Armidale Diaries 1 the smoke rolls in

I was sitting here yesterday (20 November 19) working away at the computer when I suddenly realised the world had gone from clear to very smokey.

Armidale has been very lucky in terms of smoke considering how relatively close some of the big fires are. At first, I wondered if there was a nearby fire, but no. The wind had shifted to the east, bringing in smoke from the big fire near Ebor.

That was a strange fire. It allegedly began when an Ebor local decided to back burn to protect his cannabis crop. He made no attempt to control the fire but went straight to the Ebor pub for a drink. It seems that he expected to make some money from post fire reconstruction. The police picked him up at the pub about 5.

Concentration broken, I decided to brave the smoke and head into town to do some shopping.

The smoke really was very thick. This photo by Tara May from the ABC web site shows the view from the lookout looking down into the basin in which the Armidale town centre sits.

I decided to have a coffee before doing my shopping. The mall was both smokey and deserted. I had forgotten how late it was.

Armidale has a remarkable number of coffee places, too many for the size of the city. They are full in the early morning and at lunchtime, but tend to close early. With so many coffee places the competition is fierce, I was talking to a lady a week back at a history society do who has just taken one over.

I know it. It has music and attracts a younger student audience who like sitting outside when it's fine, Talking to a Council person, the University apparently has some 4,000 internal students at the moment of whom 2,000 live on campus, 2,000 in town. She is reshaping the cafe widening food offerings, removing the music and making it all vegan. Oooh, I thought, that's not going to work.

Armidale's demographic means that there is demand for vegan food, a number of places serve it, but she is effectively replacing the existing customer base with a hoped for new one. I don't think that the demand is there.

Wandering down the Mall past a group of Chinese visitors who were struggling with the smoke and also (I suspect) wondering where everybody was, I found a coffee place open in the Richardson's Arcade. It was very much a modern coffee place with its displays of tea and coffee, speciality foods and nick-knacks. Still, the coffee was okay.

It was almost empty. There was a woman working on her Apple mac. She was obviously chatting to someone online because every so often she would chuckle. A little further away were two men in high vis, obviously involved in some way with the land, but not necessarily farmers.  They knew the waitress and chatted away with her.

I didn't properly understand the snippets of conversation I heard, but did pick up references to tanks and water as well as an obscure discussion about the relative size of halls for what appeared to be exercise classes.

I did pick up that the waitress's Gran knew the person charged for the Ebor fires. Apparently he was a strange person who had had a very troubled life.

After coffee, I walked back to the car to drive the few blocks to to the shopping centre where I planned to do my shopping at Coles. The smoke was still thick.

I parked outside as i normally do and walked through the smoke to find that the shopping centre had its eastern doors closed because of the smoke. Back to the western entrance.

The smoke wasn't bad inside, although some of the staff and customers were wearing face masks, something that I had not seen before. Customer numbers were down a bit, but were still the usual mix. A lot of older people, although there were not the usual walkers and mobility chairs, women doing what was clearly the weekly shop from the size of their loads, some young families and a few gaggles of students. I followed some Chinese students around while they worked out what to buy. It appeared to be their first visit.

Homewards again. One thing that I found interesting was the way that people appeared to be taking the smoke in their stride. This photo from the O'Connor Catholic School shows students waiting for their buses.

Driving along Dumaresq Street past the Creeklands, the stretch of parks and playing fields that run along the creek through the centre of the city, there were still people walking or practising at the cricket nets,

Don't get me wrong. The smoke really was a nuisance, strong enough to sting the eyes in spots. But people did seem to just ride with it. 

Moving to Armidale - reflections on the changing media landscape

Each change in life situation brings shifts in perspective. This shift to Armidale is no exception. This short post reflects on one element, the changing media landscape, something I have written on before.

It will be no secret that I am a news junky. At first, I did not have an internet connection, so for several weeks I relied on the mobile for my news. Even now, I still use the mobile to check the news because I can do so in the kitchen while sitting in the sun.

Some of my friends argue that we don't need the NBN because of the increasing power of mobile coverage. To me, using the mobile to access news is like an addict being promised a hit and then served a placebo! Part of the problem is structural: stories are designed to fit the small screen, reducing content and making it more difficult to scan to quickly to identify content of interest. Part of the problem is the general decline in content across the media in general.

Whatever the reason, I find that I can scan five main media outlets (BBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, the Guardian and the Conversation) in ten minutes. I also scan the Canberra Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Newcastle Herald, Glen Innes Examiner, Northern Daily Leader and the Armidale Express mainly to see what's there that I might want to visit. I don't actually visit because of fire wall limitations that limit the number of visits. If I see something that I think that is important I will visit later withing my ration.

When I do have the main computer fired up I will sometimes look at a broader spread. I don't look at the Australian because there is no point given their firewalls. Actually that's a problem. Because I don't read the Australian (I do buy it sometimes) or watch Sky News (I do have local access to the second via free to air tv) there is an entire significant segment of Australian discourse that escapes me. I guess that my justification here is that twitter gives me a heads-up on what those outlets and their readers think.

Both Sydney and, more broadly, NSW politics have suddenly become remote. I pick up a little from the ABC, a little from my scans of the Sydney Morning Herald story headlines, a little from friends, but after just three months away it all seems a bit abstract. Mind you, the on-line version of the SMH at least actually doesn't have a lot of Sydney or even NSW stories preferring broader coverage unless there is a scandal. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a matter of market perception, but if I want to read about Prince Andrew I have rather a lot of choice. If I want to learn what's happening across Sydney, I won't find it in the SMH.

Something similar has been happening in the local and regional media. Looking at today's Glen Innes Examiner website, there are very few local stories, although there are a number of regional stories drawn from other mastheads. Most of these I have seen. There is also a lot of stuff on non-Glen or even regional issues. The restructured website makes it harder to find things. If you go across all the Australian Community Web sites and dig down into some of the category headings you will find old stuff and constant repeats.

 I have to do a proper statistical analysis on this. I will do that on the New England blog. For the moment, I am just reporting a perception.

All the papers have become so thin. I have felt for a while and have written about my perception that the papers have lost sight of their markets and especially the segments in their markets.

Just before I moved to Armidale I went down to Canberra. There I read the print edition of the Canberra Times for the first time in several years. I was a bit appalled. I had been following the Canberra Times website, it was actually my first go-too outlet. This had built up a large following because it had no pay walls and included a range of stories local and drawn from other Fairfax papers. 

When Fairfax introduced paywalls on the Canberra Times website, I suggested that this would destroy the paper's on-line presence. I think that it did. Since Fairfax sold the paper to ACM, I think that it has deteriorated further.

I need to stop here for I am running out of time and this is meant to be a brief post. Still, these are issues that I suspect that I will be coming back too.

Reflections on the current New England fires - the need for evidence before action

William Strutt, Black Thursday, February 8, 1851, These fires burnt approximately 5 million hectares, or a quarter of Victoria; 12 lives were lost, along with one million sheep and thousands of cattle.

Like many Australians, I spent a fair bit of yesterday Tuesday 12 November glued to the live fire updates. a focus intensified because so many of the fires were in the broader New England.

This photo shows fire fighters at Tyringham east of Armidale.

Because of its regional airport as well as its proximity to some of the fires, Armidale has been something of a logistics hub. The planes have been full of firies and National Parks staff coming and going.

On Monday I manned the Armidale & District Historical Society office. A group of Canberra firefighters passing by came in to look at the exhibits. They were obviously going home after relief service. Instead of the usual high viz with smoke smells, they were all in neat uniforms!

In the midst of the fires there have been the usual stories of courage, of endeavour and humour and hope as well as personal hardship and tragedy. One such story about the borrowed milk has been widely carried on the media in Australia and overseas. 

 
In all the media coverage on the fires, I have become very annoyed with the nature of some of the discussion.

Before going on, I have been back through my past posts dealing with bush fires. I have listed these at the end of the post. They are concentrated in the period 2006 to the end of 2013. I'm not quite sure why I stopped writing then. Was it because of shifts in my interest or because the questions had become somehow less current?

The posts are necessarily fragmentary, but I think they provide a picture of events and issues that are still relevant today. I also note that fellow blogger Neil Whitfield had a useful piece today, The million (and more) hectare fires.

The first point I noted in reviewing past material is the frequency with which the word unprecedented has been used. I find this a slippery term. In literal terms, it means never done or known before.

The declaration of catastrophic fire conditions of the the Greater Hunter, Greater Sydney and Illawarra Regions was unprecedented in the sense that it had never been done. This particular condition classification was only introduced in September 2009. This was the first time it had been applied to such a large area. However, it says nothing about fire activity as such.

As I understand it, the term is used to describe particular sets of conditions (high temperatures, very low humidity and possible winds) which both make fire likely and extremely difficult to control. Thus does not mean that fires will start, nor that those fires will run wild. Indeed, and I stand to be corrected on this, I am not aware of any really major fires in areas covered by code red. Those big fires that have occurred have been in areas classified as high or extreme fire danger.

Code red is a risk assessment classification. Its use in in this case combined with school closures and other precautionary measures had the effect of adding drama to an already dramatic scene. It was only human to watch the code red areas waiting to see what might happen. I am not being critical of the NSW Government's decision on the categorisation, I am sure that they had expert advice, but it is important to distinguish between a risk assessment and an actuality.

The mixing of climate change and the immediate fire position is another problem area, one that I dealt with in Fires, drought and climate change within New England. As I said there, climate change is a macro long term global problem. It's an input into fire policy and associated mitigation policies. No matter what climate change policies had been adopted by Australian Governments they would not have affected the likelihood  of these fires. although they may have affected mitigation measures to some degree in the sense that management of the possible effects of climate change such as hazard reduction burns might have been pursued more vigorously with less red tape. 

Beyond the effects of the climate change debate policy towards both drought and fire policy, there is a broader issue. How do we translate the short and medium term implications of climate change into effective policy dealing with drought or fire mitigation, recognising that the on-ground effects are very uncertain. For example, if we need more fire fighters, how many more, where do we place them?  We have to take the general arguments and conclusions about climate change and give them specific geographic content. Here I put forward a specific hypothesis for test so far as the broader New England is concerned linked to movements in weather patterns.

If you read and think about that hypothesis, it has some quite profound implications in areas such as the Murray-Darling basin plan. I said hypothesis for test. I am getting a bit tired of generalities. I need things that can guide real action beyond the very macro. And that needs geographic specific analysis and test.

I note for the benefit of my climate change sceptical friends, and I have a number, that there is a distinction between what is happening and the reasons why it's happening. You can address what is happening without agreeing why. The two are separate questions.

Finally in this post, I want to turn to fire mitigation members. I note that I have a certain sympathy for some of Mr Joyce's views, although his language is unfortunate to say the least. Neil referred to a Guardian piece, Factcheck: Is there really a green conspiracy to stop bushfire hazard reduction? I did not think that this was a sensible piece in the sense that the question and answer were skewed.

I first came across the clash between environmental considerations and fire management in 1972 when meeting with sets of graziers who adjoined the Kosciuszko National Park. Their argument was that the withdrawal of grazing and the absence of proper fire management in the Park had greatly increased fire risk to their properties. In the years since, I have heard many more examples, including the inability of people in bush fire prone areas to extend hazard reduction steps into narrow strips of adjoining state land as well as frustration from farmers unable to do burning-off on their own land. There have been more examples this time, including the disappearance of fire trails that once allowed access within national parks in particular.

Where Mr Joyce misses the point, however, in his political attack on the Greens and other environmentalists is that the current position has evolved with time, changes over time and includes a variety of factors including cash constraints on National Park Services and the rise of new regulatory cultures focused on minimisation of risk and legal liability. Environmental considerations whether expressed by the Greens or anyone else are only one factor in the equation,

In this context, ABC Radio National carried an interesting interview this morning with David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania, on Hazard reduction burns just one piece of the puzzle. One of his points, if I interpret him correctly, is that individual fire reduction activities carried out by people who know their land is no longer possible because of the regulatory constraints, This is the price we have to pay for our evolving regulatory approach designed to manage risk and legal liability.

I am sure that these issues will be debated once we come to the end of the current fire season. They need to be, especially if you accept that climate change is a problem. However, that analysis needs to be based on evidence, recognising that clashes in objectives will arise. I would also argue that action needs as much as possible to be pushed down to local level.   

Postscript

 This ABC story by Kate Doyle, Fire, climate change and prescribed burning: What do the experts have to say?, contains some interesting material.         
 
Previous Posts   

• 25 September 2006, Keeping a Sense of Perspective - Larrikins and Volunteers
• 12 December 2006, Pilliga Fires
• 31 December 2006, 2006 - The Year Ends in New England, Australia
• 22 January 2007, Australia and its People - a funny upside down land
• 27 October 2007, Saturday Morning Musings - blogs and fires
• 27 October 2007, California wild fires - a systemic failure?
• 28 October 2007, Bushfires and the Australian Volunteer System
• 1 January 2008, Fire, Fireworks and Wild Weather - the year ends in Australia
• 8 February 2009, Victoria's fires - at least 14 dead
• 11 February 2009, Fires - stay and defend or leave early
• 14 February 2009, Saturday morning musings - issues raised by the Victorian fires.
• 15 February 2009, A Thursday meander - economics, fires, environmental policy and a bit on books
• 17 February 2009, Indonesian experts arrive to help identify Victorian bush fire victims
• 29 May 2009, Lessons in public administration from the Victorian fires
• 19 November 2009, Australia's new fire warning system - code red
• 19 December 2009, Saturday Morning Musings - fires, fire fighters and a new driver's license
• 28 May 2010, Victoria's fires - leadership, authority and responsibility
• 30 September 2012, Train Reading - Gammage, the Aborigines & the environment
• 27 October 2012, Fires, smoke and drought in Armidale - our Armidale correspondent reports
• 5 January 2013, Saturday Morning Musings - fires, land management & risk
• 7 January 2013. Hysteria over fire risk
• 9 January 2013, A view from the ground in a "catastrophic" fire risk area
• 15 January 2013, Warrumbungle Pilliga Fires
• 21 October 2013,Bushfires, rules and real harm minimisation 
• 5 June 2016, Sunday Essay - decline of the volunteer
• 7 November 2019, Armidale, drought and the need for balance in thought and reporting
• 10 November 2019, Fires, drought and climate change within New England

Armidale, drought and the need for balance in thought and reporting

It's been very dry up here on the New England Tablelands. Trees are dying that have survived previous droughts.

Having been through previous droughts, I was sceptical of some of the claims around this drought. I will leave it to the statisticians to decide whether this is the worst drought in the historical record, recognising that the intensity varies from place to place.

It's almost certainly not the worst drought we have had over the last few thousand years. The material I have read, I'm sorry I can't give links: I just picked it up in passing, suggests that there have been a number of very long dry spells since the ending of the Last Glacial Maximum. By long, I mean a thousand or so years.

What I can say is that this is a very bad drought, worse than I had realised. I know Northern NSW well and have been following the media reports and the social media feeds. I don't mean to be  rude, but I don't think that most urban folk have any real understanding of the on-ground position. I didn't until I returned to once familiar walks and saw the dying trees, until I listened to country people talking in passing about areas that I knew and the problems they were experiencing,

I am not happy about the approach to drought policy. At local government level, the councils (at least Armidale Regional Council) have been so caught up the hype that they have introduced what seems to me to be silly restrictions. There seems to be little sense of timing, little focus on addressing the complexities involved in the composition of water restrictions.

The Council web site carries the banner headline 398 days to day zero, the day Armidale runs out of water, down from 420 a few weeks back. That will not happen. It assumes no rain for a very extended period. There will be rain in that period, even if drought continues through out. Water restrictions can be tightened again. The Council has been putting down bores. Some water is available in Puddledock dam.

Mind you, I may be wrong and if so I will acknowledge it. It is a bad drought. It is also a drought that covers a wide geographic area. Water supplies are having to be shared between towns and between towns and country. Scarce town and farm water is also being used for firefighting.

Again to use Armidale as an example. Built to supply Armidale, the Malpas dam is now also supplying Guyra as well as some outlying farming areas where water for household consumption has run out. Water has been trucked for considerable distances. The Puddledock dam, previously Armidale's main supply, is reserved for emergency purposes, including firefighting. 

City folk have picked up all the hyperbole. This includes presentation by the media of Armidale as a basket case (who can resist day zero?) when, in fact, the city is equal to or better off than other places with lower level water restrictions. 

The problem is that at a time when we want people to move to the regions, people have begun to argue why go when there is no water. Better to concentrate in places like Sydney where there is water. This type of argument has begun to worry some of the country mayors who, while recognising current problems, are trying to strike a balance between the short term problems and longer term needs and objectives. 

The argument is in fact silly at multiple levels.

Consider the case of Sydney which is presently on level one restrictions as compared to Armidale's level five, prospectively level six.

The Sydney desalination plant has been fired up to provide supplementary if expensive water. However, 87% of Sydney's water still comes from rainfall. At present, the Sydney water storages are just over 47% capacity as compared to a Malpas dam level of a bit over 38%. Both have been falling. Sydney is wetter than Armidale, but it has a faster growing population and a much heavier water usage in industry and construction. Why then the differences in hype?

This is not meant to be a Sydney v the bush argument, nor am I saying that the drought is not bad. It is simply an argument for balance in reporting. To my mind, some of the emotion surrounding current discussion is interfering with longer term thought, with the development of solutions to meet needs that vary greatly across geographic space as well as time. 

On vanishing down rabbit holes - the case of Arthur Ransome

My family and friends laugh at me because of my ability to find connections between New England and apparently totally disconnected figures.

This is the English children's writer, Arthur Ransome. I really liked his books as a child. My favourite was We didn't mean to go to sea. It was a present from my parents.

Later, I tried to share Ransome with my children, buying Swallows and Amazons. It didn't grab. It was too remote.

Now what has all this to do with vanishing down rabbit holes? Well, I had an email from Cathie L asking me whether a certain homestead near Walcha still existed because it was once owned by Ransome's grandfather.  I had no idea that there was a Ransome connection. That was where the rabbit hole came in, for with info from Cathie I was off on a web search combined with emailing local historians.

 I have a total new story, although I can't write about it yet because I need to clear it with Cathie. But it involves a Dutch battle field, a New England station that carried its name, a squatter and early Australian painter. With the Russian revolution and espionage thrown in.

The only problem is that none of this was on my writing agenda including this blog. Sigh! this is happening all the time now that I am back on the New England.   

Clare Mulley tells the extraordinary story of Krystyna Skarbek (aka Christine Granville)

In this YouTube video, award-winning author Clare Mulley tells the extraordinary story of Krystyna Skarbek (aka Christine Granville) - the first, and the longest serving, female special agent working for Britain in the Second World War. The talk was delivered as part of the Lunchtime Lectures series, - a programme of free talks that takes place at the National Army Museum in London every Thursday at 12.30pm.

I am sharing it with you because this is one of the best talks I have seen. It's just over 49 minutes long, but is absolutely gripping. Enjoy!

 

Trying to understand foreign policy in a Trumpian and febrile environment

To say that I find President Trump unsettling is an understatement. It's not just what he does, but how he does it.

Since coming to office, he has launched trade wars that are now dragging the global economy down. He has launched a detente with North Korea whose effect appears to have been an entrenchment of the regime without any reduction in its arms program. He has begun and then partially withdrawn from attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan whose primary effect to this point has been a strengthening of the position of the Taliban. He announced that the US would develop a new circuit breaking deal between the Israelis and Palestinians while taking steps that would seem to preclude any such deal. He withdrew the US from the deal with Iran triggering a new round of sanctions and uncertainties. Now President Trump appears to have triggered the long planned invasion by Turkey of parts of Syria designed to break the power of the Kurds.

These various moves have taken place against a backdrop of a rapidly changing international scene and have added to the pace and uncertainty associated with those changes. They have been delivered with a mixture of bluster and blandishment expressed through tweets that I sometimes feel have been composed by a lonely man sitting alone at night seeking to establish relevance and satisfaction through the artificial sugar hits that come from twitter audience and responses. Others have responded, making twitter the dominant news mechanism of this new age. Who would have thought?

Millions of words have been written analysing the man, his policies and actions. I don't have a lot to add here, especially on immediate events  I agree that his approach is transactional. I agree that he has delivered on things he promised during his election campaign. I agree that US domestic political issues including the Muller Inquiry and the impeachment moves play into his responses. To my mind, none of this matters. We just have to wait it out.

The current international scene is as uncertain as I have seen it in my life time. To a degree at least, Europe and the UK are paralysed over the UK's departure from the EU as well as political divides within the UK and EU countries. Relations with Russia are uncertain as President Putin continues to push his own agenda. Fighting continues in the Ukraine.

The Middle East can only be described as a mess with both Syria and Yemen humanitarian disasters. Further west, war continues in Afghanistan, while the sub-continent is tense following Indian actions in Kashmir. China continues its expansion despite US trade actions, has become more authoritarian, is dealing with internal ethnic tensions and faces problems in Hong Kong and potentially Taiwan. South Korea and Japan, two key US allies, are at each other's throats.

Without going further, this simple list indicates the scale of global problems and uncertainties. Within this mix, President Trump has become a random wild card. As I said earlier, it's not just what he does, but also the way he does it.

I suppose that I could make guesses as to what might happen, but with so many cards in play it's perhaps better to wait on events, It must be creating nightmares for the planners and policy advisers in Canberra and other capitals.

From an Australian perspective, this is a time for caution. It is not clear to me that Australian Prime Minister Morrison is capable of exercising the caution and subtlety required to work through the shoal waters we face. I don't have a really solid evidence base to support this conclusion. It is based on his US trip, on his attacks on globalism, his arguments for the reshaping of the trade order, some of his responses to China.

To a degree, the Government seems locked in a time warp still driven by concepts such as the "war on terror", the need to propitiate and manage hard right ideas within the Liberal Party as well as sometimes xenophobic fears within the Australian community driven in part by the Government's own previous rhetoric, fears shared by those on the left as well as the right.

Managing all this requires a clear articulation based on a combination of principles and pragmatism, as well as the capacity not to say things, something that is very hard in Australia's sometimes febrile    political and media environment. It's not easy.

Postscript 13 October

In  a comment kvd wrote:

"Judges 15:16
Twitter is Trump's "jawbone" - in more than one way."

You will find the reference here. I had to laugh.

The BBC's Anthony Zurcher had a useful summary of the apparent confusion of the US position on the Kurds and Rurkey over the last week. Mr Trump's suggestion that he might mediate struck me (and I suspect the Turkish President) as very odd. Meantime, the roller-coaster continues with President Trump proclaiming that a phase one deal had been agreed with China on the trade war. We will have to wait and see what this actually means. 

 

Monday Forum – as you will

I let the Monday Forums lapse in the turmoil of the move. I think it time to reinstate them, recognizing that my irregular posting plus loss of some commenters means that responses are likely to be very slow initially. I have found them valuable in a personal sense in alerting me to new things, generating new ideas.

This first Monday Forum after the break is an as you will. Feel free to comment on things that have interested/ annoyed you!

Reflections on my first three weeks in Armidale

I have been enjoying my return to Armidale, although the internet is still not functioning properly. That’s not the NBN’s fault, just problems with my ISP.

Apart from the increase in my standard of living (my rent has dropped $215 per week for a much better house compared the increasingly grungy two bedroom semi), I’m enjoying the reduced travel time.

In Sydney it took me two way travel time of an hour thirty to go to the State Library which made it a significant excursion. Here things are much closer.

One day last week I drove into town for coffee then went to the industrial area to buy some wood. I have a wood stove and while I haven’t used it a lot (it’s been warm) I have really enjoyed it. From the hardware store I drove to the Family History Centre to pay my subscription and to do a quick scan of their collection. I also answered some queries from family researchers who called in. From there I popped over to the Heritage Centre and Regional Archives to talk to archivist Bill Oates about a possible UNESCO listing for some of the material. I then went to Coles to buy a few things for the house and then home. All this took two hours thirty.

I have also enjoyed doing some things that I used to do, but which were more difficult in Sydney.

Tuesday evening I went to the Armidale & District Historical Society meeting to hear Bill Crocker talk on “Working on the railroad; memories of a young teacher.”  Having finished Teachers’ College, the 19 year old Bill’s first posting in 1947 was to the provisional school at Kinalung, a small railway settlement near Broken Hill on the line between Menindee and Broken Hill. There were two gangs there, each responsible for maintaining a portion of the line. Their children plus a few from neighboring properties who came in by horseback provided the pupils.

Bill is a skilled raconteur, telling a string of stories that brought railway life in that small community and in Broken Hill and Menindee vividly alive. I was going to take notes, I wish I had, but the bloody pen ran out as soon as Bill started talking. Looking later, I found one nice story on Kinalung and school, if earlier than Bill’s time. I also found that Kinalung was probably a composite element in Tiboonda, a small town that appears in Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel, Wake in Fright. I filed some thoughts away for later reference.

Friday I went to a humanities seminar at the University presented by Professor Graham Maddox, “Rome as a model of Republican Liberty?” Graham focused on the constitutional views of Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner including their views on liberty. Both claim linkages back to republican Rome. There were, he suggested inconsistencies within their views and between their views and the realities of Roman history and political and constitutional expression.

This one stretched me because while I have a reasonable knowledge of Roman history, I lacked the background knowledge on certain political theories. That, of course, was partly why I went, to expand my own knowledge.

As Graham talked about their views, I was struck by the similarities between those views and some of the libertarian views I have seen expounded. I had also noticed a tendency among some libertarians to hark back to Ancient Rome. I also started seeing similarities between the arguments and those set out by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. In the end, I asked a question about possible linkages. This was so badly worded (I was trying to articulate a very ill-formed impression) that it left both Graham and I confused!

Dissatisfied, I came home, did some quick research and put the results in the form of a draft email to Graham. I may or may not send this, I don’t want to bother him, but it has given me a possible post as well.

The next day, Saturday, I went to the official opening of Boobooks’ new sci-fi, fantasy room. They had all dressed up in costumes and had prepared a cake. They also announced new writing prizes to go to younger writers (school age, up to 28) in the New England North West area.  

You can see that I am having quite a social time, if one that fits within my particular intellectual interests. In so doing, I have met or re-met quite a few people. At the end of three weeks, I seem to have slotted right back in even though it is 23 years since we moved to Sydney.

One thing I really like is the availability of resource material linked to my particular interests. I still have my State Library reader’s card which gives me on-line access. I am a member of both the City and University libraries which have some particular collections that I am interested in. I also have access to the big collection at the heritage centre including state records and the smaller collections at the history and family history societies.

So many of the references and the source material I am interested in are not available on-line. I have already found much that I had not seen, that compliments my own collection.

On the negative side, one thing I have noticed is the aging of Armidale combined with an increase in poverty. This is partially a matter of demographics linked to structural and cultural change.

The city grew very rapidly during the fifties, sixties and seventies. Local school numbers exploded with the influx of new families. Then came the changes associated with the Dawkins education reforms, changes that in combination with centralisation of service delivery cost the city a thousand jobs in a short period. Growth went into reverse. The city hollowed out as families left.

Those in permanent positions appointed during the growth phase who have strong connections with the city have now entered retirement. They were replaced to some degree by new arrivals, although these are much more mobile with changes in tenure. The city has attracted retirees (retirement homes are a growth business) and also people with disabilities or on low incomes attracted by services and the relative availability of social housing.

These changes are very visible in the street or in the shopping centres. In Sydney I lived in Daceyville with its aging social housing and retirement populations. Here I have seen more disability chairs, more walkers, in a morning than I saw in Daceyville/Kingsford in a week or even a month.

The effect is just as pronounced in my areas of interest such as history. I find that I know all those interested, the most active. Most were history staff at UNE or the Armidale College of Advanced Education when I was a post grad student in 1981 or 82. Then there were more Australianists than the total number of history staff at UNE today. The Australian history postgrad students from Litt B up outnumber the total number of history postgrads today.

Armidale is growing again. The population has finally passed the previous peak set during the eighties. There is a vibrant cultural life, a proliferation of writers, artists, of small publishing or production houses. There are new start-ups once more. Interestingly, and this is just a perception, the growth is more city, less university focused than in the past.

I suspect that this growth has come just in time to save the place from a severe shock.  

Fire and drought on the New England

It’s very dry in Armidale. Sitting outside at the back table I look across an expanse of dead grass stretching to Queen Elizabeth Drive, the main drag to the University. Fortunately, it’s been close mowed. Otherwise I would be worried about fire hazard.

The fires at Bees Nest and at Tenterfield and Stanthorpe have attracted much attention. The Bees Nest fire has now burned over 90,000 hectares, so it’s a very big fire. News reports describe it as near Armidale. In fact, it’s some considerable distance away, north of Ebor, north-west of Dorrigo. A camp for firefighters has been established at the Dorrigo Polocrosse grounds.

Fire fighting efforts have been hindered by lack of water. In some cases, limited town supplies have had to be diverted to fire fighting. Armidale itself is relatively fortunate, although level 4 water restrictions have been imposed. The main dam, Malpas on the Gara River is 42.9% full, while the much smaller Puddledock and Dumaresq dams are at 70.7% and 58.6% respectively. Puddledock is reserved for emergency use including fire fighting. Malpas now supplies Guyra as well as Armidale. Guyra’s own dams also on the Gara River are very low.

The streams in this immediate area including Gara flow east and have generally wetter catchments than the westerly flowing streams that form part of the Northern Darling Basin. Rainfall declines across the Tablelands from east to west. While it’s dry on the eastern portion of the Tablelands, it’s even drier in the west.

While I accept the statistics that suggest that this may be a record dry spell, I struggle a little with some of the hyperbole, mainly because I have seen so many droughts. Certainly it is very dry and will remain so until we get decent rain.

The 1980s – the missed link in the story of Australia in space: a note

The discussion and sometimes euphoria over the re-establishment of Australia’s space programs has been marked by a total neglect of the attempts to re-establish an Australian Space Program in the 1980s. Discussion slides from the 1960s or early seventies straight to the present time; it is though the 1980s did not exist. And yet, the 1980s were marked by a considerable push including the failed establishment of new institutional structures.

When the grand new initiative began, I became very annoyed at what I saw as the effective re-writing of history; neglect amounts to rewriting. I was also annoyed because the discussion failed to recognize the individuals who tried so hard. Then during the clean-out of my papers prior to the move to Armidale I found a box of documents on the 1980s’ attempts.

That box has disappeared for the moment, lost in the pile of boxes in the garage. It will re-appear in due course, allowing me to write a better documented account. For the moment, I just want to record some of the key events, recognizing that without documentation I may get things wrong including the spelling of names.

Australia’s withdrawal from space has been much canvassed in current discussions. Australia had an active launch site and a not-inconsiderable space sector. In Sydney, Hawker de Havilland employed some 4,000 people in its space division. When the British abandoned its independent space program, Australia had a chance to join ESA, the European Space Agency. This move was opposed by France which had its own plans and saw Australia as a threat to those plans. There was also little support domestically. The then Menzies Government saw it as a waste of money. The net effect was an unwinding of Australian involvement in space and our not inconsiderable space sector.

By the start of the 1980s, things had begun to change. Four factors contributed to this:

•  Barry Jones, the newly appointed Minister for Science and Technology in the Hawke Government, supported by Deputy Secretary Roy Green, began a space push. This led to the setting up of the Madigan Inquiry, While this proceeded, Jones and Green attempted to use Section 39 funds, part of the IR&D grant scheme, to fund Australian involvement if space projects
• Meantime, the Department of Industry and Commerce, concerned that the industry policy focus was too dominated by support for cot-case industries, established a new branch (the Electronics, Aerospace and Information Industries Branch) to chart new directions in the high technology sector. I was charged with responsibility with setting that branch up. We focused early on the role that space might play in developing not just the aerospace sector but Australia’s high technology industries in general
• There were moves in CSIRO too. The Division of Radio Physics under Bob Frater supported by Colin Cooper had not lost its interest in space and supported increased Australian involvement in space. Ken McCracken, head of Minerals Research and a dedicated believer in the value of space based remote sensing began a push to create a special space focused centre within CSIRO. There was growing interest in the universities too where researchers were experimenting with new space focused technologies
•  In industry, Hawker de Havilland had not forgotten its previous role and supported the push led by (among others) Peter Smith and Stan Schatzel. Stan had had a long involvement with Australian space activities. There were also a growing number of small space related start-ups.

A number of initiatives resulted:

• We began a series on industry consultations aimed at identifying opportunities and impediments and to gather support for new space initiatives
•  In CSIRO, Ken obtained endorsement to create a new committee to examine CSIRO’s role in space of which I was a member. This resulted in the creation of the CSIRO Office for Space Science and Applications headed by Ken, supported by Christine Astley Boden
• A new Australian Space Board was created headed by Bruce Middleton to develop new program activities.

These various moves would finally fail. The reasons for this deserve exploration as does the whole story. In essence, the climate in Canberra was changing. These space initiatives were seen as yet more special pleading for industry subsidation. I remember a frustrating meeting at Treasury where I finally said in frustration how do I satisfy you? David Borthwick carefully explained about benefit-cost analysis. It was actually quite a helpful response, but my problem was that benefit-cost analysis deals with the known, while I was doing with the what might be. I could explain linkages, show where I though benefits would come, but I was really very reluctant to attach numbers or risk assessments. From my perspective, I could show benefits, but so long as we were in the right ball-park precise quantification was meaningless.

When I get my box of papers I will write more. For the moment, I simply wish to assert that the new Australian Space Agency is not the first Australian Space Agency, that what happened in the 1980s deserves to be remembered.

Returning to Blogging

Cross posting to the New England Australia and New England History blogs.

Well, I am now in Armidale. I still don't have the internet working properly, that requires connecting to the NBN, but can access the internet using a hot spot created on the mobile. This is potentially very expensive, but meets my immediate needs.

After such a long delay in blogging, the move was creating distractions and delays long before the intensive move period, traffic to my blogs has declined greatly. I have to rebuild and that will take time.

I will write about the move, after all it has been a big and all consuming one, but for the moment I simply want to record that I am back blogging.

I look forward to a return to regular posting, to the on-going conversation with blogging friends old and hopefully new!