NAIDOC Week 2021 - reflections on the meaning of Country

 

My Country. Gordon Smith, Stormy Morning

The theme of this year's NAIDOC Week is Heal Country. The NAIDOC web site describes is in this way:

The NAIDOC 2021 theme – Heal Country! – calls for all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.

Country that is more than a place and inherent to our identity.

Country that we speak about like a person, sustaining our lives in every aspect - spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially, and culturally.

NAIDOC 2021 invites the nation to embrace First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia's national heritage and equally respect the culture and values of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders as they do the cultures and values of all Australians.

For generations we have been calling for stronger measures to recognise, protect, and maintain all aspects of our culture and heritage.

We are still waiting for those robust protections.

This year’s theme also seeks substantive institutional, structural, and collaborative reform – something generations of our Elders and communities have been advocating, marching and fighting for.

Healing Country means finally resolving many of the outstanding injustices which impact on the lives of our people.

It is about hearing and actioning the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples which are the culmination of generations of consultation and discussions among our nations on a range of issues and grievances.    

In a way, this description is confusing because it mixes together a number of different things. In this post, I want to concentrate one thing, the sense of Country. 

                                My Country. Julia Griffin Rain on the Uralla Road

I once tried to explain the difference between the Aboriginal perspective and that of the new European settlers in this way: to the Aboriginal peoples, the present was an extension of a living past, to the Europeans, a point towards a still to be defined but hoped for future. The Aboriginal perspective was carried through in various kinship systems that effectively integrated the natural and human environment by placing plant, animal and physical features within kinship systems. 

The modern Aboriginal idea of Country and connection to Country draws from this traditional base although it carries connotations that reflect the  Aboriginal historical experience, including the desire to re-establish and re-assert links to past connections and experiences destroyed by European colonisation. In a way, the idea of Country and healing Country is part of a set of beliefs linked to but independent of the original history, a set of beliefs that has now gained a living presence, creating its own history.

The Celtic Revival provides an example of a similar process in a European environment. This drew in part from historical grievances, in part from a sense of loss, in part from a romanticized version of the past.  In doing so it aimed to recover elements of that past, including language revival. It also incorporated mystical elements drawing from Celtic folklore that have had a huge impact in, among other things, fiction including in fantasy world. The ABC TV series Cleverman (a series I greatly enjoyed) provides an Aboriginal example.

 

                                    My Country. Gordon Smith Winter Morn 

When I first came across the Aboriginal sense of Country, my instinctive reaction was Yes! because it so exactly mirrored my reactions to the area in which I grew up, which remains my Country today.  Later, when I worked with Aboriginal people, I came to understand why Country was so important to people whose pasts had been so disrupted. Without that contact they were adrift in a way I sometimes felt faced with the destruction of the immediate past and present, with distance from my home, with my inability to do things that might protect, preserve and create. 

Some may argue, and especially those deracinated Australians who have lost connection with place, that the comparisons are not comparable. How can I as an older white male from a middle class background who has gained from the benefits of settler society, from the benefits of dispossession, possibly understand, share? In response, I would argue several things. 

From my experience, there is a thirst among many Australians to establish their own place in their family histories, to link back to the places they and their families have come from, to establish connection with the places they now live. Many, and especially older Australians from regional backgrounds who have moved on but now hark back to their past, share and re-share stories and images from places that were, in their thinking, their own Country. I know all this from my experience as a regional historian, from my participation in groups such as Armidale Families Past and Present. 

In my own case, my mind is filled with experiences, stories and images that now incorporate the deep history of Aboriginal New England however imperfectly. I am a story teller who has ended in the role as preserver of memories. My mind is full of stories. Those stories are all linked in some way to land, to Country.  

 

To my mind, the Aboriginal concept of Country holds out important possibilities for healing the gap between between Indigenous and non-Indigenous society. In understanding the Aboriginal concept of Country we learn about Aboriginal society and history. We can better support action to heal the past. But we also learn more about our own concepts of Country, about the things that are important to us. 

Saturday Morning Musings - covid-19, compliance and the Australian character

 

Another graphic that made me smile. It's just so covd-19! Again, I do not know the original source. 

It's one of those graphics that is unlikely to survive the pandemic except perhaps as an historical artefact because the play on words is so very specific to current events. 

It's hard here in this little part of the world in which I live to really appreciate the scale and impact of covid-19. 

To my knowledge, we have had no cases of community transmission here, although there were a small number of cases where the disease was caught elsewhere,  The whole New England North West area has had no known active cases since the end of May. The effects of covid-19 have come not from the disease, but from the measures used to fight the spread of the disease. 

This is not a complaint, although I have said that the measures imposed lacked nuance and could have been better tailored. I think that the Melbourne outbreak now coming under control demonstrates how quickly the disease can spread. 

One thing that has surprised observers is just how compliant Australians have been in observing the restriction. There have been small protests as well as cases of non-compliance, but overall compliance has been high. This conflicts with the image that Australians and others have of Australians as individualists, cautious about and likely to rebel against authority.   Hofstede Insights describes Australians in this way:

INDIVIDUALISM

The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. It has to do with whether people´s self-image is defined in terms of “I” or “We”. In Individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies people belong to ‘in groups’ that take care of them in exchange for loyalty.

Australia, with a score of 90 on this dimension, is a highly Individualist culture. This translates into a loosely-knit society in which the expectation is that people look after themselves and their immediate families. In the business world, employees are expected to be self-reliant and display initiative. Also, within the exchange-based world of work, hiring and promotion decisions are based on merit or evidence of what one has done or can do.

While there is some truth in this description, it also gives a misleading picture. 

Australians are egalitarian by nature, democratic in tone. This comes through in forms of workplace address such as the use of first names. But Australians are also very compliant, something that John Hirst explores in The Distinctiveness of Australian Democracy (p112 ff). Further, while Australians may be critical of governments and politicians, there is also an expectation that Government will provide services, an expectation that dates back to early colonial days and the difficulty in providing services to a relatively sparse, geographically dispersed population.  

This difficulty fed into another element in the Australian character, one also in conflict with the idea of the individualist Australian, the volunteer ethos. Australia has a remarkable volunteer tradition, one that began in the early colonial period when people gathered together to meet local needs. We have seen this most graphically in the recent response to the bush fires. Australians looking after Australians. 

Earlier, I said that while I supported the various restrictions in a general sense, I also thought that they lacked nuance. From a purely personal viewpoint, I think that some of the restrictions have become too onerous and make reducing sense when geography is taken into account. The difficulty here is that while Australians can be compliant and collectivist, this holds so long as the restrictions seem sensible. Australian history suggests that once people conclude otherwise, then compliance drops sharply, with people deliberately looking for ways around the restrictions, Katy Barnett's piece in Quillette, Something is Rotten in the State of Victoria, is instructive here.       

Aussie craft show moves to Facebook to help seniors beat the pandemic blues: reflections on the importance of older people

 

As will be clear from this blog, we are all doing our best to adjust to covid blues. This photo shows Melbourne's Picture to Page Papercraft Show in better days. 

Refusing to become yet another cancelled event, the annual event is  moving online, running a free three-day event on Facebook to help older Australians beat loneliness and stay in touch with the crafting community during the pandemic. 

Creative director and host Michelle Brown invites Australians to join her and a bevy of talented craft retailers and guest artists for a free weekend of live interactive video demonstrations on Facebook.

 Running from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October, Michelle will chat with local and overseas guests as they share projects and explore new craft supplies for scrapbooking, art journaling, card making, stamping and much more. Usually, more than 2,000 dedicated crafters from across Australia head to Melbourne's Sandown Raceway each October to attend the three-day craft expo. 

“This year, we're running the entire expo on Facebook and making it free, to make it as easy as possible for Australians to attend,” Michelle says. “Many people are living alone and struggling to find enthusiasm during the lockdown, so we hope bringing engaging demonstrations to them in their own homes can inspire them to start crafting again.” 

“With most of our crafting community aged over 65, many with chronic health conditions who are forced to stay at home during the pandemic, maintaining a connection to crafting online is more important than ever." 

The online expo is built on the back of Michelle's successful Facebook and YouTube video series 'P2PCrafts Presents', with her team refining the approach to help technology-challenged craft retailers reach new audiences. 

"Our vibrant crafting community tells us how our online videos have brought them a much-needed spark of joy during the lockdown, so we're really excited to bring the From Picture to Page expo to Facebook so we can share it with all of Australia," Michelle told me.

Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting in the sunroom looking out over the bush while stitching ribbon and lace on a 1900s blouse. Bronwyn Parry

As I read Michelle's material, I reflected on an earlier post, Saturday morning musings - problems with the rigid application of Australian covid-19 restrictions. 

One of the underlying points in that post was the importance of recognising the fundamental contribution of older people to our social and cultural infrastructure, of recognising and respecting their sense of agency. Too much today we present them as potential victims.

There is also a tendency to write down craft, to classify it as basketwork for the elderly. This holds notwithstanding the importance of the English arts and crafts movement, to take just one example.     

I am not sure that I should classify Bronwyn Parry as an older person. After all, I resent the tag and I am a fair bit older than her. But I do want to use her to make a point. 

I first met Bronwyn in my early days of blogging when she was a mature age postgrad at the University if New England. Her partner Gordon had a photo blog that became one of my favourite sources. I followed Bronwyn through the draft of het first romantic novel and her subsequent success as a novelist. But that's only a small part.     

This is the Hillgrove Museum where Bronwyn is currently recruiting and training volunteers to allow the museum to re-open. 

As a Jane Austin aficionado, Bronwyn is love with historical clothing, making and wearing. This is a craft activity, but one that feeds into history, into reenactment and the love of social activity.

As part of her activities, Bronwyn is active in supporting the Armidale Folk Museum. She sometimes works as a volunteer when the museum is open. More importantly. she works to build the museum's collection of historic clothing, She restores clothing, she researches historical structure and use of clothing, she mounts exhibits of clothing. And she educates me all the time!

I have some claim to be an historian, but in attending an opening at the Armidale Folk Museum I learned more from Bronwyn about women's clothing over the last two hundred years than I had in all my years. 

I mention all this because it explains why I am happy to promote Melbourne's Picture to Page Papercraft Show and its move to Facebook. You can find out more here.

Reflections on my visit to the 2019 Archibald exhibition

Established in 1921, the Archibald Prize is Australia's oldest and best known award for portraiture in Australian art. The Archibalds are associated with two other prizes: the Sir John Sulman Prize  awarded each year for the best subject/genre painting and/or murals/mural project executed during the previous two years; and the older (established 1897) Wynne Prize  awarded for the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists completed during the previous twelve months.

You will find the 2019 winners and finalists displayed here for the Archibald Prize,  here for the Sulman Prize, here for the Wynne Prize.have a browse and see what you think.

I try to go each year to see the finalists on show at the NSW Art Gallery. Having missed last year, I was determined to make it this year, so trooped of to the Gallery this morning with a friend.

Jun  Chen's Mao's last dancer - Li Cunxin. Not a winner, but my personal favourite. I rarely agree with the judges! 

There were 107 finalists across the three prizes. That's a lot of pieces of art to absorb in often crowded gallery spaces full of generally well behaved school kids. They were very well behaved, but there were a lot of them!

I no longer pretend that I am capable of making fine judgements on the quality of the finalists, but in broad terms I thought that the quality and variety of the Archibald finalists was up on previous years, that of the Wynne and Sulman finalists down.

That's just a personal view. Others may well disagree.

As in previous years, I was struck by the continued presence of what we might call message pieces, where the supplied description of the paintings reflected current popular political and cultural angsts such as feminism, gender roles and differences, Aboriginal rights and dispossession and the environment.

 I don't have a problem with the idea of art as politics, but I would recommend that you look at the art works as art works before reading the descriptions. I have a bad tendency to quickly scan the work and then read the description before looking in detail at the work. I find that this distorts to some degree because the description affects my independent judgement of the work.

Recognising that space for descriptions is limited, I would also like more information about the artist, especially for the Wynne and Sulman prizes where this was noticeably lacking.  I have a particular interest in art and artists connected in some way with the broader New England. This was significantly down this year. I only spotted four such artists. More broadly, and this reflects that fact that I am out of the art scene, I couldn't work out how the artists and styles might fit together.

Perhaps it's just a volume question. There is so much more Australian art now with that it's become a very crowded palate.

If you are in Sydney, do have a look. If outside, browse the links I have above. I plan to go back again and this time spend more time just sitting and looking.  . 

Saturday Morning Musings - the importance of the local in Australia Day

Today is Australia Day. It is also India Day, perhaps more correctly Republic Day.

I find myself out of sorts with Australia Day. The major celebrations attached to the day date back to the 1990s when it suddenly emerged as a major event. I remember us taking the girls to an Armidale celebration in the 1990s. It was quite pleasant, something to entertain the kids. However, I was never very comfortable with the sudden focus, it struck me too much as jingoism, almost un-Australian. Later I mellowed a little, for I came to see it for what it was, an excuse for a party.

This year, the months leading up to Australia Day were marked by the usual disputes over the day and especially the date. The day marks the landing of the First Fleet at Port Jackson and the raising of the British flag to mark the start of the new colony. The fleet had arrived several weeks before at Botany Bay but found that Botany Bay was unsuitable as a base. So Commodore Arthur Phillip took a small boat north and entered what is now Sydney Harbour, a much more suitable location. The fleet then moved.

You can see why 26 January might not be seen as a good day by the descendants of Australia's Aboriginal peoples. To them, this is Dispossession or Invasion Day. Some Aboriginal people, not all, want the day shifted to a more "neutral" day. This cause has been taken up by the "progressives" who have added it to their list of causes : "First reconciliation, then a republic – starting with changing the date of Australia Day" as one article put it. Now this conflation of issues gives rise to acute dyspepsia on my part. I have to rush for the antacid.

A large majority of the Australian population supports retention of the present date, although there is an age gradient. Those under 24 are the only group in which support for the current date is in a minority. Every other age group shows a majority for retention that rises with age.

Personally, I don't care. The only reason that I can see for retaining the present date is the platform it provides for Aboriginal people seeking redress from the ills of the past. From that comment you might surmise, correctly, that I support the idea of reconciliation and of a treaty. But I do not support the idea of a republic. When the "progressives" conflate all these issues I find myself opposing a date shift, I question reconciliation, since all of these are meant to end up with an outcome I do not want. And when Peter Fitzsimons, that Don Quixote of "progressive" causes with his red bandana, starts tilting his lance at windmills I want to tilt back!

I will put dyspepsia aside. I am old enough and, hopefully, wise enough to deal with separate issues separately even when others conflate them. In doing this, I will also put aside the arguments of our cultural warriors and instead focus on a few positives, things that make me think that this country is in fact doing okay.

One feature of all the Australia Day ceremonies at local level is the recognition of local heroes, the people who have contributed to local communities in a whole variety of ways. To illustrate this, I will take one newspaper, the Guyra Argus. For those who don't know Guyra, it is a small town between Armidale and Glen Innes on the New England Tablelands.

This photo shows those who received awards for community service in Guyra. It's quite a big group for a town with a population around 2,000. The Argus story provides some of the details.      

Aileen MacDonald is Guyra’s Citizen of the Year for 2019, primarily for her role in promoting activities directed at Guyra's economic development. These are varied and quite intense.

.Bronte Stanley was named Young Citizen of the Year. The Guyra Central School captain organised a very successful Mental Health Day for the students, earned a place at the National Youth Science Forum, and has excelled in swimming and the arts.

Russell Roberts received the award for Community Service. The Ben Lomond Landcare and Rural Fire Service volunteer played a pivotal role in the inaugural Winter Fair, and is a foundation member of the StarGrazing event.

Kathleen Lorraine Varley was recognised for Long-Standing Service, including 10 years as Guyra Show Society Secretary, foundation member of the Kolora Aged Care Facility committee, Guyra Ladies Golf Club president, and Catholic Church Finance Committee member.

Painters Kay Smith and Brian Irving received the award for Arts and Culture. They coordinated the TroutFest Art Show, and provided a lot of advice to young artists.

Braydon Cameron is Guyra’s Sportsperson. The 16-year-old was a member of the Under 19 side that finished runner-up at the Sir Garfield Sobers Cricket Tournament in Barbados. He trained at the Central Northern NSW Academy for cricket, coached a number of junior teams, and scored 228 not out at an Open schools cricket tournament.

Jason Campbell and Luke Blyton were recognised for their Contribution to Sport. They coached the Guyra 12s rugby league team with great success in the Group 19 competition. The team achieved the season’s highest points tally, claimed the Best and Fairest player prize, and demonstrated great sportsmanship.

Passion on the Platform was the Community Event of the Year. The Guyra & District Chamber of Commerce event attracted more than 100 people for a seven-course degustation at Guyra Train Station. The sold-out event shone a spotlight on local food producers.

Now when you look at this list, notice the range of activities. Australia works as a country because of the millions of people who are involved and care at a local level. This is not big ticket stuff that grabs the headlines. It is people who care and contribute, who want to make a difference locally.

In other local Australia Day awards, Les Davis was awarded an OAM for his tireless work at Saumarez Homestead, a National Trust property just outside Armidale, while an OAM was also awarded to Max Tavener for his service to veterans and their families around Armidale.

There is something hit and miss about the National Australia Day awards. I know of so many people who should have been recognised but have not. I suspect that's inevitable.

The local awards are a far better reflection of real contribution at points in time. They encourage people to continue, they show the depth which underpins this country's continued strength. Regardless of the date of Australia Day, the local festivities are its real core.    
       

Saturday Morning Musings - memories of Klaus Loewald, a Dunera Boy

Historian and former diplomat Klaus Loewald (right), shown here with fellow Dunera internee Hans Marcus on the fiftieth anniversary of the vessel’s arrival. Rebecca Silk

There has been a real rush of new material on the now famous story of the Dunera Boys, the group of mainly German and Austrian Jewish refugees forcibly deported to Australia on the Dunera in July 1940. Upon arrival, they were interned at Hay. From that group came many who would become leading Australian intellectuals.  

On 19 June 2018, Nicholas Gruen posted A lucky boy from a golden age of economics, a summary of the speech he gave at the launch of economist Max Corden's memoirs, Lucky boy in the lucky country. Corden was a Dunera Boy as was Fred Gruen, Nicholas's father and another leading Australian economist. My attention was caught in part because I'm interested in the Dunera Boys, in part because of the discussion on the changing nature of economics.

Nicholas's reflections triggered  a part completed post drawing from his thoughts but also my own reflections on and experience with the changing nature of economics. I paused in writing because I realised how little I actually knew in some areas.

I will complete that post, but in the meantime my attention was caught by the publicity surrounding a new book by Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark and Jay Winter with Carol Bunyan, Dunera Lives: A Visual History. This included a radio discussion between the ABC's Phillip Adams and Jay Winter on the book. Then, digging around, I found this 12 December 2016 piece by Seumas Sparke in Inside Story,  "Ken Inglis and the Dunera: a seventy-year history", telling a little of the history of the book. My attention was caught by this paragraph:

Loewald’s story is remarkable. Born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1920, he escaped the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938 by staying on the move, resting at night on trains rather than at home. In London he worked in a factory job before his arrest and deportation to Australia. Released from internment in 1942, he served in the 8th Employment Company of the Australian army alongside other former Dunera internees. He returned to London in 1945 and emigrated to the United States the following year; there, he took American citizenship and built an academic career. In 1962 he left Berkeley for Saigon to teach American politics and history at the university and to serve as American cultural attaché. He resigned from the US diplomatic service in 1970 in protest against the Vietnam war and Nixon’s presidency, moved to Australia with his wife, and joined the history department of the University of New England. He died in 2004 without having travelled to Hay with Ken, a trip Loewald had suggested they make.

In 1981 I returned to University of New England to work full time on my PhD. This was a happy time in my life. I was without real care, I had enough money for little luxuries, friends to do things with and I was back in an academic environment, able to dive down all sorts of rabbit holes not always directly connected with my main topic.

Over 1981 and 1982 I often sat next to Klaus in the tea room or at our various social functions. He was an kind and urbane man, an interesting man, who was interested in many of the things I was interested in. I had come back into an academic environment after 14 years in the public service, including several at senior level. I found that I did not have to explain things to him, that he understood.

We were then in the first or second stages of the specialisation and fragmentation that has come to mark so many disciplines.  I found that this had led to a narrowing of focus, a shallowing of thought, an increased unwillingness to discuss broader issues including the methods and philosophical underpinnings on which various disciplines rested.  Credentialism had also increased, something that I was coming to detest.

I suppose that I was especially conscious of these things because I was coming back into a university that I had known well, not just as a student but also from growing up in an academic household. So I was comparing a now with a past that, arguably,  had already become wrapped in a degree of golden nostalgia. Still, and more broadly, I do remember saying to Klaus in frustration one day after a seminar, how on earth can they seriously hope to research that if they have no idea how organisations or systems work?

Klaus and I talked a little about his past. I clearly remember his description of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938 which he escaped by staying on the move, resting at night on trains rather than at home.I remember the descriptions of broken windows, of glass crunching under foot. However, I really had no idea of his background, his broader experience, and greatly regret now that I did not pursue further when I had the chance.

Perhaps I should record at some point what I have now discovered as a short memoir. The time Klaus and his second wife Do Thi Uyen Nhu, herself a remarkable woman, spent in Armidale was only a small part of their very varied lives. It was, relatively, a bigger part of mine, sufficient that he remains fixed in my memory, saying hello as I come into the tearoom, waving at me to sit down with him.
 

Monday Forum - was 1950s Australia still a cultural colony of England, repressed, puritanical and suspicious of foreigners?

Coetzee praised Murnane’s “chiseled sentences,” placing him among of the last generation of Australian writers to come to maturity when the country “was still a cultural colony of England, repressed, puritanical and suspicious of foreigners.” Mark Binelli 

I bristled at these words of J M Coetzee quoted by Mark Binelli in his New York Times Magazine piece Is the Next Nobel Laureate in Literature Tending Bar in a Dusty Australian Town? (27 March 2018). I hadn't actually heard of Gerald Murnane until kvd referred to him in a comment on The internet: algorithms, bias and the censorship of information, pointing to both the Binelli piece and also this article by Murnane himself, The Still-Breathing Author (Sydney Review of Books, 6 February 2018).

I feel a little sheepish admitting my ignorance. He is clearly an important figure, although views about his writing expressed in the comments vary. kvd thinks, he is wonderful. Neil Whitfield took a different view: "I'm sure it is my fault not his, but every time I have tried to read Murnane I have given up! To me he is almost unreadable!" Responding to kvd, marcellous adopted a somewhat related position to Neil: "It's the content which I've found unreadable when assayed before - possibly because I'm not brought up Catholic with an enthusiasm for the turf (not that I'm saying you were/are). Incidentally, what you read as early love looks to me like slightly creepy laundry-line stalking"!

In my own defence, I do read all the time. However, I really gave up reading what one might describe as "serious fiction" several decades ago. That was partly a matter of time, more that I found that my own reactions to work considered to fall within the important category at considerable variance from those telling me that it was important and that I should consequently read it. Even today, I find Patrick White almost unreadable although here I have to make another attempt because he falls within my current field of historical interest.Still, my interest in Mr Murnane has been caught and I will read him because I can see connections with my other current interests.

I said at the start that I bristled at Coetze's words, that he (Murnane) was among the last of  generation of Australian writers to come to maturity when the country “was still a cultural colony of England, repressed, puritanical and suspicious of foreigners.”

Gerald Murnane was born on 25 February 1939. Others born around this time include Robert Hughes and Les Murray (1938), Clive James and Germaine Greer (1939), Mungo MacCallum (1941).and Martin Sharp and Bob Ellis (1942) to name just a few. All spent the first part of their childhood in war conditions, completing their education during the 1950s. They all were affected by, affected and were part of a process of cultural and social change that peaked in the 1970s. This was followed by dramatic economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s. These changes were not unique to Australia.

Two questions arise. Were they growing up at a time when Australia was still a cultural colony of England, repressed, puritanical and suspicious of foreigners? If so, what has changed?

I am a member of the Armidale Families Past and Present Facebook group. It's a closed group, you have to be approved as a member, that has grown rapidly to over 1,900 members. Over half the group and a  higher proportion of regular commenters/posters, it's a very active group, no longer live in Armidale. They are remembering their time there as children or younger adults. The posts are loaded with photos - school groups, work groups, activities, old scenes of Armidale, then and now individual shots.  The comment threads run and run stretching into the hundreds covering every aspect of life.

Commenters come from every walk of life with very different experiences. Even in a small city like Armidale there are many different groups and experiences, unified by the common city and overlapping links and experiences. .

Yabbying or Craybobbing near Armidale. Which term to use was the subject of the Great Craybob War!

One common thread is the memory of freedom as children or young adults, of doing sometimes silly things, of just roaming, along with a recognition that this is no longer possible today.

Recently, ABC Radio National had a program on why children don't walk or ride to school anymore. Various suggestions were made, but then a Queensland listener threw a spanner into the works. It was, the listener suggested, now illegal in that state to let children walk or ride to school on their own if they were under twelve.

Queensland police notice  . 

 The ABC investigated. You will find the results of the investigation here: What the law says about letting your child walk to school on their own.

In short, this is a genuine police notice issued at a particular time in a particular place for particular reasons. However, the legal position varies between jurisdictions and is by no means clear cut. But the bottom line is that you may break the law if you let your child walk or ride to school alone depending on the interpretation placed on the law. It all depends.

We have moved into territory that I have talked about before. In many ways, Australian society is indeed more repressed, puritanical and suspicious today than it was in the 1950s. There have been advances, but the overall pattern is clear and accelerating.

Are we more suspicious of foreigners than we were in the 1950s? The answer here is less clear cut, but I suspect that it is yes. It's just that the targets have changed to some degree. The 1950s saw the progressive ending of the White Australia policy. That policy was based on the idea of cultural homogeneity, of the need to protect workers and jobs from foreign competition. It changed because the world was changing resulting in a revolution that saw Australia open its doors to mass immigration first from Europe and then the world. The revolution was led by Government, but also broadly supported by a sometimes suspicious population..

And where are we today? We live in a world where the idea of cultural homogeneity, of the need to protect workers and jobs from foreign competition, is central to immigration policy in many countries. Australian Governments have held the line to some degree, but they have also made border protection a key ideal, feeding the idea that the country must protect its borders from the risk of people smugglers and unrestrained migration. One result has been a rise in xenophobia based more on religion than the old idea of ethnicity or race, although they do overlap.

And, finally, was Australia still a cultural colony of England at the time Mr Murnane was growing up? The answer here is partially yes but primarily no. However, wimping a little because of time, that is a topic for another post.

Saturday Morning Musings - Barnaby Joyce and the question of public versus private morality revisited

I hadn't wanted to comment further on Barnaby Joyce beyond those things that I said in Barnaby Joyce and the question of public versus private morality and in the subsequent comment thread. My view was better let the matter rest until we could see all the fall-out. To a degree, that's still true.

On 25 January I wrote Surviving in an age of outrage - the personal space.  I have the second post on the public space almost ready to go, but my thinking there took me in new directions that I'm still working through.

The genesis of the 25 January post was in fact a conversation about Barnaby Joyce in Armidale prior to the by-election. I wasn't thinking, I was relaxed, had forgotten other views. My friend suddenly said I must go. I realised he was going to avoid what might have become a fight. This is a very old friend, someone whom I really value. I know his views, I disagree with him in many cases, but I do not wish to lose his friendship. I really value it. Better to exercise discretion and shut up. I wish I had done so sooner.

A little later, I realised that I was censoring my public views as well. This came as a bit of a shock. I am not a cultural warrior. I always try to be fair. I want to encourage discussion, to untangle issues. There are certain contested areas such as Aboriginal history and policy where I am very cautious indeed. But to realise the extent to which I am now self-censoring made me very uncomfortable indeed.

I will complete the second post. For the moment, I am providing a context for the brief remarks that follow.

In the two weeks that followed my post on Mr Joyce I watched the deluge of publicity as issue after issue was picked up and thrown into the mix without balance or time for analysis.The original issue of morality as it related to sexual conduct and relations was still there all the time even when denied, aided by the PM's response.

This also became clear at a dinner Wednesday night where the only real issue was the response to to the morality of the affair. The PM's ban was also supported on the grounds that this was no more than the private sector was already doing.

Thursday morning my attention was drawn to this piece of sleaze misreporting from the Canberra Times repeated in the Age. As you might expect given my background, it left me somewhat unhappy.

On Friday morning came the allegations of sexual misconduct. Apparently the lady in question is unhappy that her complaint was made public. I would have thought that inevitable in the circumstances. That morning, the front page of our new guardian of public morality, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, carried Barnaby Joyce on one side of the front page, a story on sexting between two NSW state Liberal MPS, a story later repeated in the Australian.I can't give links. They are now behind the paywall. I looked at the story and thought here it comes.

Later that morning, Mr Joyce resigned as party leader. Then the Northern Daily Leader ran an editorial: This hasn’t been about the affair for a while. I really flipped, tweeting  "As an exercise in cant, hypocrisy and back covering this editorial takes the cake. The Joyce matter was everything about sex and what was appropriate to report. Other things were then thrown in. We will all be the poorer for this". Over the top perhaps, but I leave it to you to judge.

Clearly, all the issues that have been ventilated over recent weeks will require some clarification. For that reason, the whole thing is likely to roll on for a while yet. I won't comment on these or the political ramifications at this point because I have no idea how all this will unfold.

I finished my 9 February post on Barnaby Joyce and the question of public versus private morality with these words:

While reporting might not have affected the election result at the time, I do think that the current controversy will have some adverse political effects on Mr Joyce and the National Party. Of more importance, however, is what the case might mean for the dividing line between public and private morality. Are the Daily Telegraph and  the other newscorp outlets in their role as "defenders" of public morality taking us down the path previously followed by the British tabloids with their sometimes salacious coverage of moral, generally sexual lapses, by British public figures? Alternatively, will Australia follow the route that the US seems to be going of outright bans on  sexual relations between elected officials and their staff? Or maybe both, since the second is likely to lead to the first anyway? 

I don't know. I can't answer these questions. The current sometimes febrile debate around relationships suggests a continuing shift in attitudes towards morality, the emergence of new views on what constitutes acceptable behaviour, new views increasingly enforced by various forms of social and legal sanctions. The effect appears to be a progressive widening of the scope of public morality at the cost of private morality.

I think that the two weeks since I wrote have largely answered these questions. I may not like it, but we do seem to have entered the domain that what the public are interested in constitutes the public interest, that this now determines the shifting line between public and private morality in a way that we haven't seen before in this country.

Postscript

The Australian provides more information on the sexual harassment claims against Mr Joyce.

Postscript

Discussion in comments referred to the selection process for APVMA HQ in Armidale. While it's peripheral to this post, this is my response: Canberra Times sleazes over Armidale and APVMA

Saturday Morning Musings - the obike challenge

Photo Southern Courier: bikes. Coogee, Sydney 

A month or so back I suddenly noticed these yellow bikes sprinkled around the area where I live. They literally just appeared. One day they were absent, the next day they were everywhere just sitting on the pavement Each had a helmet attached in some way; safety helmets are presently obligatory in Australia. A little later, a red variety appeared.

Over the next few weeks, I saw them spread around adjoining streets, just parked on the footpath or leaning against a power-pole or a bus shelter.  I even saw some Asian students from the University actually riding them.

Investigating, I found that they came from two companies, obike and Ready Go. The dockless business model was a simple one. To use the bike, you needed to download an app and pay a small deposit. Then you could select a bike, use the app to communicate with the company. They would send a signal unlocking the bike. When you reached your destination, you parked and locked the bike there. You were then charged a small fee for the time used. The GPS function on the bike allowed the companies to track the bikes.

I found the concept attractive, somehow beguiling. It would be nice to hop on a bike and go for a ride or pick one up at the shopping centre and use it to bring my shopping home without worrying about the hassle of actually owning a bike.

When I went to Copenhagen on my first visit to see eldest I saw a real bike culture of a type I hadn't seen since childhood. I became enamored with the idea, although I wasn't blind to the practical realities in Australia with its differing geography, streetscape and regulatory landscape that effectively discourages bikes.

Incidentally, even eldest has succumbed to the Copenhagen bike craze, buying a bike in June.

I was curious as whether she she had actually ridden much since that first wobbly start. She has been back in Australia briefly, so at dinner last night I asked her. She has indeed kept biking, pedaling most days to work, a process that takes less time than public transport.

Copenhagen is different to Australia. Its flatter, you can apparently ride without a safety helmet, while bikes are parked everywhere. There are problems with bike parking and abandoned bikes, but they appear relatively minor.

In the weeks after I first saw the new bikes, they spread into the side streets. I saw bikes just dropped on the nature strips. I saw at least one case of a bike being vandalised as a person smashed the lock. I didn't know what was happening, it was just somebody banging at the bike, until he got on and rode away. Walking over to where the bike had been, I found the smashed lock on the ground.

I also noticed that the bike helmets were vanishing, presumably stolen, making them illegal to ride. I had wondered on this once once I saw the helmets loosely attached to the bike.

Photo Southern Courier: bikes. Coogee, Sydney 

Bikes concentrated in spots.It's a downhill run from Randwick to Coogee. The cost of bike hire is cheaper than the bus. People would take a bike down and then take a bus back, leaving a growing concentration of bikes at the Coogee end.

I saw an increasing number of media stories about problems. This is one example, this a second. Councils (and not just in Sydney) started to become very concerned.about dumped and sometimes vandalised bikes as well as bike clutter, seeking new regulations and controls.

Today when I went for my walk I saw only three obikes, two vandalised. I really would like the obike system to succeed, although the odds are against it. It requires too many cultural, infrastructural and institutional changes.
.      

Reflections on David Stratton's Stories of Australian cinema

ABC is presently running a series featuring David Stratton looking at aspects of the history of Australian film. I am not giving links partly because of geoblocking, partly because the link will only survive for a little while anyway.

David is deservedly one of Australia's best known and most loved film commentators.  He is also writing on something I am interested in, attracted too. Despite all this, I ended up turning off the second episode, Outsiders, in the middle. I did come back to it and finally enjoyed it, but it was a battle.

I have been trying to work out why I felt this way. Certainly part of the reason was that I felt the selection of film and indeed the commentary reflected current angsts, popular causes. I also felt that the commentary reflected a current trope, that somehow Australians are not comfortable in their own country, that they are here as occupiers and are therefore disconnected in some way from the land. Finally, there were comments about small town Australia that really annoyed me.

I would be the first to accept that there is a growing disconnect between many urban Australians and the country outside their immediate neighbourhoods and circles of contact. Increasingly, our big metro centres are made up of large villages that have little contact elsewhere in the metro area, let alone with the country beyond the metros outside popular holiday resorts. They occupy land but are not connected with the land in any real sense.  This affects portrayal in film. You get film that is message rather than story focused. I think that this is one reason why Australian films so often fail at the box office.

I accept that this is a biased view, but I do think that it is not without some substance.To illustrate, take a second current trope in discussion, the need for film to adequately reflect Australian "diversity". I have put diversity into inverted commas, for it tends to be a very particular type of diversity that is required to be recognised. In the end, the success of a movie, and Australia has too few successful movies relative to the size of output, depends upon a story that people want to watch. If we want diversity, then we need good stories that reflect that diversity, or at least the form you want. To argue for diversity for the sake of diversity is to miss the point.

Australia does have "message" movies that have achieved at least some box office success. Rachel Perkin's Bran Nue Dai is a case in point. This is very much a message film, but it's also a rollicking and thoroughly enjoyable musical. Others seemed to me to have failed because they fall in the should see rather than want to see class.

I wondered if I was wrong in all this and started digging into past box office records to answer the question what had been successful or failed compared to my own preconceptions. This proved to be at least a short term error. The Screen Australia web site provides some information on more recent films, but the box office data is in current dollars, knocking out older films. I found some other material, but not enough for my purposes without hours of work. And, in any case, I had become sidetracked onto another issue that I will mention in a moment.

 I did find enough material, however, to suggest that the position was more complex than I had realised and indeed worthy of further work.

I said that I had become sidetracked onto another issue. David started talking about Muriel's Wedding in the context of outsiders and small town life. I have yet to see Muriel's Wedding. I was put off when it first came out in 1994 because of the way it was described as a parody of small town life, another trope and one that I had become very sick of. I reacted by sticking my finger up in the air on behalf of all my fellow townies and going in the opposite direction.

Now researching it, I found to my surprise that it was in fact a New England film. David Stratton would not think of it in that way, nor indeed would most other people including probably writer and director P J Hogan. However, as part of my work on life, history and culture in Northern New South Wales, the broader New England,  I have been recording all the films that I can find with New England connections, looking at them in their Northern context.

Both Muriel's Wedding and Hogan's 2012 film Mental are part autobiographical. While Hogan was born in Queensland, he grew up in Tweed Heads just south of the Queensland border where his father Tom was a Shire Councilor, a community activist, an ALP candidate at the 1978 NSW State elections and the subject of an ICAC (NSW Independent Commission against Corruption) into local government corruption on the North Coast associated with real estate development.

The family was somewhat dysfunctional and colourful, something that Hogan has mined for material for both films. He has also mined his school and town experiences as something of a misfit.

You can see why I got sidetracked! I ended spending hours trawling though the fragmentary on-line material, something that I will write up as a full post on the New England blog. Meantime, I note that there are now three modern movies linked in some way to the Tweed Valley, writer/director Belinda Chayko's 2010 production Lou staring  John Hurt, Lily Bell Tindley and Emily Barclay being the third.

Lou is a very different movie, a domestic movie, one that I feel was sadly neglected when it came out. Like Hogan, Chayko grew up in the Tweed Valley and the visuals reflect her love of the area.

Growing up in Northern NSW, I was very conscious of the differences across the North, as well as the linkages and similarities. Each place, each region, has its own style and stories, stories which have changed with time. There are enormous differences between Stockton, Armidale, Bellingen, Scone, Moree, Gwabegar and .Lismore. Films have to tell a story that will appeal to a broader audience.

In the end, I think that New England and Australia more broadly are lucky to have as many films as we do. They do make our life richer.

Postscript

I also struggled a little with the third episode in David's series. I may come back to that. In the meantime, I re-watched and then listed all the films mentioned because I found them an interesting combination.

• The Devil's Playground 1976
  
• The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith 1978
• Kostas 1979
• Man of Flowers 1983
• Romper Stomper 1992Floating Life 1996
• The Castle 1997
• Head On 1998
• The Boys 1998
• Two Hands 1999
• Innocence 2000
• Chopper 2000
• Lantana 2001
• Rabbit Proof Fence 2002
• Lucky Miles 2007Romulus My Father 2007
• Home Song Stories 2007
• Cactus 2008
• The Combination 2009
• Animal Kingdom 2010
• Snowtown 2011
• Force of Destiny 2015
• Ali's Wedding 2017

In addition to these films, there were references to the multiple renditions of Ned Kelly!

Postscript 2 24 June 2017

In a comment, kvd pointed to two movies that he wondered why had not been included, Somersault (2004) and Jindabyne (2006). He also suggested that Kidman's role in Dead Calm (1989) was one of the most disturbing he had seen on film.

I did see Jindabyne, but had never heard of Somersault. I decided not to see Dead Calm. It put me off. That leads me to my another point.

There was a period when I tried to watch every new Australian film. Then as there were more, I found myself treating Australian films the same way as other films and largely stopped going, only going to those films I really wanted to see based on how I felt. And they didn't grab me.

Now I find that i need to revisit films that I missed. Mind you, I still don't want to watch Dead Calm! 

kvd's comment reminded me of another early Canberra linked film that I did see and quite enjoyed although I thought that it wasn't very good, the 1971 production Demonstrator.    ..
    .

Personal confusions over Australia Day

Thursday was Australia Day. It was also India's Republic Day. The photo is one of the many organised Australia Day functions.

I find Australia Day personally confusing. Looking back at the various posts I have written about it, that contusion is reflected in my fluctuating views on the Day.

Australia Day used to be a relatively low key thing, but since the 1980s it has progressively grown into a major nation activity involving all levels of Government. I am distrustful of this type of celebration, I have similar reactions to the resurgence of ANZAC Day, because it so often plays to national jingoism and self-promotion.

I finally came down in favour of the Day because it provides a good excuse for a party and does also celebrate some of the good things about Australia and Australians.

It's also great for Australians overseas, providing an opportunity to get together in various ways. This shot shows an Australia Day party in Copenhagen 2016.    

There is, however, an issue with the 26 January date, for it marks the day on which the First Fleet arrived in Port Jackson when Governor Philip raised  the British Flag.

To many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this is Invasion Day or or Survival Day. This has resulted in counter demonstrations and celebrations that have come to form an integral part of Australia Day. Many Indigenous people and their supporters in the non-Aboriginal community want the date changed, arguing that a new date would be more representative of the total Australia. They also argue that this would aid reconciliation.

Again, my own views have fluctuated. I can see the argument for, although I also think that a date change might well impede the Aboriginal desire to bring about change by removing a potent symbolic platform. However, it seems clear that the majority of Australians presently do not want the date changed. A poll carried out by McNair for the Guardian suggested that only 15% of Australian in total wanted the date changed. By contrast, 54% of Indigenous respondents wanted a change in date.  

This year there were again the usual protests against Australia Day. However, there was a darker thread this year to the media reporting, to the twitter and facebook threads that made me uncomfortable, a bigotry on both sides of the debate, including the date change question.

It is possible to discuss (and report on) Australia Day, including a possible date change, in a respectful manner seeking information, seeking to understand other peoples' positions. That was absent from some of the headlines and comment threads. In an increasingly fragmented and polarised electorate, Australia Day and especially the date has become another of those symbolic "left-right" issues providing a focal point for division. .  

My personal position on the date has shifted from support for a date change (that was itself a shift) to support for the status quo because I think that the current date is important in providing a framework for dialogue and change.

However, I don't really want to play here, to become engaged in partisan discussion. I will go along with whatever the final consensus is. Meantime, I will enjoy the party elements and spectacle of the day.  

A strange case- the banned export of Herbert Badham's 1944 painting Snack Bar

It seems that I first wrote on the art of Herbert Badham back on 5 March 2008:  Australian History and the art of Herbert Badham. Over eight years' ago! That was a different world.

There was a gap of over five years before I returned to the man as part of A morning at NERAM - Flora, Cobcroft and Badham's Observing the Everyday (26 November 2013). Next day I ran a second post, A note on Herbert Badham, providing more information on Badham since the sources on him were so few. They still are.

On 7 July 2014 I used a Badham painting to illustrate a Monday Forum post, Monday Morning Forum – another open forum. There matters rested. It wasn't that I had lost interest in the man, I still looked out for his paintings in my irregular gallery visits, but there had been nothing new to spark my interest.

Then back in September came news that the export of a Badham painting, a 1944 piece called Snack Bar, had been blocked from export because of its national significance. The new owner appealed, but the appeal was rejected by the appeal tribunal. Now I quote from the newspaper report:.

In its judgement, the tribunal found that the painting showed a critical stage in Australia's history - during wartime and its development as a multicultural nation. 

"The subject matter, which graphically records the interaction of different races, associating in congenial circumstances at a time of great danger for Australia is deeply impressive," it said.. 

I thought that this was plain daft. The painting is quite interesting, but to describe it in those terms strikes me as an a-historical misrepresentation. .

Postscript

marcellous kindly posted me a link to the appeal decision. I think that it's still daft.Explaining my reasons will have to wait.  .

Postscript 2

In comments, Winton suggested that the Badham painting had no comparison with this one. Perhaps not, but this is arguably Manet's most famous painting, his last major work.

DG suggested "Fine piece of genre art, reminiscent of Norman Rockwell". I hadn't thought of the Rocwell comparison, but could see the point.

marcellous looked at some of the legal issues.

@kvd: I doubt if it is appealable; probably need to show an error of law. Here any "error" is a difference in opinion about the cultural value of the picture and whether it should be allowed to leave our shores. 

"appears" is a kind of tribunial circomlocution for it probably is and nobody disputes it - after all the applicant could always have brought the picture to court if it wanted the tribunal to view the original. So unlikely to be a source of legal error there. 

@2 tanners: issue is not whether present owner will make the painting available, but whether subsequent owners for all time will do so. Legislation is aimed at the long view and in acknowledgement that countries can't do much once an object departs their shores. Once the purchaser paid that much he was always facing a risk because it is the value [for which price is the only real proxy] which indicates the cultural significance.

marecellous went on to clarify value: "I should clarify my comment about the price being a proxy for value: it is a presumptive proxy which enlivens the requirement for a permit".

This, by the way, is a very different Badham

2 tanners responded to marcellous on the appeal point::

I imagine the decision could be appealed on the basis of the fact that the Commission couldn't distinguish between significant and important, or just possibly that the commission dismissed evidence on a painting that it had at no stage seen, preferring evidence from other parties one of whom had initially argued for there to be no ban. 

I doubt that the very last point would hold, But, on the surface, the first might be possible. But then it leaves open another question, why are we "protecting" these things in the first place? .

 .

That Australian Life - Threads: Morella, the Parers from Catalan, Australian War photographers

I must have walked past this Mosman house, Morella, and never noticed it. It's now on the market with an expected price of between $7 and $ 8 million and possibly more. Looking at it I was struck by the art deco style and indeed it was one of the grand art deco mansions.

According to a rather dramatic piece by Dana McCauley, The derelict mansion, the ‘de facto’ nurse and the family curse: Morella mystery deepens, Morella was designed by Burley Griffin protege Eric Nicholls and built in 1939 for Leo Parer, who founded and ran the Stanford X-Ray Company with his cousin Stan Parer. Stanford built X-Ray machines.

Apparently Leo Parer entertained quite lavishly and it does seem to be a good house for that purpose. This is another detail from the house. It must have been reasonably spectacular

The Parer name was familiar because of war photographer Damien Parer. Here I quote Dana McCauley: "Generations of Parers have forged a distinguished record throughout Australian history, from war photographer Damien Parer to aviator Ray Parer and, more recently, the late Warwick Parer— a Queensland Senator under the Howard Government."

I was curious about the way those various Parers might fit together. My initial web search was quite frustrating for it was difficult to find the links. Then I found this piece, Pioneering family: The story of the audacious Parers of New Guinea. No wonder I got confused.

According to Mary Mennis, the Parer family came originally from Alella in Spain and were the anchor of the Catalan community in Australia for 50 years.

The first brother to leave Spain was Josep, who decided to migrate to South America in 1851, following his sense of adventure and eye for business. He left Montevideo in Uruguay on board the Alabama and landed in Australia in 1855. A year later his half-brother Francisco joined him and they started breeding poultry in Petersham near Sydney. This was was not successful. They moved to Bendigo looking for gold and finally settled on the banks of the Yarra River, a tent town to cope with the rapid expansion of Melbourne during the gold rush.

They had their entrepreneurial character and perseverance and also a spark of luck, building the a Parer Empire in Melbourne. In less than 40 years they invested in more than 30 hotels and restaurants. And they are believed to be the first people to have commercialised meat pies in Australia. For that reason alone, they deserve a place in Australian history.

Josep and Francisco pioneered the Parer dynasty in Australia. Seven brothers and sisters plus nephews and friends of the family joined them. You can see why I might have got confused!

A significant part of the family ended up in New

Guinea, including Oscar award winner Damien Parer. This photo on the right shows a very significant group of photographers in New Guinea, all famous in their own right.

Damien Parer is at the back left. Standing to his right is Frank Hurley, one of Australia's best known photographers and cinematographers. 

At the front left is documentary film maker and writer Maslyn Williams.The Wikipedia article on him is really just a stub. Born in England, his uncle arranged for him to come to Australia to work as a jackeroo on a property outside Tenterfield. There he fell in love with Australia. His memoir of the time,  His Mother's Country, remains a New England classic. 

Beside Williams on the far right is photographer George Silk, New Zealand born, Silk became an Australian war correspondent an went on the long career as a photographer for Life Magazine.

This photograph by Silk showing an Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942 has become one of the classic images of the New Guinea campaign.

All four men were adventurous, following the camera into different places. Parer died, but the others had long careers. Hurley in particular had a career that spanned over fifty years including two World Wars.

Postscript 5 October

Morella sold for $6.6 million in emotional scenes. The owner apparently would like to knock it down, but faces heritage problems.