A happy Christmas to you all

This will be my last post for 2018. I am shutting down fully until the new year to recharge my batteries.

This has been a busy year on the New England history front. I have valued my readers and especially my regular commenters and emailers. I may sometimes be slow in responding, but I do read and value.

I know 2018 has been a sometimes difficult year for some of us. I think for my part it has reminded me of the importance of love and friendship.

For those who celebrate this festive season, may I wish you a very happy Christmas? For those who are alone, and that can be just so hard, tomorrow is a time to remember our blessings no matter how few they seem.

We will continue our discussions and sharing in the new year.

New England folk takes its place on the stage

International renown: Work done by Chris Sullivan and others in recording 19th Century New England music means the Tablelands has its own place on the UNESCO global folk music site. This is the fifth and last in this short series on the New England folk tradition

In my last column I spoke of the work of Chris Sullivan, Barry McDonald, Mark Rummery and others in recording and documenting the folk music tradition in New England and beyond.

One result of their work is that the New England Tablelands has its own small section in Folkways, the UNESCO site on global traditional music. However, that’s only part of New England’s often unrecognized role in the preservation and promotion of the Australian and New England folk traditions.

Our story begins with the local newspapers who not only published local stories, writing and sometimes song, but from the 1890s began to promote local history. This was followed by the formation of local historical societies beginning with Clarence River Historical Society in 1931.

With time, this led to the creation of local museums including the Armidale Folk Museum in 1958. This replaced the Armidale Museum, originally formed in 1933 as the first municipal museum in NSW.

Staff from the Teachers’ College and University played important roles in these development.

We have already discussed the role played by Russel Ward in the promotion of interest in Australia folk songs, including his influence on students.

Armidale Teachers’ College lecturer Eric Dunlop played a key role in the formation of the Armidale Folk Museum and in the broader museum movement. He believed in museums as an education tool and had developed a particular interest in folk museums while in Europe in 1953.

Ward and Dunlop were joined by others, including John Ryan. John played a significant role in the promotion of Australian folklore, editing the journal Australian Folklore from 1992. He also began the process of documenting folk traditions across the broader New England with a special focus on the literary tradition.

Meanwhile, the music continued. Both Gary Shearston and Mike McLellan became prominent national folk music performers, refreshing old songs and writing new ones. Their songs added to the specific New England tradition.

Shearston’s “Shopping on a Saturday” and “Tenterfield” paint evocative pictures drawn from his early life in Tenterfield, contrasting with the sadness of Peter Allen’s “Tenterfield Saddler.”

While Shearston’s songs draw from his Tenterfield childhood, Mike McLellan’s songs are influenced by his time at the Armidale Teachers’ College. “Saturday Night Dance” and “There is a Place” remain Armidale favourites.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 December 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 . 

Reviving a musical tradition

Horton River Band 1967: Dave Game, Mark Rummery, Chris Sullivan, Lionel O'Keefe. The band became a major vehicle for presenting New England's folk tradition. This is the fourth in a series on the New England folk tradition

While the New England folk music tradition drew from European traditions, its expression was always local, especially in the rural areas which had to provide their own entertainment.

“I only saw the tail end of a long tradition Jim,” John Beswick recalled. This “centred around the Community Hall. A combination of dairy farming and Timber mills generated a dense rural settlement pattern outside local towns and regional centres and those communities worked hard by definition of their livelihoods but also enjoyed socialising when opportunity or design presented itself.”

John’s local halls were the Thora Hall at the foot of the Dorrigo Mountain on the Bellinger and the Turners Flat Hall on the Macleay. Different people, but exactly the same format.

“The music for the dancing was provided by locals with that ability, fuelled by byo grog, an always hot tea urn and a groaning table filled from the products of numerous busy kitchens. Our music was provided by a trio playing piano accordion, drum kit and fiddle. At some point when the dancers need a break, one or two of our number would give a song.”

This was a very self contained world, one in which those who were musically or lyrically inclined had a performance platform to practise and develop their talents. The result was local musicians such as the Kalang’s Bruce Pottie who wrote their own lyrics and made their own music but were only memorable in their local area.

By the 1970s, the combination of social, cultural and economic change had greatly diminished this local musical tradition. Many of the local musicians had died, those who remained who remembered the songs, dances and music of the past were rapidly aging.

Just as Russel Ward had played an important role in the folk revival of the early 1950s, now a group of Armidale based musicians sought to preserve and promote the music and songs of the past.

Chris Sullivan was a key figure in this process. He had been interested in folk music for an extended period, travelling Australia to collect music and songs.

Drawing from this and extending this experience, his Southern Cross University PhD thesis argued the case for an Australian folk music tradition.

In Armidale, Chris was joined by group including Barry McDonald, a former student of Russel Ward, Mark Rummery and Cathy Ovenden. Each collected, recorded and played folk music, documenting the folk tradition. 

The popular Horton River Band became a vehicle for them to play together and with some of the now old traditional performers. However, this is not the end of our story. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 December 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 . 

Documenting a folk tradition

Cover of one edition of Russel Ward's The Australian Legend: Arguably the first major work on the Australian folk tradition since Banjo Paterson’s 1905 Old Bush Songs.This is the third in a series on the New England folk tradition

In 1956, the application of Australian historian Russel Ward for a lecturing position at the newly renamed University of NSW was rejected. He had been blackballed for his political beliefs, including his membership of the Communist Party.

"Ward had, UNSW Vice Chancellor J. P. Baxter told council, been 'active in seditious circles in Canberra'."

Ward had, UNSW Vice Chancellor J P Baxter told Council, been “active in seditious circles in Canberra”. The decision to not appoint Ward despite the unanimous recommendation of the selection committee created controversy.

Max Hartwell had been a member of the selection committee. Born at Red Range near Glen Innes where his father was school teacher, Hartwell had studied at the New England University College where he was a member of the first Rugby Union side in 1939.

Hartwell was now Professor of Economic History at UNSW. His political views were diametrically opposed to Ward’s Marxist world view, but he liked and respected Ward and was outraged by the decision. The result was a very public spat culminating in Hatwell’s resignation from UNSW and, subsequently, his move to Oxford.

In 1957, to Ward’s surprise, he received a telegram offering him a lectureship at the University of New England. He would spend the rest of his academic life at UNE.

Ward’s PhD thesis, his THING as he described it in his autobiography, was on “The Ethos and Influence of the Australian pastoral Worker”. In writing, Ward drew very heavily from Australian folk songs and ballads. He did not believe that they were in themselves accurate history, rather that they captured ethos and sprit.

Ward’s research drew him into the nascent folk revival that was taking place especially in Sydney with its musical, literary and political threads. Then, in 1958, Ward published the Australian Legend, arguably the first major work on the Australian folk tradition since Banjo Paterson’s 1905 Old Bush Songs.

The Australian Legend had a major impact and remains in print today. Among other things, it popularized the Australian folk tradition, if with a very particular focus.

Ward retained his interest in Australian folk music and folk traditions. However, changes were also taking place that would blunt both his influence and the Australian folk revival.

One change was the broader nature of the folk revival itself, including overseas influences such as Peter. Paul and Mary. A second change was the emergence of new popular musical forms including rock and roll, the Beatles and the rise of American influenced country music. There were shifts as well in the study of history itself as new topics and fashions emerged.

Russel’s influence did continue. We now come to a new stage in the story, one in which New England researchers and performers take centre stage. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 November 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018. 

Folk ballads hit the right spot

Read all about it: Sometimes racist and xenophobic, always nationalistic, the Bulletin magazine played a major role in promoting Australian bush ballads. This is the second in a new series on the New England folk tradition

Folk music is an integral part of the folk tradition.

Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had their music that was passed down through the generations. The European settlers brought their folk music with them, music that changed with circumstance and time. Later, these traditions would cross-pollinate.

Song, music and dance are all closely aligned. They feed each other.

The convicts brought the remembered songs from home, changing titles and words to suit their circumstances. Moreton Bay with its tale of convict suffering was fitted to the tune of the Irish song Boolavogue.

As European settlement spread, the convict tradition transformed into the bush ballads popular among itinerant agricultural workers. This was predominantly a male society.

Many worked alone in isolated locations, others traveled for work or came together for particular activities such as mustering. When they gathered together they told yarns or sang songs and sometimes danced around the camp fire, entertaining each other.

Many in this period were illiterate or semi-literate. Songs were learned by listening and practicing and then passed on in an evolving oral tradition.

Overseas influences could still be important. Botany Bay, one of Australia’s most famous folk songs with its opening line “Farewell to old England for ever”, is apparently based an a musical burlesque Little Jack Sheppard. This was staged at The Gaiety Theatre, London, in 1885 and then repeated in Melbourne the following year.

While overseas influences remained important, the bush ballad had become an Australian tradition with many local variants. This tradition reached its peak in the 1890s, partly driven by Sydney’s Bulletin magazine with its focus on Australia, Australian nationalism and Australian rural life.

Collapse followed as the spread of recordings, of cinema and radio, supplanted the previous oral tradition. Australian folk songs were replaced by US offerings.

By the 1930s, New England Country Party politician Mick Bruxner, a cousin of Australian film maker Charles Chauvel, was complaining bitterly about US cultural dominance in film and language.

Not all was lost, however. A new wave was about to emerge, one that would see something of a resurgence in Australian folk music including folk songs, a rediscovery in which New England would play an important part.

Next week I will tell you how and why. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 November 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here  2018

Folk culture lost in the past

 The band played on: Miners and families, Lower Hunter, 1888. By 1888, brass bands were a central feature of life in many communities. This is the first in a new series on the New England folk tradition

The European settlers who came to Australia after 1788 brought their own popular or folk traditions with them, traditions that were then modified by local conditions.

These traditions were not uniform across England, let alone Great Britain or the European continent. Because the composition and timing of European settlement was not uniform across Australia, the ethnic and cultural mix across the country was far more varied than we realise today. 

Bush dancing: The European settlers brought a number of dance forms with them. In a male dominated society with few women, dancing was individual, competitive 

These regional variations are poorly understood, partly because regional as opposed to local history has suffered from neglect over many decades. This neglect compounds a bigger problem, one inherent in the nature of folk traditions themselves. 

Today we live in a world saturated with recording devices of all types, with media of all types, with multiple forms of entertainment. There is constant competition to get just a slice of our eyeballs, just a bit of our ears, just a bit of our already overcrowded hours.

The folk tradition is very different because it is an oral and demonstration tradition, one in which knowledge and skills in things such as song, dance, music or children’s games pass directly from person to person.

This makes it hard for folk traditions to grow or even survive. Around the world languages are in decline, entire cultures are being lost. In Australia, much of the detail and texture of folk traditions, European as well as Aboriginal, has been lost because no one wrote it down, no-one saw it as important. By the time importance was recognised, it was too late. 

In the US with its many states and longer colonial history, regional variations in culture and folk tradition are well recognised. In Australia, they are not.

The popular Australian bluegrass festivals such the Byron Bay Bluesfest sit there like blobs upon the landscape with almost no interconnection with the surrounding area beyond the economic.

I am not knocking them I value their contribution, they are part of modern New England. But I do wonder listening to the many Radio National programs about these festivals why it is that I now know more about the music of Northern Appalachia than I do about any Australian region?!

I have obviously opened up a very large topic. It is also one that I am especially ill-equipped to deal with given that I am not musical, while my attempts at dancing can best be described as catastrophic. In fact, I make British Prime Minister May look positively professional!

Still, over the next few columns I thought that I might share with you a little about New England’s folk culture just to open the topic up. You might be surprised at just how much there is.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 November 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018

The folk tradition in Australia's New England - a methodological note

New England folk group, The Horton River band, 1997. Dave Game, Mark Rummery, Chris Sullivan, Lionel O'Keefe. Photo: Bob Bolton

My current series of columns in the Armidale Express is a preliminary exploration of New England's folk traditions. I wandered into this area almost by accident. I had been picking up references to various elements in the folk tradition. Then while I was reading Russel Ward's autobiography, A Radical Life (Macmillan, South Melbourne 1988), I came across the story of champion clog dancer Harry Macklin Shaw. I knew of Russel's interest in Australian folk songs, he taught me, but had never heard of Shaw. My attention was caught, and I decided to try to pull together some material on folk traditions with a special focus on New England.

I did so with some caution. I am not especially musical, I am a very bad dancer and also knew enough to know that the area was something of a mine field. Still, I pushed ahead and now find that all my reservations had substance! Just understanding different forms of dance is itself itself a significant challenge.To help me, I decided to do a methodological note to supplement the columns.

The note itself is a work in progress, a placeholder for recording material, ideas and issues as I go along. So I will post some initial stuff now and then update it on a weekly basis as I go along. Later when I bring the necessarily short columns up on the blog, this post will provide supplementary information.

Coverage

My columns have a special but not exclusive focus on the Northern Tableands. However, my broader focus remains on the broader New England, the tablelands and the surrounding river valleys.

At this point, I am focusing on the post European settlement period,  The deep and extensive Aboriginal folk tradition is a different story, although there are later interlinks between the two.

Definition

As normally understood, the folk tradition is an oral and demonstration tradition, one in which knowledge and skills in things such as song, dance, music or children’s games pass directly from person to person. This simple definition includes a number of problems.

To begin with, who are the folk?  Wikipedia, for example, defines a folk museum as "a museum that deals with folk culture and heritage. Such museums cover local life in rural communities. A folk museum typically displays historical objects that were used as part of the people's everyday lives."  So rural and local, excluding urban communities. This narrow definition is reflected to some degree in the discussion on folk traditions where the folk are thought of in terms of working and especially rural people as compared to those in the middle and upper classes and especially those who live in metropolitan areas.    

However, Wikipedia also defines folklore in a way that is much broader:

Folklore is the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. These include oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles to handmade toys common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas and weddings, folk dances and initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration.

This broader group based definition includes urban as well as rural groups. It allows for transmission between groups and between generations. It tries to specify the scope of folklore. However, it retains a focus on oral instruction or demonstration, where traditions are passed along informally. Here we come to another set of problems.

Non-literate societies use both formal and informal learning to pass on lore, knowledge and various forms of expression. We can see this in traditional Aboriginal societies where certain lore was passed on in a highly structured way through formal learning, while other skills and knowledge were acquired less formally. In the Celtic bardic tradition, bards were trained in a variety of skills to entertain and pass lore on. So in both cases, we actually have a mix of formal and informal learning.

The emphasis on oral instruction or demonstration raises different issues. Does a tradition cease to be a folk tradition if is is written down and passed on partially in that form? Some folk song purists have seemed to argue something close to that. They have also argued that new songs composed and then spread are not folk songs.

Neither position strikes me as especially sensible. Not only do transmission mechanisms vary, but I find it hard to think of Mike McClellan's Saturday Dance, his There is a Place or Gary Shearston's Shopping On A Saturday as other than New England folk songs. To my mind, the critical issues are neither source nor transmission but tradition, the extent to which folk traditions broadly defined are carried down through the generations.

to be continued
  





   

Curley Brydon flies to new heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update 10 November 2018

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

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

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

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

The families of the New England University College

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

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

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

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

The family series is:

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

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

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

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

The Spanish Flue Epidemic in New England - a note

Spanish Flue Quarantine Camp Wallangarra 1919

I have come across glancing references to the impact of the Spanish Flue epidemic across New England, but hadn't really focused on it. This short note is by way of a placeholder.

Its genesis lies in my discovery that over 2018–19, the Royal Australian Historical Society is encouraging local, special interest and family history organisations to research the historical impact of the ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic of 1918–19.

As part of this project, Dr Peter Hobbins has been running a small series of workshops across NSW to encourage community interest and to energise local research. Two of these were held in the broader New England, one at Port Macquarie, a second at Tenterfield (and here also in the Tenterfield Star). For those on Twitter, the hash tag is #anintimatepandemic.

The project strikes me as a worthwhile one.

The National Museum of Australia has a very useful short summary on the pandemic. A PhD thesis by Patrick Hodgson looks at the Queensland experience while this is a general list of some Trove newspaper articles.

Update

Regular commenter JohnB pointed me to this piece in The Conversation by Richard Gunderman, The ‘greatest pandemic in history’ was 100 years ago – but many of us still get the basic facts wrong 

University college 'siblings' experience a rich life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story of the Armidale Museum

Armidale Folk Museum today

In 2016 I wrote a short series of posts telling the story of the Armidale Museum established in 1933 as the first municipally operated museum in NSW and then the Armidale Folk Museum in 1958, one of the early Australian folk museums. The posts are:

• 3 March 2016 History Revisited - Armidale's museum fight  
• 9 March 2016 History Revisited - Armidale museum fight finally won, if for the moment 
• 16 March 2016 History Revisited - darkening clouds over Armidale's Museum 
• 23 March 2016 History Revisited - a new Museum is born

The story of the Armidale museum sits at the intersection, the overlap, of a number of different threads in Australian and New England history.

One is the museum movement, a global movement where museums were seen as as fulfilling scientific as well as historical and educational purposes. The later rise in interest in folk museums was a particular manifestation of this movement, one that focused on the life of ordinary people.

The movement had particular Australian manifestations where it over-lapped, interconnected with rise of interest in Australian history in the decades leading up to Federation. Within those Australian manifestations, New England has its own place and traditions.

Looking back over my posts in this area, I find that they are more fragmentary than I had realised, requiring consolidation and amplification. However, pending that, the following posts may give you you a feel for some of the history:

• 30 March 2016  History Revisited - local activism and the spread of the museum movement  
• 6 April 2016  History Revisited - Eric Dunlop never wearied of teaching  
• 6 April 2016 History Revisited - a collection of wisdom 
• 4 March 2015 History revisited - the telling of New England's history 
• 5 March 2015 History revisited - reflecting back on our history 
• 11 March 2015 History revisited - building the institutions that would preserve and promote New England's history

Dedicated beginnings to New England's college

 Beginnings: This now faded 1939 photo shows the first directors of the newly formed New England University College Union.To mark the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the New England University College in 1938, this is the third of a short series telling you a little of the story of the wives and children of the new College. 

Growing up in Armidale, the interacting rhythms of town, gown and country set the patterns of my early life.

Town patterns included school and church, the shops, the local play, sport, the events such as the show. Country patterns included the rhythms of pastoral and agricultural life, the regular visits to town by country people, lambing and shearing. Gown patterns were set by the rhythms of life in the young College and then University; the three terms still carrying their old English names; the examination cycle; the major academic ceremonies; the various university functions including games and fetes; and the academic visitors who had to be entertained and shown the district

In the University College period in particular, the lives of the wives and growing number of children of the academic staff centered around the College. If you lived in Sydney, you could choose to live away from the University, to create a separation between family and work. That was not possible in Armidale.  

The early academic staff had multiple roles.

They were building a new institution from scratch, creating structures, culture and patterns that mirrored their conception of a university. They were actively engaged in university outreach activities that fitted both their conception of the role of a university and the dreams and aspirations of the College’s founders. They were trying to maintain their own research.

Most of all, they were trying to educate, although not all were good teachers. Here they had a very particular role,

Today, there is a renewed focus in Australia on bringing university education to those who have not had access to it, who are missing out on the university option. When the College was founded, that was the dominant student body.

At Sydney University, most students came from middle class Sydney backgrounds, many were studying part time for career reasons.

At the College, students were drawn from across the North. They were generally young, the first in their family to attend university and had had no contact with university life. In many cases and especially for girls, their parents were actually distrustful of university education.

In these circumstances, teaching at the College involved far more than the delivery of courses, of lectures or seminars. It was a total immersion experience intended to give students the broader skills. attitudes and understandings required to succeed in academic life and beyond.

This made for a remarkably powerful university experience. On average, New England students had lower entry level qualifications than those going to Sydney. On average, they had significantly better examination results. During the period 1938-1953, the life of the University College, 441 students took their degrees. Of these, 88 graduated with honours, 27 with firsts of whom more than half took out university medals.

That's not a bad result. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 October 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 . 

Armidale's university family grows

A Young James Belshaw outside the family home in 1948. Housing was very scarce in Armidale until the 1950s. To mark the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the New England University College in 1938, this is the second of a short series telling you a little of the story of the wives and children of the new College. 

In 1938 Armidale may have been classified as a city because of its bishoprics, it was already a recognized educational centre, the prospective capital of a new Northern state, but its population was only 7,000.

It was also a remote place, especially for those drawn from elsewhere to the new University College. There were no air services, road connections were bad and cars scarce. The night trains to Sydney and Brisbane provided the transport backbone.

With the exception of Isobel Blanch, the academic staff from that early period (1938-1940) were all male. Most were already married, some already children. Only two married local girls.

In 1939 Jack Somerville (Physics) married Muriel Naylor, while in 1944 Jim Belshaw (History and Economics) married Edna Drummond. Edna had been in charge of the new College library, marking the first, but certainly not the last, marriage within the university community.

In 1938 it was normal for women to give up work upon marriage. When Edna became engaged to Jim Belshaw in 1943, she resigned her College position.

Of the early wives, only Gwenda Davis maintained career interests finally becoming a staff member after husband Consett Davis went to war and then died. The University playing fields now carry his name.

The wives who came to Armidale were in a difficult position. Unlike Muriel Somerville or Edna Belshaw, they had no family support locally. They had to fit into a sometimes strangely alien community.

They also struggled with sometimes difficult conditions.

The College was founded on the dawn of war. Between 1938 and 1950, building materials were in very short supply. There were limited properties to  rent or buy, limited materials or labour to modify once purchased.

202 Marsh Street, the home my parents purchased, was a slightly bigger if some what nondescript California bungalow. However, there was no insulation. The howling winter westerlies came through the cracks in the weatherboard. The toilet was outside, as was the laundry.

The wives also had to cope with insecurity and limited financial resources.

The College may have been a college of Sydney University, but the staff were not employed by Sydney University.

As the war deepened, the Army tried to take over the College, Had that happened, the College would have closed and the staff lost their jobs. This created a wearing insecurity as the women worried about their men and the growing number of children in the College family.

The threat was averted, but it helped build links and cohesion among the College family, husbands, wives and the children who became known as the siblings. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 October 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 .

New England University College: building an academic institution

New England University College matriculation ceremony 1939. Behind the work creating a new university lay the families of the academics. To mark the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the New England University College in 1938, this is the first of a short series telling you a little of the story of the wives and children of the new College

It is eighty years this year since the foundation of the New England University College, Australia’s seventh oldest university institution and the first founded outside a capital city.

On 18 April 1998 at a celebration to mark sixty years since the College’s foundation, some of the siblings, the children of the College’s early academic staff, met for the first time in a number of years. We came to be called the siblings because of the intense shared experiences from that early period.

Ten years later, Jenny Browning (Janet Howie) published a social history, Four Wives. This  focused on the experiences of four of the wives – Ella Howie, Gwenda Davis, Phyllis Voisey and Hilda Crossley – who came to Armidale with their husbands.

Later that year, UNE’s Dixson library mounted a special exhibition, Families of NEUC: A Social History as part of the celebration of the College’s 70th anniversary of the College. This examined the early days of the University through the eyes of the families that accompanied the first academics to their teaching posts in Armidale and the families of the staff that supported the running of the College

With the passage of time, those with living memories of NEUC as staff, students or children of the College have necessarily diminished. The College itself has begun to vanish into the mist of the past, becoming a simple addendum to the early history of the University.

That’s a pity. The early staff were all highly qualified and committed to building a new institution. They had to be, for the obstacles were considerable.

Today, the university takes pride in the fact that it has achieved maximum student satisfaction ratings for thirteen consecutive years, something no other Australian university can match.

It should, but we should not forget that it was the during the sixteen College years that the ethos of the place was created, an ethos that has continued despite sometimes turmoil in the later institution.

Under pressure and with limited resources, the College out-performed the mother university in teaching, research and community outreach. Staff knew that they had to be better just to survive, and in many ways they were.

But in all this, what about the wives? Jenny Browning makes a convincing case that without them, the College would have failed. They had to deal with insecurity, loneliness,. financial pressures, with multiple roles as they supported their husbands and families.

Over the next few columns I want to take you back into that now vanishing past, telling you about the wives and children of the College, of what it was like to be there.

I do not pretend that this will objective history. Rather, I want to capture the feel, the taste, of that time. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 October 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 .