Hugh Frewen's story

For the record, I have just completed Saturday Morning Musings - Hugh Frewen: a New England story, a biographical post on one of New England's more fascinating characters.

A break in posts

I am taking a six to eight week break in posting in part for a rest, in part to update some of the supporting reference pages.

New England New State Movement Reference Page

Over on the New England, Australia blog I have put up New England New State Movement - consolidated posts linked to the fight for New England self government as a reference page drawing together various posts on the Northern Separation, later New England New State, Movement.

The Penders of Maitland

Photo: "Anambah" Maitland. Finished in 1889, the house was designed by J.W. Pender.

Anambah with its beautiful cedar joinery consisted of 23 rooms, 10 marble fireplaces, tiled hall and verandah and a free standing billiard room .

This post is by way of a stub. I wanted to record some of the links to the remarkable story of the Pender family, the Maitland architects who has such a remarkable impact on New England's built environment.

On Anambah itself, here. The NSW Department of Planning Heritage Branch web site provides information on a number of Pender designed building. The University Of Newcastle has a magnificent Pender archive.

New England's History - Guide to on-line resources

Note to readers: This post has been replaced by a new page, New England's History - Guide to on-line resources.  


Photo: Wing Hing Long & Co store, Tingha c1900 from the NSW Heritage Branch on-line exhibition.

I have established this page to provide information about on-line resources relating to New England's history.

Like all the reference pages, I hope that, with time, it will become a useful resource for all those with an interest in different aspects of New England's history whether at local or regional level.

Alphabetical Listing

Austlang, the Australian Indigenous Languages data base, provides a very useful searchable facility on Australia's Aboriginal languages.
Australian Bureau of Statistics web site provides access to past census data, year books and historical population estimates.
Australian Dictionary of Biography. The ADB is an invaluable source of information on people. You can also search by area or topic.
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies web site provides access to their extensive collections.
Australia Screen provides on-line access to a range of audio visual material. You can use the search facility to find material of regional interest.
Australia Trove is the National Libary of Australia's central search facility. It gives you access not just to their collections, but also to the invaluable searchable digitised newspaper data base and to the still patchy Pandora electronic archive of Australian web sites.
Chinese-Australian Historical Images in Australia (CHIA) database is a catalogue of historical images of Chinese, Chinese immigrants and their descendants held in Australia.
Directory of Australian Archives provides a searchable list of archives throughout Australia.
Encyclopedia of Australian Science is a register of the people and the many industries, corporations, research institutions, scientific societies and other organisations that have contributed to Australia's scientific, technological and medical heritage, with references to their archival materials and a bibliography of their historical published literature.
Free Selector or Felon provides a rather good searchable resource for all those interested in the history of the Hunter Valley.
Google Books is often a great way of finding references. I find the previews especially valuable.
Guide to Australian Business Records is as the name says. So you can search on, say, North Coast Steam Navigation Company.
NSW Heritage Branch. This NSW Government site is a valuable source of information not just on listed heritage items in NSW, but on the context and history of the listed sites. You can search by local area, by the name of the building or by architect if known.
NSW Railnet. An invaluable private site for all those interested in the history of New England's railway lines.
Picture Australia provides access to a range of visual material.
Unlocking Regional Memory - NSW electronic regional archives provides access to a range of archival resources including the large regional archive managed by the University of New England.
State Records Authority of NSW is the name now given to what was previously the NSW State Archives.
Theses on NSW Political History is as the name says. It seems to be pretty complete. You can sort by name or subject.
University of New England's Heritage Centre web site gives you access to their collections, including the regional archive.
Virtual Sourcebook for Aboriginal Studies in the Hunter Region provides a rather valuable resource, including digitised records of some of the early European visitors.

Werris Creek Railway Timeline

As a child travelling by train, I knew Werris Creek station as a very big station for an apparently very small town.

In fact, Werris Creek was a major New England Railway centre. According to the Railcorp site:

The Railway Station at Werris Creek has been a major rail junction in northern NSW for well over a century. Anyone who has ever travelled through NSW to Tamworth or Narrabri will know Werris Creek. It's where the combined train from Central separates to take travellers both north or north-west. Travellers and smokers will know it best as the breathing spot on a long journey where they can witness train shunting in action. Just forty minutes to Tamworth in the North and about twenty minutes from the agricultural centre Quirindi, Werris Creek is situated within the Parry Shire in New England, in the Heart of NSW Big Sky Country.

The decision to build a line from Werris Creek to Gunnedah was made by the New South Wales Parliament on the evening of the 26th April 1877. This decision marked the overturning of long standing policy not to build branch lines before the completion of the three mail lines; the Great Northern, Great Western and Great Southern lines. It signalled a boom in Australian branch lines and in the significant increase in the productivity and popularity of the railway. The line reached Gunnedah (the home of Dorothea McKeller) in September 1879.

At Werris Creek, the former Department of Railways (now StateRail) not only gave rise to the physical fabric of the town, but also provided its psychological framework and instilled a set of moral values that affected everyday life. Werris Creek has the distinction of being both the first and the last railway town in northern NSW and epitomises all aspects of the rail industry, including the sometimes dangerous aspects of railway work in the past. A number of former railway workers, killed through railway operations, are buried at Werris Creek. The railway institutions in Australia helped to form a working class culture and, as a one-industry town, Werris Creek has been identified as a centre where the railway working culture has flourished.

Railway timelines for Werris Creek follow:

1877 Work on branch line from Werris Creek commenced
Sept 1879 Line reaches Gunnedah
Oct 1879 Platform finished
1884 Railway Refreshment Room (RRR) tender awarded
Nov 1884 RRR Opened
March 1885 Adjacent platform built
Jan 1886 'Great Northern Railway Junction' operational
1893 Footbridge built
1889 Gas works operational
1892 Verandah on eastern side extended
1896 Timetable altered
1897 Moree branch line operational
1899 Manila branch line operational
1902 Inverell branch line operational
1906 Pokataroo branch line operational
1908 Walgett branch line operational
1911 Second story added to RRR
1917 Decision to make Werris Creek the Northern Headquarters of Mechanical Branch signals boom years
1923 Binnaway to Werris Creek line opened
1923 Second story added to Station building
1939 Additional sleeping quarters added
1958 Explosion in Single Street kills two people and breaks every window in the Station building
1960 Diesel takes over from steam
1972 RRR closed after 88 years of service
2001 NSW Minister for Transport Carl Scully announces a grant of $1.3 million towards the Australian Railway Monument (ARM) at Werris Creek
2002 Appointment of Project facilitators, commencement of Australian Railway Monument Project.
2005 Monument opens

Back to Timelines Entry Page

Kamilaroi Entry Page

This is one of a number of entry pages established to provide a central point for posts and references dealing with specific Aboriginal language groups within New England. You can find a list of all the entry pages here.

The Kamilaroi, also known as the Gamilaroi or Gamilaraay were a large and powerful language group occuping territory extending from as far south as Murrurundi on the Great Dividing Range, to Tamworth, Narrabri, Moree, Boggabilla, Mungindi, Collarenebri, Walgett and Gunnedah into what is now Southern Queensland. Sub-groups are recorded as including the Kwiambal, Weraerai, Jukambal, Pigambul/Bigambul and Coonbri. See New England's Aboriginal Languages for a map.

There is a degree of confusion about the meaning of the language. The on-line Gamilaraay dictionary states:

The name Gamilaraay consists of two parts: gamil meaning 'no' and araay meaning 'having', that is 'the people who have gamil for no'. This method of naming people after their word for 'no' is widespread throughout New South Wales and Victoria; for example, the western neighbours of the Gamilaraay, the Yuwaalaraay, say waal for 'no'.

By contrast, the Northern Regional Libary based at Moree suggests that name comes from the word Kamil or Kumil meaning main soul.

The Library site also records on language:

Some languages are very similar when the boundaries are close. For example, the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay language have similar words because the boundaries defining their land were very close. After settlement Aboriginal people were instructed not to speak their own language, they were forced to learn and speak English, and their language was suppressed for many years.

Today, Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay language programs have been introduced into schools to re-introduce and learn the language to Aboriginal children. Children from throughout the North West at Walgett, Boggabilla and Goodooga are now learning their language.

Kamilaroi Posts

3 November 2006, New England Australia - Introducing Mining. Includes material on the Moore Creek Axe factory that supplied stone tools across Kamilaroi lands.

21 June 2007, Gambu Ganuurru, or Cumbo Gunnerah of the Gunn-e-darr tribe. Information about a Kamilaroi leader who pre-dated Euopean colonisation.

12 August 2008, New England's Kamilaroi people - web search August 08.

17 December 2008, New England's Aborigines - The work of Professor Peter Austin on linguistics contains links through to the history of research into the Kamilaroi language. Professor Austin's work also provides details on Australian indigenous languages that sets a helpful context for thought about the New England scene.

New England's Aborigines - Reference Page

I have established this page as an entry point for material on the life and history of New England's Aboriginal peoples. At this stage, there are two ways of accessing material.

New England's Aborigines - Stocktake on Posts provides a consolidated overview of posts written about New England's Aboriginal peoples. Note that as at 9 May 2009, this needs updating.

Then there are the entry pages that I have begun establishing for each of the language groups within New England. At present, they are:

• the Awabakal who occupied the territory from the southern edge of the lower Hunter River and included Lake Macquarie.
• the Anaiwan or Nganyaywana who occupied the southern part of the Tablelands
• the Dainggatti, the Aboriginal peoples of the Macleay Valley
• the Kamilaroi from the Western Slopes and Plains
• the Ngarabal or Ngoorabul who occupied the northern part of the Tablelands

James Swan - New England Aviator

Photo source.

This post simply records material taken from Jim Swan's web site. Given Jim's age, I am recording it so that it can be found at another source. I note that some of the photo links no longer work.

Jim writes:

"I WAS Born 1922 in Parramatta NSW. For 73 years my official place of residence was Girraween, 5 Km west of Parramatta.
An extract from the opening paragraphs of my "memoirs" titled "Flight of a Swan" suggests that very early attraction to matters of the surrounding environment existed. I quote:

"On a grassy sward in a Sydney backyard, a five year old boy sprawled beneath the branches of a plum tree, with the first blossoms of an early spring just visible against the blue sky which was sprinkled with the pure white of bubbly fair weather cumulus clouds.

He rolled over and gazed in awe at the sheer beauty of that sky which seemed to spread forever. It was during those few minutes of peaceful bliss that he felt he had a place up there with those clouds, that was where he intended to be at home, free as the air he breathed and part of the beauty of it all... He was going to fly!!"

As the years passed, his interest was captured by the magic of radio, first hearing a "crystal set" and somewhat later a "portable" valve set, an Airzone which had four bright shiny valves and cost a fortune to run on batteries. Then at the age of 12 or so the household acquired a four valve "Strad" which ran off mains power but received only the broadcast band which was a little disappointing as at my Grandmothers home I had been introduced to "short wave" and had actually heard overseas stations. However, I did find at the very bottom of the dial a small group of stations called "amateurs", who broadcast music and talked about radio after the commercial stations had closed for the night. It was a great thrill in the late seventies when as a new Amateur, I had a QSO with one of those Old Timers (No music hi hi).

So my radio career began by first repairing the ancient crystal set and making it work!! Then a spell of making single valve regenerative receivers from the debris of the "Airzone" which had passed its use by date. A couple of small amplifiers and a whacking great high quality speaker box brought my practical experience up to the mid 1970s.

The intervening years had not been wasted - I joined the Royal Australian Air Force the day I turned 18 and before aged 19 had commenced training as a pilot. I contrived to remain in the service until the last day of the wartime Airforce and returned to my clerical work with the Department of Main Roads. However, by late 1946 I had joined Trans Australia Airlines as a Pilot (First Officer) becoming a Captain (Training Captain) by 1954. At that time I transferred to East West Airlines to assist them in their expansion program. Having progressed through the ranks as Training Captain, Check Captain to Chief Pilot and becoming responsible for the pilot standards on F27, DC3, and the number of other types operated by the company. I decided to retire in 1975. I had over 21,000 hours and had flown 18 types of aircraft.

The RAAF experience ranged from Coastal Search and Surveillance, through Test and Ferry to Operational Recce and Bombing Strikes in the East Indies area.

During the airline service there were standard scheduled passenger flights, freighters, Air tours around Australia, training aircrew, testing pilots and a few delivery flights of new aircraft from Holland to East West Airlines. A very varied existence!!! However, when I retired I found that despite doing some private flying for enjoyment and instructing in instrument flying on a synthetic trainer, I still missed a component of my flying days, and that was the continuous use of radio communications. As CB was just coming into its own in Australia, I started to run a small 4 watt A.M. rig, normal range was about 40 miles but I did make DX to Kingaroy Queensland.

The legalisation of CB ruined that form of radio as it was swamped by masses of yahoos or whatever, so I decided that I would join the ranks of Amateur Radio."

How fast do horses travel?

This post records some information from Wikipedia on the speed at which horses can travel. While there were horses around when I was growing up, we were not a horsey family. So I have only a rough idea as to transport times when horses were king.

As a rough guide, human beings walk at around two and half miles per hour. Yes, we can go faster, but this is still a reasonable approximation for long distance walking. So if we want to go, say, the fourteen miles from Uralla to Armidale, it might take us a bit over five hours.

Travelling with stock, speed is determined by the speed of the animal. From my limited experience with sheep, I haven't travelled with cattle, travel becomes a slow amble, less than a normal walking pace. Say eight hours to drove from Uralla to Armidale. I imagine a bullock dray would also have travelled at a slow walk.

But how fast might a horse go? Starting with a walk:

The walk is a four-beat gait that averages about 4 mph (6.4 km/h). When walking, a horse's legs follow this sequence: left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg, in a regular 1-2-3-4 beat. At the walk, the horse will always have one foot raised and the other three feet on the ground, save for a brief moment when weight is being transferred from one foot to another. A horse moves its head and neck in a slight up and down motion that helps maintain balance.

So on the basis of a walk, we are looking at about three and a half hours to ride from Uralla to Armidale. Now what about a trot?

The trot is a two-beat gait that has a wide variation in possible speeds, but averages about 8 mph (13 km/h), or, very roughly, about the same speed as a healthy adult human can run. A very slow trot is sometimes referred to as a jog. An extremely fast trot has no special name, but in harness racing, the trot of a Standardbred is faster than the gallop of the average non-racehorse....

The trot is the working gait for a horse. Despite what one sees in movies, horses can only canter and gallop for short periods at a time, after which they need time to rest and recover. Horses in good condition can maintain a working trot for hours. The trot is the main way horses travel quickly from one place to the next.

On the basis of a trot, we could ride from Uralla to Armidale in a bit under two hours. Presumably roughly the same speed equation would hold for something like a sulky.

Now for the gallop:

The gallop is very much like the canter, except that it is faster, more ground-covering, and the three-beat canter changes to a four-beat gait. It is the fastest gait of the horse, averaging about 25 to 30 miles per hour (40 to 50 km/h), and in the wild is used when the animal needs to flee from predators or simply cover short distances quickly. Horses seldom will gallop more than a mile or two before they need to rest, though horses can sustain a moderately-paced gallop for longer distances before they become winded and have to slow down.

So normally one would not be able to gallop from Uralla to Armidale. But what about stage coaches? We all have this vision of Cobb & Co galloping through the night.

The short answer is that I do not know, although it must have been devilishly uncomfortable travelling fast over rough roads with iron shod wheels! So something else that I must find out!