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Unrecognised and now almost unknown: explorationsthrough the history of the broader New England1

In recognition of the topic of this paper as well as our location, I would like to begin

by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the Land. I would also like to payrespect to the Elders past and present of this Land and of all New Englands

Aboriginal peoples. My hope is that they will find some value in my work.

This paper follows my personal journey in attempting to write a history of the broader

New England. I will talk a little about names and naming later. For the present, Isimply note that when I talk about the broader New England, I mean the Northern

Tablelands and its surrounding rivers to the north, south, west and east.

I say unrecognised, because the area that I am talking about has no formal identity.You will not find it on any map. I say now almost unknown, because the tides of

history, and of fashions in the writing of history, have overtaken the area, its interests

and activities. Things once considered important have been increasingly relegated to a

sentence, a footnote, or just ignored.

As will become very clear, I have a direct personal interest in all this because of my

own history and that of my family. In some ways, I think of my work as somewhat

akin to an archaeological rescue dig, trying to recover a past before modern

constructions destroy it entirely!

This leads to obvious problems of selection, perception and bias in my research and

writing. The topic I have selected, and the initial questions I asked of the evidence,

reflect my own past, interests and values. Further, at a personal level and especially

on my New England Australia blog

2

and in my weekly column in theArmidaleExpress, I am still a partisan player, sometimes using history to explain and support

particular positions.

To manage the obvious conflict created by my interests, perceptions and approach andmy role as a historian, I try to make my personal biases clear up front. I also try to be

professional in my practice of the historical craft. By this, I mean simply that I try tobe objective in my approach to the evidence and to ensure that the things that I say are

properly referenced, so that others can check and, as appropriate, refute my inevitable

errors of fact and judgement.

Beginnings

I first became interested in writing a history of the broader New England while doingmy honours years in history at the University of New England in 1966. This was a

very different world.

1 Paper delivered by Jim Belshaw to the University of New Englands Classics and History Seminar

Series, Armidale Friday 19 March 2010.2http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com

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The Cold War was still in full swing. Australia was involved in the Vietnam War.Jobs were plentiful. The social changes that would make the 1970s such a tip decade,

a break with the past, were underway, but undergraduate students at the University ofNew England still wore gowns and were expected to dress properly. In the case of

men, the rules prescribed coat and tie as well as gown. One of my student colleagues

did just that, wear a tie, coat and gown to lectures. Fortunately, he did add underpants

to the list! The main student issue on campus was room visiting, with studentscampaigning en masse to overturn a decision of the University Council banning visits

by members of the opposite sex in the Colleges3.

At local and regional level, the New England New State Movement was in the middle

of Operation Seventh State, the campaign that would culminate in the 1967 plebiscite.

The loss of that plebiscite on the votes of the dairying, mining and industrial interests

of the lower Hunter still lay ahead.

I had always been a new state supporter, in large part because of my grandfather,

David Drummond. Drummond had first become involved with the movement for selfgovernment while working as a manager on a share farm basis on Maxwelton, a

wheat block near Inverell4. He remained a supporter over a long career in State andFederal Parliament that stretched from 1920 to 1963.

I first became actively involved with the New England New State Movement in 1961

when, at my grandfathers request, I acted as an usher at the 1961 Armidaleconvention that launched Operation Seventh State. This was a very big meeting and

very exciting to a sixteen years old wearing his first suit! When I started at the

University of New England in 1963, I carried my new state enthusiasms with me.

During first year, I helped form the University of New England New State Society

and became foundation president. I became the Societys representative on the

Movements Executive and remained a member until leaving Armidale early in 1967.

Despite this involvement, it wasnt the fight for self government that first made me

want to write a history of New England. That desire came from another source

entirely.

In 1963 as a first year undergraduate I enrolled in History I. The History Department

was a remarkably strong department for what was still a relatively small institution.

The first year history course provided a general introduction beginning witharchaeology and prehistory, a segment largely taught by Isabel McBryde, supported

by Mary Neely (later Dolan). This focus on archaeology and prehistory was unusual,since prehistory itself was quite a new field. John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga

note that the first book on world prehistory and one of our texts, Grahame Clarkes

3 Mathew Jordans A Spirit of True Learning: the Jubilee History of the University of New

England (University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2004) pp 187-190 discusses the room visiting

issue. However, the editor ofNeucleus quoted was Winton, not Winston, Bates. Winton was in fact co-editor; I was the second editor with Winton. Like so many UNE alumni, Winton went onto a

distinguished career, becoming a Commissioner with the Productivity Commission.4

J D Belshaw, David Henry Drummond 1890-1930: The formative years, Armidale and District

Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, No 22, March 1979, pp147-160. For further detail, see J

D Belshaw, Decentralisation, Development and Decent Government: the life and times of David

Henry Drummond, 1890-1942, PhD thesis, University of New England 1983.

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my interest in the project. At this point, I want to use the work of Isabel McBryde asone prism to extend my discussion on some of the threads within New Englands

history.

Impact of the University of New England on regional thought

While there have been a number of studies that do look at specific aspects of regionalthought

9, I am not aware of any general studies examining the contribution of regional

thought to the overall history of Australian thought. Yet the evidence that I have seen

suggests that there were considerable regional variations in thought that fed back into

the broader pattern of Australian life and thought, including politics. Certainly, that

was the case within New England.

At the time Isabel was appointed to the University of New England, it was just twenty

two years since the formation of the New England University College, seven years

since UNE had gained its autonomy.

Those agitating for the formation of the new university college saw its role in regional

terms: this was to be the Sydney University of the North. To this end, the College wasto support Northern development by bringing science and education to bear upon

Northern problems. In 1920 the first New State manifesto, Australia Subdivided, putthe problem this way: In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical

schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area10

.

The academic staff coming to the new College and then the University had a varied

background, but shared the ideal of the founders about the role of a university as a

centre of teaching and learning in the English tradition. However, they also came

from a very different world: the culture shock was enormous and deserves a section of

the history in its own right. For the moment, I will simply point to a few important

features.

Armidale may have been a significant education centre, but in 1938 it still only had a

population of perhaps 7,00011

and was a long way from the major centres staff had

known. Further, 1938 was a drought year, so the town that greeted the Colleges new

9 The work of B D Graham, for example, on the formation of the Australian Country Parties ( The

Political Strategies of the Australian County Parties from their origins until 1929 , PhD thesis,

Australian National University, 1958; The Formation of the Australian Country Parties, Australian

National University Press, Canberra 1966) draws out quite clearly the way in which ideas about the

need for, role of and structure of Country Parties varied in geographical terms.

In similar vein, Don Aitkins work on the NSW Country Party (see for example D A Aitkin, The

Colonel: A Political Biography of Sir Michael Bruxner, Australian National University Press,

Canberra, 1969; The Country Party in New South Wales: a study of organisation and survival,Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1972) provides examples of geographical variation

across NSW.

At regional level, High Lean Country (Alan Atkinson, J S Ryan, Iain Davidson and Andrew Piper

(eds), Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest 2006) point to a number of specific intellectual co ntributions madethrough the University of New England, while John Ryans many publications also discuss thought,

attitudes and the contribution made.10

E Page and others (eds), Australia Subdivided, The First New State, Examiner Printing Works,

Glen Innes, 1920, p10.11

The 1938 Australian Year Book uses the 1933 census data. Armidales population was then 6,794.

Accessed on-line 24 February 2009.

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staff was dry and dusty, far removed from the green city we know today. My father,who was to lecture in history and economics and was the first staff member to arrive,

later recalled that his first reaction was to catch the train back!

Armidale was also marked by a very stratified social structure12

.

John Ferrys Colonial Armidale describes the progressive emergence of town socialstructures based on those who had capital and those whose capital was limited

13. He

also describes the process by which social order was established in Armidale,

replacing the previous early settler society. This process was not unique to Armidale,

but to greater or lesser extent was common across New England: the rise of the town

is one theme in New England history; the often bitter rivalries between towns a

second. These rivalries divided, preventing common action that might have benefited

all14

.

While there were common processes in town formation, the character and culture of

towns varied depending upon their history and economic base. Here, two things incombination made Armidale different.

The first was the presence of a more diversified town population because of the citys

role as an educational, religious and administrative centre15

. The second wasArmidales role as a grazing centre with well established pastoral families, many of

whom were also actively involved in community activities at a local and regionallevel. This was important and, to a degree, unusual, for the wealth and position of

these families often led them to identify with capital city life and beyond to England

and Europe.

The Clarence Valley squatter Edward Ogilvie can be taken as an example of the

second type16

. Ogilvie was a fascinating, if difficult, character. He was ten when his

father William emigrated to Australia in 1824, taking up land in the Upper Hunter. In

1840, Edward and his brother took up land in the Clarence after a race from the

Tablelands against a much larger party guided by former convict Richard Craig. The

Ogilvies had asked to join Craigs party. Denied, they pushed on as fast as possible

12Robert Barnards first detective novel, Death of an Old Goat (the Crime Club, London 1974)

provides a funny, somewhat malicious and satirical account of social structures in Armidale during the

1960s. While somewhat later, it still provides a guide to both structures and responses. However, it is

important to recognize that social structures and associated attitudes varied greatly across New

England. These variations affected, among other things, approaches to cooperative actions.13

John Ferry, Colonial Armidale, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1999.14 As an example, rivalry between coastal and tablelands towns made it very difficult to establish long

desired west-east rail links because nobody could agree on routes.15

Drummonds description of the early days of the university movement, (D H Drummond, AUniversity is Born: The Story of the Founding of the University College of New England, Angus

and Robertson, Sydney, 1959), shows clearly how this affected the movement. As an example (p5), the

deputation that met the NSW Minister of Education in August 1924 to plead the case for local

university education was led by the Rev. Canon Archdall, M.A, Headmaster of The Armidale School.He was supported by the Mayor, Morgan Stephens, by Mr J Cornforth, M.A., Brother Jerome as

Principal of the De La Salle College and Mr F Cuthbert, M.A, Headmaster of the Armid ale High

School. In academic terms this was, and this is the reason Drummond listed all their qualifications,

quite a high powered group for such a small city.16

George Farwell, Squatter's Castle: The saga of a pastoral dynasty, Angus & Robertson; Sydney

1983.

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into unknown country and reached the Clarence at Tabulum ahead of Craig. Edwardtook up fifty-six miles (90 km) downstream on both sides of the river and later named

the runs Yulgilbar.

Edward Ogilvie is quite an important figure in early New England European history.

The story of the growth of the Olgilvie empire is an interesting story in its own right.

More importantly, Edward Ogilvies relations with the Aboriginal peoples weresomewhat unusual for the time. At Merton in the Upper Hunter he learned to speak

the local dialect, probably a variant of Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi)17

. Upon arrival in the

Clarence he learned to speak the local dialect of Bundjalung, and established formal

relations with the local Aboriginal people.

Yet, and this is what is important at this point in our narrative, he had little interest in

local activities outside the property itself. Instead, and like his father, he fell in love

with Italy and spent as much time there as possible. So far as the Clarence and

especially Grafton were concerned, he remained an alien being.

Key local pastoral families on the New England such as the Wrights and Whites were

different, for they were involved. This affected the local social hierarchy, creating agrazier/farmer structure to match and interact with town divisions in a variety of

complicated ways. The arrival of the academic added to this complexity by addinggown, creating a town/gown/country divide. Many country people found the new

arrivals very strange indeed, while the academics themselves had to decideindividually how to fit into the place in which they now found themselves.

My own father is a classic example. In 1944 he married Edna Drummond, the new

Colleges first librarian and eldest daughter of the local member of state parliament,

leading to the local Labor party joke that Drummond founded a university to find a

husband for his daughter! Yet despite this connection, I had no idea until quite late in

his life just how difficult an adjustment it was for him.

At my fathers funeral, Professor Ron Neale described him as the Universitys only

working class professor. There was some truth in that.

Born in 1908, James Belshaw was the second son of James and Mary Belshaw who

had emigrated to Canterbury in New Zealand in 1906 from the industrial world of

Wigan in Lancashire18

. This was a very working class family. His parents had limitedformal education, his father had been one of the first Labour councillors in Britain and

the family was active in the Primitive Methodist church. In New Zealand, JamesBelshaw Senior worked in various roles before becoming a Methodist home

missioner. It was also a family with a powerful interest in education and a strong

sense of social justice.

Given this background, my father struggled with a social structure that reminded him

of an English class system that he disliked. He made many good friends, but never

forgot his initial reactions. He also, and this is the last point I want to make about the

17Michael ORourke, The Kamilaroi Lands: North-central New South Wales in the early 19

th

century, Michael ORourke, Griffith 1997, pp33-38.18

Holmes, Frank. 'Belshaw, Horace 1898 - 1962', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 22

June 2007, URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/, accessed 2 March 2010.

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initial culture shock experienced by academic staff, struggled with what he saw as thesocial conservatism of the broader New England society.

We need to be careful here with our definitions, for the question of what constitutes a

conservative or a conservative society is by no means clear cut. What we can say, I

think, is that the new College and its staff had to deal with people who were

unfamiliar with, and to a degree distrustful of, university education19.

To manage this problem of children coming into contact with tertiary education for

the first time and with parents concerned about the moral well being of their children,

first the Armidale Teachers College and then the University College adopted

approaches that we would now regard as paternalistic. As an example, in his

introduction to Keith Leopolds memoir on his days at the early University College,

John Ryan records this promotional piece from the Lismore Northern Starof 22

November 194020

:

No student in residence is permitted to be out after 10 pm without permissionand they have to sign the leave book when they return.

By now, my discussion must seem a long way from Isabel McBryde, but there is a

link in the unique university culture that emerged out of these various forces. Thebelief of the academic staff in the role of the university as a centre of teaching and

learning, in the ideal of a university as an independent entity dedicated to the pursuitof knowledge, merged with the ideals of the founders that the university should serve

the needs of broader North. To use a modern phrase, the University College and

University thought globally, but worked locally.

The meld worked because while the founders themselves thought of this as their

institution and were highly protective of it, they also shared the vision of the

academics of the university as a place of learning21

. As theArmidale Express

editorialised on the Colleges opening: It must not be a superior boarding school for

young men and women. Its function is to create, not imitate22

.

Isabels personality and approach exactly fitted the Universitys culture. The results

were quite outstanding for such a small institution23

.

19Keith Leopold was a member of the first student intake at the New England University College. In

his memoir (Keith Leopold, edited by J S Ryan, Came to Booloominbah: A Country Scholars

Progress 1938-1942, The University of New England Press, Armidale 1998), Keith suggests (p17) that

support for the new College was not as widespread as its founders might have liked: for the most part,

he wrote, the idea of a university college in Armidale met with indifference or even hostility . This was

not helped by the fact that the College opened with male and female students sharing the same

building, something then unique in Australia.20

Leopold, p17.21 The 1957 appointment of Russell Ward as lecturer in history provides an interesting example.

Wards previous membership of the Communist Party had led to him being effectively blackballed. Yet

he was now appointed to what was regarded as a conservative institution and indeed the only universityin Australia whose staff and students tended to vote Country Party.22 Cited by John Ryan, Leopold, ibid.23

The material that follows on UNE theses is drawn partly from the list of UNE postgraduate thesis

(http://www.une.edu.au/archaeology/theses.php accessed February 2007) supplemented by my personal

knowledge. In addition to the thesis in the archaeology list, there were also theses now classified as

history. Isabel herself left Armidale in 1973, but the work continued.

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Four years after Isabels arrival came the first thesis, Sharon Sullivan's 1964 honours

study on the material culture of the Aborigines of the Richmond and Tweed Rivers.

By 1978, UNE students had written at least 22 theses on the Aborigines, 4 Litt.B's, 16

BA honours and 2 MAs. Isabel herself was awarded her PhD in 196724

, laying the

basis for a 1974 book, Aboriginal prehistory in New England 25. This was followedin 1978 by book of essays, Records of Time Past: ethnohistorical essays on the

culture and ecology of the New England tribe s26

mainly written by her former

students. This included an article of mine,Population distribution and the pattern of

seasonal movement in Northern NSW, drawn from my original work. The story does

not end there, for there were also journal articles and monographs, including her

pioneering study with R A Binns, A petrological analysis of ground-edge artefacts

from northern New South Wales27

.

The citation for her award in 2003 of the Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding

Contribution to Australian Archaeology justly summarised her work this way:

Her work in New England was remarkable for its extent and depth, andIsabel'sexamination of the interface of archaeology and ethnography in the region

shaped not only the approach taken by many later researchers but alsoprepared the basis for the arguments about upland regions created by

archaeologists such as Sandra Bowdler and Luke Godwin28

.

If we now look at the original plaint from 1920 in Australia Subdivided - no

universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area - we can see from

Isabels case just how well the new University College and then University served the

original ideas of its founders. Nor, I should add, is this unique to UNE. Both

Newcastle and later Southern Cross have also served their immediate areas in the

same way, if with a narrower geographic focus. The overall contribution of New

Englands colleges and universities is another part of the New England story29.

The Importance of Geography

The second theme that I want to use Isabels work to illustrate is the importance of

geography, in so doing also extending our discussion of Aboriginal New England.

In High Lean Country, Wendy Beck notes that Isabel defined her study area in

Aboriginal Prehistory in New England as north eastern NSW from the latitude of

24Isabel McBryde, An archaeology survey of the New England Region, NSW, PhD thesis,

University of New England, 1967.25

Isabel McBryde, Aboriginal prehistory in New England: an archaeological survey of

northeastern New South Wales, Sydney University, 1974.26 Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies .27

Australian Institute if Aboriginal Studies 1972.28 Ibid.29 It is hard today with mass university education to realize the importance of this. One of the

weaknesses in Mathew Jordans A Spirit of True Learning (op cit) is that he does not fully bring this

out so far as UNE was concerned. The contribution needs to be assessed not just across disciplines, but

also in university extension work and the activism of key individuals. Because this is my second

criticism of Mathews book, I should note that I found it a valuable work.

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Tamworth and Kempsey north to the Queensland border and from the coastwestwards to the Nandewar Ranges and the western slopes of the Northern

Tablelands30

. She also notes that in another publication, Isabel explains that NewEngland has been interpreted broadly, but generally conforms to the bounds envisaged

by the late nineteenth and twentieth century New England New State Movement.

The first point to note about this is that the study area as defined by Isabel inAboriginal Prehistory in New England is not the same as the new state boundaries

recommended by the Nicholas Commission in 1935 and later adopted by the New

England New State Movement, for these included the Hunter Valley. The area

variously called the Northern Districts, Northern Provinces, the North or New

England is a European construct whose boundaries have varied with time. While

those variations form part of the history of New England, they were not relevant to the

Aborigines who occupied this territory prior to the coming of the Europeans; what

was relevant to them was the territory they occupied and their relationships with

adjoining groups31

.

In her chapter, Wendy kindly suggests that one James Belshaw mapped the different

geographic zones within New England32; she includes a map based on part of myoriginal analysis. I included this introductory material on the geography of New

England because I knew from my own experience just how important geography wasin determining the pattern of life. This is not geographical determinism; other factors

can also be important. However, the topics that I was trying to investigate across avaried area such as population distribution and the patterns of seasonal movement

were clearly related to geography.

I broke New England into four north-south geographic zones reflecting common

usage the humid coastal strip including the Hunter Valley, the tablelands, western

slopes and then western plains. Each zone contained a variety of environments

depending on landforms, soil and climate. Climate, for example, varies both east-west

and north-south. Within each zone and between zones, you would expect east-west

and north-south human interaction. That was indeed the case.

While my primary focus in this section is on Aboriginal New England, European New

England was just as affected by geography. As an example, the pattern of yes and no

votes at the 1967 new state plebiscite were closely correlated to settlement and

transport patterns created during the first decades of European settlement, patternsdirectly linked to geography33.

In her discussion of Isabels work, Wendy suggested that Isabel conceived of the

region under study in a relatively abstract way, rather than consisting, for example, of

30 Wendy Beck,Aboriginal Archaeology, High Lean Country, op cit, pp 88-9731 This has relevance to the scope of any history of the broader New England, for the first part of such a

history has to include geographic areas now included in Queensland.32 Op cit pp 89-91.33 Jim Belshaw,History of the New EnglandNew State Movement 2 - definingNew England, New

Englands History Blog, http://newenglandhistory.blogspot.com/2010/02/history-of-new-england-

new-state_04.html, 4 February 2010. Just as there were north-south and east-west linkages in

Aboriginal New England, so there were in European New England. These axis were very important in

determining, among other things, the pattern of political life.

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specific Aboriginal territories34

. This reflected, in part, the state of knowledge at thetime. At that point, there was very little available work on Aboriginal history35. The

writing that had been done was dominated by anthropologists, prehistorians andethnographers. The detailed ethnographic and linguistic work required to understand

the distribution of the Aboriginal people at the time of European settlement had

simply not been completed.

There is a rather sad subtext here. We can take Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) as an

example36

. In 1963, pioneering linguist Arthur Capell reported that up to 50 speakers

of the language had been recorded. They were mostly elderly, but possessed

considerable knowledge. Noting that Gamilaroi was one of a number of related

dialects in North Western NSW, Capell suggested that a comparative study of the

whole series of dialects might well be made. By the time that Peter Austin, the scholar

who would play such an important role in documenting Gamilaraay, began his studies

of the language as an undergraduate in 1972, the majority of these speakers had died.

Against the background of the discussion to this point, we can now turn to review thedistribution of New Englands Aboriginal languages at the time of European

colonisation. The position here is necessarily a confused one.

To begin with, what was a language? In 1788 there were perhaps 250 Aboriginallanguage groups in Australia, incorporating perhaps 700 dialects37. The precise

distinction between language and dialect can be a difficult one. In general, speakers ofdifferent dialects within a language group were likely to be able to understand each

other, or at least recognise that they spoke different varieties of the same language.

However, this was by no means clear cut.

We also need to make a clear distinction between language and political or territorial

boundaries38

. The broad language groups covered substantial areas in geographic

terms. There were a variety of shifting territorial and political boundaries within each

language group. Just speaking the same or a related language did not make for

everlasting friendship.

34High Lean Country, p90

35 Jim Belshaw,Malcolm Calley, Anthropology and Australia's Aborigines, New England Australia

Blog, http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/01/malcolm-calley-anthropolgy-and.html, 27

January 2007.36

The material on the Gamillaraay is drawn from Peter K Austin, The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi)Language, northern New South Wales A Brief History ofResearch, SOAS, University of

London, 2006, accessed on-line 17 December 2008.37 John Mulvaney & Johan Kamminga, Prehistory ofAustralia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 1999 pp

69-75; and Peter K Austin, Article MS 1711 Countries and language Australia , Encyclopedia of

Language and Linguistics ELL2,pp 2-9.. Accessed on line 19 August 200938

In using the term political boundaries I am not implying formal structures of the type associated with,

for example, nation states. A closer analogy would be the type of relationships found in mediaeval

Europe, in Scandinavia or indeed in Homers Greece. The 18 th century Kamilaroi war leader the Red

Kangaroo provides an interesting case study. Having taken control from the previous elders, he hadbuilt the Gunnedah mob up into a strong force by absorbing other groups. Raids from the Bundarra

mob on the Goonoo Goonoo and Manaella mobs led them to seek support from the Red Kangaroo. The

Red Kangaroo argued that support should be provided because the power of the Bundarra mob posed a

threat. A joint war party was formed that defeated the Bundarra group. The case shows how political

alliances were formed and used in Aboriginal Australia. (Michael ORourke, Sung for Generations,

published by the author, Canberra 2005, pp 306-311).

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This added to the confusion that could arise in the minds of European observers as to

naming. Quite apart from the varying spellings attached to particular names, thosenames might be a territorial name attached to a particular group, a name attached by

one group to another group, a dialect name.

Michael ORourkes study of the Kamilaroi draws this out very clearly39. As anexample, he points to the case of the Baradine area north of Coonabaraban which was

assigned to both Burrigalu and Gamilaraay languages.

Burrigalu burrie+galu: literally myall-tree + human plural meant those who

inhabit the myall country or myall dwellers. To ORourkes mind, this was primarily

a group or locality name. However, it could also mean the local variant or dialect of a

larger language.

In contrast, the name Gamilaraay itself - gamil + array: literally no + having or having

gamil for no denoted a form of speech, the broader language spoken by theKamilaroi as a whole. Even here, Gamilaraay could describe the language (that

speech which has gamil for no) or, by implication, its speakers (those who use gamilfor no).

The result is apparently crazy patchworks quilt of names whose exact meaning can be

quite unclear. In some cases, we may never be able to resolve the problems. However,a number of general points can be made to clarify what might otherwise seem to be a

complex and confusing mess.

The following map taken from the Aboriginal Housing Office web site shows one

attempt to map the distribution of Aboriginal languages across NSW40

. A colleague,

John Baker, kindly superimposed the current NSW boundaries on the map. The slight

skew comes because the mapping process used specific town locations on the map to

determine boundaries; these were not quite exact in geographic terms.

The map should not be treated as definitive. A little later I will discuss some areas

where I think that the actual distribution within New England varies from that set out

in the map. However, this is not important from the viewpoint of present analysis

since we are concerned with overall patterns.

39Michael ORourke, The Kamilaroi Lands: North-central New South Wales in the early 19

th

century, Michael ORourke, Griffith 1997 especially pp 26-32.40NSW Aboriginal Housing Office web site accessed 6 October 2009. The map is, I think, originally

drawn from the distribution of Aboriginal languages across NSW as defined in Horton, David, general

editorThe Encyclopaedia ofAboriginal Australia : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history,

society and culture, Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander Studies, Canberra : 1994.

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Look first at the state boundaries. You can see how they dissect language groups.

With the creation of Queensland, for example, Bundjalung speakers found themselves

living in two jurisdictions whose policies towards the Aboriginal peoples varied over

time and from each other. These divisions continue today. In January 2007, the

Githabul people (a Bundjalung group) reached a native title agreement with the NSW

Government41

. The Queensland Government refused to participate

We now turn to the importance of geography. In their Prehistory ofAustralia,

Mulvaney and Kamminga noted that there had been numerous attempts to mapcomplexes of Aboriginal cultural traits throughout the continent that might help

understanding of the major differences in language, social customs, mythology,artistic styles and technology.

42. To their mind, the 1976 explanation by Nicholas

Petersen was the most persuasive.

Petersen observed that major cultural areas corresponded with major drainage basins.

He suggested that the reason for this is that the topography and environments of

drainage basins tend to be internally uniform, while their margins are relatively poor

in plant, animal and water resources. This led to more social interaction betweengroups living within the basin; much less between groups living on either side of the

marginal zones.

41Melbourne Age, 2 January 2007. I covered this story in two posts on the New England Australia

blog: Githabul People achieve Native title deal, 2 January 2007,

http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/01/githabul-people-achieve-native-title.html; Githabul

people win land title recognition, 30 November 2007,

http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/11/githabul-people-win-land-title.html.42 Ibid p78

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Petersens conclusions broadly fit with those that I reached in my own earlier work43.

However, I also suggested that that major geographic regions were important sincethe close relationship between the Aborigines and their environment meant that the

patterns of Aboriginal life varied with changes to that environment. By implication,

areas with similar environments were more likely to have commonalities in life and

culture.

To the degree that this conclusion is correct, we would expect similarities within New

Englands major north-south zones. Indeed, this does seem to have been the case.

If you look now 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 theMurray, 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 westof 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, theWiradjuri 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.

Overall, the broad sweep of languages along the Western Slopes and Plains, the

riverine languages, seem clearly related, merging into the languages of the western

deserts. Dividing lines are linked to geography. However the relationship is not an

exact one.

Variable rainfall droughts and floods is a feature in this area. The Aborigines were

not bound to water in the same way as Europeans with their stock and crops.

However, during dry periods Aboriginal populations concentrated near water,

expanding across land at other times to take advantage of newly available water and

food resources. As a consequence, social and to a degree language groupings ranalong rivers; language dividing lines could cross catchments.

Along the coast and adjoining ranges, you have another dense distribution. We can

think of this in both north-south and east-west terms. North-south languages are

directly related to river catchments. The partial exceptions are the Hunter and theClarence. There is a problem with the Hunter that I will come back to shortly. So faras the Clarence is concerned, the sheer size of the river made it the divide between

two very different language groups, the Gumbaynggirr and the Bundjalung. A third

Gumbaynggirr related language, Yaygirr, does not appear on the map, but occupied

the areas around the mouth of the Clarence.

43J. Belshaw, The Economic Base ofAboriginal Life in Northern NSW in the Nineteenth

Century, BA (Hons) thesis, UNE, 1966; add 1978

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East-west, there appear to be language shadings inland. In the Hunter Valley, for

example, the traditional presentation of language distribution has a coastal languagewith a linked inland language. The position further north appears somewhat similar.

Bainbaa, the language spoken in the headwaters of the Nymboida River (a tributary of

the Clarence to the south extending into the Tablelands near Guyra) appears to be a

version of Gumbaynggirr.

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 map shows the New England Tablelands,

the largest tablelands in Australia, with just two language groups.

I said earlier that I thought that the actual distribution of languages varied from that

set out in the map. Here I want to mention two of the puzzles that presently concern

me.

The first is the Hunter Valley. I think that Michael ORourkes analysis of the

evidence shows conclusively that the Kamilaroi occupied territory in the UpperHunter shown as Geawegal on the map44. Further, it also seems clear that some of the

five languages shown on the map, a very large number for such a small area, were notlanguages at all, but territorial names or dialects. This led Amanda Lissarrague to

argue for a new geographic title, the Hunter Valley Lake Macquarie language45

.

The second is the Northern Tablelands and especially the relationship between

Nganjaywana and Anaiwan. Are they in fact just different names for the same

language, different dialects of the same language or different languages? As with the

Hunter, I am still working my own way through the evidence, trying to focus on the

underlying geography.

Rediscovery of the North

Returning to my personal journey through the history of New England, early in 1967 I

left Armidale to take up a position as an administrative trainee with the

Commonwealth Public Service Board. At the end of my training year, I was posted to

the Commonwealth Treasury at that Departments request. While I retained my

interest in Australian prehistory for a period, I was now working as an economist.This led me to switch to economics, completing my Masters degree in economics at

the Australian National University in 1970.

There was a certain irony in this, for I was following in my fathers footsteps. He had

come to Armidale as lecturer in history and economics. Forced to choose between thetwo, he chose economics, with Gordon Greenwood then appointed to lecture inhistory. The irony lay in the fact that I had sworn not to do economics beyond a third

year major because this was my fathers discipline.

44 Michael ORourke, The Kamilaroi Lands, op cit, pp33-38.45

Australian Indigenous Language Date Base (AUSTLANG), Awabakal,

http://austlang.aiatsis.gov.au/main.php accessed 20 October 2009. AUSTLANG with its on-line search

facility is an extremely useful introductory tool for anyone interested in the distribution of Aboriginal

language groups.

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There is another small sub-text here that forms part of the social history of New

England. Earlier, I spoke of the arrival of the academics in Armidale and of theinteraction between them and the existing social order. The siblings as they later came

to be known, the children of staff at the University College, formed another sub-

group, town while in a sense also gown. It wasnt always easy being an academics

child in Armidales goldfish bowl, among other things it created expectations atschool, and the various children reacted in different ways. My rejection of economics

in favour of history was one outcome.

In 1972 I ran for Country Party pre-selection first for the Federal seat of Eden-Monaro

and then the state seat of Armidale. I was unsuccessful, but became actively involved

for a time in the Party at an organisational level and in various groups concerned with

Party reform. It was during this period that John Knight and I decided to write a joint

biography of my grandfather.

Born in Armidale in 194346

, John had completed a BA honours at UNE and a MA atHawaiis East West Centre. He had also been a Fulbright scholar. In 1965 he had

joined the Department of Foreign Affairs, but at the time of our discussion wasprivate secretary to then Opposition Leader Billie Snedden. Johns election to the

Senate in 1975 as one of the two senators for the Australian Capital Territory, aposition he was to hold until his untimely death in March 1981, put Johns

involvement in the project on hold. I decided to continue and enrolled in a PhD atUNE to provide structure.

At this time my focus was on my grandfather. Further, John and I had both seen the

biography focused on two linked threads: politics and the Country Party on one side,

his public and ministerial career on the other side. Here we were influenced by the

work of Don Aitkin and especially his 1969 biography of NSW Country Party leader

Mick Bruxner and then his 1972 study of the structure and history of the NSW

Country Party47. I had found both very convincing from my own knowledge of the

Party.

At this point, I want to return briefly to one of my earlier themes, the role of New

Englands universities in preserving and promoting the culture and creativity of New

England, as well as the nature of the links that bind over time and space.

Don Aitkin was a teachers son who was, in fact, the first student admitted to the

newly established University of New England in 1954 simply because his name beganwith an A!48 Those drawing on his work were, respectively, the sons of an Armidale

storekeeper and the first academic to arrive at the University College in 1938. Three

46Biographical material on John Knight is drawn from the Senate Hansard, Wednesday, 4 March 1981,p 303, accessed on-line 5 March 2009.47 D A Aitkin, The Colonel: A Political Biography of Sir Michael Bruxner, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1969; The Country Party in New South Wales: a study of organisation

and survival, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1972.48Don Aitkin, UNE's first student, awarded honorary degree, University of New England media

release, 11 October 2004, accessed on-line 5 March 2009,

http://www.une.edu.au/news/archives/000085.html

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very different people with different experiences, yet linked by history and sharedinterests.

Dons own interests took him away from his initial political focus into a very

successful career as a political scientist and senior university administrator. However,

in 2005 he returned to his original roots in What was it all for? The Reshaping of

Australia.49. This is a remarkably good book that explores social change in Australiathrough the prism set by the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate class of 1953.

This book was a godsend from my viewpoint. I had been struggling with a way to

structure the history of New England from the 1967 plebiscite loss through to the end

of the twentieth century. This was a period of fundamental change within New

England that saw the decline not just of many of the ideas and institutions that had

given the area its character, not just in the relative power and influence of the area, but

also of the very idea of New England itself. What was it all for? gave me something

of a structure for looking at the process of change in a controllable way. So, just as it

had been thirty years before when John Knight and I first looked at a biography ofDavid Drummond, Dons writing had come to my aid in providing an initial starting

point.

I said an initial starting point, because a very odd thing had happened in the writing ofDrummonds biography. As I started detailed research and writing, I found that the

only way to understand him lay in his role as a regional politician. After his troubledchildhood and his sometimes harsh experiences as a ward of the state, it was

Drummonds arrival in Armidale in 1907 as a seventeen year old farm labourer that

really marked the start of his life because, from this point, the troubled youth started

to achieve the successes that would make him a leading politician and education

minister. In so doing, his identification with the North came to be a central feature of

his beliefs. I also found that some of the arguments that he and others used to justify

separation and that I had really thought of as political debating points, actually now

rang true from my own experience as a senior policy adviser.

All this led me to restructure the thesis. Instead of focusing on the Country Party and

Drummonds public career as central, the North, the history of the North and

Drummonds love for the North became central. This shift was to cause me

considerable marking problems, problems that became something of a cause celebre

within the University and that led me finally to walk away from the PhD. That is oldhistory now. For present purposes, it was at this time that I decided that I must write a

proper history of the broader New England because of the need, as I saw it, to presentand preserve a slice of the past that I considered to be important.

Conclusion

In concluding, I have tried to give you just a taste of New Englands history through

the frame set by my own experiences. That history has been constantly re-shaped by

the interaction between local conditions and broader forces including economic and

demographic change in ways that are not always clear or self-evident. One of the

49 Don Aitkin, What was it all for? The Reshaping ofAustralia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005.

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advantages of taking a broader area such as New England is that it can be easier to seethese interactions than it is at local, narrow regional or state or national level.

Take Federation as an example. If you look at writing in this area, you will see that

the primary focus has been on the political and national impacts of Federation. Yet

Federation was also an economic decision, the creation of a customs union behind

protective walls that rose with time. This meant that Federation redistributed incomeand economic activity in quite differential ways across the new nation, depending

upon whether economic activity serviced a local or global marketplace. We can see

this clearly in New England, for the industrial interests of the lower Hunter and some

farming areas benefited, whereas other areas were disadvantaged, providing one

driver for the re-emergence of separatist feeling.

Or take Aboriginal New England. Why did the Bundjalung, Gumbangirr and

Dainggatti peoples retain more of their languages than Aboriginal peoples in other

parts of New England? Was it just a matter of relative population size, or was it the

way in which differential development allowed for what we can think of as refugeareas?

I will finish here. I hope that I have interested you in the history of the broader New

England.