New England's great literary legacy

Remarkable: Poet and academic Geoffrey Dutton. Asked to identify Australia's 100 greatest books, 17 were linked to Northern NSW.

The 1988 Bicentenary, the celebration of 200 years since the arrival of the first fleet, was contested territory. To many Aboriginal people, this was the invasion. To others, it was a celebration of just what we had achieved.

Regardless of the debate, the Bicentenary was marked by an explosion in history publishing. Some books covered Aboriginal history, some dealt with national themes, while others focused on family, local and regional history.

New England, especially the New England, benefited greatly from books published before, during and just after the Bicentenary. I haven’t done a statistical count, but my feeling is that more books were published in this period than the totality over the last fifteen years.

As part of this process, Australian writer Geoffrey Dutton was commissioned by Angus & Robertson to select 100 books that might be classified as Australia’s greatest books. The result appeared three years before the Bicentenary entitled The Australian Collection: Australia’s Greatest Books.

I purchased it from Boobooks in the first week after I returned to Armidale, taking it outside with my coffee to browse it in the sun.

You will know that I am obsessed with New England’s history. I make no apology for this. It’s my passion.

Sitting there in the sun in the Mall, I did what I always do. I started going through to identify all the books and authors with New England connection.

I couldn’t finish the task. Once my coffee was done, I went home and took the book along with a pad and pen outside to sit in the sun and record.

This was a distraction. I was meant to be unpacking all those horrid boxes, but I sat and read and took notes. I am glad that I did.

I discovered that no less than 17 books or writers had a connection to Northern NSW, my broader New England.

Think about this for a moment.

 Of Professor Dutton’s selection of one hundred greatest Australian books, 17 per cent have some connection with Northern NSW. That’s quite remarkable.

I have been conscious for some time of the contribution made by the broader New England to Australia’s cultural and intellectual history. I didn’t know this when I started researching.

I wonder why it’s not recognized?

Is it just because all the cultural gatekeepers who determine topics and grants live in metropolitan areas? Or is it because we New England historians are too localized and cannot look beyond? 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 30 October 2019. 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, here 2019  

Judith Wallace's childhood reflections

Replacement labour: Some 18,000 Italian POWs were sent to Australia during World War II. 10,000 became farm workers some on IlParran. This, the eleventh in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands, continues the story of writer Judith Wallace. 

For many of us, childhood memories are especially intense. Time seems to stretch, to last for ever.

Then as we grow older, as more events and responsibilities crowd into our lives, things begin to blur. We have to put aside memories as our brains become more crowded. Yet childhood memories remain because they have a continuing and indeed increasing emotional intensity.

This was true of writer Judith Wallace. Some of the most intense and lyrical pieces in her memoir Memories of a Country Child-hood relate to her early childhood growing up on Ilparran, a large station to the west of Glen Innes. .

Ilparran is only 18 miles (29k) from Glen Innes. Today one would pop into the car without thinking. But even in the 1930s when Judith was a child, visits to town were rare.

The old stations were self-contained worlds, villages. There was the inside (life in the big house or homestead) and then the outside (life on the property outside the big house). Beyond that was the rest of the world.

Up to the Second World War, most stations retained domestic staff - cooks, maids, nannies - who looked after the inside. This was a more formal world with marked class distinctions.

The first part of Judith’s book records this life from the viewpoint of the child. Initially the focus is on life in the house and immediate surrounds, but progressively widens as the growing child is able to explore the property around the house.

A turning point comes when she and her sister are given ponies. Now they can explore still more widely.

The Second World War brings major changes as staff are drawn away by the War. Outside staff are partially replaced by Italian POWs, inside staff by the family.

Judith’s English mother takes over the cooking, using skills originally learned at Finishing School. Meals acquire a distinct French flavour as plain mutton and vegetables are replaced by food encrusted in rich cream based sauces.

The young Judith takes responsibility for the necessary milking, rising at 5.30 to tramp across the sometimes black-frost ground to gather the Jersey cows.

The girl enjoyed it, resting her head against the warm side of the patient cows for protection from the cold. Then, milking done, she carries the pails back to the warm kitchen where bacon is cooking.

Comment 

While I knew that Italian POWs had worked on the farms, I did not know that they were in New England until researching this column, nor did I know the numbers involved. Something else I have to investigate! 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 September 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 demons of a historic New England figure

Edvard Munch, The Scream 1893: Driven by his own demons, William Ogilvie, Edward's eldest son, took his own life in 1920.This, the tenth in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands, continues the story of writer Judith Wallace

Life can sometimes become too much. On 18 November 1920, William Ogilvie was found lying on his bed at Sydney’s Usher’s Hotel with a bullet wound in his temple, a revolver clasped in his right hand. He was only 58.

Near his body were found a letter to his solicitor plus telegrams to his wife and children.

“Good-bye, my darling wife, one telegram read, “I shall never see you alive again. I have written you to Ilparran today, explaining everything. Fondest love, my dearest dear.”

I do not know what drove him to suicide, can only imagine the distress it caused his family.

Edward, the eldest boy and Judith Wallace’s father, was in England. After beginning his education at TAS (The Armidale School), he had gone to England to study at Oxford, his father’s old university. He was, the TAS magazine observed, one of the few Armidalians who had studied at Oxford.

Edward underwent officer training and in 1914 became a second lieutenant in the 17th Lancers. At the time of his father’s death in 1920, he was still in England as a lieutenant with the Life Guards.

Now as his father had wished, Edward returned home to help his mother and manage Ilparran as well as the family’s other interests.

Four years after his return, he married the English born Dorothy Gytha Micklem in Brisbane at what appears to have been a considerable social wedding.

"It is indeed a haunting, sad, but magical book..."

The Micklems owned property in North Queensland, so the papers presented it as a union of two major pastoral families with the Governor of Queensland present as one of the guests.

To house his new wife, Edward built a new house on the property. That house and the surrounding property form the centre piece of Judith Wallace’s memoir on he childhood.

Writing in 1996, David McCooey (Artful Histories: Modern Australian Autobiography) features Judith’s book as one example in his study of Australian autobiography. He capturing the key elements of the book to place them in a broader context; ideas of place and time; the elegiac nature of accounts of place; the way time weaves itself through the narrative.

It is indeed a haunting, sad, but magical book, one that shows life at a particular time in a particular place. Australia is not and never has been a uniform whole, but a place of many and varied stories.

Next week I will look at key features in Judith’s story.

Postscript

I used the famous Munch image to illustrate this column because it captured that sense of personal despair  Over on ART and ARCHITECTURE, mainly, Hel's Edvard Munch, Norwegian meteorology and mental ill health provides some fascinating background to Munch painting.

Other Reader Feedback

Ed wrote (21/11/2018) in an email:
Greetings Jim,

You local history articles are greatly appreciated and on some topics you have a unique perspective: an insider looking out.  This message is specifically prompted by your sequence on William Ogilvie -- of particular interest to me because I actually visited Yulgilbar Castle circa 1952.  It was a mess, of course, and ascending the stairs was not prudent; my main memories are of lucerne hay bales stored where there was still some roof and of the lions couchant at the entrance, maybe they are still there.  My companions on the day informed that a nearby creek called “OBX Creek” was so named because the landholders along it were Ogilvie, Boyd and a completely illiterate chap who only signed documents with an ‘X’.  I took that with a grain of salt but it’s a lovely story and it would be nice if it were true.  Can you shed any light on this this pressing matter?

I fear that I can't provide light on QBX Creek. Perhaps a reader can? I did love the description of Yugilbar. I understand - I have still to visit - that the upstairs is gone. Too difficult to repair.   

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 September 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 poetry and the passion: Judith Wright's Moving Images

Cresting the Moonbi range in 1942, Judith Wright's love of the New England, "my country", suddenly crystallised. The 1946 result was The Moving Image, her first book of poems.This, the fifth in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands, is the second on poet and writer Judith Wright

In 1946, the 31 year old Judith Wright published her first book of poetry, The Moving Image. Dedicated to the father she loved and who loved her, the book is one of the masterpieces of New England literature.

The poems cover many of the themes for which she would later become well known including love of the environment and awareness of Aboriginal dispossession, but most are local poems that will be instantly familiar to anybody who knows the New England Tablelands. They reflect a love of country, a sense of passionate identify.

This long felt love had suddenly crystalised in 1942.

Judith had been working in Sydney. Most men were now away at the war, while her father was leading civil defence planning to evacuate people and livestock from the coast in the event of Japanese invasion.

After pressure from Judith, her father agreed that she should come home to help on the property. Topping the Moonbi Range, Judith was suddenly aware, struck, that she had entered her country.

She had long known that she would be a poet.

After her mother’s death in 1927, the twelve year old Judith had tried to adopt the role of Norah from the Billabong series, books that she loved. She became fiercely protective of her brothers and tried to look after her father. She was also struggling with the stresses of early puberty.

When he father  remarried, Judith and her new step mother clashed. It was decided that Judith and her cousin Tina should go to NEGS, the New England Girls' School, as boarders.

Unlike the slim Tina, the bespectacled Judith was bookish, spotty, bulgy and uncertain. She was not sure what to expect, but knew that she would always second. She consoled herself with the love of poetry and the knowledge that she would become a poet.

At NEGS, Judith decided that she would like to go to the University of Sydney, but her plans were thrown awry by the second of two serious accidents.

In the first, she was thrown from a horse and broke her arm. It was set wrongly and had to be broken and reset.

The second accident was far worse. Her horse fell, leading to very serious injuries. She was carried by stretched to the homestead, driven to Armidale and then sent to Sydney by train for surgery and rehabilitation.

It had been an agonising experience, one that had also put paid to any idea of matriculation. But not all was lost.

I will continue my story next week, also introducing our third character in our growing up on the New England series.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 25 July 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 

Judith Wright's search for an escape

Formative years: Judith Wright's favourite home was her mother’s family property, Thalgarrah. This, the fourth in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands, is the second on poet and writer Judith Wright

In some ways, the first part of poet and writer Judith Wright’s life can be described as a search for escape, escape from the confines of New England, escape from the narrowness of Sydney, escape from the roles and limitations imposed on women.

It can also be thought of as a search for happiness and meaning in often difficult and confusing personal circumstances. During this period she formed those views expressed in her writing that would make her one of Australia’s most prominent literary figures.

Judith was born on 13 May 1915, the first child of Phillip Arundell (PA) Wright and Ethel Mabel Wright nee Bigg.

The fact that Judith was first born is important, for she was born into a world where girls could not inherit. Expected to marry, they received money but could not inherit the land. This would become a tragedy for Judith when, at the end of her life, the beloved properties were lost.

The first part of Judith’s life revolved around station life and multiple homes belonging to family members. Her favourite was her mother’s family home, Thalgarrah.

Thalgarrah was more open than the dark Wallamumbi, set in nice grounds. I also think that the girl was spoiled, loved. Describing it, Judith referred to her mother’s country, an almost identical term used by writer Maslyn Williams as the title of his memoir.

Life at Wallamumbi revolved around Inside and Outside. Inside was the relatively formal life of the homestead and family, Outside the life of the working property.

Initially Judith’s life centered on the Inside, including the Girls, the domestic staff who provided a welcome relief to the greater formality of the homestead itself. Later, Judith would some to love the outside, the broader station.

Judith’s mum became ill with a debilitating disease that finally rendered her a total invalid.

The girl seems to have been bookish from an early age, teaching herself to read from the books around the house. As her mum became sicker, Judith retreated into he books, creating a world of imagination.

Later, Judith would have a sense of guilt about this retreat. She would still go to her mum to read her poems, to tell her about her writing, but didn’t know how to manage her mother’s illness.

Ethel died in 1927. Husband P A was distraught from previous worry and at the loss of his wife. On 21 November 1928 he re-married.

Judith did not get on with her step mother, Dora Isabella Temperley, marking another divide in her life. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 July 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 

Judith Wright, a quintessentially New England writer

In her own words: Judith Wright's first book of poems, Moving Image published in 1946 included a number of poems that have become New England classics including "South of my Days".This, the third in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands, is the first of three on poet and writer Judith Wright

Many parts of Australia claim poet and writer Judith Wright as their own.

In Queensland, the State Government has expropriated her for a performing arts centre. Her New England connection is dismissed in just a few words: “Judith Wright was a Queensland resident for over thirty years. She was born in New England, in regional New South Wales, and came to Brisbane as a young woman”.

Her Wikipedia entry notes that she was born in Armidale, but then says she spent most of her formative years in Brisbane and Sydney. Later, Canberra and Braidwood would claim her too.

In all this, Judith remained a quintessentially New England writer. That was where her views were first formed, although her later experiences and especially her relationship with the older novelist and philosopher Jack McKinney would exercise a powerful influence over her.

Judith met Jack McKinney when she moved to Brisbane. He was a much older man, some twenty four years her senior, only two years younger than her father. They fell in love, moving to Mount Tamborine in 1950; daughter Meredith was born in that year. In 1962, Jack and Judith finally married. Four years later Jack died, leaving a hole in Judith’s life.

Jack McKinney was the second of three powerful men in Judith Wright’s life. The first was her father, Phillip Arundell Wright, with whom she shared a middle name. The third was H C “Nugget” Coombs, a noted Australian economist and public servant, with whom she had a twenty five year love affair.

Coombs was again an older man, in this case by nine years. Both were major public figures. Judith was a widow, Coombs long separated from his wife. Both shared common interests, including Aboriginal advancement and the environment. Judith moved to Braidwood to be closer to the Canberra based Coombs, but the affair was kept secret, if open to their friends and the Canberra network within which they moved.

" It was he that gave her that love, affection and unstinting support that seems to shine through in the letters between them."

Each man had a powerful impact on Judith, but I think that it was the father that formed her core views. It was he that gave her that love of the environment and of the country. It was he that gave her that love, affection and unstinting support that seems to shine through in the letters between them.

I think that Judith would accept that conclusion. Whether she would accept my claim that she remained a quintessentially New England writer is more open to question. “You ask me to read those poems I wrote in my thirties?” she wrote in Skins. “They dropped off several incarnations back.”

That may be true and there are reasons for it, but her 1999 autobiographical memoir half a lifetime draws out the continuing importance of her early life history. I will look at this in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 July 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 

Maslyn Williams - the beginnings in Tenterfield and beyond

Maslyn Williams: one of Australia's best post war documentary makers before turning his hand to writing. This the second in a series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands

“He should go to Australia, to his mother’s people,” Uncle George said, “that’s what she always intended.”

The lad listened. Aunt Yvonne was not convinced. ”But he’s got a good brain. He should go to Cambridge like his father.”

Uncle George, a Whitehall civil servant with a practical mind accustomed to shedding responsibility, would have none of this.

“He can go as an immigrant for next to nothing. I’ll arrange it. If he doesn’t like it, he can come back.”

“He should go to Australia, to his mother’s people” Uncle George said; “that’s what she always intended.”.

The lad listened. Aunt Yvonne was not convinced.

”But he’s got a good brain. He should go to Cambridge like his father.” Uncle George, a Whitehall civil servant with a practical mind accustomed to shedding responsibility, would have none of this.

“He can go as an immigrant for next to nothing. I’ll arrange it. If he doesn’t like it, he can come back.”

Robert Ronald Maslyn Williams, the listening lad, was probably around 17. He had been born in 1911. His father, a career military officer, had been killed in the Great War. His mother had just died.

Fate decided, the lad joined a group of young immigrants on the journey to Australia and, in his case to station outside Tenterfield to become a jackeroo. There he fell in love with Australia, ultimately becoming one of this country’s best known documentary film makers and writers.

It is clear that the lad was interested in writing from the beginning, although his taste first ran to poetry. He kept notes, wrote descriptions and long letter to his Aunt Yvonne.

In 1988, the 77 year old Williams used those notes and letters to write an award winning biographical memoir, His Mother's Country (Melbourne University Press), looking back at the lad (he refers to himself as the lad through out) coming of age on the Tablelands. It was a time when life seemed to be “permanently sunlit”.

The first part of the book outlines why he came, the voyage, reactions to Sydney and describes the long train trip to Tenterfield on the Brisbane Mail, a description that would be instantly familiar to older New Englanders.

The lad knew little of Australia, less of the country or farm work and nothing about his destination. This was his introduction to the new, to strangeness that would soon become familiar.

At Tenterfield, the lad was met by the boss who managed the station on behalf of the family and taken to his new home. It was a large and well established place, a self-contained world, a small village.

One core focus in the book from this point is station life, work and people, as the lad learns to do his job and establishes his place. A second is the lad’s growing involvement in the life of Tenterfield and, to a lesser extent, the nearby big town of Glen Innes.

Final acceptance comes when the irascible and taciturn overseer Old Mackie, the Old Man, is hurt in an accident and the lad has to go for help. Two days later, a heavily bandaged Mackie comes in for breakfast, sits down and looks straight at the lad and says “G’day”.

The book ends with the lad’s departure for England following a further intervention by Uncle George. It’s clear, though, that the lad will return to Australia.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 June 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 

William Gardner - chronicler, sketcher, amateur photographer, tutor, regional historian and geographer.

Saumarez Homestead as we know it today. When William Gardner took up a position as tutor on Saumarez Station in 1842 the property was owned by the Elizabeth Dumaresq. In 1856, Saumarez was sold to Henry Arding Thomas who in 1874 sold it to Francis White. It was the Whites who built the homestead we know today.  

“When New England was first settled by the Whites”, William Gardner wrote in 1854, “they found standing nets of the Blacks in many parts of the bush for the purpose of entrapping the wild animals – The tribes of Blacks met by appointment at these places at certain times driving from different directions their game before them, and this from a circle of many miles into these nets”.

This has become one of the most often quoted descriptions of traditional Aboriginal life on the Tablelands, providing a clear picture of the nature of cooperative work within an Aboriginal society on the point of disruption.

One of the first chroniclers of life in Northern New South Wales, William Gardner has been described as sketcher, amateur photographer, tutor, regional historian and geographer.

Gardner (1802-1860) was born in Glasgow, Scotland. In April 1838 he sailed from Leith, Edinburgh’s port, for Sydney as a cabin passenger on the barque Countess of Durham, arriving five months later.

We know little of Gardner’s life in the thirty six years before he sailed for Sydney. He was clearly an educated man and may by then have spent some time in Georgia (USA), for in 1848 he published a pamphlet on the possibility of growing of cotton in NSW.

Upon arrival in Sydney, Gardner worked briefly for the Union Bank of Australia before going north to Maitland to assist in Dickson’s general store. About 1842, he moved further north to become tutor (at £15 a year, plus keep) at Saumarez Station near Armidale.

The Saumarez run had been taken up by William and Henry Dumaresq in 1837. When Henry died from war wounds in 1838, his wife Elizabeth inherited Saumarez. While the property remained in family hands until 1856 when it was sold to Henry Arding Thomas, Elizabeth and her children returned to England a few years after Henry’s death.

Gardner was then employed as tutor at various stations around the district, Moredun, Rockvale, John Barker’s Mount Mitchell Station, and finally Andrew Coventry's Oban Station .

A keen horseman, Gardner travelled widely over the district. He compiled the first detailed map of the northern districts of New South Wales, published in September 1844.

Gardner's later writings were not published, but were kept in large manuscript notebooks. “I made them for my own amusement”, he wrote. These notebooks, now held in the Mitchell Library, are a treasure trove of information about the early years of New England.

One of his pupils, John Barker’s daughter, recalled Gardner as a stout, jovial man of wide learning, a keen amateur photographer and painter, the owner of a stereoscope with views of his native country and a keen student of history who 'wrote in bulky volumes far into the night by the light of a candle’.

Gardner did not marry. He died at Oban in September 1860 and was buried in an unmarked grave. In November 1973, a headstone was finally erected on the grave by the Armidale and District Historical Society.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 30 August 2017. 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. 

History Revisited - Dymphna Cusack: writing her own story

RENOWNED PLAYWRIGHT: Armidale educated Dymphna Cusack travelled the World during her writing career

From time to time in this column I have commented on the many writers with New England connections. Dymphna Cusack (1902-1981) is another such writer.

Dymphna Cusack was born in 11 September 1902 at Wyalong, the third of six surviving children of Beatrice and James Cusack. The combination of straightened family circumstances with the girl’s ill-health led to her being brought up by her childless aunt and uncle, Nell and Tom Leahy at Guyra.

Dymphna was very much alone during those bush years apart from her Aunt and Uncle and her cat, William Adolphus. However she loved animals, fishing and time spent outdoors. Her uncle was a keen fisherman, and they often went fishing together. Later, she would live in many great cities across the world, but she remained a bush girl at heart.

The child read omnivorously. She also discovered a love of teaching when the headmaster at Guyra Primary (“what a man! what a teacher!) let her take over lower classes when their teachers were away.

In 1917, Dymphna was sent to board at St Ursula’s in Armidale. I have commented before on the contribution that St Ursula’s made to New England’s cultural life. Founded by German nuns in 1882, the school still (in Dymphna’s words) “bore their imprint in its reverence for learning for learning’s sake, and in its rigid discipline.”

Importantly, the school trained girls for University entrance. As a consequence, in 1920 Dymphna won an exhibition and Teachers’ College scholarship to study at the University of Sydney, taking her place in 1922. Upon graduation, she embarked on a teaching career while also writing.

Dymphna wrote her first play while at University, followed by three more that were all well received. In 1936 came her first published novel, Jungfrau, a tale of personal relationships and moral conflicts based on her University experiences.

By the time of her death, she had published twelve novels (two of which were collaborations), seven plays, three travel books, two children's books and one non-fiction book. She also helped Catherine Edmonds write Caddie. Caddie, Red Sky at Morning, and Come in Spinner (written with Florence James) all became Australian films or television shows. Another . book, Heatwave in Berlin, was staged and televised across the Soviet Union as part of the 1965 celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of victory over fascism.

The themes in Dymphna’s work reflected her changing life experiences, taking her far from that early New England life. Yet her love of the county remained and was reflected in some of the descriptions and memories contained in her writing.

In 1961 she returned to her earlier memories in Picnic Races. The setting is the imaginary gold mining town of Gubba, one that combines echoes of Bathurst and Goulburn as well as her beloved New England.

Her husband, Norman Freehill, described the book as a deceptively light-hearted yet profoundly critical study of rural Australia against a pioneering background which was her own.

The sometimes malicious anecdotes and passing descriptions in the book would be instantly recognisable even today, a trait that she shares with other New England writers.

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

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.

History revisited - the telling of New England's history

STARTING POINT: Many of New England's first professional historians were drawn to Armidale when the Teacher's College was established in 1928

Lionel Gilbert was an Armidale institution, something drawn out clearly in John Harris’s obituary (AE, 11 February). He was also part of what I have come to think of as the golden age in New England historiography, the writing of history about the place and region in which we live.

Triggered by Lionel’s death, I thought that I might tell you a little in my next few columns about the history of history in New England. It’s an interesting story, reflecting both the changes in New England life and broader events, fashions and trends.

How historians write is largely set by the canons of the discipline. However, what they write about, the questions they chose to ask and answer, is very much a creature of current fads and fancies.

You can see this if you look at the Australian histories on the shelves in the diminishing number of bookshops. War is presently popular, as are books connected in some way with the convict period.

In my case, I write about the history of the broader New England because that is my personal passion, one connected with my own family and with the Northern causes that I became involved with from an early age. I am, I suppose, an historical relic in my own right, part of the history that I write about.

Historians stand on each other’s shoulders.

What we can think of as the North’s first professional historians were drawn to Armidale first by the Teachers’ College (1928) and then by the newly created University College (1938). They focused on local and regional history partly because of the ethos of the newly created institutions, partly because that was the source material that was most readily available.

By 1949, their students were beginning to produce theses such as A V Cane’s 1949 MA study, Ollera, Study of a Sheep Station. This was followed by articles and books, culminating in something of a publishing explosion in the 1980s. By then, each Armidale bookshop plus Pidgeon’s had a small section devoted to local publications.

Not all this writing came from the academy. Much such as Owen Wright’s Wongwibinda (University of New England, 1985) reflected family and local interests that had been triggered and directed to some degree by the professional historians.

Interest and output then declined, although interest in family history continued to grow rapidly. It wasn’t all bad news. Individual historians such as Lionel or John Ryan maintained interest, while there was also some very good individual writing.

In my next column, I will look in more detail at the history of our history, starting with the early period in New England historiography. Most of the books are now out of print, but you can still find them in second hand bookshops or in local libraries.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 February 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.

Growing up in New England – four stories

Some years ago now, Neil Whitfield commented that he and I seem to have grown up in different Australia's. The trigger for the comment lay in an exchange of experiences relating (among other things) to first exposure to things Asia. He was right, of course.

I was reminded of this by four books that I have been re-reading. The books are all set on the Northern or New England Tablelands. Each is a story of childhood or young adulthood in a country setting. Spanning many years, they tell stories of change set against a backdrop of major historical change.

The period from the early eighteenth century to the start of the Second World War saw a period of economic expansion followed by consolidation. There were major shocks: the depression of the 1840s, that of the 1890s and the 1930s; there was war. During those periods, many lost their properties, some their lives, yet the social system they established seemed solid. Decline followed in the great remaking of Australian society from World War Two through to the end of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century, their society that had seemed so secure had been largely relegated to history.

Writer and film maker Maslyn Williams was born in England in 1911. In the 1920s he came to Australia to work as a jackeroo on a large station near Tenterfield. His Mother's Country[1] is an almost lyrical account of his experiences there. His account shows life on the station but also in the nearby town from the perspective of someone who could mix across social divides. In Maslyn’s case, his experiences created a love of Australia that would keep him there for the rest of his life.

Poet and writer Judith Wright was born in 1915, a member of the Wright family who had major pastoral interests in the Falls country to the east of Armidale and in Queensland. Her half a lifetime[2] is a very different book. Written towards the end of her life, it is a partial account of that life up to the death of husband Jack in 1966 covering childhood, school, her experiences at Sydney University and then in Queensland.

The historical span of half a lifetime is greater than the other books, stretching over 140 years from the arrival of George and Margaret Wyndham in the Hunter Valley in the late 1820s. It is a more acerbic and reflective book than the others, written by a woman looking back and reflecting in part on the formation of her own views.

Binks Turnbull Dowling was born in Papua in 1923. In 1928, her parents sent her to stay at Kotupna, the Turnbull family property also in the Falls country east of Armidale not far from the Wright properties. Bink’s autobiographical memoir For crying out loud![3] starts in Papua, covers her childhood and early life up to her marriage. Full of detail, the book centres on life on Kotupna and the interactions among the extended Turnbull family.

Judith Wallace was born in 1932 and grew up on Ilparren, a sheep and cattle property just to the west of Glen Innes. Her family was part of the Ogilvie family, a family described a little earlier in George Farwell's book Squatter's Castle: The saga of a pastoral dynasty.[4].

Judith Wallace's Memories of a Country Childhood[5].centres on Ilparren, recording the now vanished life style and the changes that were forced on it from external events. He book ends:

The new owners (Ilparran had been sold) never homesteaded on Ilparran and the great house, still standing in spite of the sunken foundations, stares with blind eyes over the ravaged garden.

Three of the four books are marked by this sense of impermanence. In Judith Wright’s case, The Wyndham branch of the family lost much of their assets in the great crash of the 1890s, while the Wrights’ themselves would lose Judith’s beloved Wallamumbi the year following publication of half a lifetime. In Bink’s case, the book is in part about the decline and loss of Kotupna.

As personal stories, the books are interesting in their own right. Together, they also represent social history of particular life in an area over time.

I referred at the start to Neil Whitfield’s comment that he and I seem to have grown up in different Australia's.

The overlapping worlds of all four writers are familiar to me. I am very much younger, but aspects of their life and the people they write about are also part of my own life. I see things a little differently, in part because of age, in part because I came from another if again overlapping part of New England life, more because my experience and research means that I see them contextually, as part of a broader pattern.

It’s complicated to explain. Some aspects, my personal reactions, are better dealt with via autobiographical memoir where I can observe from my own perspective. But as historical documents, the four books are intensely interesting because I can put them into context as part of an interlinked story.

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[1] Maslyn Williams, His Mother’s Country, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1988

[2] Judith Wright edited by Patricia Clarke, half a lifetime, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999

[3] Binks Turnbull Dowling, For crying out loud!, published by the author, Glen Fernaigh via Dorrigo, 1997

[4] George Farwell, Squatter's Castle: The saga of a pastoral dynasty, Lansdowne Press, 1973.

[5] Judith Wallace, Memories of a Country Childhood,. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1977.

New England Lives – Robert Dawson (1782-1866), company manager, pastoralist and writer

Robert Dawson was the first Chief Agent of Australia’s first really large public company, the Australian Agricultural Company[i]. If he had not clashed with a Macarthur family determined to feather its own interests, he would not have been first suspended in April 1828, dismissed in January 1829. Had that not happened, he might not have written the two books he did, some of the first writing connected with New England.

Born in 1782 at Great Bentley, Essex, Dawson was educated at Dr Lindsay's Grove Hall School near Bow, returning to Essex to farm the family estate. In 1811 he married Anne Taylor. Ten years later, an agricultural depression forced him to Berkshire where he managed Becket, Viscount Barrington's estate. That move would affect the later naming of New England features including Barrington, the Barrington River and Barrington Tops.

In December 1824 an old school friend, John Macarthur junior, persuaded him to accept the post of chief agent in New South Wales for the newly formed Australian Agricultural Co. His key role was to establish and manage a new pastoral business based on a land grant of 1,000,000 acres (404,609 ha). In carrying out this role, he would be subject to a committee resident in NSW. This committee was entrusted by the directors in England with 'extensive discretionary powers,. Dawson was advised to accept their advice at all times.

On the surface, this made sense. The directors in England could hardly directly govern such a distant operation. They needed an on-ground supervising body made up of local experts. However, the committee was dominated by members of the Macarthur family, and this would case trouble.

Dawson had to organise many things. After buying stock in France, Saxony and Spain and recruiting workers, The Australian Agricultural Co party sailed for Sydney in the ships York and Brothers. On the trip, Dawson was assisted by his nephew John Dawson, then nineteen. In November 1825, the small convoy reached Sydney. On board were a party of 15 men, 14 women, 40 children, more than 600 sheep, 12 cattle and 7 horses.

Meantime, the local committee had been considered the three alternatives for the land grant suggested by Surveyor-General John Oxley. They concluded that the area between Port Stephens and the Manning River was most suitable for the company's activities, although this was not Oxley’s preferred site. After inspecting the area in January 1826, Dawson accepted this advice. He recommended that the whole establishment should be moved there as soon as possible. Later, Dawson would be criticised for not checking the other sites. Objectively, it is hard to see what else he could have done.

Dawson moved rapidly. By June 1826 headquarters had been established at Carrington on Port Stephens; by 1827 much land had been cleared and spacious stores and workshops erected. Dawson had already recognised that the humid coastal country was not suitable for sheep and had begun to move stock inland. His efforts attracted praise, including from James Macarthur who in May 1827 spoke highly of Dawson’s management and the progress being made.

Trouble now broke out. Dawson, concerned at the way the Company was being forced to buy old and diseased sheep from the local committee’s flocks, refused to buy more. 'I was no longer disposed”, he wrote to James Macarthur in June 1827, to make the Company Grant a burial ground for all the old sheep in the colony'.

James Macarthur moved against him. On 27 December 1827 he paid another to Carrington. This time, his report castigated Dawson for mismanagement and extravagance. He was accused of bad management and insubordination, of taking up land on the north bank of the Manning River and running his own flocks on it, of using the company's resources in exploring and settling it. John Macarthur stated: 'The concern cannot prosper because the Company's servants are only solicitous for their own interests', In April 1828 Dawson was suspended by the local committee and, on James Macarthur's report to the court of directors in London, was dismissed in January 1829.

Dawson fought back. Now in London, he published his Statement of the Services of Mr Dawson, as Chief Agent of the Australian Agricultural Company[ii]. Apart from providing details of the early days of a significant part of New England’s history, it is the first written record of corporate infighting in Australian history.

The following year, Dawson published a second book, The Present State of Australia; a Description of the Country, its Advantages and Prospects with Reference to Emigration: and a Particular Account of its Aboriginal Inhabitants[iii]. It was this book that really left his longer term mark. Nor only was it in part the story of the establishment of the Australian Agricultural Company, but it also became a fundamental source book on New England’s Aboriginal peoples. Dawson liked them, respected them and employed them.

Dawson’s efforts to achieve justice slowly had an effect. In 1836, after repeated representations to the Colonial Office, he was given land in New South Wales in recompense for the grant he had sought unsuccessfully from Sir Ralph Darling in 1828 even though such grants were now forbidden by law. He returned to New South Wales with his second wife in 1839 to superintend his estate, Goorangoola, on the upper Hunter: he also acquired a 100-acre (40 ha) grant at Little Redhead, near Newcastle. Soon after his return he was again appointed magistrate for the area. One of his last recorded actions in New South Wales was to advise on the Botany Bay water supply scheme for Sydney.

Dawson returned to England in 1862, dying in 1866 and was buried at Greenwich. He was survived by two sons and one daughter of his first marriage and by one son of his second. The elder son of his first marriage, Robert Barrington, became well known as a civil servant and pastoralist. In the end, even the directors of the company had some awareness of the wrong done. 'The misconduct of Mr. Dawson is far exceeded in culpability by that of the Committee whose orders he was to obey', the directors recorded.

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[i] Material in this piece is drawn especially from E. Flowers, 'Dawson, Robert (1782–1866)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dawson-robert-1969/text2379, published in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 17 February 2014.

[ii] Statement of the Services of Mr Dawson, as Chief Agent of the Australian Agricultural Company. (London, 1829), accessed on-line. http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1392619628144~191&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=10&show_metadata=true&preferred_usage_type=VIEW_MAIN&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true 17 February 2014

[iii] The Present State of Australia; a Description of the Country, its Advantages and Prospects with Reference to Emigration: and a Particular Account of its Aboriginal Inhabitants, (London, 1830). Accessed online - . http://books.google.com.au/books?id=6swNAAAAQAAJ – 17 February 2014

History Revisited - 'Blacksmith Country" lit up on the silver screen

I wonder how many Armidale people watched the repeat of the Fred Schepisi film The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978) on NITV? I also wonder how many know that this was a quintessentially New England film?

Those who watched will certainly recognise some of the landscape in the film. To begin with, the last part of the wild chase after Jimmy Governor (Jimmy Blacksmith in the film) and his brother Joe took place across New England.

In the heat of the manhunt for Malcolm Naden, the Sydney media started calling the country around Nowendoc and the Upper Manning and Hastings Rivers Thunderbolt country. They would have been better off calling it Governor or Blacksmith country. Like Malcolm Naden, Jimmy and Joe were Aboriginal. Like Malcolm Naden, they knew the bush and effectively taunted the authorities. Like Malcom Naden, they became the stuff of legend.

Their journey was shorter, just fourteen weeks from the first murders to the death of Joe, the capture of Jimmy. Yet in that short time they became the dominant news figures in the colony, transfixing European society and its officials.

The film itself was based on a book by Thomas Keneally also called The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, a book that varied to some degree from the historical tale. Keneally had strong New England connections, for he was writer in resident at UNE and wrote two very specific New England books. The first was The Survivor (1969), a book linked to the sexual guilts of a senior academic. Anybody from Armidale will spot the local connections in the early part of the book. The second book was The Dutiful Daughter (1971), a story of UNE college life seen through the eyes of Damien Glover, the son of simple, coast dwelling parents.

The film was made mainly in Armidale, Dorrigo and their surrounds. Any modern Armidale resident would find the scenery including the Armidale Court House instantly familiar.

This is our world presented back to us through the miracle of film. It doesn’t matter that the story diverges from the historical record. It is a story after all. What matters is the instant familiarity of landscape that sends a shiver down the spine. This is our world, and we know it.

Just as with the earlier Captain Thunderbolt, the arrival of the film crew created great excitement. Locals lined up to be extras. Just as with Captain Thunderbolt, the world premiere was held at Armidale’s Capitol Theatre.

The film was not a great success. For Fred Schepisi, the film's reception was a disillusioning experience and he left Australia soon after to work in Hollywood, not returning for ten years. For we locals, the film is part of our history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 16 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