History Revisited - Aboriginal society re-forms as Late Glacial Maximum ends, temperatures rise

TRADITION: The Aboriginal society that the Europeans found began to form more than 5,000 ago. Jim Belshaw reports

Conditions at the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the ice age that progressively gripped the world from around 21,000 ago, can best be described as unpleasant.

Sahul, the name given to the larger Australian continent that formed as the sea levels fell, was drier, colder and suffered from intense dust storms that, as Mulvaney and Kamminga put it, continued unabated across south eastern Australia for 9000 years.

The Aborigines had spread across Sahul during better climatic conditions, reaching Northern New South Wales by perhaps 30,000 years ago. Archaeological dating suggests that, with the possible exception of the coastal strip, Aboriginal occupation across Northern NSW was widespread by the early stages of the LGM.

The coastal strip is an apparent problem because of the paucity of evidence, leading Sandra Bowdler to suggest that the coastal zone simply wasn’t that attractive during the early onset stages of the LGM.  

Today, we are used to thinking of the North Coast as a rich area in Aboriginal terms with its mix of sea, estuary, river and land resources. That may well not have been the case then.

The coastal shelf is often narrow and declines quite sharply. The falling sea levels may have created a rugged coast line with increasingly cold waters, narrower rivers and smaller estuaries, a far less attractive environment than would exist later. My feeling, and it is only a feeling, is that the coastal strip was and remained populated.

Across New England, the LGM affected the plants, animals and the people who depended on them. The Tablelands became sub-alpine, the arid zone widened, the inland lakes dried up, while the now smaller inland rivers wended their way across sandy plains.

A long gap emerges in the archaeological record. People survived, but populations would have been reduced and possibly limited to refuge areas with higher resource availability.

The long ice age of the LGM began to ease around 15,000 years ago. Around this time, the North American ice sheets melted. Around 12,000 years ago, the Antarctic ice sheets began to shrink. The Holocene with its higher rainfall and warmer temperatures had begun.

The seas rose, reaching present levels around 6,000 years ago. The coast as we know it began to form. Plants and animals that had survived the ice age in remnant areas and the Aborigines that depended on them progressively reoccupied the land.

Archaeological dates begin to reappear: around 9,000 years in the Macleay Valley, 6,500 years at Seelands in the Clarence, 5,500 years at Graman on the Western Slopes. The Aboriginal society that the Europeans would find was forming.

In my last column in this series, I will carry the story through to 1788.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 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.

History Revisited - New England's first Aboriginal settlers

BREATHTAKING: The rolling hills of New England have not always looked like they do now. Jim Belshaw explains in his column this week that changing climate conditions altered the landscape

In my 15 April column, I made you stand on Smoky Cape for 40,000 years watching the dramatic sea level and climatic changes of the late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs take place around you.

The Pleistocene was marked by repeated glacial cycles during which the sea level fell and the climate became much colder and drier. Some 11,700 years ago, it was replaced by the warmer and wetter Holocene during which sea levels rose 120 metres to their present level.

These changes provide the backdrop to the changing patterns of Aboriginal life across Northern NSW, the broader New England, over the millennia that New England’s Aboriginal peoples occupied the land. The changes would not have been noticeable at any point in time, but would have been very noticeable over time, forcing regular long term adjustments on the Aboriginal inhabitants. 

We don’t know exactly when the Aborigines first arrived in the area that would be called New England. However, dating from the Willandra Lakes site in south western NSW that Aboriginal people were present in inland NSW by around 41,000 years ago, while the pattern of archaeological dates across the continent suggests that they came to NSW via inland routes potentially from both the north and the west.

This was a benign time in climatic terms. From 45,000 to around 36,000 years ago, moderate temperatures and high rainfalls filled the inland lakes and rivers. Travel would have been relatively easy across the inland plains. The dates we have suggest to me that early Aboriginal settlers in the north spread south along the western coast, north across the continent, then south along the inland corridor. However, they could have moved in multiple directions.

We now have a rush of dates. In the Hunter, we have dates from sites with a range of 17,000 to 30,000 years ago. Evidence from the Liverpool Plains indicate Aboriginal occupation from at least 19,000 years ago, while the Wallen Wallen Creek site in south east Queensland suggests occupation from about 20,000 years ago.

There is a very particular pattern to these dates, for the world was changing and for the worse.

From 36,000 years ago, the climate became cooler and drier, the sea levels began to fall again as the ice caps grew. Water remained plentiful in the lakes and rivers because lower rainfall balanced lower evaporation.

From 25,000 years ago, the climate deteriorated, culminating in what we call the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM). This lasted from 21,000 to 15,000 years ago. Sea levels fell from around 50 metres to perhaps 130 metres below current levels. The climate became very dry and intensely hot or cold over much of the continent.

If we now look at the dates we have, three apparent features stand out. They generally fall during the early onset stages of the LGM. They are inland dates or at least away from the coast. Finally, and so far at least, an occupation gap emerges in the archaeological record.

I will continue this story in my next column.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 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.

History Revisited - teeing off a history of sport in New England

A PLEASANT WALK SPOILED: Jim Belshaw's research led him to discover fascinating aspects of the history of golf in Armidale

Did you know that there have been three very different Armidale golf courses? I didn’t until I read Pat Chapman’s history of the Armidale Golf Club 1899-1981.

Organised golf was played in Armidale from at least 1893, although the Armidale Golf Club itself was not formed until 1899. The Club’s first golf course meandered through the paddocks along Dumaresq Creek from near Markham Street as far west as Douglas Street.

That first course had its own problems. Plucking balls from the tar filled effluent from the gasworks was usually a smelly job, There were also problems with landholders and indeed with angry bulls, making ball recovery difficult.

Matters came to a head after the First World War when a series of wet seasons with consequent long grass made the course virtually unplayable. Finally, the Armidale Golf Club leased the grass rights on the race course from the Armidale Jockey Club with the tea rooms as club house. The new nine hole course opened in 1922.

I blinked a bit when I read this, for the race course grounds were multi-purpose space, including Armidale’s aerodrome. Indeed, it was a remarkably crowded space catering not only for gallops, golf and aircraft, but also trotting, coursing, cricket, soccer and hockey. 

Mrs A R J Woller found this out first hand when she was forced to take refuge in the horse stands after fleeing from a wayward aircraft which had struck hockey posts on takeoff!

In 1927, the Armidale Golf Club committee was charged with acquiring a sufficient area of land for an 18 hole golf course. This was quite a brave decision, for the Club had only 40 pounds in the bank.

Searching, the committee purchased from Frank Pearson a block in a commanding position overlooking Armidale from the southwest. The price? A thousand pounds!

To fund the purchase, the Club launched an oversubscribed debenture issue paying 6 per cent interest. Repayment was to be by an annual ballot, with 10 per cent of the capital to be repaid. 

You couldn’t do this today, of course. The Armidale Club issuing debentures? The rules wouldn’t allow it. 

During the depression of the 1930s, those holding the debentures hoped that they would not be selected for repayment in the annual ballot. Investments yielding 6 per cent were very hard to find.

The site that the Club purchased is that we know today. It remains one of Armidale’s major community assets, one that many of us know and have greatly enjoyed.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 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.

History revisited - J F Campbell: surveyor, botanist, historian

I first came across J F Campbell as an early writer on New England’s history. Between 1922 and 1937, he published twenty eight papers in the Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, many on New England topics. I would also find that from 1907, he published sixteen papers in the Institution of Surveyors’ New South Wales’ journal, The Surveyor, again many with New England connection.

Clearly, J F Campbell was quite prolific, but who was he? Searching, I found that a much later New England historian, John Atchison, had written extensively on Campbell’s life. Campbell was much more than just an historian.

John Campbell (1853-1938), was born on 21 August 1853 at Loch Leven, Kinross-shire, Scotland. After school, Perthshire, he was apprenticed to an architect. Upon completion, he switched to surveying, studying at the University of Glasgow.

Often restless, a need for movement would mark his life, Campbell left for Dunedin in 1879 before completing his course. Two years later he moved on to Sydney.

In Sydney, he adopted the middle name Fauna for identification purposes, becoming J F Campbell. For reasons that will become clear, Flora would have been a better choice given his interests, but Flora was a girl’s name, one carried by Jacobite heroine Flora Macdonald, an association not likely to appeal to a Campbell. 

In Sydney, Campbell joined the Department of Lands as a cadet draftsman and was soon promoted. Completing examinations, he was registered as a licensed surveyor on 10 January 1884.

Late in 1888, Campbell was sent to the Walcha district of the Armidale Land Board, establishing his New England connection, one that he was to maintain in one way or another for a long time. In February 1889, he married Althea Louisa Gissing, a newly arrived Englishwoman, in Sydney. The couple quickly became well known in the district, with Campbell serving on the Walcha Council for eight years.

Campbell was fascinated by the natural environment. The passage of the Crown Lands Amendment Act of 1884, an uneasy compromise between squatting and free selection interests that became the basis of land policy for the next 100 years, encouraged new selection. Outside his official duties, Campbell began documenting a changing landscape.

A member of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, he studied and collected new botanical specimens, working with Ernst Betche and J. H. Maiden who named a shrub after him. Later, his geological notes were incorporated in Sir Edgeworth David's 1931 Geological Map of the Commonwealth of Australia.

In 1903 Campbell moved to Sydney for the education of his children, briefly returning to New England as crown representative and chairman of the Armidale Forest Board in 1906-07. In retirement from the end of 1913, Campbell retained his interest in rural issues, now researching and writing quite prolifically.

A reticent man who shunned publicity, Campbell displayed unflagging zeal and patience in detailed research until his death in 1938.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 April 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.