Saturday Morning Musings - reflections triggered by Hey Jude

In a comment on last week's Monday Forum, kvd referred me to Tim de Lisle's essay in the Guardian, Nana na naaa! How Hey Jude became our favourite Beatles song. It's a well written piece that attracted a large comment stream, 1548 as I write. Some agreed, many others did not listing their favourite Beatle songs in order. Some attacked the Beatles, including a few lone defenders of classical music!

I do remember Hey Jude coming out, but not really the exact year. Looking it up, it was 1968, roughly when I thought.

One of the difficulties of growing older is that dates tend to blur, along with the detail of events. I am not talking about the aging process as such, although that can happen. It's rather that the present is always more intense, an intensity lost as that present recedes further into the past. The more presents there have been, the lower the intensity of preceding presents, the more memory is lost. Certain things stand out like increasingly distant mountains, but the detail and often accuracy is gone.

This process is a good thing. How can people heal from tragedy or trauma if the details remain fixed in their memory carrying the same emotional intensity? We need distance to put things in perspective. We need new experiences with new emotions. Healing may not be perfect, scars may remain, but the process allows us to move forward.

I am reminded of all this from time to time because I write so much history, including stories from the relatively recent past. My last Armidale Express column began:

Life can sometimes become too much. On November 18, 1920, William Ogilvie was found lying on his bed at Sydney’s Usher’s Hotel with a bullet wound in his temple, a revolver clasped in his right hand. He was only 58.   

Near his body were found a letter to his solicitor and telegrams to his wife and children. 

“Good-bye, my darling wife,” one telegram read, “I shall never see you alive again. I have written you to Ilparran today, explaining everything. Fondest love, my dearest dear.”      

I felt sad reading the material on his death because here was a man with a loving family, without money worries, for whom it had become just all too much. Yes, he appears to have been drinking too much, this is often a feature in such cases, but this is not a sufficient explanation. Knowing something about he and his broader family, I can surmise far more than I could put in 500 words.

I think it goes back to the decision to send him away to school in England at an early age, separating him from home including his grandmother for whom he seems to have been a favourite. Then after those years in England came his father's decision after William completed Oxford to send him back to Australia to start preparing to take over Yulgilbar. William seems to have been happy in England and close to his brother who was also living there.

Relationships with fathers are often complex, Edward Ogilvie was becoming increasingly irascible and authoritarian. His daughters, poet Robert Browning's beloved octet, would shortly escape into marriage. His brother would remain in England. For William's part, he was sent back to a country he now barely knew to learn his trade from a station manger who continued to live in the big house, who excluded him. When William raised objections and concerns with his father about the way the manager was treating family interests, he was ignored.

Later, his father would be forced to take action, to put aside his extended idyll in Europe and especially Florence, a city Edward had fallen in love with, to return to stabilise the family fortunes. By then, the break between William and his father had become permanent. Now well-off in his own right, it seems that William was left without a proper anchor or degree of purpose.

All this is surmise. although (I think) reasonable surmise. What I had not expected is that the column would draw comments from people whose own fathers had committed suicide, where the wounds were still raw. That past was still very present.

While the passage of time does lead to sometimes necessary blurring, there are times when you would like to remember. Hey Jude is a case in point, That period of my life once so bright, so clearly delineated in bright light, has become vague. But this is where the historian comes in!

Following kvd's comment, I went back checking dates. I find that if I remember something to which I can attach a date, it becomes easier to remember and check events and feelings surrounding that. It was something of a trip down nostalgia lane, Maybe I will write something on that. But not today!
 

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.
 

My nominations for the Creative Blogging Award

AC kindly nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award. Thank you Anna.

This type of award process was common in the earlier days of blogging. It was a way of encouraging fellow bloggers at a time when blogging was still new. The process died away, so I became curious about the starting point this time. I searched back through almost 100 Google pages. I didn't find the starting point, but I can tell you that it appears to date back to at least early May, that there have been several minor rule changes, as well as several different badges for people to include on their sites.

It was quite an interesting journey taking me through multiple tropes or recurrent themes. At one stage, I found myself learning more about make-up or female fashion than I, as a mere male, would normally want to know. Still, there was some nice gear there.

AC advises that there are rules to accepting the Creative Blogger Award:

1. Thank and post the link of the person who nominated you.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself to your readers.
3. Nominate 10-20 blogs and notify them.Pass on the rules.

Mmmm!

I am not sure about those five facts. What can I say that is either not too revealing or that has not already been revealed?

1. I have always been an insatiably curious if somewhat dreamy individual. I guess that I still am!

2. I absolutely love Yum Cha. Big table, lots of chatter, swinging the rotating serving tray in the middle of the table around to dig in with chopsticks, drinking lots of green tea and some wine.
3. I have wanted to be a writer since at least secondary school, although that vision was always somewhat unfocused because I wanted to be many other things as well. It's a vision that I am still working through.
4. I am naturally shy and somewhat introspective, traits that were accentuated by a bad and very lonely period at school that lasted several years. As part of the solution, I had to teach myself how perform in public.

5. I can be quite stubborn and persistent where I consider something to be important, sometimes to my own detriment. 

 Now turning to the blogs. Here I don't feel bound by the rules, but will share with you some blogs that I value and why. You will already know some of them. To the bloggers nominated, don't feel that you need to participate nor comply by the rules. It's just my pleasure to nominate you. 

Camille de Fleurville's Sketches and vignettes from la Dordogne is a new blog, started in April this year. Camille  lives in a village with her "Little Family". She describes her position in this way: 

Now, you must know something about the Little Family. They are two ladies of nearly 56 and nearly 20 (next week) who are my wards as they are "affected" by Down Syndrome and have no parents left. I am their closest next of kin. We live together sometimes happily, sometimes more "stormily" with flashes and thunder but everything must be forgiven and forgotten when they go to bed. They are my reason for living in the country and in this house. I take care of them and, in a way, they take care of me. 

I came in contact with Camille through the D E Stevenson discussion group where (unlike me now: I lurk because of time constraints) she is a regular contributor. Her blog is a gentle blog, stories of local life in an interesting region of France with anecdotes of family life. In some ways, it has a flavour similar to AC's blog and is all the better for that. She is trying to involve her Little Family in the process. Maybe you could drop in from time to time?

I hadn't quite intended to create this theme, but I now want to turn to the Hollands. Rod Holland's brother used to work for me in Armidale as an industry and policy analyst. Rod found me partly through that, more because we shared common interests.

Rod's  blog, Northern Rivers Geology, has just been selected as worthy of permanent retention in the Australian National Library's Pandora electronic archive. 

Before going on, this photo from the Northern Star shows two members of the Lismore Lions Club with members of the Holland family following purchase of the new wheel chair funded by the Lions Club plus a member of our little village that I won't name. I got into trouble for mentioning him in an email! 

I knew from snippets on Rod's blog that there were problems, but I didn't know the details. You can follow the story on Becky's blog, My Faith or on the new Facebook page for those who are members of Facebook. 

In her blog, Becky says "You are welcome to our little space!"  This is a similar theme to Camille's blog. The world's problems are too big for any of us to handle. We can only deal with them in our individual space.  Meantime, Rod, activate that geology blog. We want you!

Staying with a contribution theme, I want to pick up one of our old favourites, Neil Whitfield's Commonplace Book.It may sound odd to nominate such a familiar blog, Neil is a very long standing blogger. We used to joke a little about his varying blogs and his dreaded template instability, but he has certainly been a creative blogger and continues to have interesting material.

My next blog is an academic one, John Hawke's weblog, subtitled paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution. This is a truly serious blog, but a very good one. It keeps me in touch with fields such as the results of DNA analysis of prehistoric peoples. Don't be put off. Try some searches. The search facility is a little unclear, but if you click on the icon at the top left in the header, it will take you to the search menu.
Recent discoveries on the world of ancient hominids have almost totally reshaped our views of the human past. Among other things, it has become clear that homo sapiens and other human species are far more interconnected than we realised!

My next blogs are again ones I have mentioned before.

The first is the Lowy Institute blog, The Interpreter.This is a truly interesting blog for those interested in international relations and Australia's place in the world. It is one of my constant must reads.At one stage in my past, I had access to all the international cable traffic coming into my then Department. The cable folder was delivered by hand on a daily basis. I had to read it and then hand return it. Among other things, it gave me access to most (not all: some were just too sensitive to include but had to be seen on an eyes only basis) of the political  and economic reports from Australian posts around the globe.

Most of those with access just browsed. I read the stuff in detail because I found the reports absolutely fascinating, an education in international economics and politics. I probably wouldn't have that type of access today. There are so many more rules.

Security then was actually quite tight. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, were still in the future. Ronald Reagan had just become President of the United States, There were very tight rules, but there was neither the obsessive desire to control nor the weaknesses that were to come with centralised electronic systems. Nor, come to think of it, was there a serious problem with information overload bringing with it the constant need to sort the wheat from the chaff. Less information, more time to think.

I have digressed! Now I use the Lowy blog in the same way I used to use those cables. It keeps me in touch in a way that I simply cannot achieve from the main stream media.

Finishing quickly now with two final blogs.

As with the Lowy Institute blog, I have referred to Professor Martin Lewis's Geocurrents blog many times before. As a geographer, Martin is into maps, fascinated by maps and patterns. He explores patterns and issues in different parts of the world - the political geography of Poland, the history of the Arabian Peninsular, the changing distribution of and history of particular languages, social and political trends within California. They are are all grist to his mill so long as they can be expressed via a map!

My last blog is The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, a history blog. Like me, Janine Rizzetti is interested in Australian history. I enjoy and gain value from her pieces.                     .

 .     

New England Travels – journeys through space and time

Last year, my main writing for publication outside my weekly newspaper column and the blogs were two chapters, one a long one, in a book to be published to mark the 75th anniversary of the New England University College, the 85th anniversary of the Armidale Teachers’ College. I spent a fair bit of time on those chapters, trying to write as well as I could while ensuring proper historical referencing. I was looking forward to holding it in my hand as tangible evidence of my work. Frustratingly, the book hasn’t been published. First it was due to be published last year, then by the end of March this year, now who knows?

Last year, too, I began what would be two attempts to turn some of my existing writing into book form. Both stalled because of the degree of rewriting required. Now I am having another go, but this time in a different way. Instead of trying to edit and restructure my existing writing, I am writing from scratch in an area that I already know where I can draw from my existing work.

The working title is New England Travels – journeys through space and time. Part autobiographical memoir, part travel story, part history, my story meanders wherever it will take me. New England provides the unifying element, the frame if you like, but I am not restricted to that; the sands of Arabia, Lugard’s Nigeria, spying in Japan, boxing and boxing tents, life and death on the frontier, the rise and fall of dynasties and the strange by-ways of family life are already there, sketched on the canvas I have created; my choice now is to select.

I am not being too ambitious. For the moment, I have an income to earn, other things to write. My writing target is 300 words per day. So far I am sticking to it, although it’s very early days. For the present at least, I am finding the process liberating, an anodyne to other frustrations that bedevil me. I know that the draft will change greatly as I write. Even now it has changed several times as I strive to capture the right words, to achieve the balance I want. Accepting that, this is the present start of the book.         

“Dalwood House stands on a rise. From the side verandah, mown grass runs down to the old vineyard. The Hunter River lies beyond, hidden within its high banks. It was hot and still, the silence broken only by the distant sound of a crow. Even the working properties on the hills on the other side of the River were still, remote in the faint heat haze.

This was only my second visit to Dalwood. Many years before I had read Australian writer and poet Judith Wright’s Generations of Men, the story of her grandparents and the establishment of the Wyndham and then Wright pastoral dynasties; the book gripped me. I was especially caught by the almost lyrical descriptions of Dalwood House as seen through the eyes of Charlotte May Wright nee Mackenzie, Judith’s grandmother.

By chance, I had just finished the book when I went out to dinner in Canberra. Talking about the book over dinner, my hostess, herself a member of the Wright family, said “The house is still there, you know, although it’s a ruin now.” I got directions and visited it with a friend on my next trip to Armidale.

Many parts of Australia now claim Judith Wright as their own. Up in Queensland, the State Government has expropriated her for a performing arts centre. Her New England connection is dismissed in just a few words: “Judith Wright was a Queensland resident for over thirty years. She was born in New England, in regional New South Wales, and came to Brisbane as a young woman”. Later, Canberra and Braidwood would claim her too.

In all this, Judith remained a quintessentially New England writer. That was where her views were first formed, although her later experiences and especially her relationship with the older novelist and philosopher Jack McKinney would exercise a powerful influence over her. Judith met Jack McKinney when she moved to Brisbane. He was a much older man, some twenty four years her senior, only two years younger than her father. They fell in love, moving to Mount Tamborine in 1950; daughter Meredith was born in that year. In 1962, Jack and Judith finally married. Four years later Jack died, leaving a hole in Judith’s life.

Jack McKinney was the second of three powerful men in Judith Wright’s life. The first was her father, Phillip Arundell Wright, with whom she shared a middle name. The third was H C “Nugget” Coombs, a noted Australian economist and public servant, with whom she had a twenty five year love affair. Coombs was again an older man, in this case by nine years. Both were major public figures. Judith was a widow, Coombs long separated from his wife. Both shared common interests, including Aboriginal advancement and the environment. Judith moved to Braidwood to be closer to the Canberra based Coombs, but the affair was kept secret, if open to their friends and the Canberra network within which they moved.

Each man had a powerful impact on Judith, but I think that it was the father that formed her core views. It was he that gave her that love of the environment and of the country. It was he that gave her that love, affection and unstinting support that seems to shine through in the letter between them.

I knew her father as a much older man. PA, we all spoke of him as PA, was my grandfather’s friend; my grandfather was godfather to his son who bore the same first name; my copy of Generations of Men carries my grandfather’s signature, bought in the year the book first came out. To me, PA was a somewhat remote figure. I saw him at events and at the New England New State Movement Executive meetings that he sometimes chaired. I and my fellow students at the University of New England where he was chancellor poked gentle fun at him for his sometimes mangled English. It would be a number of years before I came to properly understand his contribution to Northern life and the causes he supported.

Judith loved her father, she loved the Fall country in which she grew up, she loved the life on the family properties. Her earlier works reflect that love, and then the joy she found in her relationship with Jack McKinney. Later, there would come a darkening of spirit, erosion in optimism, a rejection of elements of her past. “You ask me to read those poems I wrote in my thirties?” she wrote in Skins. “They dropped off several incarnations back.”

Judith had the misfortune to be born a girl in an age when men inherited. After the death of PA, she became separated from the properties and life she had loved. Towards the end of her life, she saw the end of the Wright family empire that had been carefully built by her grandparents and especially grandmother May Wright. The ABC TV Dynasties program recorded the event in this rather dramatic way:

By December 2000, he (brother David) had lost it all – his properties, his cattle and his wife to cancer. His sister, the poet Judith Wright, watched in despair and died soon after.

Six years later David, my grandfather’s namesake, died suddenly. On his death, University of New England Professor Bernie Bindon described David as one of the pioneers of the scientific research underpinning today's Australian beef industry. "I can't think of a beef industry person” Professor Bindon said, “who's made a bigger contribution to not only the growth of the beef industry but the science that underpins the beef business," The Herefords that formed the base of the V1V and V2V Wright brands began their life at Dalwood. It was Judith’s grandparents, the core characters in Generations of Men, who began the breeding program that created the Wright cattle.”

I hope that this will give you a feel for what I am trying to do.

Postscript

Message first via the UNE Facebook page and then a personal email from Jennifer Miller UNE Alumni Officer to say that the UNE book was back from the printer with a launch being organised. I was so relieved.  

Sunday Essay - a ride from school

As a young kid, gravel rash was an occupational hazard. Many of Armidale's roads were unpaved beyond a strip of tar in the very centre, while the footpaths themselves were pretty rough.   Those unpaved road sections were quite useful, actually a good source of clay that could be used to make many a misshapen object.

We seemed to run everywhere. Most of our games seemed to involve sometimes violent exercise.  British Bulldog 123 was popular, especially in scouts where we played on a cement floor, while another variant, Red Rover Cross Over, was also generally popular. Chasings, yes it is a valid scrabble word, was popular, as was hide and seek and later wide games, another scouting influence. After I was given a stop watch for a present (I can't remember whether it was for Christmas or my birthday), we used to time ourselves running around the block. This was exactly 880 yards.

Later when we got bikes, we used to ride all over Armidale and into the country around, often with Rover, our red kelpie. Rover was a working, not show, dog and really most unsuitable for an urban environment. Still, he did get lots of exercise, something that can be a real problem today when dogs are meant to be so controlled. Poor Rover. He survived the inevitable accidents with cars, he did like to bark at the wheels, only to die from snake bite.

I suppose in those circumstances prangs were inevitable. I was a slightly clumsy child, so when my feet somehow got entangled, the gravel and I would collide. I don't know that I minded so much, although picking the gravel out of the grazes was sometimes unpleasant! Later with the bikes, risks increased, although there were remarkably few accidents.

Looking back, it's hard to remember just how fit I was. During the football season in my last years at secondary school I played two full eighty minute games of Rugby per week, trained two afternoons a week, and walked, ran or rode everywhere. On boring Sunday afternoons when friend David came across on exeat (he was a border at my school), we would sometimes go for very long walks just to see how far we could get in the time. From memory, our record was eighteen miles.

You would think in all this that I would like cross-country runs, something that was popular at the school. In fact, I hated them. To do something for fun was one thing, to do it because you had too was quite another thing. 

I was reminded of all of this by a rather nice tale told by Denis Wright - Five-ex, blood and the zebra twins, Five-ex, blood, and the zebra twins 2. I won't tell you the story, beyond noting that in my world kids no longer rode to school on horses. That stopped with the school buses. And yet, in stories of Australian country life, that ride to school often features very heavily.

The photo, I have used it before. shows a gaggle of us on a horse. I am the tall one. Brother David is just behind, hanging onto me. Its a very placid animal. Note our bare feet.

Despite the photo, I wasn't good on horses. My grandfather sold Foreglen, his property, when I was very young. After that as a townie, I lost all contact with horses. Years later when I came to get on one, it seemed so bloody big, I was a long way from the ground, and I had forgotten what to do. I didn't enjoy the experience.

It would be many more years before youngest took up riding and I learned to ride again. Then the years fell away and I found that, with gentle reminders, I could remember what to do. Mind you, they were placid old nags!

Still, even though I wasn't riding, I did understand those early rides to school that I read about or heard described. I think that you will enjoy Denis's recollections.      

Sunday Essay - on salt, mushrooms and memories of times past

It seems strange now, but when I first started to cook, I never used salt. Salt was something that you added to food later to taste. Salt was placed on the table in a little bowl, silver for formal occasions. It was never sprinkled over food, but added to the side of the plate in a little pile.

Later, my habit of doing this seemed strange to others. By then, salt was incorporated into cooking. "Why don't you wait and see if it's salty enough", I was told when I asked for the salt or added it to the side of the plate. I was reminded of this by a fascinating post  by Asya Pereltsvaig, Russian cuisine: a Melting Pot of Native Sensibilities and Foreign Influences. There, to my astonishment, was a description of my salt tradition! Salt was scarce, so you didn't add it to food, but kept it separate for later use.

As a child staying with my grandparents, I sometimes used to eat my porridge sitting with my grandfather on the front verandah at Mann Street. I say front, but the main verandah was actually at the back of the house. That's another oddity. He ate his porridge in the Scottish way. There was no sugar, but he did sprinkle the porridge with salt. I did likewise! This tradition did not last, at least so far as I was concerned. Brown sugar was just so much more attractive. And with cream, delicious!

Since all this is making me a little nostalgic, this is a photo of my grandparents with that verandah. You can see that it's a quite impressive view!

Many of the traditional cuisines are in fact farm or peasant cuisines. You ate what was around, what was in season.

If you look at the Russian case, the aristocracy brought in newly fashionable food  tastes, but the peasant had to use what was available. You can see this clearly in China. Today, of course, we are all aristocrats and can access whatever we like. The sometimes mess called modern Australian cuisine (I find that word poncy: do you? How about just food?) reflects that. We no longer focus on getting best taste from what we have, but instead focus on buying the things that we believe will give us best taste.

Friday night at dinner overlooking Sydney Harbour, a friend and I chatted about mushrooms. If you look at Asya's piece, you will see the reference to mushrooms. Mushrooms were food of the ordinary people, collected from the fields or forests. There were no mushrooms in the shops when I was a child. All the mushrooms we ate were field mushrooms. We used to pick them ourselves, or sometimes they would come in from a local property. We also learned how to identify those that could be safely eaten. That was kind of important!

The American writer Harry Turtledove specialises in alternative history or, alternatively, new worlds based on historical examples. I learned a lot about the Byzantine Empire, for example, from the novels set in or around  Videssos, a world based on Byzantium and its environs. Harry' has a PhD in Byzantine history! 

Mushrooms feature in one series; from memory, I think that it is the Darkness series. Within the series, the Kaunians are a strange melange based on the Roman Empire (the previously defeated Kaunian Empire) plus the Jews (now oppressed minority). The Kaunians  love collecting mushrooms, They also know how to avoid one especially poisonous variety that tastes delightful but leads to very painful death. This mushroom features in a revenge attack towards the end of the series.      

Today, mushrooms come in boxes with brown paper bags for packaging purposes. Then, we picked them.

When Aunt Kay died, we went down to Glenroy, the Vickers' old property, long sold. The house had gone, demolished, as had many of the old features. We drove through the paddocks identifying the features we had all known. There were mushrooms everywhere, huge mushrooms, the biggest I had ever seen. They looked all right, just like the ones that I had known.

Thirty years ago, I would have picked and picked. Like the Kaunians, I adore mushrooms. But they were so big and I had forgotten through my urbanised environment; we all wondered if they were okay. Some were picked, but most were left alone. 

In fact, they were the old field mushroom. So through the decay of old memories and the resulting uncertainty, I missed my chance of collecting mushrooms with the huge, old, full-bodied taste when things were real. I have never seen mushrooms like them. I really haven't. And mushrooms properly cooked are the food of the gods.             

Saturday Morning Musings - Wanderers, Eels and the story of a university

The sound of the drums drew me. I swung off Argyle Street under the railway towards the town square where I could see the flags waving. It was a bright, warm day and the crowd was celebrating the near victory of The Western Sydney Wanderers in the Australian A-League soccer competition. I know that I am meant to call it football, but there are other football codes!

There was something tribal about the scene. Standing there under a tree, I watched the fans go through their ritual dance, waving flags and rhythmically shaking their arm in the air or clapping their hands above their heads. Nobody had expected the club to make the grand final in its first season, so there was reason to celebrate. 

The formal street parade had yet to begin, so I wandered down Church Street past the University of New England's recently opened Future Campus in the old Parramatta post office. This had been officially opened a few days before with a street party supported by another football code, in this case the Parramatta Eels Rugby League team.

In welcoming the opening, Lord Mayor John Chedid had said in a statement that the city was fortunate to now have two leading universities, referring to the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney.. The Mayor went on; “The establishment of the UNE Future Campus is an opportunity for everyone to experience a new generation of distance learning through the use of cutting-edge technology”.

  The University is one of the Eels' main sponsors. Parramatta Eels Help Launch UNE Future Campus proclaimed the team web site. Players were at the opening to provide support and to be photographed with their young fans.

I had reservations about the University's move to sponsor a major Rugby League team far from the home campus, but it's turned out to be a quite effective regional marketing strategy, The University now has over 2,000 students in Western Sydney, including a number of Eels' players. The Future Campus itself, don't you love the modern jargon?, has received a fair bit of national press coverage because its actually a demonstration site for the application of new technology.

Looking around me that lunchtime, I realised that I had solved a problem. I have been struggling to write a 3,600 personal memoir of my memories of UNE to go into book that may be published later in the year. My earliest memories of the University, it was then a university college, are as a very young child. I sort of grew up in the place and still have connection today. I had been struggling to work out just how to compress all this, to explain, to tell a story. I now realised I had my answer. 

I would start the piece in Parramatta with the opening of the Future Campus, then jump back in time to where I already had some words in draft.

"Early in February 1938, a young looking thirty year old lecturer in history and economics arrived to take up his appointment at the newly created New England University College. It would be some weeks before thenext academic staff member arrived. There were just two students enrolled; Jean Dyce, the Warden’s secretary, promptly tried to enrol him as the third and was disappointed to find that he was only a staff member.

The story had begun some six months before. On the journey back to New Zealand from England after completing his PhD at Manchester, the ship had called at Sydney. The young man left the ship to inquire about job prospects at the University and the banks. It was in the Economics Department at the Bank of New South Wales that he heard vague rumours about a proposed university college to be established in a remote part of the state. Those he talked to were not impressed.

Around December, the first five academic positions at the New England University College were advertised. Without much enthusiasm and with decided reservations, he decided to apply, beating thirty five other applicants for the position.

His reservations did not disappear with his arrival in Armidale, nor was his enthusiasm aroused. The town seemed small; it was dry, brown and dusty, a huge contrast to New Zealand’s green. It seemed to be asleep a great part of the time, or at least very drowsy."

So that gives me by bookends if you like, a personal touch to today and that distant past. Mind you, I wasn't personally present in 1938! Come on, I'm not that old, but certainly I wouldn't exist without that arrival in Armidale.

With my problem solved, I wandered slowly back through the Wanderers' fans. I really had to get back to the office and get some work done.  

Reflections on the death of Peter Brownie

Tomorrow is Peter Brownie's funeral in Newcastle, Sadly, I will not be able to attend; it's just too difficult getting there.

From time to time on this blog I have written of the importance of good teachers, of teachers who have an undying influence and who remain etched in our memories. I am sure that if I asked you, you would remember a teacher or two who had a major impact on your development. Peter was one such teacher.

Peter came to TAS (The Armidale School) in 1952, staying there until 1969 when he left to become Head of Wolaroi College, Orange. Peter was active in all parts of school life from theatre performance to coaching the school First Fifteen in Rugby. The following photo shows Peter in pretty characteristic pose during a 1962 First Fifteen match.  

In Rugby, I watched Peter from afar. I was a long standing (several years) member of the Seconds as a front rower, second rower, lock and break-away; the last was my favourite position. Peter did try me at one training as hooker, but it wasn't a success. He wanted me for my comparative size and speed, but I really had no idea and kept pulling the props down.   

My increasing contact with Peter came via the academic sphere. I was a bookish child, an omnivorous reader, but also one whose school results were poor. There were reasons for that, but the end result was that I got five Bs in the Intermediate Certificate, then just four Bs including geography in the School Certificate the following year. Not deterred, Peter asked me to do geography honours and enrolled me the small geography honours class. Then he did something far more cunning, although I only came to realise this later.  

The honours course focused on Asian geography. He gave me books to read. Not school geography texts, but the leading scholarly publications on Asian geography. Have a look at this, you might find it interesting. I didn't have to write essays or anything like that. He would just ask me later what I thought. He asked me to help form a school geography society. He told me that I should use diagrams to explain relationships, to write to the diagram. Those are my words now, I am sure that he put them more simply.

The Trial Leaving Certificate came some eight months into this process. My B in the School Certificate was replaced by a high level A. I have been waiting for this moment, he wrote in my report. A few months later I scored first Class Honours. I can't remember where I came, whether it was ninth or eleventh in NSW.

My parents felt that at sixteen I was too young to go to University even though I had a Commonwealth Scholarship. I was to repeat the Leaving. Peter, knowing me rather well, said you are going to be bored. Why don't you pick up economics and economics honours? You should be able to complete the two year course in twelve months. I did, and again gained first Class honours. I didn't do quite as well, coming in somewhere around thirty second in the state.

I lost contact with with him after that. I had gone to Canberra, while he left TAS in 1969. We finally met again in 2006 at Alex Buzo's funeral. We talked. Peter said that when he first came to TAS the salary was low, but the head (Gordon Fisher) told him that his sons would be able to attend the school for free. Several daughters later, Peter appeared in a review wearing a tap, explaining that despite all his efforts he still had no-one to put him put it it on!I also learned for the first time that when Peter began teaching economics he knew nothing about the subject and in fact relied on Dad who was Professor of Economics at New England for subject knowledge to keep him just in front of his students.

We did exchange a few emails after the funeral, but I was tied up with family matters and things drifted. Now, of course, it's too late. I regret that. But I can at least record my admiration and affection for a man who did so much for me.  

Katy Waldman and the sometimes influence of our twenties

Today I had intended to write about politics or economics or, perhaps, a combination of the two! Instead, I got sidetracked.

The long weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review combined the normal Friday and weekend editions. I often buy the Friday edition just to read the Review section  for its collection of longer pieces from around the world. This time, the Review reprinted a Slate article by Katy Waldman, The Mysteriously Memorable 20s. The subtitle gives the theme: "Why do we remember more from young adulthood than from any other time of our lives?" It's a well written piece, but it got me thinking. I don't think that she is quite right. At least, that's not been my experience. But then, the evidence may be drawn from what we think of as "normal people" as classified at points in time.

In saying this, I am drawing from my own experience, but also from the people that I have spoken to or even interviewed. My experience has been that people remember most vividly those periods of their life that have an emotional intensity both high or low that in some ways marks an important period of passage. Often, we do block out the bad. We don't forget about it, we just don't want to talk about it. But in many people's lives, the subsequent good is valued more highly because it contrasts with the dark night. We carry the scars always, we try to put those aside, talking about things highlighted by the black unseen light of the dark past.

As both a reader and writer, I am fascinated by biography. The thing that stands out to me, the fascination, is simply the complexity of it all. In many western societies, we have forgotten how unstable life is. What we think of as normality is not normal at all.

Just take Australia in the twentieth century. At Federation, many parts of the country had just emerged from a great depression. Drought was raging, affecting people in ways outside modern ken because so many were directly or independently dependent on the land. The Great War began thirteen years later, with Australia suffering some of the highest casualties relative to population of any of the belligerents. The Great Depression followed twenty eight years after Federation, then ten years later came the Second World War.

The new Australian migrants and especially the million plus displaced people, what we would now call refugees, who came to this country were focused on survival, on recreating life in a new land. In conversation or interview, they did talk about the past prior to the war, ut did so because that more peaceful time was a relief from what was to come. And, even then, it was not clear-cut. They didn't say that their values or scripts were formed in childhood or in their twenties, but in the meld of their earlier memories with the horrors that followed.

By contrast, those born locally during the war or afterwards were the lucky generation, the first to experience a really long period of relative piece and prosperity. The nearest previous equivalent was the long period between the depression of the late 1840s and that of the crash of the late eighties, also a period of relative peace.

So I'm not sure about the validity of Katy's writing or the research on which it is based. I think that it's validity is time dependent and depends upon circumstance.

As a final aside, the nearest equivalent period to me in terms of her model is not the age twenties at all, It is the time from which I entered what is now called grade ten until I graduated from university and started work in Canberra. I was then twenty one. That early working experience and the life of a young relatively well paid single in Canberra in a share house far from home was another right of passage. But it was different.

My own life has been a series of chapters marked by sudden book-ends, abrupt shifts. If I was to apply some of Katy's questions, I would say that the period with the greatest long term impact on my values and attitudes was my school period. My views have changed considerably over my life, but I think that the statement is still true. And I left school at seventeen after repeating final year because my parents thought that I was too young to go to university.

When I look at my daughters, I think that the same thing is probably true. I have no idea how they will remember their twenties, I will ask if I survive long enough, but at twenty three and twenty five, they are closer to Katy's generation. They also come from a very different generation to mine. And that, I think, should be my end point, for our views are formed by our times.  

Neucleus days - Part One

I do get easily sidetracked! In yesterday's post on the New England Australia blog, Diary of my Armidale trip, I said in part:

From Boo Books I went up to the Express to meet my new editor, Lydia Roberts. I am always interested in seeing production facilities. It seems a very long time since fellow blogger Winton  Bates and I were co-editors of the now defunct Neucleus, the UNE student newspaper, and indeed it is. But it does mean that I have been in at least part charge of the production of a newspaper in the pre-computer age. So I watched with interest as my column was set up for print. Then we used scissors and paste to set up pages. Now its so very different!

That reminded me that the Wikipedia entry on Neucleus was still just a stub and at one stage I said that should do something about fixing that up. Reminded, I did some digging and ended up on something of a nostalgia trip that I thought I might share with you, in part because it also says something about Australian social history.

Just to set the scene, the photo shows the old sub-lodge on the UNE campus. The building dates from the time when Booloominbah was the headquarters of one of the White family pastoral empires. Paul Barratt's Booloominbah tells the story of those early days.

This was the Neucleus office when Winton and I worked for the paper. As I commented before, it was a wonderful spot for parties! The dark room was on the left, the room on the right was the main staff office and workroom. The building is now the Overseas Students Association office. As we shall see in a moment, that's kind of appropriate.

In my search, the first person I wanted to find was Soo Khoo, who was editor when Winton and I first joined the paper in 1963 as young first years, became co-editors when Soo Khoo stood down. I struggled to find much until I realised that I should be searching on Khoo Soo. Then, bingo. 

The first photo is from the National Archives. The year is 1960. The caption reads: Malayan student, Khoo Soo-Hay, of Penang, has no accommodation worries in Australia. He is attending Australia's only fully residential university, the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. Editor of the student newspaper, Ross Pengelley, and Khoo Soo-Hay do the layout of the next edition in the printing room of the Armidale Express.

I really loved this photo because it captures the old now vanished newspaper world, illustrating the differences I referred to in my opening quote between page setting then and now. In Ross, we can now add another person to the editor list. I tried to find out more about him via web search, but drew a blank.

Digging further, I found another 1960 photo of Soo Khoo from the National Archives, this one illustrating another aspect of UNE life at the the time, the importance and visibility of the overseas student community.  

The caption on the photo reads: Overseas students at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia, recently organised an 'Overseas Week', during which they presented something of the cultures and customs of their own countries to Australian students. Overseas students arranged an arts and craft exhibition for 'Overseas Week'. From left: I Made Nitis, Teluk Padang, Miss Heng Poh Saing, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Nguyen Huu Bong, Khoo Soo-Hay, and Neoh Choo Lin.

I am not sure when Soo Khoo became editor, 1962?, but I would be pretty sure that he was the first overseas student to edit an Australian student newspaper. He was not the only overseas student on the Neucleus team. Our cartoonist, Adhi Hendranto, came from Indonesia.

When Winton and I first joined the paper, he was I think on the reporting and editorial side, while I became (of all things) business manager! My primary role here was to sell advertising space to local stores. I also had to collect the advertising copy for insertion in the paper.  I am not sure that I was very good at it, but it actually wasn't a very hard job because most of the stores advertised regularly.

For 1963, I found another set of photos from National Archives including Soo Khoo that illustrate further aspects of UNE life.  The caption on this photo reads: During the long summer vacation students from India, Borneo, Sarawak and many other South-East Asia countries studying in Australia, held a work camp organized by NUAUS [National Union of Australian University Students] in Armidale, northern New South Wales and helped erected a community kindergarten hall for Aboriginal children. Donations towards expenses were received from the Australian Department of External Affairs, local graziers and shop keepers while the Department of Education supplied the building - tea break (foreground) Will Dennis, camp Director with Ting Wei Ling (centre) from Sarawak and Khoo Soo Hay (right) from Malaya.

This photo manages to combine a remarkable number of elements relevant to Australian social history.

One was the role of the National Union of Australian University Students. Formed in 1937, NUAUS was quite important to UNE students. The UNE campus wasn't especially active in political terms. It was noted as an especially religious campus, and was indeed the only University campus in the country where the Country Party commanded a voting majority to the sometimes despair of Labor leaning staff members! The social changes and ideological divides that would become important during the 1970's and which would ultimately polarise and then destroy much of the effectiveness of NUAS still lay ahead.

UNE students may not have been especially active in party political or ideological terms, but it was still a very active student body measured by participation in student activities, far more active than would later be the case. University societies of all types proliferated. By the standards of the time and indeed today, the prevailing student ethos can best be described as small l liberal. Students therefore participated actively in NUAS activities including fund raising for WUS (World Universities Services) Week and Abschol.

UNE staff and students were early and actively committed to causes associated with Aboriginal advancement. Both the University and the Armidale Teachers College were already playing pioneering roles in Aboriginal studies. This kindergarten was one of the first if not the first constructed for Aboriginal children in NSW. The needs were considerable; the hut on the right of the photo indicates then living conditions.

The last photo of Soo Khoo with fellow Arts student Barbara Wilkins, again from the National Archives, shows them buying food for the camp.        

I have included the photo because it shows a domestic scene with the food available at the time. UNE's overseas students started changing the availability of food in Armidale long before such changes really happened elsewhere. The changes were slow, but 1963 you could actually buy some Asian food in Armidale because the market was just large enough.

And what happened to Soo Khoo and indeed Adhi Hendranto?

Soo Khoo, I probably should say Khoo Soo Hay, returned to Malaysia. There, among other things, he became a poet while pursuing a career in management. This is the start of a poem written in September 1999 on the death of Brother Ulrick Currie, a (and I quote) "well beloved Christian Brother Teachers of St. Xavier's Institution, Penang, who died on 17th September 1999. ...who used to teach English. He became blind for many years before he passed away".

When the sun sets on my life,
When I can no longer feel
The rain drops on my head,
Nor see the stars at night,
Then shall I feel no more
The cool breeze from the sea,
Nor hear the lapping waves at the shore,
On the beach at Batu Ferringhi.

In a further note on his writing, the UNE recorded in 2009:

Khoo Soo Hay, UNE alumnus, joined other distinguished poets, such as the National Literature Laureate Prof Muhammad Salleh, at recent celebrations of UNESCO's World Poetry Day at Wawasan Open University (WOU) in Malaysia. His poems, published in an anthology titled “In Ancient Ayuthia”, touch on environmental, social, political, religious issues, and romance, satire, and whimsical pieces. Some of this writing was completed while a student at UNE in the 1960s when Khoo Soo Hay was resident in Wright College.

And Ahdi? This one is more difficult. I last had news of him on an official trip to Indonesia in the 1980s. But unless I am very much mistaken, you will find a translation of Ahdi's LinkedIn page here.

I will complete this post tomorrow, talking (among other things) of Winton as the old thunderer! 

Postscript

In a comment, kvd correctly spotted that in the last line in the quote from Soo Khoo, "On the beach at Batu Ferringhi", the Ferringhi is another variant of the word I referred to in Franks, Firinghi & Farangs. The Wikipedia entry on Batu Ferringhi says that the name means Foreigner's Rock.

Winton has also come up with additional detail that suggests that my memory is imperfect. The present issue in question is the role of Hugh Spencer as editor. Winton remembers Hugh as editor when he joined, but I don't when I joined.

Hugh's bio suggests that he came to UNE from Maitland High in 1960 on a TC scholarship then, and I quote, "got involved in student politics (silly naive bugger) - left with tail between legs to complete degree at ANU." Hugh started work in 1965 at Monash University. Depending on the exact date, my feeling is that Hugh's last year at UNE was 1963.

I know that all this must sound very arcane, but this post and the next now in preparation are in part history pieces. I  am confident that I am capturing the feel of the time, but as history pieces I really want the facts to be accurate.     

Old boys, young boys & a bright, sunny day - TAS OBU weekend September 2012

I drove to Armidale Friday for an Old Boys' reunion at TAS (The Armidale School). I took my camera and took a lot of photos; a few were okay, although I had difficulty balancing light on a very bright day. This is a photo from the rugby. Downlands College from Toowoomba (red stripe) were visiting as part of the weekend. 

As you might expect, I cam back with many possible stories, some of which I may even write up! This next photo taken in Big School is a shot of my group.  People had travelled from Hong Kong, Canada and the US for the reunion, as well as from different parts of Australia. Few people who go to school or university in Armidale stay there. Their subsequent journeys are part of the changing fabric of life in Australia and well beyond.

I suppose that it's inevitable now, but in both Armidale itself and among the TAS group I learned of deaths that I had not known. Australian writer Gwen Kelly, Jim Burling, Rennie Barnes. That added to my sense of refection; I will record some of that too.

All of us were struck by the changes in the school, changes that also reflect the changes in Australian society. The last photo is of the TAS Stage Band. The school has a very strong theatre tradition.

We sat in the sun, drank beer and talked, listening to the music and the more distant sounds of the cheers and war cries from the nearby sporting fields. I was glad I had come, even though getting away had been a bit of a battle. 

Podcast - Social Change in New England 1950-2000

Because of the topic, this is a cross-post on three blogs.

In April of last year, I delivered seminar paper in Armidale on Social Change in New England 1950-2000. While I knew that it was being recorded, I didn't know until last week that it was on line as a podcast.  I had a cold plus too much material, but still it's a record of some of my work.

You will find the podcast here.

A gentle Monday meander

As will be self-evident to anyone who reads my blogs, I have been struggling to maintain my writing. I really have. I suppose that it's unrealistic to think that I could in in the midst of multiple moves and changes in family directions. I should be packing and cleaning, but I don't feel like it. I also left the house a bit after six this morning, and tomorrow want to be earlier still. I didn't sleep especially well last night, so that I find myself getting very tired.   

Given all this, tonight just a gentle personal wander without politics or anything else serious. Call it an indulgence!

This photo of Clare on Facebook  drew a comment from a friend:

Note to self: Don't get Clare angry, she knows how to use a gun!

I laughed.

Because Facebook is limited in its public access, I use it for short diary entries. Not too revealing, but a way of keeping people in touch.

There tonight I wrote:

Monday, 14 May 2012. Bloody cold this morning.

We have a new Belshaw to add to the very small number in the family, and that group spread across three countries - Olivia Alexandria Belshaw-Weir. So that makes Ryan and Kristy parents, brother David a grand father, me a grand Uncle (?!) and gives my girls a new cousin somewhat removed.

said that we were a small family. Including partners, there are just twenty of us on the Belshaw side in three generations in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I know from family trees and photos that there are still some relatives in Northern England, but we lost all contact a number of years ago. In all the world, I have just two first cousins on the Belshaw side.

Another busy week. I am trying to work out how to energise my writing. It's been sadly neglected!

I have written a little on the Belshaw family. It's actually a remarkable story even though I am hardly impartial. I do so in part because of my interest in history, in part because I have my daughters in mind. In the hurly burly of their life there is little room for the past, the present is all. Yet I don't think that they are all that different from me, the interest will come because of the need to establish a link between past and present.

In Saturday Morning Musings - the quality of life I referred to gardening. This led Armidale writer, Express journalist and fellow blogger Janene Carey to write:

May I suggest you check out the Gardenate website if you're about to embark on a herb/vegie garden? Lots of info, a lively community swapping tips on gardening and cooking, and a free reminder service monthly.

It's a website (and also an app) that my software developer husband built because he wanted something like that himself - http://www.gardenate.com

I am always very happy to shamelessly promote one of my colleagues. But seriously, Gardenate is a very good web site. 

I have actually written a number of gardening posts. Perhaps time to pull them together.

Staying with the texture of life as well as the personal indulgence theme, this is a picnic photo of my part of the Belshaws. From left to right mum, me lurking behind Mum, Prof and brother David. It's very formal, I know, but I grew up in a more formal world. 

I have written on picnics many times before. They are one element of the texture of life. I have a picnic basket, one of those posh ones, in the cupboard. Perhaps time to pull it out.

Janene also referred to a story she had written for the paper on local MP Richard Torbay. It's a pretty good piece that links to an earlier story of mine, Why I support Tony Windsor. It may seem very local, but remember that the current Australian Government is in power because of New England politics, as have a number of other State and Federal Governments before them. Perhaps not so local after all!

In a comment on Saturday Morning Musings - the quality of life, Ramana wrote:

In a small town, an entrepreneur decided to open up a brothel, which was right opposite to a church. The church and its congregation started a campaign to block the brothel from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business.

Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open a few days later, a strong lightning struck the brothel and it was burnt to the ground.

The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the brothel owner sued the church authorities on the grounds that the church through its congregation and prayers was ultimately responsible for the destruction of his brothel, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

In its reply to the court, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were reasons for the act of God. As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork at the hearing and commented:

"I don't know how I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, we have a brothel owner who believes in the power of prayer and we have an entire church that doesn't."

I laughed, but as I also said to Ramana there is a very funny Australian movie along the same lines - the man who sued god.

Tonight I didn't feel like cooking, so I decided to have one of those weight watchers style meals that I had in the freezer for my wife. Then Clare unexpectedly came home for dinner, so now there are two in the oven. I need to go and stir them and put them back in. I actually find them unsatisfying, but I have promised Clare berries, cream and ice cream for desert! Then I am going to whip the rest of the cream and have it with coffee!

I think that it's time to finish. Maybe more tomorrow. 

A New England childhood - a country slice

I was responding to comments and then I suddenly realised that I hadn't posted today!

In a comment on Personal indulgences just for regular readers, marcellous wrote:

What a charming picture of yourself when young.
Seems quite another era.

Another era is right. I often describe myself as a townie since most of my friends were from town. But I was also gown and had a country slice. These are a few more photos from that early country slice. 

The photo included in my last post showed me as a two year old on the verandah at Forglen, my grandfather's place. I really loved going there as a young child.

This photo taken the year before I was born shows Aunt Kay (Kathleen Vickers nee Drummond) ready for riding.

All our aunts but especially Kay helped bring us up. When I was two she took bother David and I out to play in a nearby creek where the shallow waters ran over the stones before plunging some distance away into the deep gorges below. Much later after Mum died, she became my girl's de facto grand mum on my side of the family. They loved her dearly.

Kay's death hit me hard not just for her loss, but also because it was the ending of my direct family connection with Armidale. The pattern of regular visits - we went four or five times a year - to see Kay was over. Now when we went to visit, we stayed in motels. Slowly the family visits dropped away. The girls haven't been back to their home town for several years. Now when I visit, I go alone. 

This next photo it taken at the same time as the first; I was two. You can just see mum in the background.

We spent a lot of time on that front verandah. Straight ahead was a small garden with a path that led into the front paddock past the small orchard and then down to the woolshed.

I remember the old wind up gramophone with its large records. We used to wind it up to listen to songs and nursery rhymes. Then it would suddenly run down, and we would have to wind it again. 

When we first started going to Forglen there was no electricity. We drove out in the old oldsmobile with its running boards, generally arriving after dark. Then the tilley lamps had to be lit and, as I remember it, pumped up to give a light far brighter than the ordinary  kerosene lamp.

With no electricity, some food and especially meat was stored in a meat safe in the garden beside the house. This was a largish structure with mesh walls to allow the breeze through and hessian drapes that could be dropped if necessary.

Later my grandfather purchased a generator. This had to be turned on as we arrived. As the noise settled down, the lights would suddenly come on.

This next photo shows my grandfather with his beloved Ben. Very much the bushy, but not quite.

He was very deaf when he went into politics, unable to hear conversations. That, of itself, made his early achievements somewhat remarkable, including his sonorous voice.

Later he got a hearing aid. You can see one version here, stuffed into his shirt pocket. That helped. However, he wasn't above using all this to his own advantage.

Faced with someone he didn't want to talk too, his hearing aid could always be off! He also trained his daughters and especially Kay to support him. Meeting someone whom he knew but didn't remember the name, he would say this is my daughter Kay. The other party would then introduce themselves!

I am not sure when I first became involved in politics in some way, but it was pretty early.

After a Christmas morning at home, we always went down to my grandparents' place. This began with open house for his key friends and electoral workers. Later at primary school, I used to listen to the Commonwealth budget so that I could argue with him when he returned from Canberra. In retrospect, I was a remarkably serious child!

My early world was, in some ways, a much more mannered world than Australia in the twenty first century. There were far more unwritten rules of behaviour. This was especially so on the New England Tablelands with its complex social stratification. I tried to explain naming conventions, what names were used in talking to which people, to a Chinese colleague. He got quite lost! 

It was also a world with far fewer material things. Clothes, for example, were expensive, while the range was limited. People made do.

I was looking for a photo to illustrate all this, so finally selected this one, partly because my grandmother is on the right. The photo is again from 1944.

They are out in the paddocks. Everybody is wearing very similar clothes. It's clearly a partly social occasion; the men are wearing coats.

In an earlier post I mentioned the old irons heated on top of the stove. I said that they were still around when I was a kid. Yes, there were electric irons everywhere, but at Forglen with no electricity you used the old irons if you wanted to iron. Made, I think, of cast iron, they came in different sizes depending on what you wanted to iron.

Time spans.

I had lunch with a work friend that I have been teamed with on certain matters. Under pressure and with the week ending, we decided to go out for a proper lunch to an Italian restaurant.  She talked about her horse riding experiences. I couldn't match those, but here's a last photo of a group of us on a horse. I am in the centre with brother David behind.

This was probably the last time I was on a horse for many years. I remember it seemed a long way down!    

Musings on photos past 4 - Puhoi & Tahekeroa

In my last post in this series, Musings on photos past 3 - James Pilkington Belshaw, I mentioned that my father played provincial Rugby in New Zealand.

The little village of Puhoi lies 50km north of Auckland. The area was settled in 1863 by Bohemian settlers and retains its Bohemian character today.

The early settlers had to clear the thick Kauri bush, with timber being cut and floated down the Puhoi River.

The farming district of Tahekeroa lies not far to the west of Puhoi along a winding dirt road. It is a pretty area.

Tahekeroa lies on the North Auckland Railway line and used to have its own siding and school. Dad was posted there as a teacher in the 1930s. 

The school itself was located in a railway carriage, while the school teacher lived in a fettler's hut.

The photo shows the hut with Dad sitting outside to the left. The conditions could hardly be called luxurious!

Dad was completing external masters at the time time.

He got one first class MA, first in New Zealand, but it was not sufficient to give him the scholarship he needed to study in England. There was just one full scholarship for all of New Zealand providing travel, all fees and a reasonably generous living allowance at any English University.

He therefore did a second MA, again gaining first class honours and first in New Zealand. From memory, the first MA was in history, the second in economics. This got him his scholarship. Because brother Horace had studied at Cambridge, my father chose to do a PhD in economics at Manchester instead.

The advantage of living on a railway line lay in the way that books could be sent up from the university, essays and thesis material sent back.

In the 1970s I visited Tahekeroa with Aunt May (Dad's sister) and Uncle Vic Fisher. Dad and Vic had met through the Worker's Educational Association. There Dad introduced Vic to his older sister.

May could remember visiting her brother at Takekeroa, although no obvious sign remained of the fettler's cottage when we were there. However, we called in to see the Straka family, one of Puhoi's Bohemian families, to see if anyone remembered Dad. As it happened, Mr Straka did indeed, remembering his football and also the fact that they tried to marry him off to a local girl. He was seen as far too serious for his own good.

In September while Helen (eldest) and I were in New Zealand for the weekend to see Australia play Ireland in the Rugby World Cup, we found our way first to Puhoi and then to Tahekeroa.

With the passage of time since my previous visit, I found it difficult to locate things. However, I was at least able to show Helen the area where her grandfather had taught!

Maybe on another trip we will have more time.