Valuable source on Hunter Valley family history

I just wanted to mention that Free Selector or Felon provides a rather good searchable resource for all those interested in the history of the Hunter Valley. 

Bibliography of Aboriginal dreaming stories

My thanks to Gordon Smith for pointing me to this bibliography by M K Organ on Aboriginal dreaming stories. I think that there are a couple of missing New England references. I will pick these up later.

At his point, I have yet to attempt an analysis on the New England material.

NSW Aboriginal Languages Map

Just at the moment I am a somewhat bogged down on Aboriginal languages.

The NSW Aboriginal Housing Office has a rather useful map on its site showing one view of the distribution of Aboriginal languages in NSW. I generally focus on New England, but there are advantages in looking at a broader picture. Look at the map first: my comments follow afterwards.  

If you look first at the bottom of the map, you will see a heavy concentration of languages. These follow the Murray River, a very rich and densely populated Aboriginal area at the time of European colonisation.

On the far left, there are a range of languages - a patchwork quilt - occupying larger territories. These are the languages of the Darling River and western deserts. Like the Murray, the Darling was quite densely populated, although densities were far less. The Darling is simply a smaller river. The variety in the desert languages to the west of the Darling is a factor of distance and small populations; languages and dialects diverged because of distance.

To the right of the Darling, we find the two biggest language groups by area, the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi. They occupied the river valleys flowing to the west from the Great Diving Range. These were quite rich territories; language expansion was facilitated by geography, people could spread.

Along the coast and adjoining ranges you have another dense distribution. Coastal language groups were linked to catchments. Many of the languages are linked: a coastal language, with another related language or dialect (the distinction between the two is a slippery one) occupying the headwaters. Tribal groups occupying the Tablelands areas between the Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri and the coastal languages were generally smaller in population because the environment was poorer. They were also squeezed.

The New England Tablelands, the largest tablelands in Australia, appears to have had just two language groups.  

Sandra Bowdler on Bora sites

Just to record a reference: Sandra Bowdler A study of Indigenous ceremonial ("Bora") sites in eastern Australia.

There is a real issue in the conflict between the need to record and preserve for historical purposes and the desires and views of current Aboriginal people.

Armidale Methodist Church - reference notes

A search on the Armidale Methodist Church brought up a few interesting if somewhat random references:

• Alwyn Jones's obituary
• the wedding of Alan Cutmore and Mary Walford
• Biographical details on Eric John Pearson
• Interview with Neville Fletcher. This led me to a fuller list of interviews with Australian scientists
• Gould Genealogy - lots of good books.

New England Australia History Research Report August/September 2009

In August my meanders took me in a new track.

In Introducing the Armidale poets I started a new series looking at one recent stream of New England writing. I followed this with  Hockey and the Armidale poets. Pea and ham soup and poetry and then  Armidale poets - beginnings. At this point, and as so often happens, I got sidetracked.

I want to continue this series because, apart from pure pleasure, it fills another little gap.

Train Reading - Michael O'Rourke's Kamilaroi Lands then Train Reading - Michael O'Rourke brings the Kamilaroi to life and Belshaw’s World: A closer look at Kamilaroi and language continues my discussion of the Kamilaroi people based around three of Michael's books. Michael's writing really has been very helpful in developing my thinking. The only problem is that I have on some ways bogged down in this one element of New England. I have a lot of part written material, but I need to bring it to the point that I can make it available.

As I indicated in one of the Kamilaroi posts, one thing that has been helpful was the decision to draw a line in the Aboriginal New England section of the history at the time of colonisation. This makes it easier to focus on the Aboriginal story. I was finding that later events kept on interfering with my thought and writing.

 Armidale Air Show 1959 was triggered by a post from Paul Barrett. The link to his post is included in my post.

In Saturday Morning Musings - weird history and other meanders I quoted (thanks to Christopher Moore's Canadian History) US historian and writer Jill Lepore:

To be a public historian, not a public intellectual, not a popular historian, not a pundit, but a public historian, is to be a keeper of our memory as a people. And that, if I had my druthers, and the capacity, is what I would want to be.

I am not sure that I could claim to be a pubic historian. I think that that would be pretentious. But certainly I am trying to record and present aspects of New England's past. You see, the problem is that while there are still some historians writing at local and regional level, there seem to be none writing at a broader New England level.

The North exists. If you overlay maps of the current administrative divisions of NSW Government agencies with other boundaries such as the TV aggregation boundaries you will see it emerge. Yet no-one is writing about it as an entity. No-one is preserving and re-presenting the collective memory.

The Armidale Airshow of 1959 is one very small element, as is Belshaw’s World: The Palais Royale and memories of a Newcastle past. When I write about the Palais or Newcastle past I write not as a Newcastle or Hunter Valley person, but as a person from elsewhere who still sees Newcastle as part of his personal  historical world.

I accept that my approach including my continued support for New England separation raises its own issues in terms of objectivity when writing as an historian. But so long as I give my sources and express my arguments clearly, then others can critique what I write.

Sunday Essay - Farming, green house gases and the importance of practical experiments- Part One and  Sunday Essay - Farming, green house gases and the importance of practical experiments- Part Two are both explorations of current issues. However, both also link to another element of New England history, rural science and experimentation.

Just another thing to write about!        

Austlang - information on Australia's Aboriginal languages

The Austlang data base is a very good source for those wanting to find information on particular Aboriginal languages. You can search by name if you already know this, or by area if you want to find what language may have been spoken there.

New England Australia History Research Report July/early August 2009

I have been bogged down and not able to post. Just a brief update on my thinking.

In The Australian Aborigines - problems with personal perceptions I reported on a shift in my thinking brought about by a discussion with an Aboriginal colleague. I extended this discussion somewhat in "Wild blacks" and other interesting things.

Following my visit to Canada, A Belshaw family photo marked the another stage in my interest in Belshaw family history.I followed this with Saturday Morning Musings - more on the Belshaws. The Belshaws themselves are one small thread in New England's history.

In Saturday Morning Musings - Aboriginal languages and the return of Kamilaroi I returned to my musings on Aboriginal New England. This was followed by Sunday Essay - language, history and Australia's First Peoples and then A note on New England's Aboriginal languages.

In Memories of Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Stadium I looked at one aspect of the New England experience from a personal perspective.

Sunday Essay - church, state and social change in Australia and Belshaw’s World: Views of a past world – Barool, Treefield and Highcliffe took me in a different direction, an exploration of some aspects of the religious experience within New England.

Train Reading - Keith Leopold's Came to Booloominbah dealt with another aspect of the New England experience.This led me to write Getting balance (and interest) in New England's history.

Finally, Armidale Air Show 1959 is just a note.

New England Australia History Research Report - May/Early June 2009

I have been down many by-ways and meanders since my last research report, some new, others familiar. A lot of the resulting posts have been on my personal blog.

I have already mentioned on this blog North Coast Memories - SS Fitzroy. A little later in Saturday Morning Musings - the challenge of writing good history I looked at the challenge of writing good history.

I followed this with Invasion, massacre, murder and just death in battle looking in part at the way words affected perceptions.

Saturday Morning Musings - New England's Ogilvie dynasty looked at one New England pastoral family. This is actually linked to the previous post because the relations between the Ogilvies, and especially Edward, provides one prism in reviewing Aboriginal-European relations.

Then in Belshaw's jottings - 27 May 2009 I used the device of a Daingatti man to try to tease out elements of thought on the other side of the frontier. I then continued the Aboriginal theme in Saturday Morning Musings - access to an Aboriginal past.

Despite the huge gaps remaining in my knowledge, I am in fact starting to get more comfortable with the Aboriginal side of New England's history. By this I simply mean that I know where most of the gaps are.

In history, as in most of my professional work, I try to point and counterpoint between the particular and the general. I use the particular to develop an initial framework that I then test by returning to the particular. Sometimes I discard the framework in light of new evidence. More often, I extend and modify.

Knowing the gaps does not mean the end of hard work. In the case of the Aborigines, I am conscious of just how much work I have to do on the Holocene period up to European arrival. I now have to develop a sub-framework, and that means looking at all the work done since I did my first work in this area all those years ago.

I simply don't know enough. Because this is a general history, I am hopeful that I can avoid re-visiting primary sources. That would make the whole thing a mammoth task. I also have to remember, and this applies across the scope of the whole work, that I have perhaps just 20,000 words to cover the Holocene up to and including the European arrival. Some of the stuff that I am writing now, thousands of words, has to shrink to paragraphs!

In Train Reading - E Lloyd Sommerlad's Serving the Country Press I returned to the twentieth century.

I am fortunate that a fair bit has been written on the country press. We have to think of these newspapers as businesses as well as propogandists and journals of record for their communities. We also have to think of the biases of their metro competitors who were just as parochial.

Again, I am reasonably comfortable with the country press story. It's just a question of filling out the details and then selecting the key points.

In a post on this blog, The Chinese in New England 1848-1853, I looked at the early history of the Chinese in New England.

I am interested in the Chinese in part because I have Chinese friends and colleagues. So I am writing for them as well. Once I have written up the story of the mining rushes I can return to complete the Chinese story. While the Chinese are very much a sub-sub theme, they do form part of the texture of New England life that was quite important at particular times.

On Sunday I finished a major post - over 3,000 words - on my personal blog, Sunday Essay - church, state and social change in Australia, looking at some elements of social and cultural change within New England through the prism set by three very different books, one on Methodism in a country town, the second a history of the Ursuline Order, the third an organisational history of the NSW Country Party.

While the books are very different, their spans overlap, so they actually reveal many of the same type of change processes.

The sectarian divide that developed between Catholics and the rest of the Australian community was (is) very important from a national viewpoint. It was also important at a local level.

I am actually in a better position to understand the Roman Catholic position than I once was because one of the major orders became a consulting client a few years ago. Just attending a meeting of the order with its opening prayers gives me an emotional context that can, I think, help me understand and present the varying elements in the religious position.

I think that I have done a fair bit over the last month. So much more to go! Onwards!

Notes in passing.

• 1883, Dr. Elzear Torreggiani invites the Sisters of Mercy to Grafton, then part of the Armidale diocese.
• 1886 Lismore Presentation Sisters. Note as with the Ursulines the way local conditions affected structures and in the same way.
• History of Bishop T here.
• More on the Ursulines here.

May Yarrowyck - an update

Back in March 2008 in Aboriginal midwife - the mystery of May Yarrowyck I wondered about the story of this Aboriginal midwife.

By the wonders of the internet, Kim found the post and left a book reference with more information. I am recording it here so that I do not lose it. The reference is:

Barbara Le Maistre with contributions from M R Hardie, Nimula, Tingha, Bullawangen : Aboriginal people and their land, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Hurstville, N.S.W. 1996.

There is a copy in Australia's National Library. Another book to read!