure the strain of much-nerve-wracking work as telephone operating.” However, there were practical reasons for their appointment, for the pay scales were more attractive to girls than boys.

Much later, advances in telecommunications would drain jobs from country areas, but initially the first employment effects were positive. When responsibility for postal, telegraph and telephone services was transferred to the Commonwealth after Federation, the large number of employees in the PMG gave the new Commonwealth a physical presence, its only physical presence, in large parts of Australia.

While the telephone service expanded rapidly, the costs involved in the spread of the required infrastructure meant considerable lags. It would be 1925 before the first telephone call could be made between Sydney and Brisbane. This made the telephone a device first for local communication, while the telegraph or post still carried longer distance traffic.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of improved local communication on the pattern of local life. Both country and town people could ring up and order goods for later collection or delivery. It became much easier to organise meetings and events, something that was used to great effect by those with interests in politics or the advancement of particular causes. The tempo of politics speeded up.

In many country areas, the local telephone exchange became the centre of community information, of gossip about what was going on.

The telephonist became the central person in a hub of information and exchange, the one person who was in contact with nearly everybody and knew what people were doing. She was also the person people depended on to get the news through when something went wrong.

People complained, of course, especially on the party lines with multiple subscribers on a single line where anybody could listen in, but nobody who could afford to pay would have been without the service. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 July 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - telephone links towns

REVOLUTIONARY: Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the first telephone connection between New York and Chicago in 1892. In Australia, Melbourne and Sydney were not linked until 1907.

In December 1877, E. C. Cracknell, Superintendent, Electric Telegraphs, in New South Wales successfully transmitted songs and music over the 224 km distance between West Maitland and Sydney using telegraph wires. Late in May the following year while Cracknell was visiting Armidale, there was a partially successful attempt to establish telephone communications between the Armidale and Uralla telegraph offices.

Those dates are quite remarkable.

Alexander Graham Bell first achieved transmission of intelligible speech over wire on 10 March 1876. According to Keith Munro who has recorded the history of country telephonists, details of Bell’s invention were published in the English Mechanic and World of Science of 6 April 1877 and then the Scientific American of 6 October 1877.

As soon as those publications reached Australia, both private individuals and those in the telegraph world began to experiment, constructing telephones based on the magazine articles. The potential value was clear to all, including those in the United States who triggered massive patent and political battles fighting for control of the technology.

In 1880, the first working telephone exchanges were established in Melbourne and Brisbane, followed by Sydney in 1881. The telephone age was dawning.

Despite the very early date of that experiment linking Uralla and Armidale, telephony was a little slower reaching the North. Graziers were especially early adopters, for this aided business.

Early in the 1890s, a transformer became available that allowed voice transmission over single wire telegraph lines. Over the next decade, lines were slung across paddocks to homesteads, allowing transmission of telegraphs and instructions.

Older Armidale residents may well remember those lines. Often sagging, the poles ancient and sometimes moss covered, they helped form the base of country communications.

The first Armidale service dates to 31 October 1891 when a line was installed between the Armidale Railway Station and the Goods Shed. Then came a gap until 1896 when a second line was installed between the Armidale Hospital and the Infectious Hospital. This was on the corner of O’Dell and Donnelly Streets.

Another gap, and then in 1899 a line was installed between the Hospital and Dr Sheldon’s surgery. In August 1901, the first Tablelands’ telephone exchange opened at Armidale. By the end of 1914, there were fifteen exchanges dotted across the Tablelands.

Those exchanges changed our lives for better and worse. They created new patterns of social interaction, of communications, of working, of politics. They speeded life up.

Later, with further technological advances that speeded life would become the whirly gig we know today. In the meantime, a very specific world was created that would, in it’s turn, be swept away.

In my last column in this series, I will look at some of the social aspects of the telephone.

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

History Revisited - age of the telegram

GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY: Telegraph boys, Brisbane, 1870.  Armidale's own office opened in October 1861

As I indicated in my last column, the telegraph spread globally with quite remarkable speed. This was a case where technology directly coincided with an urgent unmet need for rapid communications.

The installation costs of the system on land were relatively low, facilitating rapid construction. Operating and maintenance costs were considerable, but these could be recovered from a marketplace eager for quick communication. The telegram was a classic example of a simple packaged high value product. Creation of undersea cables was expensive and more complex, but by then the demand was there to justify the costs and risks.

The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. On 1 May 1844, the first public telephone line between Baltimore and Washington DC opened. In Australia, the first Australian line between Melbourne and Williamtown opened in March 1854.

All the Australian colonies rapidly built lines. In 1858, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were linked. In November 1861, the newly constructed NSW and Queensland lines met at the border, linking all the Eastern colonies.

Demand grew rapidly. New lines had to be added, while relatively small centres were quickly connected.

On the New England, telegraph offices were opened simultaneously on 1 October 1861 in Armidale, Glen Innes and Tenterfield as part of the opening of the progressive opening of the Northern Line. In 1869, a line to Port Macquarie was opened.

Older Armidalians will remember the telegram. It was so much part of or lives that is hard now to realise that our kids know nothing about it!

So, for the younger generation, telegrams were expensive. The cost of the telegram was based on the number or words, a sort of Twitter equivalent, so people kept their messages short.

The expense meant that, for the private person, telegrams were only sent on special occasions; marriages, deaths, anniversaries, congratulations and achievements,

I was in Hobart hitchhiking when my Leaving Certificate results came out. I went to the Hobart GPO to collect my mail, and there were all the telegraphs and other messages congratulating me. I took them back to the boarding house and read and reread the lot. I had no idea so many people were interested.

The link of the telegram with special news made their arrival a matter of great concern. So often, and especially during the two wars, their arrival meant the death of a loved one. A telegram carried fear.

Standing on their doorsteps, people ripped the envelope open to find the worst. The short clipped words carried a message that would change their lives forever. Distressed, they would carry the message indoors, trying to wok out what had to be done, what to do next.

Telegraph traffic peaked in 1945. Now a new competitor, the telephone, had become well entrenched. I will look at this in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - changing the way the world communicates

TRAILBLAZING: Built from as early as 500 BC, the Roman Roads were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman State. 

If you are going to run an Empire, you need communications. The Romans had the Roman Roads, while Marco Polo’s Travels describe in almost breathless tones the extensive communications system in the Great Khan’s empire.

Using both runners and horses with posting stations spaced at regular intervals, messages could be transmitted across vast distances within the Mongol Empire at remarkable speed. So important was the system, that provincial or local rulers were required by law to maintain the physical and animal infrastructure and given tax concessions to encourage them to do so.  

In the case of the British Empire, you find the Red Route, the network of undersea telegraph cables linking British territories. Intended to protect imperial interests and promote imperial commerce, the Red Route spread rapidly to the point that British cable laying ships dominated the global trade.

Australians have recently been commemorating various events connected with the First World War. There has been little recognition in those commemorations of the importance of the Red Route. It gave the British and Commonwealth side secure global communications, while Germany and the other Central Powers found their global communications badly disrupted.

Looking back, there were many remarkable features about the global spread of telegraphy. The first was its sheer speed.

Many complex problems had to be resolved before messages could be transmitted, let alone transmitted economically across a vast global cable network.

The first working telegraph system was created in 1816. The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. The first undersea cable was laid in 1850 between France and England. The growing international cable system reached Australia in October 1872.

If you think about it, that’s very fast, just fifty six years from first commercial application to global transformation. Its about the same time from the invention of the Turing machine to the creation of the internet.

Telegraphy transformed to world. It reduced the time taken to get a message from England to remote Australia from many weeks to seven hours. It transformed industry and governance.

New industries were created, warfare was revolutionised. For the first time, a newspaper in Sydney or Armidale could get information on events as they happened, not events past.. For the first time, a government official could expect to assert direct immediate control over a far distant subordinate. Real centralisation was born.

The remote Australian colonies were early adopters of the new technology. In my next  column, I will look at this and the impact on New England.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - life as postmaster in Armidale's early days

HISTORIC BUILDING: The current Armidale Post Office first became functional in 1880 under the watch of long-serving postmaster John Emblin.

Armidale’s first Post Office was established in March 1843. Armidale was less than four years old. That first Post Master, John Pattison, was entitled to a commission of 20% on postal charges, then one shilling and three pence for a letter to Sydney, plus an allowance of 30 shillings per year for lighting.

As the old currency system disappears in the mist of time, we forget the meaning of these old numbers. When decimal currency was introduced in 1966, one shillings and three pence was equivalent to 15 cents per letter, 30 shillings for lighting $3.

Those values came after years of inflation. Those early letters were very expensive, well beyond the reach of most people assuming they could in fact write.

By the time Armidale’s first Postmaster was appointed, the NSW mail service had been in existence for just under thirty years. On 25 April 1809 ex-convict Isaac Nichols was appointed first Postmaster for NSW.

Envelopes had not yet been invented. Early letters were sealed by folding, often with wax sealing the folds. Postal costs were paid by the receiver.

In 1838, two things happened. One was the start of the overland service from Sydney to the Port Philip settlement. The second was the invention of prepaid stamped letter sheets, a world first, allowing money to be collected from the sender. Some of those sheets carried the insignia Melbourne New South Wales!

In April 1840, the first overland mail arrived in Sydney from the Moreton Bay settlement in, the Sydney Herald Records, “the short space of thirty-nine days.” Ten years later came the first adhesive postage stamp.

Things weren’t always easy for Armidale’s first Postmasters. Money was short, and Government officials in Sydney were not inclined to spend it unless absolutely necessary.

In 1864, local member of Parliament Robert Forster wrote to the Minister for Finance complaining that it was painful to him to be constantly “reminding the Government of the fact that the Postmaster at Armidale, his Wife & 7 children are obliged to Eat, drink, Cook & Sleep in one small room.”

Things did improve. In 1880, long serving (and suffering) Postmaster John Emblin with his wife and multiple children was able to move into a brand new post office on the corner of Beardy and Faulkner Streets, While extended, the building was recognisably that we know today.

In 1889 there was another development. Following continuing complaints from Armidale residents, a second daily mail delivery was introduced to coincide with the arrival of the Northern (Queensland) mail train.

Hard to believe now that Armidale had two daily mail deliveries and that mail from Queensland was sufficiently important to warrant a second delivery.

You have to remember that Armidale families once had interconnections across Northern NSW into Queensland, that New England was once the centre of widespread pastoral enterprises extending into Queensland, that Queensland children came in numbers to Armidale schools.

It was a different world. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - Aboriginal life intensifies across New England

HILLS AND PLAINS: From 6,000 years ago, the Aborigines had spread across all the broader New England coast, hills and plains

We know from the ethnographic record that the pattern of Aboriginal life across the broader New England on the dawn of invasion was varied and complex. The archaeological record suggests that this pattern began forming after sea levels stabilised around 6,000 years ago, with growth accelerating around 5,000 years ago.

New England’s history is dominated by geography. From east to west, the often narrow coastal strip ends in the rugged broken escarpments of those blue ranges that provide a constant visual backdrop to much of the coast. The New England Tablelands, the largest tablelands in Australia, declines to the west, becoming the Western Slopes and then falling away into the vast Western Plains.

Looking north-south, that pattern creates the broad zones we know today, coast, tablelands, slopes and plains, each marked by local variation.

Five thousand years ago, as today, travel was easier north-south than it was east-west. The Aborigines of the slopes and plains formed one very broad grouping, those on the coast another.

Petrology studies rocks. In early pioneering work, Ray Binns and Isabel McBryde used petrological analysis to trace Aboriginal ground-edge artefacts in multiple collections back to source. Their work revealed a widespread exchange network that carried artefacts from the stone quarry at Moore Creek near Tamworth north and especially west as far as the Darling River.

This was a remarkable result because of the distances involved, and suggesting that the patterns we know from ethnographic evidence formed early.

Binns and McBryde’s analysis also showed more limited exchange on the coast where suitable stone was widespread. However, there appeared to be almost no interconnection between either coast or Moore Creek and the Tablelands. Further, those major sites connected with the Tablelands such as Bendemeer or Graman are on the periphery.

So what, to use Iain Davidson phase, about that bit in the middle, the main Tablelands?

The evidence suggests that the Tablelands were a marchland area, with a relatively small resident population squeezed between the big coastal language groups whose territories extended into the headwaters of the coastal rivers and the large Kamilaroi language group extending along the Western Slopes.

Oral tradition, the ethnographic evidence and limited archaeological evidence all suggest seasonal movement between the coast and tablelands. Petrological evidence from the Salisbury Court axe factory shows a relatively limited local distribution, suggesting that it was important to a local resident group.

The central –southern Tablelands Nganyaywana (Anaiwan) language itself appears structurally related to the coastal languages, but is also very distinct, hinting that it diverged during a period of isolation.

One of the most interesting feature of the Tablelands is the presence of significant ceremonial sites, including the Serpentine stone arrangements p(icture). Some served local needs, but high country sites such as Serpentine clearly met broader needs.

There are hints in the evidence we have of the broader patterns that once existed. By combining all forms of evidence, we may yet be able to discover those patterns. It’s a tantalising prospect.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 May 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.