History Revisited - women in the exchange

INFORMATION HUB. The telephone exchange became a centre for community information.

When the first telephone exchange opened in Armidale in August 1901, there were 24 subscribers connected to a 100 line switchboard. By 1910, the number of subscribers had increased to nearly 250.

The new telephone system was far more capital and labour intensive than the telegraph system. Lines had to be connected to premises, phones installed with new switchboards purchased to handle the growing traffic.

In Armidale, the new exchange was open twenty-four hours. This required the appointment of what came to be called telephonists who managed not only the calls, but also the detailed paper work required to ensure proper billing.

The first NSW switch attendants were all men. It was not until August 1896 that the first women were appointed to the Sydney central exchange, all selected from the ranks of the Education Department’s pupil teachers. It would be 1913 before the first female telephonist was employed on the New England Tableland.

The move to employ women was not welcomed by all.

In April 1908, a letter writer in the Sydney Morning Herald complained that females “are physically unfit to endure the strain of much-nerve-wracking work as telephone operating.” However, there were practical reasons for their appointment, for the pay scales were more attractive to girls than boys.

Much later, advances in telecommunications would drain jobs from country areas, but initially the first employment effects were positive. When responsibility for postal, telegraph and telephone services was transferred to the Commonwealth after Federation, the large number of employees in the PMG gave the new Commonwealth a physical presence, its only physical presence, in large parts of Australia.

While the telephone service expanded rapidly, the costs involved in the spread of the required infrastructure meant considerable lags. It would be 1925 before the first telephone call could be made between Sydney and Brisbane. This made the telephone a device first for local communication, while the telegraph or post still carried longer distance traffic.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of improved local communication on the pattern of local life. Both country and town people could ring up and order goods for later collection or delivery. It became much easier to organise meetings and events, something that was used to great effect by those with interests in politics or the advancement of particular causes. The tempo of politics speeded up.

In many country areas, the local telephone exchange became the centre of community information, of gossip about what was going on.

The telephonist became the central person in a hub of information and exchange, the one person who was in contact with nearly everybody and knew what people were doing. She was also the person people depended on to get the news through when something went wrong.

People complained, of course, especially on the party lines with multiple subscribers on a single line where anybody could listen in, but nobody who could afford to pay would have been without the service. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 July 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 - telephone links towns

REVOLUTIONARY: Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the first telephone connection between New York and Chicago in 1892. In Australia, Melbourne and Sydney were not linked until 1907.

In December 1877, E. C. Cracknell, Superintendent, Electric Telegraphs, in New South Wales successfully transmitted songs and music over the 224 km distance between West Maitland and Sydney using telegraph wires. Late in May the following year while Cracknell was visiting Armidale, there was a partially successful attempt to establish telephone communications between the Armidale and Uralla telegraph offices.

Those dates are quite remarkable.

Alexander Graham Bell first achieved transmission of intelligible speech over wire on 10 March 1876. According to Keith Munro who has recorded the history of country telephonists, details of Bell’s invention were published in the English Mechanic and World of Science of 6 April 1877 and then the Scientific American of 6 October 1877.

As soon as those publications reached Australia, both private individuals and those in the telegraph world began to experiment, constructing telephones based on the magazine articles. The potential value was clear to all, including those in the United States who triggered massive patent and political battles fighting for control of the technology.

In 1880, the first working telephone exchanges were established in Melbourne and Brisbane, followed by Sydney in 1881. The telephone age was dawning.

Despite the very early date of that experiment linking Uralla and Armidale, telephony was a little slower reaching the North. Graziers were especially early adopters, for this aided business.

Early in the 1890s, a transformer became available that allowed voice transmission over single wire telegraph lines. Over the next decade, lines were slung across paddocks to homesteads, allowing transmission of telegraphs and instructions.

Older Armidale residents may well remember those lines. Often sagging, the poles ancient and sometimes moss covered, they helped form the base of country communications.

The first Armidale service dates to 31 October 1891 when a line was installed between the Armidale Railway Station and the Goods Shed. Then came a gap until 1896 when a second line was installed between the Armidale Hospital and the Infectious Hospital. This was on the corner of O’Dell and Donnelly Streets.

Another gap, and then in 1899 a line was installed between the Hospital and Dr Sheldon’s surgery. In August 1901, the first Tablelands’ telephone exchange opened at Armidale. By the end of 1914, there were fifteen exchanges dotted across the Tablelands.

Those exchanges changed our lives for better and worse. They created new patterns of social interaction, of communications, of working, of politics. They speeded life up.

Later, with further technological advances that speeded life would become the whirly gig we know today. In the meantime, a very specific world was created that would, in it’s turn, be swept away.

In my last column in this series, I will look at some of the social aspects of the telephone.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 June 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 - age of the telegram

GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY: Telegraph boys, Brisbane, 1870.  Armidale's own office opened in October 1861

As I indicated in my last column, the telegraph spread globally with quite remarkable speed. This was a case where technology directly coincided with an urgent unmet need for rapid communications.

The installation costs of the system on land were relatively low, facilitating rapid construction. Operating and maintenance costs were considerable, but these could be recovered from a marketplace eager for quick communication. The telegram was a classic example of a simple packaged high value product. Creation of undersea cables was expensive and more complex, but by then the demand was there to justify the costs and risks.

The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. On 1 May 1844, the first public telephone line between Baltimore and Washington DC opened. In Australia, the first Australian line between Melbourne and Williamtown opened in March 1854.

All the Australian colonies rapidly built lines. In 1858, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were linked. In November 1861, the newly constructed NSW and Queensland lines met at the border, linking all the Eastern colonies.

Demand grew rapidly. New lines had to be added, while relatively small centres were quickly connected.

On the New England, telegraph offices were opened simultaneously on 1 October 1861 in Armidale, Glen Innes and Tenterfield as part of the opening of the progressive opening of the Northern Line. In 1869, a line to Port Macquarie was opened.

Older Armidalians will remember the telegram. It was so much part of or lives that is hard now to realise that our kids know nothing about it!

So, for the younger generation, telegrams were expensive. The cost of the telegram was based on the number or words, a sort of Twitter equivalent, so people kept their messages short.

The expense meant that, for the private person, telegrams were only sent on special occasions; marriages, deaths, anniversaries, congratulations and achievements,

I was in Hobart hitchhiking when my Leaving Certificate results came out. I went to the Hobart GPO to collect my mail, and there were all the telegraphs and other messages congratulating me. I took them back to the boarding house and read and reread the lot. I had no idea so many people were interested.

The link of the telegram with special news made their arrival a matter of great concern. So often, and especially during the two wars, their arrival meant the death of a loved one. A telegram carried fear.

Standing on their doorsteps, people ripped the envelope open to find the worst. The short clipped words carried a message that would change their lives forever. Distressed, they would carry the message indoors, trying to wok out what had to be done, what to do next.

Telegraph traffic peaked in 1945. Now a new competitor, the telephone, had become well entrenched. I will look at this in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 June 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 - changing the way the world communicates

TRAILBLAZING: Built from as early as 500 BC, the Roman Roads were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman State. 

If you are going to run an Empire, you need communications. The Romans had the Roman Roads, while Marco Polo’s Travels describe in almost breathless tones the extensive communications system in the Great Khan’s empire.

Using both runners and horses with posting stations spaced at regular intervals, messages could be transmitted across vast distances within the Mongol Empire at remarkable speed. So important was the system, that provincial or local rulers were required by law to maintain the physical and animal infrastructure and given tax concessions to encourage them to do so.  

In the case of the British Empire, you find the Red Route, the network of undersea telegraph cables linking British territories. Intended to protect imperial interests and promote imperial commerce, the Red Route spread rapidly to the point that British cable laying ships dominated the global trade.

Australians have recently been commemorating various events connected with the First World War. There has been little recognition in those commemorations of the importance of the Red Route. It gave the British and Commonwealth side secure global communications, while Germany and the other Central Powers found their global communications badly disrupted.

Looking back, there were many remarkable features about the global spread of telegraphy. The first was its sheer speed.

Many complex problems had to be resolved before messages could be transmitted, let alone transmitted economically across a vast global cable network.

The first working telegraph system was created in 1816. The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. The first undersea cable was laid in 1850 between France and England. The growing international cable system reached Australia in October 1872.

If you think about it, that’s very fast, just fifty six years from first commercial application to global transformation. Its about the same time from the invention of the Turing machine to the creation of the internet.

Telegraphy transformed to world. It reduced the time taken to get a message from England to remote Australia from many weeks to seven hours. It transformed industry and governance.

New industries were created, warfare was revolutionised. For the first time, a newspaper in Sydney or Armidale could get information on events as they happened, not events past.. For the first time, a government official could expect to assert direct immediate control over a far distant subordinate. Real centralisation was born.

The remote Australian colonies were early adopters of the new technology. In my next  column, I will look at this and the impact on New England.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 June 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 - life as postmaster in Armidale's early days

HISTORIC BUILDING: The current Armidale Post Office first became functional in 1880 under the watch of long-serving postmaster John Emblin.

Armidale’s first Post Office was established in March 1843. Armidale was less than four years old. That first Post Master, John Pattison, was entitled to a commission of 20% on postal charges, then one shilling and three pence for a letter to Sydney, plus an allowance of 30 shillings per year for lighting.

As the old currency system disappears in the mist of time, we forget the meaning of these old numbers. When decimal currency was introduced in 1966, one shillings and three pence was equivalent to 15 cents per letter, 30 shillings for lighting $3.

Those values came after years of inflation. Those early letters were very expensive, well beyond the reach of most people assuming they could in fact write.

By the time Armidale’s first Postmaster was appointed, the NSW mail service had been in existence for just under thirty years. On 25 April 1809 ex-convict Isaac Nichols was appointed first Postmaster for NSW.

Envelopes had not yet been invented. Early letters were sealed by folding, often with wax sealing the folds. Postal costs were paid by the receiver.

In 1838, two things happened. One was the start of the overland service from Sydney to the Port Philip settlement. The second was the invention of prepaid stamped letter sheets, a world first, allowing money to be collected from the sender. Some of those sheets carried the insignia Melbourne New South Wales!

In April 1840, the first overland mail arrived in Sydney from the Moreton Bay settlement in, the Sydney Herald Records, “the short space of thirty-nine days.” Ten years later came the first adhesive postage stamp.

Things weren’t always easy for Armidale’s first Postmasters. Money was short, and Government officials in Sydney were not inclined to spend it unless absolutely necessary.

In 1864, local member of Parliament Robert Forster wrote to the Minister for Finance complaining that it was painful to him to be constantly “reminding the Government of the fact that the Postmaster at Armidale, his Wife & 7 children are obliged to Eat, drink, Cook & Sleep in one small room.”

Things did improve. In 1880, long serving (and suffering) Postmaster John Emblin with his wife and multiple children was able to move into a brand new post office on the corner of Beardy and Faulkner Streets, While extended, the building was recognisably that we know today.

In 1889 there was another development. Following continuing complaints from Armidale residents, a second daily mail delivery was introduced to coincide with the arrival of the Northern (Queensland) mail train.

Hard to believe now that Armidale had two daily mail deliveries and that mail from Queensland was sufficiently important to warrant a second delivery.

You have to remember that Armidale families once had interconnections across Northern NSW into Queensland, that New England was once the centre of widespread pastoral enterprises extending into Queensland, that Queensland children came in numbers to Armidale schools.

It was a different world. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 June 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 - Aboriginal life intensifies across New England

HILLS AND PLAINS: From 6,000 years ago, the Aborigines had spread across all the broader New England coast, hills and plains

We know from the ethnographic record that the pattern of Aboriginal life across the broader New England on the dawn of invasion was varied and complex. The archaeological record suggests that this pattern began forming after sea levels stabilised around 6,000 years ago, with growth accelerating around 5,000 years ago.

New England’s history is dominated by geography. From east to west, the often narrow coastal strip ends in the rugged broken escarpments of those blue ranges that provide a constant visual backdrop to much of the coast. The New England Tablelands, the largest tablelands in Australia, declines to the west, becoming the Western Slopes and then falling away into the vast Western Plains.

Looking north-south, that pattern creates the broad zones we know today, coast, tablelands, slopes and plains, each marked by local variation.

Five thousand years ago, as today, travel was easier north-south than it was east-west. The Aborigines of the slopes and plains formed one very broad grouping, those on the coast another.

Petrology studies rocks. In early pioneering work, Ray Binns and Isabel McBryde used petrological analysis to trace Aboriginal ground-edge artefacts in multiple collections back to source. Their work revealed a widespread exchange network that carried artefacts from the stone quarry at Moore Creek near Tamworth north and especially west as far as the Darling River.

This was a remarkable result because of the distances involved, and suggesting that the patterns we know from ethnographic evidence formed early.

Binns and McBryde’s analysis also showed more limited exchange on the coast where suitable stone was widespread. However, there appeared to be almost no interconnection between either coast or Moore Creek and the Tablelands. Further, those major sites connected with the Tablelands such as Bendemeer or Graman are on the periphery.

So what, to use Iain Davidson phase, about that bit in the middle, the main Tablelands?

The evidence suggests that the Tablelands were a marchland area, with a relatively small resident population squeezed between the big coastal language groups whose territories extended into the headwaters of the coastal rivers and the large Kamilaroi language group extending along the Western Slopes.

Oral tradition, the ethnographic evidence and limited archaeological evidence all suggest seasonal movement between the coast and tablelands. Petrological evidence from the Salisbury Court axe factory shows a relatively limited local distribution, suggesting that it was important to a local resident group.

The central –southern Tablelands Nganyaywana (Anaiwan) language itself appears structurally related to the coastal languages, but is also very distinct, hinting that it diverged during a period of isolation.

One of the most interesting feature of the Tablelands is the presence of significant ceremonial sites, including the Serpentine stone arrangements p(icture). Some served local needs, but high country sites such as Serpentine clearly met broader needs.

There are hints in the evidence we have of the broader patterns that once existed. By combining all forms of evidence, we may yet be able to discover those patterns. It’s a tantalising prospect.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 May 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History Revisited - New England's first Aboriginal settlers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will continue this story in my next column.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 April 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.