My main post today, Neucleus days - Part One, was on my personal blog. It was a follow up to Diary of my Armidale trip. Here I want to record just a few New England comments.
The Neucleus post is part personal memories, part historical research.
One of my continuing complaints is that our shared history is not seen as mainstream, not important. So outside the purely local or sometimes narrow regional level, few research it, fewer still publish it. It's just so non-metro!
I wrote about Soo Khoo, Khoo Soo-Hay I should probably call him, because he occupies a particular spot in my memory and life. I didn't know he was a poet! He is obviously a good poet, so I have to find his main book and read him. He is another of the ever growing list of New England writers.
Talking to people in Armidale or in other New England towns or cities, I find them cut off from their past. They just don't know, Yet our history is deep and interesting. It's just different from that elsewhere in Australia, different from the current "mainstream". Obviously it varies across New England, but those variations are part of the interest.
The story of Neucleus, a student newspaper, is of limited relevance to many. Yet it's also relevant to tens of thousands who read the paper. It's also relevant as a window into a broader slice of Australian history. And it's relevant to the thousands of New Englanders who have left the bounds of New England, however defined.
I hope that you enjoy the post, because it's part of us.
1 comment:
I have forgotten the title of the critical paper written by a New England academic on the Neucleus.
AS someone who was dragooned into the editorship by Peter Drysdale ,I am acutely embarrassed by the poor quality of the issues of the paper I edited.Except for one article that I asked the daughter of Russell Ward to write on the plight of aborigines living at the Armidale town dump.
Most of the article published,from memory ,were unsolicited essays from student religious groups.
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