History Revisited - early UNE rebellions

Sometimes it can hard to sort fact from fiction, fiction from simple failures of an imperfect memory. Some of my first memories as a child are of the still very small University College. The Teachers’ College was just up the hill from home. Many of the people who feature in the early history of both are not just names. They were friends of my parents or grandparents. I often played with their children.

All these years later, I still have some degree of involvement with the University. In the intervening years I have been an undergraduate student, later a postgraduate student and have been involved with the place in a variety of activities. It can be difficult to disentangle it all, although stories stand out in my mind.

Orientation Week 1963 was very well organised indeed: “study hard,” the new students were told, “but also participate fully in university life.” This wasn’t hard, for apart from the Colleges and the Unions there were no less than fifty-eight clubs and societies on campus. There was little sign that February that the first great student revolt was about to break out.

Some University Council members had become concerned, or so the official line ran, with failure rates in the previous year; student social activities were detracting from study. Students took a different view, that the Council members and one in particular were concerned at perceived sexual immorality and the risk of pregnancy. Whatever the reason, Council decided to restrict room visiting between members of the opposite sex.

This decision was met with protest from colleges, some academic staff and from students. Should inter-collegiate visits be further restricted, Council was warned, “the student body will not feel constrained to obey such regulations.”

With Council to meet to further consider the matter, a major demonstration was organised on the day of the October meeting: 400 students blocked the Elm Avenue bridge, blocking access to Booloominbah until police cleared the road. The students then re-gathered on the lawns outside the Council room to continue their protest.

Council would not be moved. It considered itself in loco parentis at a time when most students lived in college, while many of the first years were seventeen, some sixteen It resolved that from January 1964, room-visiting would be banned. With term ending, the matter rested, but the ground was set for major confrontation in the new year.

Throughout 1964, student opposition continued, strengthening in 1965. Faced with an organised rule breaking campaign including mass room visits, a growing unwillingness of the Proctorial Board to impose fines and increasing opposition from college senior fellows, Council wilted. In September 1965, limited room visiting was reinstated. Agitation continued. Finally, in October 1967, Council handed the whole matter back to the Colleges.

While it was not clear at the time, the room visiting affair marked the start of a period of student rebellion that was to force change on all of Armidale’s schools and colleges. An era had ended.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 April 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - taking stock of golden opportunity for bank

Have you heard of the Australian Joint Stock Bank? I must admit that I hadn’t until I found reference to it while browsing An Armidale Album, the source for several of my recent columns. .Why is it significant for Armidale? Well, it was our first bank.

Early in 1852, a group of prominent Sydney merchants and citizens met at the Royal Hotel in Sydney to consider the formation of a new bank. The meeting was successful, with the first branch of the Joint Stock bank opening for business in Sydney on 24 January 1853.

Way to the north beyond the old barriers to settlement, the citizens of Armidale were concerned about the lack of local banking facilities. The Armidale Express, worried then as now about the doings of the local citizenry, commented on the large sums of money being realised by the New England working class in general and especially by the diggers at Rocky River. “For the want of a safe place of personal deposit”, the paper observed, “a great portion of this money is being spent on drunkenness, instead of being devoted to purposes alike beneficial to the owners and the best interests of society.”

Whether it was the paper’s call or just the cash being generated on the gold fields, the Armidale branch of the Australian Joint Stock Bank opened on Monday 15 December 1853. The Express was quite pleased. “We regard the opening of the bank as one of the greatest benefits ever conferred on the district”, it declaimed.

Initially the Bank operated from rented premises, but then decided to build its own building on land it had purchased in Beardy Street. By January 1864, the new premises were ready for occupation.

There seem to have been some maintenance problems with the new building or perhaps it just wasn’t very well built. In any event, by late 1887 it was in such a state of disrepair that the Bank decided to tear it down and start again.

Armidale Album records that Sydney architects Blackmann and John Sulman were commissioned to design a new bank. That may not be quite right, unless Sulman was still using the old partnership name. You see, it appears that Blackmann fled Sydney with a barmaid in 1886, leaving Sulman to pay his debts!

In any event, John Sulman (another of the architects who has had such an impact on Armidale’s built landscape) set to work to design a new building. The new design was in the monumental style .so beloved by banks, a physical assertion of authority and respectability.

By April 1889, the new building was finished. Thereafter it remained a bank building for more than a hundred years, finishing its banking career as the State Bank. Have you guessed which building is it? You see it most times you go down town.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 April 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - the night the city was given light

Public meetings have always been a feature of Armidale life. While not always well attended, little could be done without them. They helped organise public support and to raise money for civic activities.

In 1883, the Great Northern railway finally reached Armidale. At night, the town then lay largely in darkness. Those alighting from the railway found their way to Beardy Street along streets dimly lit by fifteen or sixteen kerosene street lights. Elsewhere, darkness held sway. Something had to be done!

In May 1883, a group of leading citizens petitioned the Mayor, John Moore, to convene a public meeting to consider the feasibility of forming an Armidale gas company.

The idea of gas lighting was hardly new. In 1837, the Australian Gas Light Company (AGL) had been given a Royal Charter charging it with responsibility for lighting Sydney’s streets. On 24 May 1841, the first lights were turned on to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. That year, AGL became the second company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange.

While the idea of gas lighting wasn’t new, the cost of bringing coal to Armidale by road mad gas lighting impractical. Now with the railway, coal could be brought easily from the Hunter Valley.

In Friday 26 May 1883, the requested public meeting convened at the Armidale Town Hall with Mayor Moore in the chair. There they heard a proposal for the construction of a gasworks estimated to cost £7,000 to £8,000. A gas committee was formed to consider proposals and to seek expert advice.

In July, the Mayor presented a proposal to another public meeting that an Armidale Gas Company be established and a share list drawn up. There appears to have been some initial hesitation, but finally the necessary capital was obtained and construction begun on a Beardy Street site, along with around five miles of supporting gas mains and associated building connections.

This was quite a large undertaking in a still small city. Finally, in October 1885, all was ready. The mains were filled with gas, and then a team of plumbers and gasfitters lead by gas manager Samuel Rutter walked the mains to check that all the connected buildings were ready to light-up at dusk.

As night fell on Saturday night, 24 October, the streets were thronged with people, many who had never seen gaslight before. As the City Band played outside the gasworks where red, green and blue lights burned, the stores, hotels and public buildings suddenly blazed with bright light. The darkness that had marked the city was no more.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 March 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - building creativity in region

It’s an odd thing, really. I have spent more of my life outside Armidale than living in the city. Further, in inclination and writing, I think of myself as a New Englander rather than Armidale person. By New England, I mean not just the Tablelands, but the broader New State New England that formed part of the core of my early life.

And yet, despite all this, I keep coming back to Armidale, sometimes to live, more often to visit. Even now living in Sydney with so many of my family and the people I knew dead, receded into an often forgotten past, the links remain.

One of the advantages of leaving and coming back in the way I do is that you get a picture of the ever changing city, of the pattern of its life, in a way often concealed to those who live there or who rarely return. To the first, what’s relevant is Armidale as it is now. To the second, what’s relevant is Armidale of their particular past that now survives frozen in their minds, perfectly preserved.

I first met Michael Sharkey and his fellow Armidale poets when I returned to Armidale in 1981 to do some post graduate studies in history. I already knew writers such as Gwen Kelly, but they were generally older than me, more friends of my parents or of children I knew.

Michael and I shared certain common views. Like me, he believed that existing systems discriminated against Armidale and the North. My views were based on my history, politics and my experiences as a public servant. His views and those of others in the Armidale poets were based on their experiences as poets.

To Michael’s mind, the metro based intellectual elites (my wording) were biased in favour of their own. They controlled the funding, the book distribution systems, the main poetry reviews, the main small magazines. They went with what they knew. Those outside the system found it harder to be published, to get funding or recognition. Standards were only partially relevant, access was all.

The remarkable thing about Armidale and the broader New England is that so many of us fought back. In the case of the Armidale poets, they established their own small presses to bring each other’s work to a wider audience.

The critical year was 1979.

In 1975, a group of far flung University of New England external literature students led by Tony Bennett established the Kadoorair Poetry Society. In 1979, Tony and others joined to establish the Kardoorair Press as an outlet for the Society and for writers based on the Northern Tablelands or with an affiliation with the region. In that same year, Michael joined with Winifred Belmont to establish Fat Possum Press.

Tony, Michael and others including Julian Croft joined in the promotion of poetry. Apart from adding to the texture of Armidale life, the result was a poetic flowering that is part of the story of our city.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 March 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

Introducing the story of the New England Independents

In a post on my personal blog, Thank you Richard Torbay, I looked at the unfolding story of Richard Torbay's resignation and expressed my personal thanks to Richard on certain things.  There I referred to a Sydney Morning Herald Story that said in part:

Mr Torbay is known for assisting independents to run against Liberal and Nationals candidates.

The Lake Macquarie MP, Greg Piper, is close to Mr Torbay, but he is also understood to have assisted the former Dubbo MP, Dawn Fardell and Peter Draper, the former member for Tamworth.

Before the 2011 election Mr Torbay is believed to have aided the former Liberal mayor of Hornsby, Nick Berman, in his unsuccessful bid against Liberal Matt Kean.

Mr Tripodi was spotted having coffee with Mr Berman during the campaign.

My response was as follows:

Well, bloody hell, what a surprise and what does it mean? As I have written, the New England independents formed a different political movement. And yes, in this role they did support other independents in an organised way. That's not a secret. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the main theme of the story beyond adding to doubts about the wisdom of Richard's endorsement.

The story of the rise and fall of the New England independents would make a good book. Its not one that I can write. I don't have the time when I am struggling with other writing projects. The protagonists would not necessarily accept my description of them. But then I see their role in terms of the broad sweep of New England history that I am writing about.

Over the next week or so, I thought that I might bring up a few posts so that someone else might tell the story. I haven't spoken to the main protagonists about this, although I do know some of their campaign workers and certainly know the milieu from which they sprang.

So I am going to record a few jottings that might, imperfectly, give a base for someone else. It's a complicated story, for the rise of the independents was a NSW phenomenon. But only in New England did it become a political movement.      

History Revisited - College's uncertain days

Early in February 1938, a young looking thirty year old lecturer in history and economics arrived to take up his appointment at the newly created New England University College. It would be some weeks before the next academic staff member arrived. There were just two students enrolled; Jean Dyce, the Warden’s secretary, promptly tried to enrol him as the third and was disappointed to find that he was only a staff member.

The story had begun some six months before. On the journey back to New Zealand from England after completing his PhD at Manchester, the ship had called at Sydney. The young man left the ship to inquire about job prospects at the University and the banks. It was in the Economics Department at the Bank of New South Wales that he heard vague rumours about a proposed university college to be established in a remote part of the state. Those he talked to were not impressed.

Around December, the first five academic positions at the New England University College were advertised. Without much enthusiasm and with decided reservations, he decided to apply, beating thirty five other applicants for the position.

His reservations did not disappear with his arrival in Armidale, nor was his enthusiasm aroused. The town seemed small; it was dry, brown and dusty, a huge contrast to New Zealand’s green. It seemed to be asleep a great part of the time, or at least very drowsy.

Booloominbah, the home of the new College, was three miles from town along a narrow dirt track. Since none of the new lecturers had cars, it appeared very isolated even from Armidale. Further, work on building alterations was still underway. Everything was being done in a rush.

You can get a feel for this if you look at the chronology. Legislation to allow the formation of the new College passed Parliament in December 1937. Then all the machinery issues had to be addressed before building work could commence and academic staff be recruited. There was less than three months between the advertisement for academic staff and the start of lectures.

There were very particular reasons for this rush.

The University College’s main proponents had all been involved in the creation of the Armidale Teachers College ten years before. That, too, had been done in a rush and wisely so. Depression hit Australia twelve months after its creation. There were moves to close the Armidale Teachers College, but the project was too far advanced.

With that lesson in front of them, the University project was pushed hard and again wisely so. Had the opening been delayed even twelve months, the onset of war could well have closed the University College. As it was, it was to be a close fought battle with the Army who wanted the site for a convalescent battle.

And that young staff member? He stayed and became an active member of that close knit University College community forged through those early experiences.

Photo Dr James P Belshaw October 1940

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 March 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - tough change for Aborigines

Winter, 21,000 years ago. The temperature is colder, the wind stronger, drier. The little valley huddles under the gusty westerly winds. There are few trees. To the northwest, the peak of Mount Duval is coated by snow that lasts for extended periods.

Five thousand years have passed. Average temperatures are eight degrees below today’s level. The westerly winds are absolutely biting; the wind chill factor brings temperatures far below zero. There are no trees, only snow covered coarse grass. The snow covering on Mount Duval is thick. Further north in the high country to the east of Guyra, mini glaciers are marking the country.

To the west, the cold, strong winds are creating sand dunes. The global rise of ice cap and glacier has led to sea levels perhaps 120 meters below today’s levels. Groaning, the North American continent is pressed down by the weight. Here in New England, the sea line has retreated east by twenty kilometers. The rivers rush down the steeply sloping continental shelf, carving paths to a sea many degrees colder than that we know today.

A further five thousand years have passed. Temperatures have risen significantly. The continent is a little hotter and wetter than today. The giant glaciers have melted, leading to rapid rises in sea levels that have reclaimed the land lost during the Late Glacial Maximum period.

On the coast, silt deposited from the eastern flowing rivers has begun rebuilding the land, creating a pattern of lagoons and swamps. The coastline we know today is being born.

On the Tablelands, trees have spread across the previously open Patagonia like country. The ground is wet; marshes, ponds and lagoons are common. Snow is rarely seen on Mount Duval.

We don’t know when the Aborigines first arrived in New England. 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 41-40,000 years ago,. Given these dates, it seems reasonable to assume that Aboriginal people were at least visiting New England some 40,000 years ago.

We do not have hard evidence to support this assumption. The earliest confirmed date I know of in New England itself comes from a dig by Graham Connor at Stuarts Point in the Macleay Valley. This places human occupation at 9,320 +/- 160BP. Further north in South-East Queensland, the Wallen Wallen Creek site shows continuous occupation from about 20,000 years ago.

Regardless of the exact date, it seems likely that the Aborigines lived through all the environmental changes I described. How they responded or might have responded provides one of the fascinating questions in our history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 February 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - looking back on the industrial age

I wonder how many Armidale residents know of Armidale’s industrial past? Yes, the city does have one!

You find hints of it today in street names such as Brewery Lane (Simpson’s Brewey) or Tancredi Steet (B A Moses’ tannery), in the brick pits and in some of the buildings.

Most of the city’s early workshops and manufacturing operations relied on local markets and used local raw material. They serviced the building industry (brickworks and sawmills), transport (blacksmiths, leatherwork, coach or buggy building) and supplied consumer products (meat, beer, flour, cordials, butter, soap or boots and shoes).

Operations were generally small, although some grew to be substantial businesses. In 1882, Barnet Moses’ Armidale tannery and boot factory had 100 employees, was exporting to Britain and producing up to 1,500 pairs of boots and 500 sides of leather a month.

The civic minded Moses built houses for his workers and contributed to various local causes. He also experienced the region’s first serious industrial action outside the railways when his workers struck because Moses had reduced wages to counter cheap Sydney product coming in via the new railway.

The city’s industries rose and fell with changes in management, transport, technology, local supplies and Government regulation.

Armidale’s civic leaders spoke proudly, but mistakenly of the Tablelands’ future as a premier wheat producing area. By the 1890s, Armidale’s five flour mills had shrunk to two in the face of competition from other areas, including cheap flour coming in by rail from South Australia. Tamworth’s experience was very different. There with greater supply, scale and entrepreneurial flair, Fielders grew to become one the largest miller and baker in Australia.

Flour milling was not the only Armidale industry affected by the railway. Brewing stopped. “Golden Bar” and “Champion Cleaner and Pumice Sand” soap produced by Mallaby’s New England Soap Works vanished from the shelves.

The combination of the railways with changing technology and increasing economies of scale affected local industry across the broader New England. However, the immediate impact appears to have been greatest in Armidale, in part because the city lacked the local entrepreneurial culture to be found elsewhere and in Tamworth in particular.

The coming of the railways was only the first in a series of rolling changes affecting New England industrial activity, culminating in the economic and structural changes of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, for example, abattoir closures led to the loss of some 800 direct Tablelands’ jobs, a loss that passed without ripple in the metro press.

Some new industries did open, but the net effect was a further hollowing out of the Northern NSW economy.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 February 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns 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

History Revisited - DNA link connects us to India

In 2003, then University of New England archaeologist Mike Morwood and colleagues announced the discovery of a potentially new human species on the Indonesian island of Flores. Dating suggested that that species had survived until perhaps 12,000 years ago. The discovery created controversy that continues to this day.

This year, a group of researchers associated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in  Leipzig, Germany released the results of DNA studies suggested a genetic link between the Australian Aborigines and groups in Southern India and Sri Lanka.

This was not the first such discovery. In 2009, DNA analysis by a group of Indian researchers suggested that there was a genetic connection between the Australian Aborigines and certain tribal groups in Southern India that dated back to between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. This date range supported the idea that the first Aborigines came to Australia along a southern route via the Indian sub-content.

The Max Plank study along with an earlier 2002 study introduced a new dimension to the Indian connection, for DNA dating techniques suggested that the biological link dated back a bit over 4,000 years. In other words, new settlers had arrived in Australian and mixed with the local population.

This date has significance for another major debate in Australian history.

Around 5,000 years ago, significant changes began to appear in the Australian archeological record. The Aboriginal population grew, the dingo appeared for the first time, while there were significant changes in technology including new stone tools.

The stone tools included small backed blades whose purpose was initially unclear. Archeologists concluded that the blades were probably mounted on war spears. Added support for this view was provided by University of New England pre-historian Isabel McBryde’s discovery at Graman near Inverell of two backed blades with hafting still attached. At Wombah near the mouth of the Clarence, Isabel also discovered dingo bones associated with backed blades that were over 3,000 years old, one of the oldest dingo dates in the country.

The photo shows UNE History tutor Mick Moore and the author, right, on one of Isabel's survey missions at the time. 

Former UNE pre-historian Harry Lourandos called the whole process intensification, a term previously applied only to the shift from hunter-gathering to farming. But were these changes of indigenous origin, or were new ideas introduced by new settlers?

The real answer could well be a bit of both. The dingo was certainly introduced, but some of the changes in technology shown by the archaeological record were probably local developments.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 30 January 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns 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

The economics of traditional Aboriginal life - questions and answers

Over on my personal blog in Lorenzo and the economic complexity of traditional Aboriginal life I posed and then answered some questions on the economic complexity of traditional Aboriginal life. In doing so, I didn't try to provide evidence, I just wanted to get them down. I hope to provide that later.