History Revisited - tough change for Aborigines

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don’t know when the Aborigines first arrived in New England. We know from dating at Warren Cave in Tasmania that the Aborigines had reached Tasmania around 35,000 years ago, while dates from Willandra Lakes in South West New South Wales suggest occupation as early as 41-40,000 years ago,. Given these dates, it seems reasonable to assume that Aboriginal people were at least visiting New England some 40,000 years ago.

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

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

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

History Revisited - looking back on the industrial age

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History Revisited - DNA link connects us to India

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 30 January 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

The economics of traditional Aboriginal life - questions and answers

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

History Revisited - how a town's fire brigade was born

On the night of Monday 14 March 1887, Armidale residents were wakened by the sound of the town clock bell being continually rung to sound the alarm. What the Express was to describe as “The Great Fire” had broken out and was threatening to destroy a significant section of the northern side of Beardy Street.

By the time it was finally put out, five buildings had been destroyed with adjacent buildings damaged.

Armidale residents had had enough. A public meeting was held on 22 March to consider the formation of a town volunteer brigade. The question of a possible water supply was much discussed, including the erection of a reservoir on Goal Hill (later the Teacher’s College) where the forces of gravity might be used to feed water to the town center. A committee was formed to inquire into the provisions of the Fire Brigade Act of 1884. The committee was also charged with investigating the water supply question. By the end of the year, driven partly by local insurance company representatives, a Fire Brigade Board had been formed.

Further action was slow. Then early in the morning of Monday 11 February 1896, another major blaze broke out in Beardy Street. Four buildings were destroyed, including the Court House hotel located where the Imperial now is.

Desperate action was required to save the Post and Telegraph Office on the other side of Faulkner Street since the wood roof shingles had started to smolder under the impact of embers drifting across the street. Volunteers armed with wet blankets climbed onto the roof and managed to smother the incipient fires.

Another public meeting was called. This time a brigade was formed, an action celebrated in September when a gala day saw the christening of the new fire engine and the first procession and public drill of the newly formed brigade in their smart and serviceable uniforms,

It was quite a day. From their headquarters at the gas works, the brigade accompanied their horse drawn engine down Beardy Street to Tattersall’s Hotel where they thrilled the crowd by scaling nearby buildings.  The Armidale brigade was now launched.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 23 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

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

New evidence on the Settling of Australia – the Indian connection

There has been a recurring view in Australia that the Aborigines were a changeless people living in a changeless land. We now know that that view was incorrect on both counts. Aboriginal life did change over the millennia of Aboriginal occupation of the continent, while the land itself changed many times as climate changed and as the Aborigines themselves modified the land.

In all the discussion, the first settling of Australia has always been a question of interest to Australian prehistorians and anthropologists. When did the Aborigines first arrive in Australia, where did they come from and by what route? A second question of interest has been the issue of later settlement: did the original settlers and their descendants continue in unchallenged occupation of the land or were there new arrivals that challenged or at least mixed with the local population?

Anthropological, archaeological and ethnographic evidence all indicated some changes in the physical appearance of the Aboriginal population across time and space. Did those changes reflect new arrivals or were they within the range of normal physical adaptation to different environment over the millennia?

These questions are of both academic and political interest, for they play into the complicated debates surrounding Aboriginal history and associated discussion of rights of and treatment of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

New dating techniques have progressively pushed back the date of first arrival. It now appears that the Aborigines probably arrived in this country between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period. Older sites may still be found, although the very earliest sites may lie below the sea; sea levels were then around 100 meters lower than the present levels.

In terms of route, two possible routes were postulated, southern and northern. The southern route went via what is now Indonesia where water distances were the shortest. The northern route went via what is now the Philippines through New Guinea. Water distances were much longer, but the prevailing winds may have assisted southern movement.

In 2002, a group of researchers published a paper in Current Biology.[1] This concluded that there was tight clustering between elements of the Y chromosome among the Aborigines studied from Northern Australia and people living in Southern India and Sri Lanka. This was evidence of an Indian connection and a southern route. However, there was a further feature.

Using the dating techniques developed for estimating when gene streams diverged, they concluded that the results strongly suggested that there had been an influx of Indian genes during the much later Holocene period. They also noted that the timing coincided with a period of significant change among Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

Around 5,000 years ago, the archaeological evidence suggests the beginning of a process of significant change in Aboriginal life, a process described by Harry Lourandos as intensification. I will deal with the intensification debate in another post. For the present, populations increased and there were significant changes in Aboriginal technology.

In 2009, a group of Indian researchers published a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology that provided a different perspective on the question of connections between the Australian Aborigines and the Indian sub-continent.[2] Using mtDNA sequencing, they concluded that there were genetic links between certain Indian tribal groups and the Australian Aborigines, but that the divergence had occurred between 50 and 60,000 years ago. To their mind, this provided conclusive evidence that the original Australian Aborigines and those living in Papua and New Guinea had followed the southern route via South Asia in first settling Australia.

This year, study led by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany presented new results, again based on DNA evidence.[3] found evidence of substantial gene flow between Indian populations and Australia about 4,000 years ago. In addition, the researchers found a common origin for Australian, New Guinean and the southern Philippine negrito Mamanwa populations. The researchers concluded that these populations followed an early southern migration route out of Africa, while other populations settled in the region only at a later date.

So what do we make of all this? On the surface, the evidence suggests that there were at least two migration flows, one via southern India at the time of first settlement and then a second one many years later. The Max Planck study also establishes an apparent common linkage between groups in Australia, New Guinea and the Southern Philippines. However, if as the Max Plank researchers conclude, they all followed the southern route, that suggests migration north from New Guinea into the Philippines against the winds.

We need further DNA analysis to resolve all this!

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[1] Alan J Redd, June Roberts-Thomson, Tatiana Karafel, Michael Bamshad, Lynn B Jorde, J M Naidu, Bruce Walsh and Michael F Hammer, Gene Flow from the Indian Subcontinent to Australia: Evidence from the Y Chromosome, Current Biology, Vol 12, pp673-677, April 16, 202. Accessed on-line http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/zdownload/papers/CurrentBiology.pdf 18 January 2013

[2] Satish Kumar, Rajasekhara Reddy Ravuri, Padmaja Koneru1, BP Urade, BN Sarkar, A Chandrasekar and VR Rao, Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link, BMC Evolutionary Biology, 9:173, accessed on-line 18 January 2013 http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-9-173.pdf

[3] Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Gene flow from India to Australia about 4,000 years ago, accessed online 18 January 2013, http://www.mpg.de/6818105/Holocene-gene-flow_India-Australia

History Revisited - tragic end for early architect

Visitors comment on the beauty of many of Armidale’s buildings. They give the city a unique feel.  

Behind that beauty lies the story of architects and architecture, the people and changing fashions that formed the city we love.

John Horbury Hunt was born in New Brunswick, Canada, in October 1838. He practiced first in Boston, emigrating to Australia in 1862 after the US Civil War led to the closure of the Boston practice in which he worked.

Initially Hunt worked for Edmund Blacket, another architect who had a considerable influence on New England’s built landscape, before establishing his own practice in 1869.

Hunt’s first great commission was the Newcastle Cathedral. From there, he went on to design many of the churches and great homes across Northern New South Wales. Many of those commissions came from the White family who acted as his sponsor and promoter.

In Armidale Hunt designed St Peter’s Cathedral, the Deanery, St Johns Theological College, the Armidale Hospital, Booloominbah and Trevenna. You can see from this list just how important Hunt was to the city we have today.

Hunt was a natural Victorian eccentric whose architectural views extended well beyond the conventional limits of the time. He had a deep understanding of the materials he used and of all building skills. This led him to experiment with different forms. The results are clear in the texture and special design features of his Armidale buildings.

Hunt was not an easy man to deal with. Armidale historian Lionel Gilbert described him as small, mercurial, irascible, uncompromising, egotistical, aggressive, if with certain warmth.

Work dried up as the depression of the 1890s squeezed Sydney. Then in 1895 came the death of his wife Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was fourteen years older than him and had, I think, been the bedrock of his life. From there his decline was inexorable. There was no work, he saw his beloved Cranbrook cottage at Rose Bay seized and survived as best he could by selling his possessions.

By the time he died in 1902, Hunt was a pauper. His only assets were his spectacles, three gold rings, a silver pencil and eight shillings and threepence in cash. As I read the details of Hunt’s later life I found it profoundly sad that a man who gave us so much should end this way.

Now, looking back, we can see that Hunt's distinctive, radical architecture was twenty years in advance of his peers, some of it unequalled in the world at that time. We can also see that Hunt sowed the seeds of some aspects of modern architecture in Australia.

That’s a great legacy. Armidale gained enormously from Horbury Hunt, but so did Australia as a whole.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 9 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

History Revisited - marching into town's heart

Francis Schaupp was an annoyed man. As Armidale’s Inspector of Nuisances, his job was to maintain public order. He took this role most seriously.

The city had long had a problem with larrikins, disobedient youths who congregated in the streets, drank, and created disorder.

The big snowstorm of August 1881 was the heaviest in memory. The larrikins had pelted pedestrians, horse riders and carriage occupants with snowballs. Their unerring accuracy had created outrage at the failure of the police to protect the streets from such disorderly behaviour.

By 1886 the problem had eased. The streets seemed secure from public nuisance. However, Inspector Schaupp now had a new problem, one that concerned him greatly. A new religious organisation had arrived, one that threatened the quite order of Armidale’s streets.

Funded in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth as the North London Christian Mission, the Salvation Army had developed on military lines with its own uniforms, colours and hymns, often with words set to popular and folkloric tunes sung in the pubs. Booth became the General, his minister’s officers, while other members became soldiers.

The arrival of the Salvation Army in Armidale created consternation. The marching in the streets, the band, the public presence of women in uniform, were an affront to civic decency. Inspector Schaupp single-handedly set out to stop them.

To the larrikins, by contrast, the Salvation Army was an opportunity, a break from boredom. Both the “Hallelujah Lasses” in their scarlet uniforms and the good Inspector in the top hat he always wore were targets. At one meeting, the flour bombs crushed the Inspector’s top hat and glued it to his head!

In this case, the Inspector had met his match. The Army was quickly accepted into the structure of Armidale life.

In 1891, General Booth himself visited Armidale and was accorded a massive welcome fit, in historian John Ferrier’s words, for an Empire hero. Much had changed in just five years.

Growing up in Armidale, the Sallies still marched and played.

The corner just across the road from our house seemed to be a favourite place. There each year at Christmas, the band would form up on the footpath and play just as it had done so many years before.

To me as a child, the Salvation Army with its band and uniforms seemed strange, different, part of the intrinsic colour of local life.

The world changes, of course. As it does, the rhythm of life changes. Part of the role of the historian is to record those changes and represent them so that they are not lost but reinterpreted in the light of current needs and attitudes.

The Sallies today have adjusted to change. The old is still there, but now they work in somewhat different ways, they present differently.

But just speaking personally, I have very fond memories of the old Sallies and the role they played.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 2 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 columns by clicking here for 2013.

History revisited - just a bit of bull

One of the little known facts about Armidale is its role as national headquarters of a remarkable number of beef breed societies. I haven’t counted them all, but there are over twenty. I didn’t know that there were that many beef breeds!

This fact got me wondering about the history of cattle in Australia.

I found that the first cattle to arrive in Australia came on the first fleet, picked up at the Cape of Good Hope on the way through. There was old Gorgon the bull, four or five cows and a calf. They were almost certainly of Africander breed, with probably at least one balck Vaderlander.

They quickly strayed after a convict who was meant to be watching them fell asleep. Livestock were valuable. Five hundred men were mobilized to search for the cattle, but to no avail. There were no more known cattle in the colony until another ship arrived three years later, again from the Cape, with eleven black Vaderlanders aboard.

In 1795, a convict was told by an Aborigine about a herd of cattle to the west of Sydney. He went to investigate, and found the escaped herd near modern Camden. It had grown to sixty one, a remarkable rate of increase for such a small herd in just seven years.

In the still small settlement, these cattle were a valuable resource. Governor Hunter rode to see them. He named the area Cowpastures, made it a reserve for the wild cattle and ordered a guard house built to stop poachers. Numbers grew steadily.

Sydney was full of rogues intent on enriching themselves. Governor King laid personal claim to a large number of the wild herd on the basis that Governor Phillip had owned part of the original herd and had given them to him. The wild cattle were difficult to catch. King therefore promptly swapped the claimed cattle for 200 tame Zebu and black cattle from the Government herd!

In a colony of rogues, John Macarthur was the rogue of rogues. On his first exile in England, Macarthur went to see Minister Camden and persuaded the minister to give him a very large land grant around Mount Taurus.

This was blatant chicanery. Lord Camden had no idea that Mount Taurus was in the centre of the cattle reserve, that he was giving Macarthur not just a land grant, but control of the wild herd itself. Governors might object, but the grant stuck.

Macarthur himself was more interested in sheep than cattle. His efforts here laid the base for another great New England industry.

Some of the best cattle were domesticated, others were shot for meat. The herd vanished. However, its rugged genes became widely spread throughout the colony’s rapidly growing cattle numbers.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 December 2012. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the Express columns are not on line. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for2012(Belshaw's World), 2012 (History Revisited).