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BUILDING BRIDGES: BRIDGING WORLDS The Unique Contribution to the University of Dr Lionel Gilbert , O.A.M., B.A.(Hons), Ph.D., Hon. Doctor of the University.

John Atchison

Introduction During the 1930s, whilst the elements of higher education were still being set in Armidale, three persons were making their own ways into activities and roles which would merge later to establish in New England a distinctive approach to the understanding of Australia’s past: of its local, family and applied history.

In Sydney, Lionel Arthur James Gilbert born at Burwood on 8 December 1924 to Reginald Arthur Gilbert and Alma Alice, née Taylor, was progressing through schooling at Burwood Primary, Homebush Intermediate and Fort Street High Schools before coming under the important influence of emergent botanist, Thistle Yolette Harris at the Sydney Teachers College.1 At the opposite end of the British Empire, William George Hoskins, a lecturer in commerce, was spending his weekends walking and bicycling the long-farmed fields of East Leicestershire.2

Formative backgrounds Both Harris and Hoskins would teach botanists and historians how to look at landscape in new ways and to realise the importance of the most meticulous fieldwork. Lionel Gilbert was destined to pick up on their professional insights and to make Armidale a centre of importance in locality studies with far-reaching contributions to education, historical and botanical research, as well as to the enrichment of regional society and the wider nation.

For most of this decade Thistle Harris, already familiar with the flora of western New South Wales and with an appreciation of the importance of ecology, was teaching at St George Girls’ High School and she had initiated a campaign to plant native trees and shrubs around Kogarah. In March 1938 she took up a lectureship in biology at Sydney Teachers College.3

W.G. Hoskins, deeply rooted in the soil of his native Devon, was evolving from economic history through social history to making ‘the transition from local

1 Genealogical information from Anne Gilbert, Armidale, 14.02.2013.

2 Based on discussions July 1996-March 1997 at Department of English Local History, Marc Fitch House, University of Leicester with Charles Phythian-Adams (former student of Hoskins) and Harold Fox.

3 Joan Webb, ‘Thistle Yolette Stead’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB),18. !2

historian of the type whose work is of interest to local amateurs to elevator of local historiography on to a plane where it became of universal interest and made a secure place for itself as a university discipline’.4 His weekend trips around East Leicestershire, the county with the most even distribution of villages on the English landscape, were with Frederick Attenborough, Principal of the University College of Leicester, an affiliate of the University of London. Attenborough, (father of Richard and David), and Hoskins combined their complementary interests to obtain an ever- growing understanding of this farming landscape which stood in marked contrast to its more industrialised western half.5 From this experience and reflection, combined with an enviable immersion in charter rolls, maps and documents, would emerge in 1955 W.G. Hoskins’, The Making of the English Landscape, a work which ranks amongst the most influential historical works of the twentieth century.6

A university first As the UNE School of Humanities states on its website, the pioneering work of Lionel Gilbert is ‘arguably the first time a tertiary education institution in Australia dared to introduce these popular history areas as part of its teaching and research profile’.7 It will be seen that this tradition in Armidale combines aspects of the approaches of Harris, Hoskins and, especially, Eric Dunlop with other factors. Lionel Gilbert had worked closely with his postgraduate supervisors Noel Beadle in Botany and Russell Ward in Australian History. It will be suggested his research achievement combined uniquely the research aspirations of the early decades of UNE with the core philosophy of the older tertiary institution in Armidale, one with a decade long pioneering achievement before the establishment of the New England University College: teaching primary school curriculum history as part of the training programme but not, it seems, any local history.8 In many areas over coming decades both institutions were to interact, not least of all in the teaching of history.

Armidale Teachers’ College had long prided itself on its distinctive ethos: the production of sound, grounded practical class-room teachers but with a respect and emulation for scholarship. Its evolution into the Armidale College of Advanced Education provided Lionel Gilbert with a brief window of opportunity to secure

4 ‘Professor W.G.Hoskins’,The Times,15 January 1992; ‘Giving life to history’, The Guardian,14 January 1992.

5 As above, n.2.

6 D. Hey (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Local and Applied History, Oxford, OUP, 1996,p.224.See,esp., W.G.Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (Introduction and Commentary by Christopher Taylor), London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1998 (rarely available within Australia).

7 http://www.une.edu.au/humanities/lfah/28.01.2013.

8 E.S. Elphick, The College on the Hill, Armidale,ACAE, 1989,pp.42,47. !3

funding to establish the New England Historical Resources Centre, a facility which was to help mould the existing Armidale tradition in local, family and applied history.9

Gilbert the Pioneer Tracing through the career of Lionel Arthur Gilbert leads to an appreciation of the individual roles and achievements of the predecessor institutions in shaping the present Armidale tradition. His own evolution and development as an innovator, pioneer and important historian is anchored firmly in his early career experiences as a regional schoolteacher in small communities, his deep interest in fieldwork botany and subsequent scholarship in a newly autonomous University. This helps explain the significance of the Armidale tradition, as well as make it distinctive compared with its obvious counterpart in midlands England. There are parallels between New England and Leicester; they not only achieved autonomy about the same time but share other traits.10 The similarities and differences are a little like those between Australia and Canada: they make for instructive and constructive understanding.

From Sydney and to the Northern Territory Lionel had taken up a scholarship at Sydney Teachers’ College after a valuable exposure to the business world and dealing with the general public from a brief stint of working at Gowing’s Department Store on the corner of Market Street and George Street. This Sydney institution, specialising in men’s clothes and camping gear, operated mainly on the ground floor of a 1912 twelve storey building which was in marked contrast with the predominantly single storeyed Burwood of his schooldays. Gowings had not yet had its gargoyles and statuettes removed as a wartime measure so these features of the building11 appealed to a young man already renowned for a quirky, subtle and delightful sense of humour.

Growing up in inner-western suburban Burwood, with its most substantial built heritage of Victorian, Federation and Interwar architecture had made a deep impression on Lionel Gilbert. He delighted especially in the Appian Way precinct which is Sydney’s, if not Australia’s, finest Federation Street and in the features,

9 C.B. Newling, The Long Day Wanes, Hunter’s Hill, L.F.Keller, 1973, p.147.L.A. Gilbert and E.S. Elphick, New England Readings, Armidale, ACAE, 1977, p.iii.

10 The University of Leicester was granted autonomy in 1957 after being founded as a College of London in 1921.

11 ‘Gowings, Gowings but not gone’, http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/gowings etc.,13.02.2013. !4

internal and external, of the beautiful, historic Church of St Paul with its strong evangelical tradition.12

Lionel Gilbert was thus well predisposed to savour the architecture and grounds of the Sydney Teachers’ College, located close to the noted Neo-Gothic quadrangle of the University campus. Once exposed to the inspirational impact of Thistle Harris it seems his future course was, in a sense, predestined to have lasting benefit in an appropriate arena.

Wartime study and fieldwork As students enlisted in increasing numbers, the college devised a way for them to continue their studies on a part-time basis, especially those whose night-time rosters on duty would afford them time during the day to continue their studies at a distance. Thistle Harris devised notes for fieldwork collection for a class of one - Lionel. Thus continued a process already initiated in the grounds of the College and University, as well as in ‘the wilds of Woronora River Valley, at Longreef (sic) and even in Sydney Harbour’. This was an excellent grounding for Lionel, once he had completed his initial training at Tocumwal and RAAF Richmond, to collect whilst stationed at RAAF Toorbul (near Caboolture) before final, longer posting in the Northern Territory.13

Both locations, one near the Glass House Mountains the other on the Cobourg Peninsula, provided ideal settings for this keen enthusiast to collect plants and start a personal herbarium, as well as providing Harris with a reliable and constant source of seeds for her own collections and nursery.

And 46 Radar Cape Don on the Cobourg Peninsula was an appropriate location for Lionel Gilbert as a radar operator for his eligible service with the RAAF.14 It is redolent with colonial history and Australia’s ambitions in Asia. Now part of Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, its significance for botanical collection is associated with Allan Cunningham whose role links nicely with Lionel’s life-work. Cunningham had collected in this area in 1818 whilst accompanying the noted hydrographic surveyor Phillip Parker King on the first of his four major surveys of the

12 J. Johnson, C. Gray and C. Kemp to Heritage Enquiry Productivity Commission, Re Conservation of Australian Historic Heritage Places, http://www.pc.gov.au/-data/assets etc, 13.02.2013.

13 J. Webb, Thistle Y.Harris, Chipping Norton, Surrey Beatty & Sons, 1998, pp.102-103. Gilbert to Atchison, pers comm., 14.02.2013.Toorbul Radar Bunkers No.210 Radar Station RAAF, http://www.ozatwar.com/raaf/210 radar.htm, 23.02.2013.

14 L.A. Gilbert, ‘Faded Echoes of 46 Radar, Cape Don, Cobourg Peninsula’, M. Fenton (ed.), History and Stories of 46 Radar Cape Don-An RAAF Radar Station, South Australia, Lockleys, 1997. !5

northern coastlines.15 Here Lionel collected plant specimens, as did Cunningham. This experience provided him with the evidence for some early publications in both botany and zoology.16

Nabiac and Wauchope On demobilisation and return to Sydney and College, Lionel soon found himself in an interview with Principal C.R. McRae where a firm recommendation from Thistle Harris saw him on his way to Nabiac Central School as teacher in agricultural biology, a subject in which botany featured strongly. His destiny was set when young Miss Roberts arrived on staff.17

Lionel Gilbert and Margaret, née Roberts settled into married life in the service town of Nabiac on the Wallamba River between Taree and Forster/Tuncurry. A nineteenth century small river port for the movement of timber, mainly red cedar, it was initially located off the Pacific Highway and was important for a valley cleared of dense timber and focussed on small-scale dairying and corn-growing. Surveyed on the boundary between Biripi and Worimi lands, ‘the place of the wild fig’ serviced a series of communities such as Wootton, Failford, Rainbow Flat, Dyers Crossing, Krambach and Coolongolook.18 For the next nine years (1946-1954) Lionel was to teach secondary subjects at the Nabiac Central School where one of his pupils, the internationally famous poet Les Murray, born at Nabiac in 1938 would complete there his primary and early secondary education.

This extended period of service in an unspoilt, archetypal coastal settlement, with a wealth of timber houses and charming old St Paul’s Church of England, was key to Lionel’s future.19 Nabiac is set in an environment around Mount Talawahl which enabled nascent botanist Lionel Gilbert to engage in serious, purposeful collection activity. His herbarium of some 1100 specimens owed much to his years here. In time this would form the basis of a replacement herbarium at the University of New England when its original collection was lost in the Belshaw Building fire.20

15 M. Hordern, King of the Australian Coast, Carlton South, Miegunyah/MUP, 1997, pp. 118-120.

16 L.A. Gilbert, ‘Botanical Notes on the Northern Teeritory,Part 1,Victorian Naturalist, May 1947;Part 2, idem., July 1947/ L.A.Gilbert, ‘Zoological Notes on the Northern Territory’, Part 1, idem., August 1948;part 2, idem., October 1948.

17 Gilbert to Atchison, pers.comm., 14.02.2013.

18 Nabiac, http://www.smh.com.au/news/new-south-wales/Nabiac etc, 09.02.2013; Nabiac,http://www.nabiac.com; Nabiac, New South Wales, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabiac,-New-South-Wales.

19Ibid.

20 G. White to J. Atchison, pers.comm.,07.02.2013. !6

The variety of old cemeteries in the district also drew his attention and it is not without significance that, in 1955, after he had transferred to Wauchope Primary School as Deputy Headmaster, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Australian Genealogists.21 Through this society he was to forge a close friendship with Nancy and Arch Gray, a link that was to be important for the cause of local history in the north.22

This search for old gravestones was to become a benchmark of the Gilbert style, leading not only to notable books but also to memorable after-dinner speeches. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday friends and admirers would capture well this dimension of the man and his achievement: “few, if any, could possibly match your knowledge of cemeteries, graves, crypts, mausoleums, tombs, vaults, sepulchres, burial chambers, headstones, grave markers, and most particularly, epitaphs”.23

The Gilberts - Lionel and Margaret - departed Nabiac at the end of the school year in 1954 just a couple of years after the Pacific Highway had been re-routed through the town and before it would again by-pass the settlement. Nabiac today houses Australia’s largest collection of vintage, veteran and classic motorcycles located in a national museum whose ambience suggests an activity contrasting with a major interest, indeed passion, of the energetic school-teacher who owes much to the quiet solitude, reflection and leisure time afforded by his years here.24

In taking up residence in Wauchope, near the end of navigation on the Hastings River, Lionel was subconsciously picking up a link with the Cobourg Peninsula. Phillip Parker King had, prior to the transfer of the secondary penal station from Newcastle to Port Macquarie, conducted a hydrographic survey of the Hastings so as to position the station and to make a reconnaisance of its hinterland traversed earlier by Surveyor General John Oxley who was on the Mermaid during this exploration of the waterways.25

21 I. Johnstone, ‘Dr L.A.Gilbert…A Life of Achievements Time-Line’ (author’s copy).

22 After 1968, when the Grays retired to the Rowland family home, Guernsey Street, Scone, many UNE and ATC-ACAE historians made a ‘compulsory stop’ for lengthy discussions and consultations. Local history in Armidale owes much to these visits.

23I. Johnstone, ‘To Dr Lionel Gilbert, OAM Freeman of the City of Armidale’ (author’s copy).

24 The National Motorcycle Museum of Australia, http://www.nationalmotorcycelmuseum.com.au/, 09.02.2013.

25 Hordern, op.cit., pp.158-164. !7

Going to New England Lionel was also positioning himself on an old wool track to the New England tablelands so dominant on the western horizon of this town, one also built around timber. It would be another decade before funding would be budgeted for the reconstruction of the Oxley Highway between Walcha and Wauchope 26 so Lionel’s enrolment in 1955 in the first intake of external students at the newly autonomous University of New England in Armidale 27 was to see him endure the old rough gravel road to and from the tablelands.

To Rocky River and UNE These were heady days for the emergent University of New England. The pent-up demand for tertiary qualifications and postgraduate studies amongst persons already in the workforce meant that a cohort of the highest quality students, well motivated towards mastery of their favourite disciplines, brought residential schools- a core component of the philosophy of external study in Armidale- as close to the classical idea of a university as was likely to be realised even conceding the experience of Australian universities with the post-war demobilisation education schemes.28

Lionel Gilbert was soon to be one of the stars of this transitional phase of building a stronger research base to the former University College. He brought to the experience a very hard earned knowledge of landscape, vegetation, rural settlement and, not least, a growing expertise in bibliographic collection from his haunting of Tyrrell’s Bookshop, Sydney, parish fetes and astute probing of remote rural locations. All these factors were leading towards his development of tertiary courses in local history. This meant also that he had formed his own approach to local history before coming in contact with similar minded persons in Armidale. This would make for a creative tension in the evolution of local history, especially as Lionel’s emphasis on applied history growing out of his involvement in local communities meshed harmoniously with the Teachers’ College conviction that those who professed a discipline should be seen to practise it.29

26 (P.A. Griffith/DMR), The Roadmakers:A History of Main Roads in New South Wales, Sydney, DMR, 1976, pp.245-249. A Lower North Coast Divisional Office, Port Macquarie, was opened in 1966 to achieve this reconstruction.

27 Johnstone, ‘To Dr Lionel…Armidale’, loc.cit.

28 See esp.J.S.Ryan, thesis,’A History of Adult Education at and through the New England University College & the University of New England, 1948-1986.

29 A favourite expression of Lionel Gilbert’s, stated frequently to colleagues in conversations. !8

His evolution from fieldwork botany to ‘botanical historian extraordinaire’ drew on the influence of his Sydney College lecturers George Mackaness and Charles Currey. The amalgam of Harris, Mackaness and Currey 30 with deeply nurtured personal experiences in a variety of geographical settings was being refined through the supervision of Noel Beadle and Russell Ward into a unique contribution to education, botany and history.

Lionel graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours, in 1963 with a thesis on the History of Botanical Knowledge of the Eastern Seaboard of Australia 1788-1815.This was carried through to a 1972 graduation with a highly innovatory PhD in Botanical Investigation of New South Wales, 1811-1880.31

To the Tablelands and to meet Eric Dunlop All of this was achieved whilst holding responsible executive positions and teaching at Wauchope and, then in 1960 and 1961 as Principal at Rocky River Primary School. Located at Sydney Flat between the Old Rocky and Tipperary out- stations on the southern extremity of squatting run Saumarez Station founded in 1834 and precursor to the settlement of Armidale, this school and its history laden environment deepened Lionel’s skills and approaches to field work, especially with such ready access to the rich mining and social history of the gold-field which made Uralla and boosted the growth of Armidale.32

During his Wauchope years Lionel also played the key role in the establishment of the Historical Museum in Port Macquarie, a contribution to community development which was subsequently to bring him into close association with Eric Dunlop, the founder of the Australian folk museum movement.33 Lionel was destined to follow and build on Dunlop’s seminal work. After many decades of neglect and isolation, Port Macquarie was destined for rediscovery as post-war affluence resulted from the early 1960s in more Australians being able to afford a motor vehicle. Port Macquarie Historical Museum would become a major attraction

30 R. Aitken, ‘Lionel Gilbert:botanical historian extraordinaire’, Australian Garden History, 24(3), Jan/Feb/Mar 2013, pp.17-18.

31 Theses/Dissertations Collection, School of Humanities, UNE.

32 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line’, loc.cit.; J. Atchison, Saumarez Station 1834-1874, Work-in –Progress.

33 J.S.Ryan, ‘Eric W.Dunlop (1910-1974) and the Teaching of Traditional Culture in New England’, Armidale & District Historical Society (A&DHS), Journal, No.42, April 1999, pp.57-68.N. McLennan, ‘Eric Dunlop and the origins of Australia’s folk museums’, re Collections/Issues/Volume 1 number 2, pp.1.2.6.10-13. !9

to a growing tourist destination.34 It would also be the first of four museums associated in their origins with Lionel Gilbert.35

Migration to the tablelands and study at UNE brought Lionel Gilbert into a career shaping contact with Eric Dunlop, whose reappointment to Armidale Teachers College in February 1949 had resulted in the establishment of the Museum of Education in the College grounds and the growth of various social history museums in the region with a ‘history from below’ approach before as Nicole McLennan notes, E.P. Thompson used the phrase in 1966. This coincided with ‘the burgeoning interest in local history’.36

To Regional Archives These were the years also when Adult Education courses were a major outreach of UNE, establishing a political support base and good-will towards the growing University. In many ways, this had been a natural follow-on from the interest of early NEUC staff such as James Belshaw and Ina Mary Cumpston in offsetting a lack of primary sources for advanced students by collecting documents-the beginning of a regional archives-and researching local issues resulting in monograph studies. R.B. Walker and E.J. Tapp were running courses in local history as was Eric Dunlop.37 Lionel slotted easily into this practice and began to conduct classes on the methodology of local history throughout the north and northwest.

Between 1961 and 1963, Lionel Gilbert occupied the position of Research and Information Officer, External Studies, UNE.38 Whilst enabling him to complete his honours thesis, this secondment brought him into fruitful contact with regional communities and local aspirations over an extensive area of north-western New South Wales as UNE netted more geographically dispersed students into its external programmes. Lionel, already a steam train buff of note, applied his skills to mastery of train schedules and co-ordinated movements by rail as he positioned UNE teaching staff into valued weekend engagement with their students to the mutual benefit of the student body, local communities and the University. Not least, the contacts opened up

34 For Port Macquarie Museum, see section by Liz Gillroy in Kimberley Webber et al, 2011, ‘Drawing people together: the local and regional museum movement, in Understanding Museums: Australian museums and museology, Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds.), National Museum of Australia, published online at nma.gov.au/research/understnding-museums/ k.webber_etal_2011.html ISBN 978-1-876944-92-6; Mr & Mrs R. Howell to J. Atchison, pers.comm., December 1966.

35 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line’, loc.cit.

36 McLennan, loc cit.,p.10.

37 ibid., pp.8.12.20. D. Beer, ‘A History of History’.J.S. Ryan (ed.), The Arts from New England:University Provision and Outreach:1928 to 1998, Armidale,UNE, 1998, pp.75-76.

38 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line, loc.cit. !10

and the geographical horizons expanded brought him into more effective awareness of his primary research interests in Botany and History. Russel Ward was a keen exponent of R.H. Tawney’s sound advice about the need for every historian to have a tolerable pair of boots 39 and to explore countryside. Like Manning Clark, who always liked to savour the sense of place for his characters,40 Lionel began to clock up impressive mileages as he became ever more familiar with the ground traversed by explorers, surveyors, botanists and pastoralists during Australia’s settlement expansion of the nineteenth century.

Lionel, upon arrival at Rocky River, became an early member, also, of Armidale & District Historical Society formed in 1959. He was to serve as President on five occasions and in 1989 become Patron.41

ATC and ACAE In July 1963, with his B.A. (Hons) under his belt, Lionel was appointed Lecturer in History, Armidale Teachers’ College and Curator Museum of Education. This was in succession to Eric Dunlop who had accepted an appointment in Sydney.42

The previous year Lionel had been appointed Honorary Curator, Armidale City Council’s Folk Museum. Armidale had, in 1933, established the State’s first municipally controlled museum; its initial emphasis was natural history and technology. Dunlop had, with the strong support of Alderman Robert Madgwick, “rekindled” it from wartime storage and helped it evolve into a folk museum, opened in 1958.43 Lionel’s long association with it aided its annexation of the nearby Hillgrove School. Opened in 1977 the new facility is known as the Museum of Rural Life and Industry 44 and, whilst not yet on the scale of Stockholm’s Skansen, Hillgrove School is a vital part of the local scene and, in a sense, complements Inverell’s Pioneer Village.

39 R. Ward, The Australian Legend, Melbourne, OUP, 1963, p.viii.

40 C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, 6 vols., MUP, 1962-1987, vol.IV:The Earth Abideth For Ever (1978), p.viii; Manning Clark, Occasional Writings and Speeches, Melbourne,Fontana/Collins, 1980, pp.46-47,70; M. McKenna, An Eye For Eternity:The Life of Manning Clark, Carlton, Miegunyah/MUP, 2011, pp.466-488.

41 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line’, loc cit.

42 ibid.; McLennan, loc.cit.,p.13.

43McLennan, loc.cit., pp.8,11-12. ‘Rekindled’is the preferred term of Peter Chambers, Curator, Armidale Folk Museum.

44 Dr Lionel Gilbert, Royal Australian Air Force/Zoominfo.com,28.01.2013. Australian College of Educators, Dr Lionel Gilbert OAM, http://austcolled.com.au/article/dr-lionel-gilbert-oam, 28.02.2013. !11

Eric Dunlop’s evolution towards a strong emphasis on folk museums reflects a deep concern with both general community and school education. For one who was so well grounded in Ancient, European and British history - the method areas of curriculum he taught to Diploma in Education students preparing for secondary school teaching - his early emergence and awareness of ‘looking at things on the ground’ is quite remarkable. His significance lies in his bringing - like Hoskins - scientific accuracy to careful observation. Lionel was well placed by background and scholarship to carry Dunlop’s achievement forward.

His own Department/Resources Centre In 1972, following the award of his PhD, Principal Lecturer Lionel Arthur Gilbert was appointed Chair of a newly formed Department of History at the recently legislated Armidale College of Advanced Education. In July of the same year he took up a six month overseas Churchill Fellowship to study methods of display, administration and the educational use of museums so as to explore the ways in which museums contribute to general education. Amongst other outcomes, this led to an expansion of the Museum of Education on a new site in Kentucky Street.45

In 1974 Lionel received an Innovations Grant, Commonwealth Schools Commission to establish a New England Historical Resources Centre which opened two years later with him as Director.46 His beloved History was being constantly restructured into a Faculty of Humanities and then a School of Social Science Education as Principal Leary navigated the College through a hazardous minefield of Commonwealth-States funding and accreditation processes and University-College resources, demarcation and staffing allocations for a three year Bachelor of Teaching award. Lionel seized a narrow window of opportunity to forge something special with local history utilising his own experience and expertise and that of carefully selected colleagues he had added to the history staff.47

His appointment in 1975 to the Archives Authority of New South Wales as UNE representative afforded him easier access to building up strongly the Historical Resources Centre collection. This became a major resource for academics, students and the general public.48

Diplomas of his Creation

45 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line’, loc.cit.

46 Gilbert and Elphick, New England Readings, p.iii.

47 Based on author’s personal experience.

48 Johnstone, ‘Gilbert…Time-Line’, loc.cit. !12

Lionel Gilbert was now primed to establish path-finding undergraduate and graduate diplomas in local and applied history. These awards combine in an innovatory and appealing way the academic and the practical, reflecting the strengths of the early Royal Australian Historical Society’s forging of an alliance between the professional and the antiquarian.49 Thus a firm command of nineteenth and twentieth century general history was combined with units on family history, surveys of cemeteries as primary sources, as well as of the built environment. As one who inherited, on Lionel’s retirement, his unit on Interpreting the Historical Landscape, I can testify to the interest engendered in students in having the opportunity to test their academic understanding against field observation.50

The courses reflect their emergence in the still transitional phase between first generation local histories by committed amateurs and keen enthusiasts, the flowering but now seemingly neglected generation of distinguished regional histories in the 1960s 51 and a historiography demanding the mastery of more disciplines than current resources, trends and emphases allow. Sir Keith Hancock, perhaps jestingly, had remarked that he published Discovering Monaro (1972) to offset the sins of his youth with Australia (1930).52 Unlike the Department of English Local History at Leicester, which was strictly a postgraduate operation focused on masters and doctoral candidates, local and applied history at University of New England only rarely enrols such students. Lionel’s legacy thus far enables a very broad cohort of persons to undertake history at tertiary level, and with major benefit to society as a whole.

To go even further, future developments to achieve a new generation of regional histories may well demand an ambitious co-operative enterprise between University and local communities. Such joint endeavours would seem to be a natural progression from the proven approaches of both Gilbert in Armidale and Hoskins in Leicester and, later, Exeter.

The research base to facilitate the emergence of more higher degree candidates is yet to emerge. In 1995, a mixture of pre-amalgamation UNE History and former ACAE staff, working together in a new UNE, attracted funding to combine published work in family history with academic social and demographic history to emulate Tony

49 As noted by Tom Griffiths, McLennan, loc.cit.,p.4.

50 As above, n.47.

51 As, for example: M. Kiddle, Men of Yesterday, MUP, 1962; G. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Away, Brisbane, Jacaranda, 1963; R.L. Heathcote, Back of Bourke, MUP, 1965; R.B. Walker, Old New England, SUP, 1966; G.Buxton, The Riverina, MUP, 1967; D.B. Waterson, Squatter, Selector and Storekeeper (Darling Downs), SUP, 1968.

52 Hancock to Atchison, pers. comm., August,1971. !13

Wrigley, The Population History of England 1541-1871:A Reconstruction, but with a particular emphasis on the inland corridor of settler movement from the Southern Ocean to the Gulf and the Cape and to the grasslands of South Australia.53 This was premature, in spite of the quality of John Ferry, Colonial Armidale 54 a little later.

In 1998, another combination of UNE especially archaeology, and other academics, with CSIRO, workshopped a proposal to undertake a strategic research initiative, 241: a land use history by two peoples - indigenous and immigrant - over the past (one) millennium of the four major catchments east and west of Walcha: Namoi-Gwydir and Macleay-Bellinger. Palaeo-botany, archaeology and` history would have been crucial to this project.55

If these or other projects are ever realised they will owe much to the original visionary and courageous endeavours of early Colleges and University staffs in Armidale. Amongst such, Lionel Arthur Gilbert stands preeminent as one who bridged the worlds of education and community, University and Teachers’ College, Botany and History in particular, and various other worlds. Even if Thistle Harris was to say later of Lionel Gilbert, ‘Best student I ever had and he had to go and do history’ 56 none of us can be in any doubt of his contribution not only to botany but, especially, to history and to education. He combines uniquely all three.

A Productive Retirement Retirement in 1984 as Acting Deputy Principal, Armidale College of Advanced Education, released Lionel to focus his considerable energies as well as deep expertise to publish many substantial works. Botany, in particular, benefited from this productivity with a history of The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney and biographies of botanists J.H. Maiden; H.M.R. Rupp and William Woolls. L.A.J. Gilbert’s fifteen books, hundred articles and innumerable, memorable public addresses and after-dinner speeches establish a special contribution recognised in recent years with an OAM, a Centenary Medal, an Honorary Doctor of Letters (UNE, 2008) and recognition as a Freeman of the City of Armidale amongst other awards

53 A. Atkinson, 1996 ARC Initial Large Grant, Reference No. A59602690 (author’s copy).

54 J. Ferry, Colonial Armidale, St.Lucia, UQP, 1999.

55 Based on original proposal Elizabeth Moodie to (Research Team), 19.10.2007: Two Four One project (author’s copy).

56 Webb, Thistle Harris, p.102. !14

and honours.57 A unique and well-earned achievement testifying to much about Armidale and tertiary education in all its phases!

The shadow cast by Harris, Hoskins, Dunlop, Beadle, Ward, Gilbert and others will be long indeed.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY The Australian College of Educators (see above n.44) noted that Lionel Gilbert’s extensive publications since 1948 include many papers in natural history, genealogical, local history and bibliographic journals as well as detailed studies of graveyard monuments. Journal articles and notes include fifteen early articles in the Victorian Naturalist, eleven articles to The Australian Genealogist/Descent, five to Biblionews and two to the Records of the Australian Academy of Science. His contributions to the Journal of the Armidale and District Historical Society number thirty five while his sixteen contributions to The Australian Dictionary of Biography are noted for their breadth of coverage; insights,in particular, into colonial science and appreciation of scientific and community networks. W.K.Hancock commented to this author on this scientific dimension reaching into botany and agriculture as early as 1971 and based on Dr Gilbert’s articles on Joseph Banks, Ferdinand Bauer, Dennis Considen, Daniel Solander and William Carron in the first three volumes of the ADB.Richard Aitken,as an editor of The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens,commented on Lionel Gilbert’s generous contributions to that 2002 reference (see above n.30).

A comprehensive listing of Dr Gilbert’s publications in available in Ian Johnstone, ‘Dr Lionel A.Gilbert OAM Freeman of the City of Armidale:List of publications (2001).See also Lionel Gilbert’s Select Bibliography in Australian Garden History, 24 (3), Jan/Feb/Mar 2013, p.19.

‘Balala’, Australian Council of National Trusts, Historic Homesteads of Australia, North Melbourne, Cassell Australia, 1969,pp.152-57 (photographs by William Webster and Shirley Dawson).

(with William P.Driscoll and J.A.Sutherland), History Around Us-an enquiry approach to local history,2nd ed. Sydney, Methuen Australia,1984.

57 Aitken, loc.cit.,p.17; Johnstone and Newman, ‘To Dr Lionel…City of Armidale’, loc.cit.; Johnstone, ‘Gilbert … Time-Line’, loc.cit. !15

(with E.S.Elphick),New England Readings-A Sourcebook for First Year Contextual Studies at Armidale CAE, Armidale,ACAE,1977.

(with E.S.Elphick), Forty Three and Seven-a Short History of the First Fifty Years of Teacher Education in Armidale-Armidale Teachers College 1928-1971, Armidale CAE 1971-1978. Armidale, ACAE, 1978.

A Grave Look at History-Glimpses of a Vanishing form of Folk Art, Sydney, John Ferguson, 1980.

New England from Old Photographs, Sydney, John Ferguson, 1980.

An Armidale Album, Armidale, NERAM, 1982.

William Woolls 1814-1893-A Most Useful Colonist, Canberra, Mulini Press, 1985.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney-A History 1816-1985, Melbourne, OUP, 1986.

Mr Smith, Mr Jones and a Time of Bliss-An Outline History of S.H.Smith House, Armidale, ACAE, 1987.

The Orchid Man-the Life, Work and Memoirs of the Rev.H.M.R.Rudd 1872-1956, Sydney, Kangaroo Press,1992.

Mr Mcleay’s Elizabeth Bay House Garden, Canberra, Mulini Press, 2000.

The Little Giant-The Life and work of Joseph Henry Maiden 1859-1925, Armidale/ Sydney, Kardoorair Press/Botanic Gardens, 2001.

The Commissioner and The Squatter or Armidale Visited and Revisited 1839-1889-2009, Armidale, A&DHS, 2009.

(with Dennis Hope and Col Mulquiney),Images of Armidale, revised edition, Armidale, Armidale Dumaresq Civic Precinct Committee, 2013.