New England Australia - the world wool built

This photo shows Belltrees homestead in the Hunter Valley.

The house was designed for the White family, one of New England's pastoral dynasties, by J W Pender, one of three generations of the family firm of Maitland architects who left such an impression on the New England built landscape.

This is part of the world that wool built. Now fading from memory, this was a world of struggle but also of great wealth.

Over coming weeks I plan to run selected photos and other material that will (I hope) bring this world alive. You will find the whole series by searching on wool.

New England Australia - the world wool built 2: the dray

This lithograph by the artist Samuel Thomas Gill (1818 - 1880 - Ballarat Fine Art Gallery) shows wool being carried by dray.

When European settlement began, the new settlers hugged the coast and waterways. Land transport was just too expensive.

Wool changed this because it provided a high value product that could justify land transport.

New England Australia - the world wool built 3: development of wool

• John Macarthur (1767 - 1834) is generally regarded as the founder of the Australian wool industry, although others such as Samuel Marsden also played a part.

Macarthur was a difficult man, something of a commercial buccaneer, whose clashes with various Governors culminated in Australia's one and only military coup.

The first auction of Australian wool was held at Garraway's Coffee House in London in 1821. By 1838 sheep had moved into every Australian colony, the annual wool clip was over two million kilos and wool had become Australia's main export.

New England Australia - the world wool built 4: the 19 counties and the limits of settlement

Today, people best know Murrurundi as a small settlement just before the New England Highway leaps up the Liverpool Range. In fact, this was frontier country.

In 1829 Governor Darling attempted to control the limits of settlement by proclaiming 19 counties surrounding Sydney. Murrurundi lay on the northern edge. To go further north meant being outside the rule of law.

The move failed. Wool boomed in 1830 and settlement spread rapidly.

Those going beyond the bounds of settlement became known as squatters because they were squatting on the land without license or payment.

New England Australia - the world wool built 5: the Aborigines

European settlement moved in two broad streams, one inland, one river hopping up the coast.

The world the squatters entered was not unpopulated. Indeed, while population densities varied, New England was quite densely populated, especially along the humid coastal strip.

The map (original here) shows the distribution of Aboriginal language groups. The Hunter tribes had already felt the impact of European settlement. Now all Aborigines would be affected.

New England Australia - the world wool built 6: heading north

Those heading north to take up land had to pack everything onto drays, not just tools and household goods, but also basic rations.

The drays travelled at best at the pace of the stock, creating a constant stream of noise and dust. Men were needed not just to drive the drays, but also to act as shepherds.

This much late photo from the Powerhouse Powerhouse Museum shows teamsters having a break. While later, it gives a feel.

New England Australia - the world wool built 7: squatter's daugher

This painting by George W. Lambert painted in 1923-1924 is simply called The squatter's daughter.

The squatters who went north from the Hunter Valley to find new land may have been just that, illegal squatters, but within a short time in historical terms they were to become an establishment in their own right.

New blog posts as at 7 September 2008

On Personal Reflections, the week's posting began with Sunday Essay - chick flick books, social change and the desire to escape, further musings on the process of social change in Australia.

This was followed on 1 September by two posts: Blog Performance - August 2008 and then Political parties are NOT brands. The second complains about the misuse of language and the way that this affects thinking.

On 2 September I returned to the Haneef matter in The wheels continue to come off the Haneef case. As, indeed, they continue to do.

3 September saw two posts. Mechanistic management and Mr Rudd's education revolution suggests that whole Rudd education revolution is bound up in the semantics of modern managerialism, set within the bounds of past ideas, while 3 September 1939 - the Second World War starts simply notes that the anniversary of the start of the Second World War appears to have passed without any comment at all in the Australian media.

4 September saw Ethnicity, ideology and the sometimes slippery concept of Australian "independence" - Part One: "Independence" followed on 5 September by Ethnicity, ideology and the sometimes slippery concept of Australian "independence" - Part Two: Australian Identity . Both posts discuss aspects of Australian history and identity.

There were two posts on 6 September. The costs of standardisation and uniformity continues my constant discussion on management and public policy, while in Election Night 6 September 2008 I tried my hand at live blogging the WA election results.

7 September saw Sunday Snippets - As Darkness Falls, New England Woes, Hugh Frewen, a pot pouri post.

On New England Australia there were three posts. The week began with As Darkness Falls - a good read, a review of Bronwyn Parry's new book. This was followed on 3 September by NSW's home building collapse, a brief note on the decline in home building in NSW. 4 September saw New England Australia - blogs, an update on blogs located in or about New England.

There were also three posts on Regional Living Australia.

Regional Australia - how much does food cost pointed people to the Grocerychoice site as a way of getting information on average grocery prices in particular areas, while Regional Australia Food & Wine - Orange revisited simply pointed people to an earlier post on this topic. This was followed on 5 September by Musings on Australian food and wine which is as the name says.

There were just two posts on Managing the Professional Services Firm. Raising one's eyes unto the hills simply provided a copy of one of Gordon Smith's photos, while Establishing a Discipline of Practice - stocktake of posts is as the name says.

A Change in Direction - and new blog posts as at 30 August 2008

This has been a very sad a lonely little blog, quite neglected because of time constraints. I still want it to serve its original purpose, but I also need something further if it is to continue. So I am adding to it weekly reports on the posts I have written, making it a little more like Neil's Gateway blog.

So what is new, or at least relatively new, in the world of Belshaw blogging?

Over on Personal Reflections, the week began with The social and economic pain of demographic change, part of a conversation I have been having with Bob Quiggin. This was followed by The apparent silliness of Headmaster Rudd's truancy plan, a somewhat negative response to Mr Rudd's proposal to withdraw social services benefits from parents who failed to send their kids to school.

£35 on eBay buys details of one million bank accounts reports on the latest computer security breach in the UK, a country now famous world wide for this type of problem. Then Ethnicity in Hurstville - and other Australian cities provides hints for HSC students and others who may want to find out the ethnic make-up of various Australian localities.

My other blogs have been in catch-up mode, bringing older posts on-line. I will provide details here in my next report.

New England Australia Aviation Series

This photo shows an East West Airlines Focker at Sydney airport.

At the moment I am running a series of photos showing elements of the history of aviation in Australia's New England. This page will remain the front post on this blog until the series has been finished. It will then become the entry page for the whole series.

The posts so far in the series are:

• VH-EWA - East-West Airlines' flagship Hudson
• Introducing the Lockheed Hudson - and a major Australian crash
• Nevile Schute's Planes
• East West Airlines Anson Crash - Pozieres, Queensland c. 1954
• East West Airlines' first aircraft
• Port Macquarie - East West DC3 lands for the first time
• Sunderland Flying Boats, Grafton
  

VH-EWA - East-West Airlines' flagship Hudson

This photo shows East-West's flagship Hudson. The problem with the company's frst planes, the Avro Anson, is that they required visual flight. Roger McDonald records:

Following their first successful year of operation using ex RAAF disposals Avro Anson aircraft, the company’s Directors announced they were pursuing the purchase of DC-3s to replace Ansons, stating that there was no future for the company unless they moved from a visual flight to an instrument flight operation.

DC-3s proved to be too expensive at this stage of EWA's operations, while there were also problems with landing fields. Instead, the EWA Board decided to purchase second hand Hudsons for refit, although Board members were seriously concerned about the cost.

The Hudson made its first commercial flight for East-West on December 22, 1949 when it departed on the 7.00am service to Sydney, cropping 30 minutes off the previous Anson scheduled time. The Northern Daily Leader reported:

This is possibly the best Hudson aircraft in Australia and will provide passengers with the ultimate in comforts as a toilet is installed and a Hostess will attend the needs of passengers.

Introducing the Lockheed Hudson - and a major Australian crash

This photo of a Lockheed Hudson is from the Temora Aviation Museum. Located between Wagga Wagga and Young, the museum was established by Sydney businessman David Lowy as a tribute to the aircraft and pilots who had defended Australia.

The Hudsons occupy a special niche in Australia's aviation history.

On 13 August 1940, a RAAF Hudson crashed near Canberra in view of onlookers and in apparently good weather while preparing to land after a flight from Melbourne.

Among those killed were Mr G A Street (Minister for the Army and Minister for Repatriation), Mr J.V. Fairbairn, (Minister for Air and Civil Aviation). Sir Henty Gullet (Vice-President of the Executive Council and one of Australia's most powerful public servants) and General Sir Brudenell White, Chief of the General Staff. This was a serious loss.

Later, Hudsons from No. 1 Squadron RAAF became the first aircraft to make an attack in the Pacific War, sinking a Japanese transport ship, Awajisan Maru, off Kota Bharu, an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Production of the Hudson ceased in 1942. These ex-military aircraft were to become another of the mainstays of regional aviation in Australia.

Nevile Schute's Planes

Planes and boats are central to many of the novels of Nevile Schute. In his autobiography, Slide Rule, Schute wrote:

Kenneth Grahame once wrote that 'there is nothing, absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.' With that I would agree yet for a fleeting period in the world's history I think that aeroplanes ran boats a very close second for enjoyment. For about 30 years there was a period when aeroplanes would fly when you wanted them to but there were still fresh things to be be learned on every flight, a period when aeroplanes were small and easily built so that experiments were cheap and new designs could fly within six months of the first glimmer in the mind of the designer. That halcyon period started about the year 1910 and it was in full flower when I was a young man; it died with the second war when aeroplanes had grown too costly and complicated for individuals to own or even to operate.

Many of New England's aviation pioneers shared this love of aircraft. They simply wanted to fly or build airlines for the love of it.

Lists of the aircraft included in Nevile Schute's novels can be found here.

East West Airlines Anson Crash - Pozieres, Queensland c. 1954

This photo shows an East-West Airlines Anson plane crashed at Pozieres, Queensland, c. 1954.

Growing up, I felt safe with EWA because people always seemed to survive any crashes!

In this case, the plane had to be abandoned.

East West Airlines' first aircraft

This photo is from Brisbane, 1947, and shows East West Airlines Avro Anson passenger plane VH-BBI, East West Airlines first passenger plane.

The Avro began as a commercial aircraft but then became a major military aircraft.

A total of 11,020 Ansons were built by the end of production in 1952, making it the second-most-numerous (after the Vickers Wellington) British multi-engine aircraft of the war.

Port Macquarie - East West DC3 lands for the first time

This photo shows the first landing of an East West Airlines' DC3 at Port Macquarie on New England's Mid North Coast. Founded by Don Shand in 1947, the company had meant to fly east west between Moree and Grafton, but low traffic densities shifted the focus to north south between New England centres and Sydney.

Built in huge numbers during the Second World War, the DC3's ready availability made it the workhorse for many new airlines.

Sunderland Flying Boats, Grafton

This photo shows Sunderland Flying Boats on the Clarence River, Grafton, New England c 1948. Developed as a British military aircraft just before the Second World War, the Sunderlands went on to become a passenger craft. In Australia, they operated scheduled services from Sydney to Lord Howe Island until 1974.