A Sociology of Place in Australia: Farming, Change and Lived Experience [1st ed. 2021] 9813362391, 9789813362390

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A Sociology of Place in Australia Farming, Change and Lived Experience Claire Baker

A Sociology of Place in Australia “Baker has written a closely observed and perceptive study of profound transformations in rural Australia since World War Two as soldier settler family farms have been replaced by capital-intensive agribusinesses. She explores the dynamic interplay between state policy and lived experience, showing that, in the final analysis, it is the state that calls the shots.” —Emeritus Professor Judith Brett, La Trobe University “Baker presents a vivid and original account of land, livelihood, and loss in rural Australia, working in the tradition of Karl Polanyi to trace intricate connections between sociohistorical transformations, shifting state policies, and the changing rhythms of everyday life.” —Professor Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia “A thoughtfully crafted and perceptively argued exposé of life on the land, Baker’s book blends personal insights and socio-historical events in tracing Indigenous dispossession, soldier settlement, family farming, and government policy in the making of rural Australia. The author is to be congratulated for delivering a fascinating and provocative account of agrarian transformation— one making a major contribution to rural sociology and the sociology of place.” —Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Lawrence, University of Queensland “Baker has written a beautiful study of place that illuminates the complex configurations of people and landscape in rural Australia. It’s intellectually profound analysis of the social construction of rural land use is informed by deep and heartfelt narratives of people’s everyday realities. Their voices are the vines that stretch across the latticework of her theory. This is a book that both informs and delights.” —Professor Bill Pritchard, University of Sydney “A tour de force. Anyone who wants to understand the ‘tragic separation between the City and the Land’ in contemporary Australia should read Baker’s beautifully told economic and social history.” —Emeritus Professor Michael Pusey, FASSA, University of New South Wales

“If Australia was the creation of a genocidal settler colonialism, how did the final acts of elimination play out? In Claire Baker’s meticulously documented book we learn of how the ‘brown land’ of New South Wales’ Liverpool Plains was annexed for White Australia, in part through a soldier settlement programme. In some especially engaging chapters of this fine book, Baker reveals how the last remaining aboriginal inhabitants were driven from their now-thoroughly-fenced land, and she explores in detail the fundamental economic and symbolic roles played by agriculture and agrarianism in this process of violent dispossession and erasure.” —Gareth Dale, Brunel University London

Claire Baker

A Sociology of Place in Australia Farming, Change and Lived Experience

Claire Baker School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences University of New England Armidale, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-33-6239-0 ISBN 978-981-33-6240-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Claire Baker This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

The Dreamer Over the crest of the Hill of Sleep, Over the plain where the mists lie deep, Into a country of wondrous things, Enter we dreaming, and know we’re kings. Murmur or roar as it may, the stream Laughs to the youngster who dreams his dream. Leave him alone till his fool’s heart breaks: Dreams all are real till the dreamer wakes! —Dorothea Mackellar Published in 1911

In grateful and loving memory of Fred For Olivia, Jessica and Denman

Acknowledgements

The place in which this work was conceived, lived, researched, and written about and from, is the traditional land of the Gamilaraay people. I acknowledge that this land, and all land throughout Australia, was stolen and sovereignty has never been ceded. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and the continuing connection to land, waters, culture and spirit. My life has been lived on these lands and for that I am thankful. The deep beauty and wide-open skies of Goolhi will always be part of me. This work emerges from and through my life there and my family, and I would like to very sincerely thank Elva Shumack for conducting the first interviews years ago and for allowing me to use them for this project. Thank you also to everyone I interviewed, and to Tom Fearby for all your help. Thank you all for your time, your hospitality (all the tea and scones) and your willingness to share your experiences with me. I know that a big part of this was because of the memory of my father and the way he lived his life. He has walked next to me throughout my life and his warmth and the legacy of his character has continued to walk with me beyond his. Thanks Fred.

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I acknowledge and will always be so very thankful for the knowledge, guidance and advice I received from my three Ph.D. supervisors, Alan Scott, Neil Argent and Adrian Walsh, for the thesis upon which this book is based. I was supremely fortunate to have you as mentors and advisors for this research. Thank you for your time and your knowledge, it was a great pleasure and I learned so much from each of you. I would also like to thank Jamie Peck, Bill Pritchard and Guy Redden for their forthright and thoughtful feedback on the thesis that then helped shape this book. Thanks also to Christopher Mayes for reading drafts at many different points of the process and your continued invaluable feedback. Thank you to my many colleagues at UNE that helped me through, and to Cary Bennett for the constant support. A very sincere thanks to the Chancellor of UNE, James Harris, for the James Harris Postgraduate Research Award that helped make this possible. Thanks to Warwick Keen for helping me contact Aunty Barb and knowing I could share Violet’s story. I also wish to thank my editor at Palgrave Macmillan, Joshua Pitt, for his kindness and understanding through the difficult year that was 2020. Thank you also to my three amazing children, Olivia, Jessica and Denman, to whom this book is dedicated. I know that in many ways this work has been as much a part of your lives as mine. I love you beyond words. And of course thank you to my mum Felicity, my family, and to my brother Tom for your hospitality out at Goolhi, times that remain very special to me. To my dear friends who helped hold me up— thanks for your patience and support. Mitchell Neems, thank you for understanding. Extracts from Chapter 7 appear in Redden, G., Phelan, S., & Baker, C. (2020). ‘Neoliberalism in Australia and New Zealand’ in Neoliberalism in Context: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by S. Dawes and M. Lenormand, Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 8 uses extracts from Baker, C. 2018. The Nation-Building State Retreats: An Australian Case Study in the Changing Role of the State. Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 62, pp. 146–155.

Contents

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Introduction: Goolhi and the Sociology of Place in Australia 1.1 Outline of the Case Study 1.2 The Sociology of the Case Study 1.2.1 Historical Sociology and Comparative-Historical Analysis 1.2.2 Place 1.2.3 Oral History, Memory and the Interpretation of Lived Experience 1.2.4 Evidence-led Research 1.3 Overview of the Book References The Embedded Market: Place, Space, Land and the Self 2.1 Early Capitalism and Change 2.2 Capitalism and the Politics of Space 2.3 Neoliberalism and Globalisation

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2.3.1 Neoliberalism, Globalisation and Agricultural Production in Australia 2.3.2 Neoliberalism as Statecraft 2.4 Changes in the Social Imaginary 2.5 Place, Locality and Meaning 2.6 Identity and Lived Experience 2.7 Conclusion References 3

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Groundwork: The Social, Political and Cultural History of Land Settlement in Australia 3.1 The Why and How of Colonisation 3.1.1 Historical Context: Britain and World Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century 3.1.2 Capitalism and Imperialism After 1870 3.1.3 The Politico-Juridical Inheritance 3.2 The Role of the State: Economic Goals as Social Goals 3.2.1 Land Settlement 3.2.2 The Role of Government Investment and ‘Colonial Socialism’ 3.2.3 Federation, World War I and the Inter-War Years 3.2.4 After the War: Nation-Building and the Role of Land Settlement 3.3 Cultural Ideals in the Australian Social Imaginary 3.4 Conclusion References

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Dispossession/Possession: Prologue to Moment One 4.1 Dispossession/Possession 4.1.1 The Shared History of Pastoralism? 4.2 Living At Goolhi 4.3 Love and Loss 4.4 Conclusion References

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Moment One: The Lived Experience of Soldier Settlement at Goolhi 5.1 There for the Taking 5.1.1 Drawing a Block 5.2 Everyday Life 5.3 Hard Work, Hard Country 5.4 Good People, Good Times 5.5 Encountering the State 5.6 There for the Ride 5.7 Conclusion References

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The Luck of the Long Boom: Epilogue to Moment One 6.1 Early Success at Goolhi 6.2 Multi-scalar Factors of Success 6.2.1 International 6.2.2 National 6.2.3 Local 6.3 Conclusion References

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Unpicking the Stitches: Dynamics of Change 7.1 Changing Economy, Changing Paradigm 7.2 Trade Liberalisation and Australia’s Place in the World 7.3 Farm Sector Reforms 7.3.1 Case Study: Australian Wheat Board 7.4 Globalisation and the Disruption of Traditional Cultural and Political Identities 7.4.1 Political Representation and Change 7.5 Walking the Line: Current Policy Responses 7.6 Conclusion References

173 174 181 184 187 191 193 195 199 200

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Moment Two and the Lived Experience of Economic Action at Goolhi 8.1 Contemporary Context 8.2 Embedded Economic Action: Debt Stress and Its Role in Low Capital Investment 8.3 Impacts on Lifestyle—Stress, Pace and Intensity 8.4 Experiencing the Changing Role of the State: New Burdens in a ‘Free’ Market 8.5 Conclusion References

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Moment Two and Its Social Consequences 9.1 The Past and the Future: The Lived Experience of Decision-Making 9.2 The Changing Face of Agriculture and the Lived Experience of Community 9.3 Conclusion References

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Conclusions: Conditions of Possibility 10.1 Overview 10.2 Key Contributions and Conclusions 10.3 The Return of the State? References

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Bibliography

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Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 4.1

Illustration 1.1 Illustration 1.2 Illustration 1.3

Illustration 1.4

Location of Goolhi and local reference points (Created by Macgregor, C. [2018]) The 1855 classified advertisement seeking information to help capture Charley’s murderer. Reprinted [adapted] from Classified Advertising (1855, October 24). The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW: 1843–1893), p. 2 (Supplement to the Maitland Mercury). Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla. news-article707928 Ted Baker, 1950 The timber mill at Goolhi, operated by the soldier settlers The huts that some of the more fortunate soldier settlers were able to use as accommodation in the early years The official display of produce grown at Goolhi by the Goolhi division of the Junior Farmers Club at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, 1960

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Illustration 1.5

Illustration 1.6 Illustration 1.7

L-R Tom Fearby, Elva Shumack, Fred Baker (consecutive winners of the Star Junior Farmer of the Year Award) with an unknown official Near Goolhi today Near Goolhi today

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1 Introduction: Goolhi and the Sociology of Place in Australia

A sociology of place in Australia is a study in the complexity and embeddedness of human systems. It speaks to the importance of the relationship between people and the land, culture and place, and the many ways in which these are entangled throughout human history. First off, it needs to be said that Australia is of course an ancient land, and this book does not attempt to capture the depth of this history. It recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the rightful owners of the land we now know as Australia and pays ultimate respect to the ways in which the land was managed and used to sustain a people across a timespan that is often beyond our capacity to comprehend. I write from my position as a white woman who has benefited immeasurably from this cultural position. My work is to tell the story as comprehensively as I can and uncover the sociology of a place that became my home. This work is entangled in my own history, one that emerges from the settlement project of the British Empire and one that was unsettled by the disruptions since. In the tradition of sociology as a discipline, this book looks to the impact of modernity upon society and in particular, the ways in which the changes this brought about impacted the people and the use of land. By focussing on one place, this work reveals how a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_1

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bounded locale can be used as a point of focus through time in a way that uncovers multiple meanings, purposes and outcomes related to land use and the social formations attached to it. Central to this sociology of place is the relationship between the state, the economy and the individual. As the configurations of these relationships change at the broader macro-level of political paradigm and discourse, so too do the conditions of possibility for everyday life at the micro-level. Locating the experience of everyday social reality within the matrix of culturally, socially, economically and politically available options for the conduct of life and for identity sits at the centre of the study of social action and at the heart of this book. It investigates the complex effects of the state on everyday life, using an historical agricultural case study to explore how this has changed across time. As such, it is an in-depth investigation of long-running sociohistorical processes of change examined through both a macro- and micro-sociological lens. This provides a multi-faceted perspective from which to examine economic, social and cultural transformations in each of these contexts and change is examined through multiple sites of expression: public policy and the role of the state; colonial processes of dispossession; social and cultural systems of value; economic change and its consequences; farming practices and lived experience; neoliberalism and globalisation and their social impacts; community decline and trends toward corporate and foreign land ownership. Each of these transformations impacts upon lived experience and everyday life and this book provides grounded insight into exactly this relationship and process. It is from my first-hand experience of this profound change that this research project emerges. As a child, I lived on a 2000-acre wheat and cereal farm about 60 kilometres west of the closest town, in a small area known as Ghoolendaadi on the edge of the Liverpool Plains in north-western NSW, Australia. This area is often referred to as the ‘food bowl’ of the nation (and increasingly, the world) and is characterised by productive black soil plains and low rolling hills that have proved ideal for the cultivation of cereal crops and livestock. My early life was immersed in a strikingly beautiful landscape of wide-open skies, rich black soil and a rhythm of life aligned with the physical earth—daylight, rain, harvest, drought. We grew and slaughtered our own meat, milked

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the cow before breakfast and a trip to town was a special occasion. When school intruded into this life, it involved long hours on the bus and a constant feeling of wanting to be home on the farm. Immersion in this place and way of life was total and it remains my most loved landscape. Besides my connection to the place and its physicality and beauty, there existed a connection to the community and history of the area that was central to my, and my family’s, identity. Further west along the road from where we lived was the district of Goolhi, an area characterised most recently by the establishment of a returned soldier settlement scheme after World War II. My grandfather, Ted Baker (see Illustration 1.1), had been one of these settlers and had moved there to establish a home and farm from a bare block of land in 1950. Having returned from the war where he served as a mechanic in the Royal Australian Air Force, he worked as a farmhand until gaining selection of the block, moving his wife and young family there to a house he built himself, from timber he milled himself (see Illustration 1.2). The opportunity fundamentally changed his life, his family’s life and therefore my own. The early experiences of these soldier settlers were passed on in stories that were a constant backdrop to life in the area. The hard work and determination, the mutual support in difficult times and the laconic sense of humour of these men and women were legendary. We were all immersed in the pioneering tales and amusing stories that provided the backdrop for the next generation to also build a life from the foundations that they had built. My father was one of many of the children of this generation that also chose to farm in the area and through the 1960s and 1970s the area boomed. This ensured a deepening sense of community as the next generation built lives and started families in the area. My memories of the 1980s involve weekends filled with convivial tennis tournaments, long days of cricket and barbeques at the community hall built by the soldier settlers. Social life in the area was tied to these people not just by virtue of location, but also through a shared sense of being ‘from Goolhi’ and all that identity entailed. This second generation took on the mantle of the Goolhi character that had been formed by the soldier settler’s actions and then reinforced in the telling of these stories. Quintessentially, the Goolhi character was bound to an

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Illustration 1.1 Ted Baker, 1950

agrarian identity formed through hard work and an unstoppable work ethic, unswerving but stoic concern for each other best demonstrated through practical help, and a particularly sardonic sense of humour that cut everyone down to size (Illustrations 1.3 and 1.4). The next generation proudly embodied the opportunity they had been given. The development of a Junior Famers’ Club in the area boasted a

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Illustration 1.2 The timber mill at Goolhi, operated by the soldier settlers

forceful presence at the Sydney Royal Easter Show (see Illustration 1.5), Australia’s premier agricultural showcase, for many years with extensive displays of prize produce from the area. My father Fred and then my aunt Elva were among a few consecutive Goolhi farmers named as Star Junior Farmer of New South Wales in the early 1960s (see Illustration 1.6). Goolhi was held up as an example of what could be done when hard work met opportunity in the Australian landscape, particularly when aligned with productive undamaged soils, exponential improvements in farming technologies, advances in pest management and booming international economic conditions. It was a hard life, but a good life, cast from and within a national culture that valorised the challenges and the character of the farmer. Despite having only been established in 1950, the community at Goolhi formed a tight-knit and strong sense of connection very quickly. Growing up I knew the stories, walked amongst the people and lived first-hand the farming life that provided such a rich source of pride and virtuous identity in the Australian imaginary.

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Illustration 1.3 The huts that some of the more fortunate soldier settlers were able to use as accommodation in the early years

By the time I reached the age of 11, this idyllic rural life had begun to crumble. Many of our neighbours had left the area, forced by the banks to sell up and auction off all of their belongings. By 1990, this had also happened to us. Deep structural change in the agricultural industry, unsustainably high interest rates and extended drought in the area had resulted in significant difficulties and the community was quickly transforming. As a child, my experience of this was one of deep loss. Not just the loss of a life in a landscape I deeply loved and of a community of people that had surrounded me as long as I could remember, but most painfully a deep dislocation from a way of life and being. Suddenly my parents were required to conform to rhythms of life that did not centre upon the rising of the sun or the needs of the land. As they struggled to find jobs and identities beyond the farm, our family, along with many others, lived through deep disruption and dislocation as the consequences of economic change rolled through our landscape. Having unconsciously enjoyed my place in the world—politically, economically,

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Illustration 1.4 The official display of produce grown at Goolhi by the Goolhi division of the Junior Farmers Club at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, 1960

Illustration 1.5 L-R Tom Fearby, Elva Shumack, Fred Baker (consecutive winners of the Star Junior Farmer of the Year Award) with an unknown official

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Illustration 1.6 Near Goolhi today

socially, culturally—for the first time I understood that these could change and they could change significantly. As a teenager, I saw the ways in which these shifts impacted not just my self and my daily life, but that of my parents, our household and our community. The impacts were not just a simple relocation of farmers away from inefficient farming operations as it was politically framed at the time, but rather involved deep renegotiations of self and of life for everyone involved. Farming, especially in the Australian context, involves a complex overlay of economic, social, cultural and personal identity. This personal account is important because it demonstrates the intersection of three key elements that provide the rationale for this book and the use of this area as the site of a case study. The first is that, as a clear example of the disruptive effects of modernity, it provides a significant opportunity to contribute empirical evidence to important sociological considerations of the relationship between the state and the market and the effects of this. Much of the core concern of sociology as a discipline

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lies in the changes to social life brought about by modern systems of social and economic organisation and this case study directly contributes new knowledge and understanding to the ways in which these processes are expressed and lived at the local level. Secondly, as a case study, the example of Goolhi provides direct evidence of several key trends in the Australian context that have particular significance for understanding contemporary research concerns and issues. The important ways in which dominant social and cultural forms informed the colonisation of Australia and approaches to and understandings of land, along with the historical development of policy positions and changing cultural imaginaries, are each demonstrated through an engagement with the long history of Goolhi. These long-running processes continue to impact upon the place and the people in a globally connected context and this project contributes significant understanding to contemporary political issues and social impacts. Building upon this, the third element is the consequence of my connection to the case study and the significance of the research method. This connection ensures not just a nuanced and embodied understanding of the field, but particular access to people and sources that result in exceptionally rich data at two significant moments in the social history of the place. The in-depth qualitative data informs an understanding of situated sense-making at the level of lived experience that would be difficult to capture otherwise. Combined with a long-run sociological history of the area and the comparative analysis that this affords, the research methods provide a particularly valuable contribution (Illustration 1.7).

1.1

Outline of the Case Study

The history of this setting, the district of Goolhi that covers around fortyfive thousand acres (see Fig. 1.1), mirrors the experiences of many areas of Australia. Looking not only at the long-running historical development of particular configurations of the state-economy nexus that are clearly manifest at Goolhi, this setting also offers the opportunity to investigate two in-depth ‘moments’ in this long history. These moments are not presented as clear-cut epochal shifts, but rather as two indicative

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Illustration 1.7 Near Goolhi today

high points of contrasting formations of the state-economy relationship and the very particular ways in which these impact upon the individual. These two moments emerge in the history of this place to present a crystallisation of the complex ways in which broader discourses of value, expressed through state action and enacted culturally, deeply shape the lifeworld of individuals. Beginning of course with traditional Aboriginal land ownership and management by the Gamilaraay people, the area was marked by violent confrontations in the claiming of this land for the Crown after colonisation. Subsequent land settlement mechanisms, set by the state and aimed at the realisation of economic and social forms associated with agricultural industry, shaped the area over the next two centuries as the associated ways of life dominated the landscape as direct expressions of the social and political forms of the time. What marks this area as a particularly interesting example of social change is the fact that it was then compulsorily acquired by the state after World War II for

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Fig. 1.1 Location of Goolhi and local reference points (Created by Macgregor, C. [2018])

the purposes of a land settlement program for returned soldiers. This was part of a significant act of state-sponsored nation-building within a political and economic context of state-supported agriculture. This program actively inserted small-scale farming into/onto the landscape for social, political and economic reasons and significantly changed the social formation of the area and the landscape itself. Up until this direct state action, small-scale farming had not emerged organically in this area mostly due to the required economies of scale for large pastoral companies and the unpredictability of weather conditions given extreme summer heat and dry seasons. This land settlement scheme, enacted at Goolhi in 1950, had serious consequences for the area. Up until this time local Aboriginal people had been able to remain on the land in a conditional relationship with the owners of the station and the insertion of this settlement scheme represented the final act of dispossession of these people. Co-location up until this point was largely afforded through employment on the station

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and the spatial separation of the sparse local populations permitted by such large pastoral runs. The ongoing costs and consequences of this processual dispossession of traditional owners across Australia’s modern history, including at Goolhi, are immeasurable and go beyond the scope of both this work and my cultural understanding and ability to know or capture such knowledge adequately. For the purposes of this book, it also had significant consequences for the soldier settlers as they enacted state policy under difficult conditions and implicated themselves and their families into the economic and social organisation of the area. They were a largely culturally homogenous group of strangers that had a shared history of war service but with varying degrees of farming experience and resources, whose lives were significantly changed through selection of a block at Goolhi. The ways in which they negotiated the challenges of the land and built social connections and systems of support provide a fascinating example of the ways in which policy translated into lived experience at the micro-level. It is this point in the history of the area that provides the first ‘moment’ of in-depth focus and research and the first data set, referred to as ‘Moment One’. This data set is comprised of oral history interviews with the original soldier settlers set against both a broader social history and a history of place. After the successful founding of a farming community at Goolhi and the subsequent flourishing of the area during the long economic boom following World War II, the economic and political context for support of agriculture fundamentally shifted. Australia underwent a painful structural adjustment in the farming sector and a thorough renegotiation of government priorities meant that many support structures were withdrawn and new discourses of business efficiency began to be instituted as trade was liberalised and globalisation became a force for economic restructure. These changes were reflected at Goolhi and many of the families that had remained in the area since soldier settlement were forced to re-evaluate their operations and left the area or farming altogether. Those who stayed were often implicated in the reduction of the community because a common survival strategy was to acquire neighbouring properties in the pursuit of economies of scale. Goolhi remains a significant example of this social change not only because it is a clear example of a community that was decimated by these broader

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political-economic trends, but also exemplifies a further trend toward corporate farming and foreign ownership. A vast tract of land predominately constituted of farms from the soldier settlements has now been aggregated into one large corporate farm which, in turn, was recently sold to a Chinese sovereign fund. This deeply changed context has wrought significant change to daily life and the conditions of possibility at the micro-level. This contemporary site of change provides the point of focus of the second data set, referred to as ‘Moment Two’. This is made up of the results of in-depth interviews with descendants of the original soldier settlers, as well as property owners, residents and ex-residents of the area, alongside an exploration of the broader change to macro-settings of the role of the state and its impact economically, politically, socially and culturally.

1.2

The Sociology of the Case Study

As this outline demonstrates, an examination of change in the area provides direct insight into several important areas of research. Grounded in the discipline of interpretive economic sociology, the key concern is the relationship between the macro- and the micro-contexts and the ways in which change is situated and experienced at the local level. Whilst this case study does not represent a directly representative or generalisable study, as an example of broad and deep change it is a particularly significant opportunity for insight for three important reasons. Firstly, as an exercise in economic sociology, farming represents a particularly useful overlap of economic and social identity, particularly in the Australian context, and therefore an especially useful site to more clearly examine how changes in one impact upon the other. As a key concern of the effects of modernity explored through foundational texts of the discipline such as those by Marx and Weber, modes of economic organisation associated with modern capitalism hold deep consequences for the organisation of land and labour. Farming has implications in space that are tied to economic, social and personal outcomes because it is necessarily situated and bound to place in a way that other occupations and economic activities are not. The ways in which the politics of space

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are expressed in land ownership and management speak to how the broad socio-historical context delineates the institutional settings at the microlevel, particularly as farmers respond to these conditions in daily life. As a way of seeing into the processes of social change, farming therefore represents a particularly explicit and embodied site of economic and social action, especially when considered with regard to the fundamental yet deeply changed cultural positioning of farming in the Australian context. This points to the second of the reasons underlying the sociological significance of this case study as it effectively captures key trends in the Australian context. Modes of land settlement and how these have changed across time are articulated through the Goolhi example, including the ways in which these have had deeply social impacts. The role of the state in these processes of change is clearly identifiable. The changing policy position of the state—from creating the required settings for preferred settlement forms, through to the explicit expression of nation-building logic in returned soldier settlement schemes and supported agriculture, to the effective dismantlement of support settings through changes to policy frameworks—have each had significant and identifiable impacts at Goolhi. As an exploration of the complex impact of experiences of the state and the investigation of the impact of change at the local level, this case study therefore provides significant opportunity for insight. Finally, a major part of the opportunity presented by this case study is the research method being used. This is twofold. Firstly, by bounding the case study by place and not time, there is the opportunity for consideration of the long-term context. This brings a more nuanced understanding of phenomena that emerge from long-running historical processes to more effectively situate any examination of particular forms. As context for the interrogation of particular moments in the micro-level history of place, it is equally as difficult to fully understand the ways in which a soldier settlement became possible and was enacted without understanding the longer history of agriculture in Australia, the role of the empire and macro concerns around economics, social trends and national security as it is to understand the ways in which globalisation and neoliberalisation have impacted contemporary settings. Secondly, given the opportunity for insight into complex phenomena that this case

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study represents, the additional opportunity for deep access to the field becomes significant. Personal history within and subsequent access to the field yielded an opportunity for two in-depth data points, both in terms of access to archival material in the form of historical recorded interviews and by way of special access to contemporary populations. Access to this small contemporary population was not just by way of the opportunity to speak to participants, but also influenced the character of the interviews due to the fact that there was a significant level of established trust between interviewee and interviewer. Although this insider/outsider role comes with limitations and difficulties, within a qualitative tradition that values situated meaning-making and the role of story-telling in understanding identity, there is clear value in this privileged access.

1.2.1 Historical Sociology and Comparative-Historical Analysis The research strategy involves a strong engagement with an historical sociology approach because a central concern of this project is with the historicity of social processes. Following the orienting maxim that “all objects of investigation have a history of becoming and it is these historical presuppositions we also need to explore” (Paolucci 2007 in Roberts 2014, p. 10), this project looks to uncover the ways in which the sociohistorical context informed the emergence of the particularities of the case study being researched not just via the analysis of empirical data but also through engagement with theory to which this kind of approach is integral. This consideration of the historical emergence of the moment being studied is critical to an understanding the historical processes of social change because, as argued by Mann (2012, p. 174), it is necessary to locate the case within ‘world time’ because every iteration of power development affects the world around it and as such “each case develops temporally, and this dynamic must itself be part of our explanation of its structure”. Historical sociology can be understood both as a specific sub-field of sociology and as providing general conceptual underpinnings of the discipline, to the extent that it provides an understanding of the specificity of the modern state and the perceived emergence of modernity

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(Ascione et al. 2016, p. 335). This approach is evident in the theoretical works explored in the following chapter, including the canonical works of Marx and Weber, in that they conceptualised the modern condition as a phase in a historical process and then analysed that process sociologically, rather than simply historicising or philosophising modernity, to try and understand it as a form of social interaction with related immanent meaning (Demetriou and Roudometof 2014, p. 4). Sociology as a discipline, then, is “intimately entwined with modernity, both as lived and as theorised” (Adams et al. 2005, p. 1). In direct fit with the aims of this research project and the methodological approach taken, historical sociology in particular is concerned with “what it was that changed in the ‘great transformations’ and how these manifold processes are continuing to reshape the contemporary world” (Adams et al. 2005, p. 2). As an exploration of socio-historical processes of change, this project emerges from and seeks to explore the experience of changes not just to social life at the micro-level—through an empirical description of ‘what’ has changed—but also to understand and place this experience into the broader socio-historical context to examine how these processes have ongoing impacts. As will be explored in the next chapter, a processual understanding of the corrosive effects of capitalism and the particular consequences of neoliberalisation requires an exploration of theory that similarly looks to moments of change brought about through these processes. The utility of historical sociology, then, lies in the ways in which it situates social action and social structures within historical contexts and examines their unfolding in a way that “highlights Weber’s interpretive predisposition and adds phenomenological and hermeneutical aspects to it…processual historical sociology is in a unique position to deepen the understanding of how contingency, conjuncture, and temporality intertwine with more regular elements of historical processes” (Demetriou and Roudometof 2014, p. 24). This book aims to contribute to the field through an analysis of empirical work that is historically contextualised, temporally comparative, and grounded in concrete experiences and this is most productively pursued through an historical sociology that is comparative in nature. A more comprehensive discussion of relevant economic sociology will be detailed in the next chapter, in particular the ways in which this approach aligns

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with that of Karl Polanyi and his work in examining the embeddedness of economic action through an anthropological lens, it is worth noting here the fit between the historicity of this project and that of a Polanyian approach that is “restlessly comparative” (Peck 2013, p. 246). More than a static form of cross-sectional social or economic analysis, this approach involves a “commitment to ‘placing’ a wide range of economies historically, conjuncturally, and relationally, by way of the ‘the study of the manner in which the economic process is instituted at different times and places’ (Polanyi 1959, p. 168)” (Peck 2013, p. 246). The strongest expression of comparative-historical analysis in this project is the use of ‘within-case’ process tracing to provide insight into “how the structural and institutional environments shape individual actions” (Lange 2013, p. 6). Bounded by place, the research utilises a long temporal scale to compare experiences in-place across time. Whilst the data is at the level of the individual, this micro-level analysis is linked to meso- and macro-level structures and processes and thus “even when analysing individual-level processes,… considers the interrelations between individual and structure” (Lange 2013, p. 7). Comparative historical analysis is “oriented to the explanation of substantively important outcomes of socio-political change in the modern world” and employs an emphasis on processes over time and the use of systematic and historical-contextual comparison (Demetriou and Roudometof 2014, p. 19). By tracing the unfolding of socio-historical processes across multiple chapters as deep context for the micro-level data, this project employs a comparative-historical methodology to demonstrate the ways in which these meso- and macro-level changes were lived at the micro-level.

1.2.2 Place Place is the factor that provides the boundary for this case study and place history provides a methodology for effectively orienting research that uncovers layers of experience and meaning. A study of the local is always more than a simple history of place because places are “always constructed out of articulations of social relations (trading connections,

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the unequal links of colonialism, thoughts of home) which are not only internal to that locale but which link them to elsewhere… ‘local uniqueness’ is always already a product of wider contacts; the local is always already a product in part of ‘global’ forces” (Massey 1995, p. 183). To uncover knowledge about the local, however, the researcher engages with sources that provide an “immediate sense of the past” because the sources often communicate “the impact of change measured by its consequences for particular households” (Samuel 1976, p. 192). It is exactly this interrelation between the ways in which the history of place exists as an expression of the socio-historical context and the ways in which this is experienced by households and individuals that speaks to the central concerns of this book. Arguing for the interdependent and complex relationship between these different scales of articulation, this work investigates history at these multiple scales to better understand the consequences at the micro-level. Place history is the spot where the “plumb-line” (following Simmel 2005, p. 3)1 of the research is dropped, allowing the integration of these multi-scalar considerations. This implies a particular ‘reading’ of place that recognises the importance of historical depth. In this reading, place “is only maintained by the exercise of power relations in some form… the identity of places, indeed the very identification of places as particular places, is always in that sense temporary, uncertain, and in process” (Massey 1995, p. 190). As such, the history of place is useful in disrupting the certainty and ‘taken-for-granted’ position of accounts that exist in particular historical moments and it is in this way that the long history of place is used here. Whilst located in a particular geographical location, place is here taken to involve “an intervention not only into geography but also, at least implicitly, into the (re)telling of the historical constitution of the present… another move in the continuing struggle over the delineation and characterisation of space-time” (Massey 1995, p. 190). Place therefore provides not only the outline of the research field but, through an interrogation of the particular ways in which social, political and cultural contexts have manifested in its local history, the opportunity for a nuanced exploration of 1 My

thanks to Professor Alan Scott for suggesting this metaphor and for his examination of Simmel’s use of this idea.

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the space–time dynamic of the relationship between the macro- and the micro-level processes of social action.

1.2.3 Oral History, Memory and the Interpretation of Lived Experience Oral history and memory are invaluable ways of capturing and understanding lived experience. This book examines both found oral history in the form of pre-recorded audiotapes, as well as those elicited through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Both of these forms involve modes of storytelling that encompass biography, memory and sense-making and each of these elements become important in the research methodology. Oral history itself is a collection of stories, statements and reminiscences of a person or persons who have firsthand knowledge and “offers qualitative researchers a way to capture the lived experiences of participants” (Janesick 2014, p. 1). It provides the opportunity for “thick description, analysis and interpretation of people’s lives through probing the past in order to understand the present” (Janesick 2014, p. 3). By looking at people’s accounts of their life through oral history, it is possible to investigate beyond the documentary evidence to develop a more complex view of lived experience that fits within the interpretivist framework. Oral history provides “living context” (Samuel 1976, p. 199) where the focus is not upon the events so much as on the meanings ascribed to them (Portelli 2015, p. 52). The value of oral history lies in its subjectivity because oral sources tell us “not just what people did, but what they wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, and what they now think they did” (Portelli 2015, p. 52). Yet this focus does not preclude a consideration of broader issues and public histories, in fact the relationship between private and public histories, experiences, and narratives can be seen as “a specific task and realm of oral history” (Portelli 1997, ix). This is underscored by an understanding of the human subject that recognises the interrelationship and mutual constitution of individual and collective ideas and meanings. In this vein, the human subject is understood as “always riven with partial drives, social discourses that

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frame available modes of experience, ways of being that are contradictory and reflect the shifting allegiances of power” (Frosh 2007, p. 638 in Brinkman 2014, p. 21). Oral history therefore becomes an effective vehicle to pursue an investigation of the complex relationship between macro sociohistorical processes and those at the micro-level in and through accounts of lived experience. Oral history is public history not just by way of its telling but also because of the ways in which narrators “intertwine personal history with public events and lives lived in community” (Hamilton and Shopes 2008, p. 105). This perspective recognises that reality is complex and many-sided and therefore allows for the recreation of a multiplicity of standpoints (Thompson 2015, p. 36) and looks to always consider and make explicit how the national context has shaped the local circumstances (Hamilton and Shopes 2008, xiii). The case study explored in this book is particularly useful because it highlights the dynamic relationship between individual memory and national myth and the oral history presented here can thereby help us to understand “how and why national mythologies work (and don’t work) for individuals, and in our society generally” (Thomson 2015, p. 352). Thus, the focus is not simply upon the experiences of individual narrators, but on the broader cultural meanings of oral history narratives that are found through “a grounding in real events situated in time and place, as well as in human relationships and social processes” (Hamilton and Shopes 2008, xiv). Ultimately, the value of oral history is drawn out through the continuous interplay between types of evidence wherein oral evidence acts as “a forcible reminder that the historian’s categories must in the end correspond to the grain of human experience, and be constituted from it, if they are to have explanatory force” (Samuel 1976, p. 204). The ways in which experience is communicated and told through oral history involves modes of storytelling that incorporate elements of biography and memory as major constitutive parts. As people recount their lived experience, they tell stories about what has happened or is happening and in this way interpret and give meaning and structure to these experiences. The act of telling is always a performance and involves a process of interpretation and communication in which the teller and listener collaborate in sense-making wherein “in the process of

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interpreting experiences through storytelling, people activate subjectivity, emotionality, and available frames of narrative intelligibility” (Bocchner and Riggs 2014, p. 13). Storytelling can be seen as one of the central ways in which human beings order their experience in time and make sense of the world by ordering seemingly unrelated events into a coherent narrative (Worth 2008, p. 42). These stories, however, are always relational and co-authored through interactions with others and therefore together form a central part of sense-making because “stories are the ongoing work of turning mere existence into a life that is social, and moral, and affirms the existence of the teller as a human being” (Frank 1997, p. 43 in Bocchner and Riggs 2014, p. 26). Oral history can therefore be seen as a “powerful tool for discovering, exploring and evaluating the nature of the process of historical memory—how people make sense of their past, how they connect individual experience and its social context and how the past becomes part of the present, and how people use it to interpret their lives and the world around them” (Hamilton and Shopes 2008, ix). Sense-making involves the integration of social context and personal identity to form “plausible” stories that inform and animate social action (Weick 2008, p. 3) and memory-based story-telling is integral to this process whereby people live forward and understand backward (Kierkegaard in Weick 2008, p. 5). Storytelling is therefore a central part of situated sense-making wherein it is not just the story itself but the ways in which its formation and telling is mediated through broader systems of value and shared understandings. To focus only upon the content of oral history and the reliability or otherwise of memory and remembrance therefore risks missing an important and central part of the value of oral history. Oral history can move beyond ‘what’ people remember and say to ‘why’ people remember to move toward an understanding of the meaning of people’s recollections (Hamilton and Shopes 2008, viii). The value of memory is not so much in its objective telling of historical facts because memory “is not a passive depository of facts, but an active process of creation of meanings” and, as such, the specific utility of oral sources is not so much in the preservation of the past but rather in the very changes wrought by memory and telling because “these changes reveal the narrators’ effort to make sense of the past and to give a form to their lives, and set the

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interview and the narrative in their historical context” (Portelli 2015, p. 54). Memories and stories are composed in a way that makes sense of both our past and present lives and by moving beyond oral sources as simply literal descriptions we can gain access to the ways in which “the past is resonant in our lives today… oral testimony is essential evidence for analysis of the interactions between past and present, and between memory and mythology” (Thomson 2015, p. 344). A full appreciation of the analytic value of memory in oral history therefore requires a constant consideration of both its individual and collective dimensions (Misztal in Hamilton and Shopes 2008, p. 11) because “the idea of an individual memory, absolutely separate from social memory, is an abstraction almost devoid of meaning” (Halbwachs in Kansteiner 2002, p. 185). Oral history and associated modes of story-telling and memory are rich sites for gaining insight into the ways in which sense-making, creation of meaning and interpretations of lived experience are enacted at the micro-level.

1.2.4 Evidence-led Research The orientation of this book therefore sits within the qualitative tradition that highlights the social construction of reality and the centrality of the relationship between individual behaviour and social context. It foregrounds a recognition of the historicity of social processes that demonstrates that social action is best uncovered through a comparativehistorical method that ‘places’ action within its long sociohistorical context and allows for long-run within-case process tracing. Access to accounts of this social action means that this is a book that depends on its sources and arises from them. The exceptional sources I had for my research include access to both archival oral history interviews and to a contemporary population that together allowed for the in-depth investigation of lived experience across time. The first data set comes from a series of taped interviews conducted approximately within the years 1989–1993 for the purposes of recording accounts of the events surrounding the early years of the soldier settlement of Goolhi as part of a local history. These interviews were recorded

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by my Aunt, Elva Shumack, and were incorporated into a small selfpublished book ‘Going Back to Goolhi’ (Shumack 1999). Elva generously gifted the original audio tapes to me to use in my research, which is an invaluable contribution to the richness of the book through the historical depth of experience that they provide. The interviews take the form of open conversations whereby the interviewees are asked to reflect on their experiences of the early years of Goolhi and most often take the form of stories and reminisces. The participants are not personally identified and the interviews are sometimes in the form of group conversations or are one-on-one and some are fragmented with some missing sections. In total, there are approximately twelve hours of taped interviews and whilst these stories do not represent all of the settlersŻ views nor claim to provide a full account of the years covering the enactment of the settlement, they do provide a rich record of the first-hand experiences of the soldier settlers in this district. In addition to accounts from seventeen of the original settlers (including ex-soldiers and their wives) and seven of their children, the data set also includes an account from an Aboriginal woman that lived in the Goolhi area prior to the soldier settlement in 1950. This account provides a window into the longer historical context of the area both prior to and at the time of the soldier settlement and as such is given particular attention. A clear advantage of my connection to the area and the people was the opportunity to revisit the experience of living at Goolhi by interviewing descendants of the soldier settlers that were either still farming in place or whom had left the area. People in both of these positions have lived through extensive change that had as its reference point the ‘old’ Goolhi. In addition, the opportunity to interview the owner and an employee of the large pastoral company prior to its recent sale gave an even more poignant point of contrast from which to explore change. This book involves considerable and intimate engagement with in-depth data and, given my relationship to the case study, involves complex ethical considerations. It is important to acknowledge the great privilege that access to these resources and people entails. The depth of the data speaks to and from a place of great trust. At all points, I have endeavoured to be respectful of the relational dimension of the data and the sensitive nature of oral history as narrative and story-telling “as a fundamental

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process of identity construction through meaning making and interpersonal bonding” (Bocchner and Riggs 2014, p. 31). My presence as a researcher was overlaid with my presence as an individual with a familial identity and history in the area as a precondition to the research. As a key member of the community of Goolhi, my father was a popular and much-loved character in the area and his sudden death in 2010 was often the starting point of conversations with those that knew him. In face-toface interviews, “people are present not only as conversing minds, but as flesh-and-blood creatures who may laugh, cry, smile, tremble, and otherwise give away much information in terms of gestures, body language, and facial expressions… interviewers thus have the richest source of knowledge available here” (Brinkman 2014, p. 24). Emotion was present in many of the interviews, markedly in the ones I conducted and audible in the case of the archival interviews. In social research, emotion and embodiment is central. This provides a depth of engagement with the perspective of lived experience that is incredibly valuable and rich. Interviewing can be understood as a creative act (Janesick 2014, p. 6) where the researcher exists as a “knowledge-producing participant in the process itself ” and this role was taken both by the interviewer involved in the archival interviews and by myself during the interviews I conducted and our connection to the case was an important element in the selection and particular communication of the stories being told. My presence in the research process exists also through the ways in which the data is interpreted, analysed and reported upon. The difference between treating stories as ‘data’ and therefore privileging the standpoint of the analyst is a world away from that of the experiential focus of the storyteller, because the researcher wants “go beyond the story, to think about it and use it for the sake of advancing sociology” yet for the storyteller the story “is a means of being with others, of thinking with their stories in order to understand and care for them” (Bocchner and Riggs 2014, p. 18). As in all qualitative research, integrity on behalf of the researcher and a reflexive approach are central to the ethical conduct of research.

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Overview of the Book

This book sets out to uncover the complex multi-scalar social and cultural processes involved in the lived experience of change via the Goolhi case study and both the historical and contemporary data sets provide very rich repositories of insight. The lens shifts from the scale of national history and Australia’s social and economic development to that at the local level for both time periods. The first covers from the time of colonisation until the point of soldier settlement post-World War II and the second explores the significant economic and social change from that time until now. Each of these chapters of sociological history provides insight into the matrix of socio-historical conditions that are both the necessary precursors to and constitutive elements of the lived experience at Goolhi. The national social and cultural imaginary was realised in and through experience at the micro-level and this is particularly evident at Goolhi. Thus, as the lens moves between macro- and micro-socio-histories the relationship between the two is revealed. Chapter 2 investigates the theoretical basis of economic sociology to situate this research at the intersection of political economy and the effects of capitalism, the politics of space, and issues of place and identity that take particular import in a farming context. This chapter demonstrates that capitalism, as the dominant mode of economic organisation, involves significant social change because economic systems are socially and culturally constructed and embedded. In this substantivist understanding, the state is always involved in the construction of the market and it is this relation that shapes outcomes. Within a capitalist system, space is divided politically and socially and land use becomes increasingly determined by economic imperatives. This is complicated and intensified through processes of globalisation that emerge in line with a neoliberal paradigm that exists as both a political and cultural project and emerges as a complex form of statecraft. This multi-dimensional and processual emergence involves a shift in the culturally endorsed set of values over time, particularly in the new primacy of economic criteria, which in turn impacts upon understandings of the self, especially within the arena of farming as a point of intersection of economic, social and cultural identities. This chapter locates the case study as a response to calls for research

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into the actual processes of change and highlights the key understandings of interpretive economic sociology as a way of understanding the relationship between macro- and micro-contexts. Chapter 3 provides the historical context for an in-depth understanding of Moment One. As such, this chapter explores the development of the matrix of ideals that led to soldier settlement policy as experienced at Goolhi after World War II. The time scale is long and investigates how processes of colonisation provided the political, economic and cultural bases for small-scale farming as a primary mode of land settlement. The ways in which the growing dominance of capitalism and world trade intersected with imperialism in Australia, together with the insertion of institutional and political power as processes of ‘civilisation’, were especially evident in the case of agriculture. As such, state support for farming was for social, political and economic reasons and the role of the state in land settlement processes was explicit. Together with the cultural and physical legacy of a ‘colonial socialism’, the historical economic dominance of agriculture in the Australian context and its social implications provided the foundations of a moral-economic basis for closer settlement policy and state support of farming, in part via the prominence of a virtuous and deserving ‘Australian’ identity. Chapter 4 emerged as a necessary and significant prologue to Moment One. This is because it was clear that in order to extract a complete understanding of the case study, a more in-depth exploration of place history and the role of dispossession of traditional owners over time was an essential precondition for the emergence of Moment One. This chapter outlines place history as deep context and interweaves it with lived experience to communicate the ways in which processes of dispossession and cultural ideals have been enacted at Goolhi since the earliest days of its claiming by the Crown. The direct consequences of state power and policy directives upon the experience at the local level are clearly demonstrated through this history of place as competing understandings of land and of plausible cultural identities are invoked in the landscape. Chapter 5 is comprised of the detailed uncovering of the lived experience of soldier settlement at Goolhi in 1950 as Moment One. It outlines the particulars of the soldier settlement scheme and interweaves this with

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the lived experience of the soldier settlers. The voice of the settlers is strong in this chapter, to capture an immediate sense of the past and the everyday way in which this state action directed the conditions of possibility of their lifeworld. Their experience was often difficult but was understood as a significant opportunity and as such represents an account of the enaction not just of explicit state goals, but of a clearly-defined cultural identity. Chapter 6 follows as an important epilogue to Moment One. The investigation of the multi-scalar factors of success at Goolhi serves to highlight the integral relationship between the socio-historical and economic contexts in the set of available options for the lifeworld at the micro-level. The experience at Goolhi in the years of the long economic boom after World War II served to consolidate the enactment of cultural identities and the available lifeworlds yet depended upon the crucial interrelation between all levels of scale. This epilogue serves to demonstrate the ways in which the relationship between the macro- and micro-contexts influences the availability of options at the local level. Chapter 7 charts the shifting contexts and underlying matrix of ideals that led to contemporary policy settings as experienced at Goolhi. These include the deep changes since World War II that were driven by global economic crises as the impetus for structural reform, the rise of the neoliberal paradigm and intensifying globalisation. Through this time, Australia has taken a significantly different posture toward trade and farm policy and retreated from state-supported agriculture. Together with significant deregulation, Australia’s preference for free trade and the rising importance of China as key trade partner has shifted the set of political priorities in this arena. Through a re-calibration of the role of the state, the focus of farm operations has become efficiency and productivity and there have been significant sociological effects. This provides the context for understanding the lived experience at Goolhi at Moment Two. Chapters 8 and 9 each communicate this experience. Through the presentation and analysis of the qualitative interviews, these chapters communicate the ways in which the reorganisation of state priorities has shifted the settings within which farms operate and how this has impacted upon everyday life. By redefining the broader settings around

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trade and the deregulation of markets, the state requires certain orientations of farm activity and therefore the lifeworld of the farmer. Within a context that is complicated by the competing demands of familial and emotional legacies that exist in-place alongside this required focus upon economic action, there have been complex effects. Chapter 10 summarises the findings of the whole study. Ultimately, there has been a fundamental shift in the matrix of ideals informing policy settings in Australia across time and agriculture is a useful lens through which to view this change. Subsequently, there has been a fundamental and related shift in the orientation of the lifeworld of farmers in the Goolhi district that has had significant and complex effects. This book explores exactly what these effects are and what this might tell us about the relationship between the social and the individual, the cultural and the material. Beside a telling of the ‘what’ that happened in this place and the broader reasons ‘why’ sits a deeper telling of what that felt like for those whose lives were lived in this place. It contributes a detailed empirical example of the impacts of the role of the state and how changes in macro-social settings deeply impact upon the conditions of possibility of the lifeworld, simultaneously a big and small view of the dynamic and convergent nature of place, history and everyday lived experience.

References Adams, J., Clemens, E. S., & Orloff, S. (2005). Introduction: Social theory, modernity, and the three waves of historical sociology. In J. Adams, E. S. Clemens, & S. Orloff (Eds.), Remaking modernity: Politics, history, and sociology. Durham, UK: Duke University Press. Ascione, G., Chambers, I., & Bhambra, G. K. (2016). Comparative historical sociology and the state: Problems of method. Cultural Sociology, 10 (3), 335– 351. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639085. Bocchner, A. P., & Riggs, N. A. (2014). Practicing narrative inquiry. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019981 1755.001.0001.

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Brinkman, S. (2014). Unstructureds and semi-structured interviewing. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019981 1755.001.0001. Demetriou, C., & Roudometof, V. (2014). The history of historical-comparative methods in sociology. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxf ordhb/9780199811755.001.0001. Hamilton, P., & Shopes, L. (Eds.). (2008). Oral history and public memories. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.une.edu.au. Janesick, V. J. (2014). Oral history interviewing: Issues and possibilities. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019981 1755.001.0001. Kansteiner, W. (2002). Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies. History and Theory, 41(2), 179–197. https:// doi.org/10.1111/0018-2656.00198. Lange, M. (2013). Comparative-historical methods. London, UK: Sage. Macgregor, C. (2018, May 15). Map of Goolhi district of New South Wales Australia. Scale Not Given. “Location of Goolhi and local reference points”. University of New England, Australia. Using: ArcGIS [GIS software]. Version 10.0. Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2010. Mann, M. (2012). The sources of social power volume 1: A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760 (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139381314. Massey, D. (1995). Places and their pasts. History Workshop Journal (39), 182– 192. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/4289361. Peck, J. (2013). Polanyi in the Pilbara. Australian Geographer, 44 (3), 243–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2013.817037. Polanyi, K. (1959). Anthropology and economic theory. In M. F. Fried (Ed.), Readings in anthropology, Vol. 2, (pp. 161–184). New York: Crowell. Portelli, A. (1997). The battle of Valle Giulia: Oral history and the art of dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Portelli, A. (2015). What makes oral history different. In R. Perks & A. Thomson (Eds.), The oral history reader. London, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.une.edu.au.

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Roberts, J. M. (2014). Critical realism, dialectics, and qualitative research methods. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 44 (1), 1–23. https:// doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12056. Samuel, R. (1976). Local history and oral history. History Workshop (1), 191– 208. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288044. Shumack, E. (1999). Going bush to Goolhi. Gunnedah, NSW: Elva Shumack. Simmel, G. (2005). Rembrandt: An essay in the philosophy of art (A. Scott & H. Staubmann, Trans. & Eds.). New York, NY: Routledge (Original work published in 1916). Thompson, P. (2015). The voice of the past: Oral history. In R. Perks & A. Thomson (Eds.), The oral history reader. London, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.une.edu.au. Thomson, A. (2015). ANZAC Memories: Putting popular memory theory into practice in Australia. In R. Perks & A. Thomson (Eds.), The oral history reader. London, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-pro quest-com.ezproxy.une.edu.au. Weick, K. E. (2008). Sense-making. In S. R. Clegg & J. R. Bailey (Eds.), International encyclopaedia of organization studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412956246. Worth, S. E. (2008). Storytelling and narrative knowing: An examination of the epistemic benefits of well-told stories. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 42(3), 42–56. https://doi.org/10.1353/jae.0.0014.

2 The Embedded Market: Place, Space, Land and the Self

The case study of Goolhi presents a particularly useful opportunity to gain deep insight into the lived experience of change in an explicitly situated, rural-agricultural context across time. Given the intersection of multiple scales of change, this case study sits within a number of fields of enquiry and thus needs to be contextualised in a variety of ways. Most fundamentally, it is necessary to first situate the research approach within key theoretical understandings in the field of economic sociology and political economy. An examination of the transformative effects of capitalism is an important starting point to understanding the ways in which markets are socially and culturally embedded and the particular effects that this mode of organisation may have on two key points of consideration for this research project: land and labour. As will be explored, these effects are spatially uneven and the politics of space impact the ways in which these effects are felt because space is bound up in economic and socio-cultural processes and history. These processes become accelerated and intensified in particular ways under neoliberalism where change is multidimensional. The renegotiation of state-economy-society relations encompasses not only deep changes to state priorities and the expression of state power, but also important normative elements that confer new © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_2

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criteria of worth in the imagining of possible and plausible identities where economic identity has become more central to ideas of personhood. As a site of overlap between social and economic identity that sits at the intersection of place and personal history, farming is a usefully complex lens through which to view social change. As such, this chapter aims to situate the research not just within broad theoretical accounts of a changing political economy of space, but also as a response to calls for contextualised and grounded explorations of the effects of this change.

2.1

Early Capitalism and Change

Theoretical conceptualisations of the impacts of capitalist modes of production have a long history and in the critical political economy tradition begin most notably with Karl Marx. Whilst not endeavouring to provide a comprehensive account of Marx’s writings here, it is important to note the key understandings that Marx’s analysis of capitalism provided and have since been built upon. Through his analysis of the exploitation of labour for the extraction of surplus-value he establishes how individual labour “ceases to be a product of the individual, and becomes a social product” (2013, [1867], p. 354) and it is through this central idea that the transformation of social relations can be understood as the basis for his account of the changes to society, particularly with regard to the changes in the social relations of agricultural production. Marx identifies earlier periods of human history as being composed of a mass of direct producers each servicing a small portion of society to satisfy a small number of wants (2013, [1867], p. 357). In contrast to this, Marx maps important developments in land-holding and ownership that saw the “genesis of the capitalist farmer” (2013, [1867], p. 520) which, combined with the agricultural and industrial revolution, resulted in the creation of vastly changed relations of production. Instead of small, independent producers each catering to their own or small-scale subsistence means, the concentration of production into the hands of centralised capitalist producers “transformed small peasants into wagelabourers, and their means of subsistence and of labour into material elements of capital” (2013, [1867], p. 523).

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The destruction of rural domestic industry had significant effects according to Marx. It both separated workers from their subsistence means of production and transformed these means and products into commodities; it made available labourers for industrial production due to the expropriation of part of the agricultural population; and simultaneously created the market for these products required by the capitalist mode of production (2013, [1867], p. 523). Thus the value of a Marxian perspective to this book, despite the general anti-individualism underlying his work, is in fact his articulation of how changes to economic relations have a very deep impact at the level of the individual, in particular the transformative (and destructive) impacts of early capitalism. From his detailed analysis of labour and wages, including a consideration of the physical, social and moral limitations on the determination of an appropriate working day (2013, [1867], p. 161), as well as his analyses of the impact of machinery and factory production on workers (e.g. 2013 [1867], pp. 272–278), we see a consideration of the human dimension of economic relations and an acknowledgement of the importance of economic relations to lived experience. In the context of this project, it is also important to note here Marx’s predictions of the inevitable demise of the petty commodity producer, and the substantial debate and literature that this assertion has generated in the face of the persistence of small scale and usually family-based farming structures. According to Marx, the peasant farmer who hires no labour holds a contradictory class position, simultaneously understood as “owner of the means of production he is capitalist, as worker he is his own wage worker”, a position ultimately resolved by either a gradual transformation into a small capitalist who exploits labour or else “he will suffer the loss of his means of production…and be transformed into a wage worker”, as “the separation between the two is the normal relation in this [i.e., capitalist] society” (Marx in Thorner 1986, xviii). As observed by Lawrence (1987, pp. 103–104), not only was the demise of peasant farmers seen and described by Marx as inevitable, he also anticipated the eventual corrosion of even the somewhat protective barrier of the landlord class in Britain and predicted the inevitable organisation of all farming in terms of capitalist industry. This has not eventuated in many parts of the world (for a summary see, for example,

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Argent 1997; Brookfield 2008) and a critical reflection on the distinctiveness of agriculture as an economic sector and the family farm as a mode of organisation has produced considerable debate. Central to this are contributions to the ‘survivalist’ models (Marsden 1991, p. 15) that consider the particular resilience of the family-farm structure. Particularly salient contributions include Chayanov’s (1986 [1925]) analysis of the viability of the peasant family form due to the distinctive composition of its internal labour force and capacity for self-exploitation; and Friedmann’s (1978) further consideration of the particular relation of the family farm structure to simple commodity production, including the dual nature of family member’s class position with regard to labour on- and off-farm and the dual character of the household unit as both enterprise and family. Further considerations of the complex relation of family farms to circuits of capital have also problematised Marx’s predictions, with a significant literature surrounding the vulnerability or otherwise of the family farm to subsumption by off-farm capital. Whatmore et al. (1987 in Lockie 1997, p. 27) outlined the key transformation of two dimensions of social relationships inherent to the subsumption of the farm production process within capitalist relations of production: the commodification of social relationships internal to the farm enterprise, and the extension of linkages to off-farm capitals. Whilst there is not the space here to further detail the ways in which farm enterprises are open to direct and indirect forms of subsumption and the potential for compromise of internal management control of the enterprise (as outlined by Lockie 1997), this interesting debate highlights the complex relation of commodity production and the family farm structure to capitalism. Thus, whilst Marx provides a useful starting point in the analysis of agrarian change, the limitations of Marxian analysis must also be acknowledged. Marx was of course not alone in his observation of the transformation of agricultural production brought about by early capitalism. Max Weber’s early work included a number of writings on rural society (notably including The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations 1976 [1897]), but for the purposes of this work the focus will be on his address to the 1904 St Louis Congress, specifically the critical edition

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of the English text by Ghosh (2005). In this address he considers the “dissolving effects of capitalism” (2005, p. 333) and acknowledges and compares the various impacts of the particular context in which capitalist economic patterns develop. It is in this way that Weber’s analysis foreshadows the recent theoretical investigations of the process-based and variegated nature of neoliberalism (see for example Peck and Tickell 2002) by describing these varying impacts. His analysis compares the differing effects of capitalism “under the conditions of completely settled countries of old Kultur” (2005, p. 331) with that of the newer society of the United States. The ancient social forces of old Kultur, evident in Europe and exemplified in his analysis by Germany, slow the movement of capitalism into these areas by resisting and augmenting the more dissolving aspects of this mode of economic organisation. The “peculiar combination of factors” (2005, p. 335) that act to resist capitalism arise from a particular set of social, political and historical conditions: a complex and stratified social system (including political, intellectual, religious and ruling classes less dependent on and therefore more critical of economics); a dense population and therefore high land value; a constant need for military preparations; and an existing rural social constitution, and are presented in contrast to the circumstances of the United States within which the impact and rate of change were quite different. Weber then deepens his illustration of the variegation of capitalist forms by examining economic change within Germany itself and the varying effects of the localised historical, political and social contexts upon these developments. As can be seen from this analysis, the effects of capitalism and its movement into new territories are transformative, yet the historical-political context of economic change deeply conditions the ways in which this change is realised through processes of uneven development. The importance of the socio-historical context for economic formations is central to Karl Polanyi’s work The Great Transformation (2001, [1944]). Through an exploration of the evolution of the market pattern, Polanyi situates capitalism within a longer historical epoch to effectively highlight the changes brought about by this new market-centred system. By seeking to link economic history with social anthropology, he demonstrates how economic relations were successfully submerged

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in and organised through social relationships before the development of market-based economics. Principles such as reciprocity and redistribution mediated individual interests at a collective level and were themselves patterned through socially sanctioned notions such as symmetry and centricity (2001, p. 51). Polanyi demonstrates that such marketless and gainless societies operated at “elaborate” levels of complexity and “gigantic” levels of scale (2001, p. 52) and in doing so highlights the cultural blindness inherent in early liberal ideology that centred upon a naturalised and “uncritical reliance” on the alleged virtues of growth and markets (2001, p. 37). This was based, at its core, upon a privileging of the principle of gain and by contrasting non-market societies with that of nineteenth-century movements to a market system, Polanyi distinguishes the key influence of this base value, indeed highlights that this principle of human motivation was “never before raised to the level of a justification of action and behaviour in everyday life” (2001, p. 31). Further, Polanyi argues for the centrality of social relationships to any understanding of economy, where the value of material goods exist only in and through their use for social ends, where one “does not act so as to safeguard his individual interests in the possession of material goods; he acts as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets” (2001, p. 48). As identified by Scott (2012, p. 168), a key feature of Polanyi’s argument is that these changes to a market- and individualfocussed system of value led to a qualitatively different experience of economic life and it is this element of Polanyi’s argument that is of particular relevance to this book. In a society based upon the principle of gain and characterised by, in contrast to non-market societies, the principle of individual responsibility, an individual’s relation to the economic order is of vital significance to the lived experience of the individual. Polanyi’s notion of the embeddedness of markets became a central organising principle of economic sociology. An interpretation was popularised by Granovetter (1985) whose examination of the concept involved a critique of the inherent atomisation within over- and undersocialised perspectives of economic action (drawing on Wrong) that he resolves through an emphasis on how “attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations” (Granovetter 1985, p. 487). His interpretation and focus on social

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network structures have been widely taken up but also critiqued (for an examination see Krippner and Alvarez 2007; Krippner 2001). Further debate over the notion of embeddedness has been generative and spanned questions such as those concerning mutuality and markets (Gudeman 2009) and problems of coordination (Beckert 2009a, b) and is the basis of a considerable literature on its definition and use (for example see Dale 2011; Gemici 2008; Lie 1991; Mendell and Salée 1991). Rather than become entangled in the specifications of these debates, this book aims to engage with the Polanyian tradition by employing the concept of embeddedness as “a critique of the notion of an analytically autonomous economy [that] seeks to substitute this notion with an account of state and economy as mutually constitutive entities” (Krippner and Alvarez 2007, p. 234). This approach mobilises the concept as a methodological principle that “invites the researcher to look for the social processes that structure and shape economic life” (Gemici 2008, p. 27) by considering the real and variegated contexts of economic action that are always “socially hosted, politically mediated, and institutionally regulated” (Peck 2013a, p. 1540). It is in this way that this book proceeds. Polanyi’s substantivist position and articulation of the embeddedness of markets calls for an approach whereby “actually existing economies must be understood in grounded terms, and in ways explicitly situated in their social, historical, and geographical contexts” (Peck 2013b, p. 245). This approach lies at the heart of this book and provides the theoretical orientation for the approach that has been taken. Polanyi’s “social-systemic” approach is to be realised not by abstractions alone, but rather through “situated, historical, comparative, and concrete research, complemented by dialogical forms of abstraction…always engaging with the cultural and the material, back and forth across modalities of socioeconomic difference” (Peck 2013b, p. 245). Through an analysis of empirical work that is explicitly situated, historically contextualised, temporally comparative, and grounded in concrete experiences, this book will unearth the complex interactions between the broader social context and the grounded sense-making activities at the level of lived experience. The ways in which the interpretation of and interplay between the cultural and the material, the social and the individual, is enacted in and through the lifeworlds of individuals highlights the continued

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embeddedness of economics. In an era in which the economic has been decontextualized, rarefied and elevated to ideological primacy, the formal constructions of economic discourse “conceal economy’s dialectic” (Gudeman 2009, p. 17) that “emerges not only in the shifting practices of a state, civil society and economy…but also in everyday behaviour, in ethnographic contexts, and in mentalities” (Gudeman 2009, p. 19). Following Peck, this book aims to engage with the Polanyian approach as a “reflexive methodology, rather than a fixed framework or template” (2013a, p. 1547) to ‘place’ local economic practices in conversation with “extralocal, recurring, and macro concerns, such as transnational economic interdependence, corporate deepening and monopolization, financialization and informalization, and neoliberal hegemony” (Peck 2013a, p. 1546). An important aspect of Polanyi’s work is his central idea of a ‘double movement’, the inevitable extension of state intervention to both enable and facilitate, through protective and regulatory mechanisms, the simultaneous growth of an artificially ‘free’, laissez-faire market system. An important part of this research project is the investigation of the changing role of the state and its impact across the time period being studied as a core feature of the dynamics of change. By calling attention to the problematic way in which human labour power (along with land and money) is treated as a commodity, Polanyi, like Marx, highlights the human dimension of the “fictitious commodity” (2001, from 71 on) of labour power. For Polanyi, this peculiar commodity cannot be left at the direction of the market mechanism alone, for the manner in which it is used or mis-used (or left un-used) deeply affects the human individual (2001, p. 76), thus the need for state intervention to regulate its use. Along with industry requirements for state intervention to help with the establishment and regulation of markets (2001, p. 146), this represents an “enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism” required to make a ‘free’ and self-regulated market “compatible with the needs of a human society” (2001, p. 146). By highlighting this paradox, Polanyi’s work helpfully problematises the assumptions inherent in the “utopian principle of a self-regulating market” (2001, p. 157), a “denaturalising argument” (Scott 2012, p. 168) that is of particular interest to this book and useful

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grounding of later examinations of the development of a neoliberal social imaginary. Whilst this book encompasses a detailed ‘placing’ of economic action within a political and historical context that includes a consideration of the state’s role in the regulation of land and money, there is an abiding agreement with Polanyi’s emphasis on labour as perhaps the most important of these fictitious commodities as it is “coterminous with social life itself rather than produced for sale on a market” (Krippner and Alvarez 2007, p. 229). The impact of changes to the state’s involvement and concern with the welfare of labour, in and through its role in the direction and focus of intervention in market arrangements for land and money, is of central concern.

2.2

Capitalism and the Politics of Space

In addition to these explanations of the fundamental restructuring of life patterns and orientations under capitalism comes a theorisation as to the politics of space under such a system. It is important to note these arguments as background to this book as it is a deep restructuring of the political economy of land use in the area that serves as the context for change. The works included here serve to highlight the spatially-uneven character of capitalist development and restructuring, something very much overlooked in orthodox economic and social science accounts. Henri Lefebvre’s The Urban Revolution (2003, [1970]) is an important next step in this review of relevant theoretical works. Furthering a Marxist analysis, Lefebvre looks to the move to urbanisation as the defining feature of his time by developing his idea of an ‘urban society’ and an all-pervasive ‘urban fabric’. ‘Urban society’ is that which results from an on-going process of industrialisation that dominates agricultural production and absorbs it as a unit of production (2003, pp. 2–3), a point also prefaced by Weber (in Ghosh 2005). Likewise, Lefebvre’s concept of the ‘urban fabric’ delineates an understanding of space where all areas are dominated by the interests of the urban. For Lefebvre, the concentration of the population into cities reflects the dominant mode of production and, over time, will see an extension of the urban fabric of “varying density, thickness and activity” (2003, p. 4). This extension

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corrodes agrarian ways of life whereby early forms of social organisation are subsumed by the needs of the urban. Lefebvre emphasises that this exists as a continual process of transition from agrarian to urban (via the political, mercantile and industrial city forms) and becomes a global phenomenon where “space and the politics of space ‘express’ social relationships but react against them” (2003, p. 15). With regard to agricultural production, Lefebvre correctly identifies that in this shift to urban-centred forms agriculture has “lost all its autonomy in the major industrialised nations and as part of a global economy” (2003, p. 3). Here agricultural production has been changed into a form of industrial production, subordinate to the demands of economic growth and subject to its constraints (2003, p. 3). By becoming subordinate to the economics and needs of a globalised and urban-centred society, agricultural production becomes increasingly oriented to the market and away from other considerations or patterns of life. The Australian example is particularly interesting in this regard when colonisation is seen through the lens of an international empirical strategy and, once agriculture developed enough to meet needs of the small penal colony, extended as part of the global system of trade from the very beginnings of its modern economy. In this way, it may be useful to consider parallel processes of development and subsumption in Australia, whereby early agricultural production developed through particular agrarian forms already subsumed in a global logic, but that were then themselves corroded by the deepening of power and influence of the urban fabric as capitalism intensified. This book will also draw upon the Marxist analysis offered by David Harvey, particularly that advanced in Social Justice and the City (1973) and The Limits to Capital (2006) because they deepen the theoretical understanding of the changes to systems of value inherent in the reorganisation of human life associated with capitalism. In Social Justice and the City, Harvey provides a detailed analysis of the politics of space and there are a number of interesting points to pull out. He establishes how the emergence of a particular form of social and economic organisation (capitalism) compelled farmers to produce more than is needed for subsistence (1973, p. 223). In a detailed exploration of theories of surplus value, Harvey highlights how “transformations in society inevitably bring

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about transformations in actual and perceived needs” (1973, p. 224), thus a “continuous transformation of human nature” (Marx in Harvey, p. 1973, p. 224). At a broad level, the market mode of organisation integrated elements of the economy into one cohesive economic system, with the cities as the hub of the accumulation and circulation of surplus value. When it is understood that definitions of surplus value are socially determined, the political and ideological content becomes clear, and those who benefit will work to convince those who contribute it of its necessity (1973, p. 219). This contributes to this project by highlighting the dialogic relationship between definitions of value and elaborate systems of spatial organisation and how these are subject to change and deeply political and ideological in intent. In The Limits to Capital Harvey furthers his analysis of rent as the theoretical concept “through which political economy traditionally confronts the problem of spatial organisation” (2006, p. 337). By placing land, a non-reproducible, monopolisable and alienable asset, at the centre of this analysis, Harvey demonstrates how rent provides the mechanism of social control over spatial organisation and development. Land is the basis for all reproduction and extraction and agriculture represents a special case in that the production process is partially embodied in the soil itself (2006, p. 334). Thus it can be seen that the political economy of a society deeply conditions land use and how considerations of change need to placed within the broader systems of economic, political and social organisation. Harvey’s acknowledgement of the special case of agriculture given the inextricably placed nature of the production process also supports the examination of farming as an instructive intersection of land and capital in the production process and the particular effects on labour involved in this process. The idea of space as bound up in economic and socio-cultural processes is central to the research presented in this book. Of particular value to a deep theorisation of this concept is the important work by Manuel Castells in The Urban Question (1977). Here Castells explores the social production of spatial forms by examining the social, economic and cultural elements involved in the production of space. He looks at the change from agrarian social structures and the move to urbanisation as a process characterised by the significant concentration of activities

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and populations in such a way that expresses the dominant relations of production (including strategies of accumulation) and reproduction of labour power and the naturalised ideological and cultural values of a particular social formation (1977, pp. 15–19). Space, for Castells, is specified by a “definite relation between the different instances of a social structure, the economic, the political, the ideological, and the conjuncture of social relations that result from them” (1977, p. 430). Whilst again this process of urbanisation cannot be seen to directly apply to the Australian context given the overlapping processes of colonisation and economic development that changed form over time wherein early agricultural forms were already implicated in a broader global logic, it is his understanding of space as a social product and historical conjuncture that is of particular relevance to this project. Whilst this project examines the processes of change from more traditional small-scale forms to the disintegration of such under the intensifications of later capitalism, these early forms were themselves instigated as a state project and did not emerge organically over time as those agrarian forms considered by Castells did. Nevertheless, a consideration of these complications in the Australian context is usefully informed by Castell’s central understanding of the delineation of space as a conjuncture of historical and socio-cultural forms. Whilst so far involving a discussion of classic works, the ideas put forward in this section on the political economy of change in early capitalism have served to locate this project in a field of theory that posits a deep conditioning of place and space by way of the economic, social and historical context of their emergence through processes of uneven development and change. It is important to note that there have been further early investigations of change from agrarian social structures through industrialisation and the effects that are felt by communities subject to these changes, most notably Ferdinand Tönnies’ Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ) (1957, [1887]), Raymond Williams’ The Country and the City (1975), Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870 –1914 (1976), Theodor Shanin’s Peasants and Peasant Societies (1987) and Robert Redfield’s work on the folk-urban continuum (for example, Peasant Society and Culture 1960). Whilst acknowledging their importance and tremendous contribution

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to an anthropological understanding of the ways in which economic patterns effect social articulations and experiences, it is to more modern debates of neoliberalism and globalisation, the deepening and widening of capitalist modes of organisation that characterise the time period being studied, that will be considered in detail. This is particularly due to the need for a more nuanced understanding of Australian rural change as being bound to a context of colonisation and economic development that is not easily aligned with examinations of change and transformation of more traditional and long-standing agricultural forms.

2.3

Neoliberalism and Globalisation

Debate over the definition and significance of neoliberalism and globalisation has become the marker of current discourses in many fields of the social sciences. In the context of this project, it is important to consider two important and interrelated facets of neoliberalism and globalisation, as it is how these elements intersect that is at the core of this project. The first is to examine neoliberalism as a political ideology and the ways in which this informs economic policy and subsequent land use, particularly with regard to agricultural production, in a globalising world economy. The second is an examination of how the change this has engendered influences and affects the lived experiences and subjectivities of individuals impacted by this mode of social and economic organisation. A key theoretical argument of this project is that lived experience is deeply influenced by an individual’s relation to the economic system of which they are a part, and the ways in which an individual interprets and understands this role deeply affects their subjective experience and the ways in which they take action and understand and deal with change. Central to these self-concepts and interpretations of change is the socially and politically endorsed criteria of worth as informed by the dominant social imaginary and this, too, has changed under neoliberalism. It is therefore the intersection of these two elements of neoliberalism and globalisation—the political economy on the one hand and the subjective experience of change on the other, that is of importance in framing this study.

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Before moving to an examination and definition of terms in this field, it is important to briefly acknowledge the broader context of this project and account for the relative focus upon change under neoliberal processes. The immediate context of this study is that of a community centred upon agricultural production in a young nation-based capitalist economy transitioning from protected and supported agricultural production, through a deepening neoliberal agenda, to that characterised by deregulation, global commodity markets and productivist techniques. The deeper context is a landscape and social imaginary marked by colonisation and the pursuit of particular goals regarding land settlement that were not singularly focussed upon the economic utility of the land. In order to understand the complex ways in which change occurred and is understood in the data, it is useful to take the moment of state intervention in land settlement that occurred in 1950 as a marker against which to measure change that has occurred since. This point in time confers the living memory of a community that was largely established as a direct outcome of this state intervention and thus interpretations of change are often measured against this standard (small-scale agriculture instituted and protected by state action). This can have the effect of shortening the interpretive gaze given that these forms did not emerge organically and were not seen in the area prior to the state-led action, even though they reverberate with cultural meanings that extend well before the time in which they were actually enacted in this example. In the same way in which accounts of the corrosive nature of early capitalism above are contrasted against traditional agrarian forms that emerged through very different historico-political processes than those in Australia, the older forms of agriculture upon which comparisons under neoliberal drivers are made are, in the Australian context at least, products of a very different yet historically recent past. Thus whilst it is important to understand recent change in terms of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation in order to appreciate the very significant ways in which this has impacted lived experience in the area, it is important to acknowledge that this is one phase of change in the area that is neither singular nor the most significant. That said, it is through the prism of neoliberalism that recent change can be usefully understood and this change

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fundamentally affected the community being studied and that provides insights for broader application.

2.3.1 Neoliberalism, Globalisation and Agricultural Production in Australia It is important to establish a definition of neoliberalism and globalisation within this field of enquiry. Brenner and Theodore (2002, p. 350) usefully identify the fundamental tenet of neoliberalism as “a belief that open, competitive, and unregulated markets, liberated from all forms of state interference, represent the optimal mechanism for economic development”. This belief serves as an orienting axiom within multiple sites of expression. As indicated by Larner (2000), neoliberalism is a complex phenomenon that extends beyond debates about economics and state intervention. She identifies neoliberalism as operating at the levels of policy framework, ideology and governmentality, and as such neoliberalism represents a complex new form of political-economic governance based on the extension of market relationships. This complexity is similarly identified by Springer (2012) in his taxonomy of neoliberalism as an ideological, hegemonic project; a policy and program; a state form; and as a form of governmentality. These theorisations of neoliberalism sit among many and point to the multifarious ways in which neoliberalism is both understood and realised. Additionally, there are conceptualisations of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002) that emphasise the processdependent nature of advanced capitalist initiatives. This processual understanding of neoliberalism is defined by Peck and Tickell (2002) as ‘neoliberalisation’, and further identified by Brenner et al. (2010) as being systemically uneven or ‘variegated’ due to the uneven institutional and geo-historical landscapes upon which cumulative impacts of the process of neoliberalisation are felt. For Brenner (2014), neoliberalism is understood as an ongoing and contextually specific process in that it emerges in and through collisions, in specific ways and forms, with inherited regimes and landscapes that had in some way previously protected

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people from waves of commodification, thus an “ongoing transformation of inherited regulatory formations at all spatial scales” (Brenner et. al. 2010, p. 183). When considering the context of this project, the increasing dominance of neoliberalism as an ideology informing policy formation around agricultural production is of particular significance when considered as a catalyst of change to existing regulatory and policy frameworks. There are similar theoretical debates over the meaning and nature of globalisation. Fundamentally, it is understood as the “deepening and widening of capitalist social relations” (Larner and Le Heron 2002, p. 755) through an extension and acceleration of multi-dimensional processes that “create, multiply, stretch and intensify worldwide social and economic interdependence and exchanges” (Steger 2003 in Woods 2011, p. 266). For Brenner (1999), this doesn’t just involve an accelerated circulation of commodities, people, money and capital through a progressively global space, but also involves a related “production, reconfiguration and transformation of territorial organisation at once on urban-regional, national and supra-national scales” (1999, p. 435), a development of the ideas of Lefebvre (2003, [1970]). Globalisation thus represents a multi-dimensional and multi-scalar set of processes with complex effects, but in the context of this project the focus will be necessarily narrowed. With particular regard for the rural context, Woods (2011) usefully identifies three broad trends of globalisation processes, namely ‘economic globalisation’, ‘globalisation of mobility’ and ‘cultural globalisation’. For the purposes of this project, it is useful to focus on those globalisation processes related to that of economic globalisation, identified by Woods (2011, p. 268) as encompassing the liberalisation of international trade and the promotion of a global marketplace, the development of global commodity and value chains, and the concentration and consolidation of transnational corporations and alliances, amongst others. As a study of a community organised around and through agricultural production, the arena in which globalisation processes are encountered in the context of this project is that of agri-food production and distribution. Given this context, it is useful to consider Bonanno and Cavalcanti’s (2014) use of the term ‘neoliberal globalisation’ as a way of capturing the

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way in which globalisation brought about the reorganisation of production and consumption of agricultural products with the emergence of global networks, whilst neoliberalism simultaneously provided the theoretical and political tools that legitimised and facilitated the reduced intervention of the state along with the accompanying reregulation of production that privileged corporate interests. The significance of neoliberal globalisation to this project lies in its role as the catalyst for changes in the organisation of agricultural production in Australia. The development of the institutional and economic framework that provided the setting for the moment of state-led land settlement at the heart of this project was bound to processes conditioned by Australia’s modern settlement. For complex and inter-related economic, social, historical and cultural reasons that will be explored in later chapters, these settings privileged producer welfare and sectoral stabilisation right up until the end of the long economic boom post-World War II. According to Pritchard (2005a, p. 2), from the 1970s to the 1990s the Australian nation-state underwent a “process of ‘agricultural liberalisation’ which sought to construct a mode of ‘neoliberal agriculture’”, that represented a fundamental change to the governance of agriculture. Driven by broader economic concerns, the state began to instigate structural adjustment that encouraged the consolidation of farm debt and assisted with farm build-up and farm improvement through subsidised lending, along with financial assistance for farmers who chose to leave the land (Kenwood 1995, p. 55), a position critically underpinned by a message of ‘get big or get out’ (Malcom et al. 1996, p. 59; Lawrence 1987, p. 89). Moving from traditional policies based on economic protectionism and the welfare state, Australia’s set of neoliberal policies pursued through this period included the deregulation of banking and finance sectors, the floating of the Australian dollar, a reduction in the level of protection for Australian industries, the reduction of business and income tax, and the privatisation of goods and services (Tonts 2000, p. 53). The impact on farming and agriculture was manifold, with changes fostered by these neoliberal settings resulting in significant negative social and environmental outcomes (Lawrence et al. 2013, p. 37). As a result of these policy shifts, the “business of farming is in a state of almost

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continuous change”, responding to increasing capitalisation and the pressure to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies usually by way of farm amalgamation and a reduction in labour, thus a fundamental (and painful) economic restructuring that has challenged traditional social values (Haslam McKenzie 2000, p. 74). Underpinned by neoliberal and monetarist tendencies, the Australian government’s management of global trading relationships and the ways in which its aggressive freetrade stance transformed the organisation of farm commodity marketing arrangements can be seen as an example of the impact of globalisation on Australian agriculture (Argent 2011, p. 17). Although it has been challenged by some commentators (see Weller and O’Neill 2014), there is strong agreement that these processes can be attributed to an increasingly neoliberal agenda in Australia (see, for example, Pritchard 2005a, b; Lawrence et al. 2013). Whilst cautious of positing neoliberalism as a monolithic explanatory force, Argent (2014) acknowledges the influence of neoliberal thought upon Australian agricultural and farm policy and strategy. Following Lawrence (1987) and his problematisation of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy responsible for such ‘reforms’ as the deregulation of agricultural markets and the dismantlement of centralised marketing authorities, Tonts et al. (2012, p. 294) importantly identify three areas of Australian rural geography in which the dynamics of change within rural Australia have been felt and examined, namely the restructuring of agri-food chains; farm family survival/subsumption; and rural community well-being/vitality. Each of these three areas form a crucial base to the project and by providing a review of works in this area they highlight the need to move beyond dualisms (e.g. productivist/post-productivist, Keynesianism/neoliberalism) to studies of the “actual processes of change” across longer temporal scales (Tonts et al. 2012, p. 296). This research project makes exactly this contribution. Whilst acknowledging the explanatory potential of a focus on neoliberalism, this project places this examination within an extended time period to situate change within the long context of economic development in Australia that has encompassed changing government approaches to development and growth across the time period.

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2.3.2 Neoliberalism as Statecraft This historical-comparative approach fits with a Polanyian perspective on change as emergent and integrally tied to the social and political settings of the time. Although his articulation of the double-movement tends to a Marxist view of crisis as catalyst for ultimate system dissolution and transformation rather than an understanding of crisis as a “part of cyclical dynamics allowing for both consolidation and renewal” (Palumbo and Scott 2018, p. 27), this project utilises Polanyi’s emphasis upon the central role of the state in the market and its conduct. Whilst acknowledging the problematically finite iteration of the double-movement in which the disembedding of the market is countered by a singular institutional re-embedding and instead considering the process as a “cycle” (Palumbo and Scott 2018, p. 28) or “great oscillation” (Dale 2010, p. 226; Dale 2012), readings of neoliberalism through this lens show it to be “merely the latest iteration of Polanyi’s double-movement…an attempt once again to disembed the market from society, to roll back the institutions of social protection and replace them with a more market-conforming institutional order” (Blyth 2002, p. 4). In this way, the idea of the double-movement becomes an instructive meta-concept through which to view historical transformations, particularly when the multifarious facets of neoliberal programmes are considered fully. Although popular understandings of neoliberalism centre upon the idea of a retraction of the state operationalised through the core programmatic concepts of privatisation, marketization and deregulation, it is in fact more useful to understand these in terms of a complex development of statecraft that provide techniques and means for “state actors to rule through the market in a way that can strengthen rather than weaken state power and authority” (Palumbo and Scott 2018, p. 3). For example, the actual outcome of supposed state retreat implied in the term ‘deregulation’, can actually be understood as a “reorganisation of control” through a combination of liberalisation and re-regulation via processes of ‘juridical reregulation’, namely juridification (‘putting informal rules into legal form’); codification (‘putting tacit rules into written form’); and ‘improved procedures to ensure accountability’ (Vogel 1996, p. 17). This is consistent with accounts of neoliberalism as a primarily political

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project that involves the perpetual transformation of regulatory arrangements, including the more recent phase of ‘roll-out neoliberalism’, a “robust pattern of proactive statecraft” where the agenda has gradually changed from one preoccupied with the “destruction and discreditation of Keynesian-welfarist and social-collectivist institutions… to one concerned with the purposeful construction and consolidation of neoliberalised state forms, modes of governance and regulatory relations” (original emphasis, Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 384). This project investigates an example and provides empirical evidence of, a localised context in which exactly this programmatic change has occurred.

2.4

Changes in the Social Imaginary

The community and period being researched has been deeply marked by the economic and social restructuring brought about by neoliberal and globalising trends and their impact on agricultural production in rural Australia. Whilst having been established under a very different organising logic and orientation to definitions of growth and development, the community being studied sits at the nexus of economic and social outcomes of policy change. In this sense, this project seeks to integrate an account “of the shifts in macro and meso contexts associated with neoliberalism with an examination of the impact those shifts had on what is conceived, perceived and experienced at the individual level” (Lefebvre in Hall and Lamont 2013, p. 3). Central to this examination is a consideration of the ways in which the move toward neoliberal discourses has changed the elementary values associated with social life, as it is against these changing standards that individuals measure and understand their position and value, thus deeply affecting these conceptions, perceptions and experiences. This echoes Larner and Walters’ (2004, p. 507) examination of globalisation as both situated and embodied, where globalisation is understood as a new “way of imaging human life…through very specific imaginaries, processes and practices”. Hall and Lamont (2013, p. 4) apply this understanding of a collective imaginary to neoliberalism (incorporating globalisation) by exploring the ways in which such an imaginary provides “overarching narratives that

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tell people what their society is about, what its past embodies and its future portends, who belongs to it, and what types of behaviour merit social respect”. Whilst not having the space here to give full weight to his theory, the idea of a social imaginary is importantly developed by Castoriadis (1987) in his exploration of social imaginary significations, particularly the way in which he outlines the four principal fields of articulation in terms of collective identity, conceptions of the whole, definitions of needs as this is inscribed in a society’s activity, and the ways in which these articulations are involved in the formation of a structure of power. Similarly, Weber’s (2000, [1905]) account of the rationality and ‘spirit’ of capitalism points to the deeper organising logics and systems of value that underpin economic systems and accompanying modes of social relations. For Weber, there existed an historically-particular development of a spiritual side of modern economics that was intricately related to particular ascetic tendencies and the “‘characterological’ effects of specific forms of piety” (Weber quoted in Hennis 1983, p. 143). This “development of an ethical lifestyle adequate to emergent modern capitalism” (Weber quoted in Hennis 1983, p. 147) in turn unfolds “within the orders of the world: family, economic life, social community” (Weber quoted in Hennis 1983, p. 145), thus an important link between the conduct of life and the dominant social imaginary, between the macroand the micro-contexts. The key point here is a recognition of the normative dimension of the neoliberal imaginary, and the ways in which neoliberalism “inspired changes in the dominant scripts of personhood toward ones more focused on a person’s individuality and productivity” (Greenhouse quoted in Hall and Lamont 2013, p. 5), in a privileging of market criteria for assessing worth (Hall and Lamont 2013, p. 18). In this context, where economic identity is at the forefront of social identity, position and status, it can be seen how “thinking economic identities – worker, consumer, entrepreneur” are socially constructed (Larner and Le Heron 2002, p. 756) and of central importance to ideas of self-identity and meaning. This is at the centre of this project, as changing conceptions of worth and value at a macro-level deeply affect how individuals understand and interpret their lived experience. Within a deepening neoliberal imaginary, socio-economic status, intertwined with moral

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status, “became more central to the matrix through which individuals conceived their self-worth” (Hall and Lamont 2013, p. 5). This study presents a particularly useful window upon the ways in which changes in societal definitions of worth and value, expressed at a policy level, impact upon individuals’ sense of purpose and value by exploring the ways in which these individual’s identity and experience were influenced through their positionality with regard to political priorities. Initially bound to an identity and status as ex-servicemen turned farmers and nation-builders, this study looks to uncover the ways in which this shifted and changed through a deep recalibration of values to those associated with market performance, productivity and competitiveness. Given the context of the study, two core themes emerge and it is important to locate this project in these fields also. Firstly, the situatedness of the project points to an essential consideration of place as a site of meaning and attachment, particularly given the deeply embedded nature of farming in this project. Secondly, the centrality of conceptions of identity to individual experience and meaning-making necessitates a discussion of terms.

2.5

Place, Locality and Meaning

Central to this project is a concept of place, given the explicit situatedness of the case study being looked at. The literature and theory surrounding concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’ are extensive and cannot be thoroughly addressed here, so a brief summary of the way in which the concepts will be understood in this project will be put forward. In her seminal works on space, Massey (e.g. 1984, 1993) elucidates a theory of space as constituted through practices of engagement and the powergeometries of relations. For Massey, the politics of space in neoliberal globalisation centre upon ideas of relationality, implication and specificity, where the global and local always exist in and through each other (Massey 2005, pp. 100–101). In this sense, she identifies how discussions that delineate between concepts of local and global can involve problematic notions of ‘place’. Massey (2004) cautions against the universalising of ‘place’ as the site of meaning and calls attention to Latour’s emphasis

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on the essential inter-relatedness and “the emplacement, even of socalled ‘global’ phenomena” (Latour quoted in Massey 2004, p. 8). Massey (2002, p. 295) herself emphasises that ideas of lived experience cannot be reduced to localised experiences and that the relational and connected nature of daily life must be acknowledged. This is at the core of this research project as it seeks to uncover the ways in which changes at a macro-level are realised at the local level through the embodied action involved in changing agricultural practices and associated impacts on subjective experience. Whilst acknowledging the inter-relatedness of place, it is to understandings of the way in which place can be understood as a site of meaning that discussion will now turn. As outlined by Vanclay (in Vanclay et al. 2008, p. 3), “‘place’ is generally conceived of as ‘space’ imbued with meaning”, a coming together of biophysical, social and spiritual worlds in a way that embeds place in people’s memories and community stories in a way that evokes feeling. The vast scholarship on the importance of place, as reviewed by Trentalman (2009), spans the disciplines of phenomenology, sociology and psychology and has involved the development of many taxonomies and concepts. A recent useful example is the review offered by Raymond, Brown and Weber (2010), who delineate theories of place attachment that emphasise place identity and place dependence as important dimensions. Their analysis is of particular relevance as they focus on concepts of place as understood by rural landowners. They propose a five-dimensional model of place attachment that encompasses the personal dimensions of place identity and place dependence; the community dimensions of social bonding with family and friends; and the environmental dimensions related to nature bonding (Raymond et al. 2010). This importantly adds in the connection to landscape, also captured by Savage et al.’s (2005) observation of aesthetic and ethical orientations to place, and studies such as that by Lee (2007) that establish the experiential and meaningful engagement with landscape; Convrey et al.’s (2005) invocation of the concept of a ‘lifescape’ to capture the integration of landscape, livestock and farming community; and Gray’s (1998, p. 345) ontological position that purports the concept of ‘consubstantiation… the spatial relation between family

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and farm, between beings and a place, such that the distinct existence and form of both partake of or become united in a common substance”. This is of particular relevance to farming communities given the deeply embedded relationship of farmers to their land, as farmers live, work, recreate and socialise on their farms where land is “more than a place to grow crops; farms are locations with history, symbolic meaning, and repositories of emotion” (Quinn and Halfacre 2014, p. 118). Appadurai (1996, p. 178) views locality as “primarily relational and contextual rather than scalar or spatial” where locality is understood as a phenomenological property of social life expressed through certain kinds of agency, sociality and reproducibility. This has particular import for farming localities such as Goolhi by which the importance of interrelatedness comes from a shared social history where place is central. In a contrasting account that explores the role of place to farmers that are necessarily ‘globally engaged’ through business practices and thus not always deeply embedded in the place of farming, Cheshire et al. (2013, p. 64) are able to usefully decouple place attachment and farming identity which are often inextricably linked. Their theory of farmer attachment identifies three modes of attachment: attachment to farming as an agrarian identity; attachment to the farm as an economic and social unit; and attachment to place. Each of these positions point to the complex relatedness of place and identity for farmers and the multidimensional nature of attachment to place and helps to tease out the complex modes of connection to place in farming.

2.6

Identity and Lived Experience

Farming therefore represents a particularly embedded and complex relation to place, community and self-identity, as many of these elements overlap and intersect. At a theoretical level, this project follows Giddens’ assertion that self-identity is a “reflexively organised endeavour” (1991, p. 5). Following in the tradition of existential phenomenology, Giddens emphasises the knowledgeability of human agents where the social conventions produced in and through daily activity are reflexively monitored, recursively organised and able to be discursively interpreted by

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subjects. Continuity of self-identity is thus constituted through a biography or story, where “self-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a collection of traits, possessed by the individual…it is the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography” (Giddens 1991, p. 53). It is the contention of this project that the ways in which this biography is reflexively understood is conditioned by the dominant social imaginary because it involves socially, politically and morally sanctioned criteria of worth against which individuals ascribe value. This is echoed in Brandth and Haugen’s (2011, p. 37) assertion as to the situated, multiple and relational nature of farmer identity. In this argument for identity-as-practice, they identify the ways in which identity is constructed in specific social contexts, in a relational manner that links perceptions of self to the prevailing expectations of others and within wider systems of meaning. Farming brings with it a particular set of cultural ideals and meanings in general, but there are also those specific to the Australian setting and largely informed by a socioeconomic history surrounding ideas of the ‘farmer’ and centred upon the rural idyll and “country-mindedness” (see, for example, Lockie 2000). It is of note that agrarian discourses in the Australian context involve particular ideas of “farming masculinity” that “interweave with an economy of value, moral worth and pride… and situates the self within social and cultural contexts involving moralized relations of value conferred to the subjectivities of farmers which are navigated according to an ethic of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ as a farmer” (Bryant and Garnham 2015, p. 69) with particular consequences on lived experience. Relevant research in the area of farmer identity is extensive, spanning the role of cultural scripts in farming in the UK and Australia (Vanclay and Enticott ); sense-making stories and farming changes in Argentina (Peirano-Vejo and Stablein 2009); the links between network membership, identity and changes in farming in Australia and Europe (Lockie 2006); farming identity and gender roles (Shortall 2014); the detraditionalisation of farming identities in South Australia (Bryant 1999); collective identity constructs and farmer identity in multifunctional landscapes in Australia (Groth et al. 2014); identity and family farm succession planning in Australia (Sappey et al. 2012), in addition to those mentioned above and many others.

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However this project sits in a unique space in that it seeks to use grounded research methods, in particular narrative and oral history, to uncover the meaning ascribed by these individuals to the changes in the lived experience of farming in this community over an extended period. The usefulness of this approach to explore the historical geography of farming cultures and the processes of agricultural and landscape change has been convincingly argued by Riley and Harvey (2007). They put forward their own analysis of oral history of farming practice change and meaning as a response to calls from cultural geographers to “move towards a more nuanced understanding of the transformation of the agricultural landscape ‘from the ground’—through the experiences and understandings of the people who have enacted these changes” (Riley and Harvey 2007, p. 392), thus to contribute a crucial social element to these understandings of change and to develop “new understandings of farmer identities and farming lifeworlds” (Holloway 2000 in Riley and Harvey 2007, p. 393). This method has been acknowledged as a useful way of “enriching understanding of the microscale dynamics and consequences of rural restructuring” (Woods 2011, p. 840). The usefulness of in-depth qualitative data that encompass the lived experience of economic change has similarly been captured by Anderson (2004) in an examination of the experience of dairy farm deregulation and Lambert (2004) in his ethnographic study of factory closure. All of these examples contribute to the broader argument by Burawoy (2001) for a ‘global ethnography’ that seeks to undertake a study of “globalisation from below” that both recognises the local, concrete and uneven experience of the effects of globalisation within a locality, alongside an understanding of the situated and contested production of globalisation at multiple sites. The alignment of in-depth qualitative research, particularly that of life history, provides a significant fit with ideas of identity as reflexive project and its complex dialogic interrelation with broader processes of change. The next chapter focusses upon the approach, methodology and methods involved in this field interpretive economic sociology.

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Conclusion

This chapter has established some key theoretical foundations upon which the basic understandings of this research are built. The transformation of social relations inherent in intensifying capitalist relations is a primary feature of classic political economy. Capitalism has been corrosive of traditional farming forms and, given the entwinement of social and economic activity and identity at play in the farming context, attendant social forms have also been deeply changed. The ways in which this change has impacted in varying ways across multiple locations and differing social, historical and cultural contexts has been uneven, yet these impacts always involve a particular articulation of state power. An historical-comparative approach, notably that of Polanyi, denaturalises contemporary understandings of the separation of the economic sphere from the social context to establish an understanding of markets as always being socially embedded and mutually constituted by the state. The power of this substantivist position lies in the importance that it gives to the social, historical and cultural context of action. This points to the integral role of examinations of the social processes involved in the interactions between localised experiences and broader systems of economic and social organisation and interwoven systems of value. Chapter 3 continues the exploration of this case study by stepping into the deep context of the development of these values.

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Quinn, C., & Halfacre, A. (2014). Place matters: An investigation of farmers’ attachment to their land. Human Ecology Review, 20 (2), 117– 132. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.une.edu.au/doc view/1660429199?accountid=17227. Raymond, C. M., Brown, G., & Weber, D. (2010). The measurement of place attachment: Personal, community, and environmental connections. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30 (4), 422–434. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jenvp.2010.08.002. Redfield, R. (1960). The little community and peasant society and culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Riley, M., & Harvey, D. (2007). Oral histories, farm practice and uncovering meaning in the countryside. Social & Cultural Geography, 8(3), 391–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360701488823. Sappey, R., Hicks, J., Basu, P. K., Keogh, D., & Gupta, R. (2012). Succession planning in Australian farming. Australasian Accounting Business and Finance Journal, 6 (4), 94–110. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com.ezproxy. une.edu.au/docview/1284080729?accountid=17227. Savage, M., Longhurst, B., & Bagnall, G. (2005). Globalization and belonging. London, UK: Sage. Scott, A. (2012). Development theory and the constitution of market society: A Polanyian view. Comparative Sociology, 11(2), 160–178. https://doi.org/ 10.1163/156913312X631270. Shanin, T. (1987). Peasants and peasant societies: Selected readings. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Shortall, S. (2014). Farming, identity and well-being: Managing changing gender roles within western European farm families. Anthropological Notebooks, 20 (3), 67–81. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=101108779&site=ehost-live. Springer, S. (2012). Neoliberalism as discourse: Between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies, 9 (2), 133–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.656375. Thorner, D. (1986). Chayanov’s Concept of Peasant Economy [1966]. In D. Thorner, B. H. Kerblay, & R. E. F. Smith (Eds.), A.V. Chayanov on the theory of peasant economy. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Tönnies, F. (1957). Community and society (gemeinschaft und gesellschaft) (C. P. Loomis, Trans.). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press (Original work published 1887).

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Tonts, M. (2000). The restructuring of Australia’s rural communities. In P. McManus & B. Pritchard (Eds.), Land of discontent: The dynamics of change in rural and regional Australia. Kensington: UNSW Press. Tonts, M., Argent, N., & Plummer, P. (2012). Evolutionary perspectives on rural Australia. Geographical Research, 50 (3), 291–303. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1745-5871.2011.00745.x. Trentelman, C. K. (2009). Place attachment and community attachment: A primer grounded in the lived experience of a community sociologist. Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal, 22(3), 191–210. https://doi. org/10.1080/08941920802191712. Vanclay, F., & Enticott, G. (2011). The role and functioning of cultural scripts in farming and agriculture. Sociologia Ruralis, 51(3), 256–271. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2011.00537.x. Vanclay, F., Higgins, M., & Blackshaw, A. (Eds.). (2008). Making sense of place: Exploring concepts and expressions of place through different senses and lenses. Canberra, ACT: National Museum of Australia Press. Vogel, S. K. (1996). Freer markets, more rules: Regulatory reform in advanced industrial countries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914. Chicago, IL: Stanford University Press. Weber, M. (2000). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). London, UK: Routledge (Original work published 1905). Weber, M. (1976) The agrarian sociology of ancient civilizations (R.I. Frank, Trans.). London, UK: NLB Publisher (Original work published 1897). Weller, S., & O’Neill, P. (2014). An argument with neoliberalism: Australia’s place in a global imaginary. Dialogues in Human Geography, 4 (2), 105–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820614536334. Williams, R. (1975). The country and the city. St Albans, UK: Paladin. Woods, M. (2011). Rural . London, UK: Routledge.

3 Groundwork: The Social, Political and Cultural History of Land Settlement in Australia

The ways in which broader political, economic and social forces impacted upon lived experience at Goolhi, and in particular the instigation of a returned soldiers settlement scheme in the area, are complex and deep-seated. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the necessary cornerstones for understanding this deep context by offering a thematic analysis of the political, economic and social history of Australia up to and including Moment One. The data set of Moment One provides a qualitative exploration of the lived experience of land settlement practices of the state post-World War II. As such, it requires a consideration of the complex ways in which this settlement was animated by particular approaches to land and agriculture that emerge from long-running social and cultural processes stemming from the nature of Australia’s modern history as a colonial territory of the British Empire. As a settlement colony Australia’s development was heavily influenced, though by no means completely defined by, the relationship with Britain. Foundationally, the basic premises upon which settlement was legitimised and pursued involved the insertion of institutional and ideological forms that continued to influence government processes and priorities © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_3

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right up until the post-World War II period. The processes foundational to the pursuit of preferred social forms inferred in policies related to producer protection and small-scale agriculture after World War II, including those of returned soldier settlement schemes, found their legitimising logic in deep-set cultural ideals stemming from Australia’s colonial past. Three key elements emerge from the historical context. Firstly, the foundational processes of colonisation and the ways this facilitated the insertion of particular cultural understandings and institutions onto and into the Australian landscape. Secondly, the ways in which social and economic goals consistently overlapped in the state’s approach to land settlement and agriculture and, finally, how these approaches were constituted in and through the expression of cultural ideals emerging from the particularities of the Australian context.

3.1

The Why and How of Colonisation

Central to understanding the ways in which land settlement strategies developed in Australia is the way in which the British Empire provided not just the means but also the ideological apparatus for colonisation and the ways in which this apparatus enabled the development of political and economic systems and institutions that endured over time. Bound up in this understanding are both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of colonisation in Australia. The ‘why’ importantly includes the geo-political dominance of the British Empire at the time, the forces of sub-imperialism and the role of capitalism. The ‘how’ encompasses the ways in which rationalised approached to land were inscribed in institutional forms imported in the British mould, including politico-juridical systems of knowledge and practice. Each of these leave enduring legacies upon the Australian landscape and are important considerations in an understanding of place formation, land use and settlement in Australia.

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3.1.1 Historical Context: Britain and World Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century In the later years of the eighteenth century, European motives for acquiring colonies were very complex and significantly related to the geo-political power dynamics of the time. Although economic motives were evident, the “margin between economic and other motives was small… many colonies were rather the product of political and military rivalries than for the desire for profit” (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 86). The British Empire was a significant power at the time. European expansion into Africa, Asia and America opened up trade and land and was dominated by competing Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British claims (Fieldhouse 1982). Despite the loss of the American colonies, Britain’s presence abroad continued to expand substantially during the eighteenth century through a combination of territorial advances, the promotion of settlement colonies and through the creation and policing of commercial ties and trade routes (Cain and Hopkins 2002, p. 63). The decision to make a claim at Sydney was bound up with interests of both trade and empire, as it simultaneously forestalled the territorial ambitions of the French and undercut prior claims by the Spanish and the Dutch, as well as satisfying trading interests that called for a replenishment base in the Pacific and a secure route to China (Day 2001, p. 24). The decision to settle at Sydney was taken by the British government fifteen years after the initial reports of New South Wales and the exact motives for this settlement are disputed (Macintyre 2016, p. 30). The decision to settle at Sydney was complex. Internally, Britain was facing pressures related to overcrowded penal populations and the remoteness of New South Wales made it attractive most significantly as a penal settlement, with additional free immigration initially allowed only to keep the settlement alive (Fieldhouse 1982, p.78). As such, the earliest years of development persisted as a result of direct involvement from Britain and for many years this development was driven predominantly by direct British subsidy, with the subsidy making up a quarter of the national income as late as 1831 (Cain and Hopkins 2002, pp. 216–217). The immense capital investment involved in transportation and assisted emigration helped the settlement through the critical early years and was

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a significant element of development in the colony (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 252). However by the 1830s agriculture, and in particular the wool industry, had developed rapidly and began to attract significant private British capital to Australia (Cain and Hopkins 2002, p. 217). This economic development helped the forces of sub-imperialism to gather strength and further colonial expansion began to proceed as an internal expansion of existing European nuclei rather than due to deliberate planning by the empire (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 180). Along with emigration, trade and capital investment as the dominant economic and social forces emanating from Europe at the time, the civilising mission of Enlightenment Britain, and the new wealth that had enabled this, began to play a role as another conduit for European influence (Fieldhouse 1973, p. 99). Formal processes of empire were not yet dominant and although the British government dutifully acted where needed it didn’t actively pursue settlement until later in the nineteenth century when attitudes towards settlement and the colony began to change, owing in large part to enthusiasm for settlement colonies espoused by thinkers such as E. G. Wakefield and his and others’ quasi-scientific principles of settlement (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 253). Formal development of the colonies began to be justified on social and economic terms primarily based upon British needs: investment in the colony represented a more profitable employment of British capital than investment at home; it relieved British unemployment; the colonies had become financially self-supporting; they provided markets for British manufactured goods; and emigrants here remained British subjects, rather than become citizens of the United States (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 254). Thus early motivations behind development of the colonies represented a complex mix of social and economic drivers that remained largely driven by political, economic and social dependencies on Britain.

3.1.2 Capitalism and Imperialism After 1870 As systems of free trade and capitalism emerged ever more dominantly in Europe, so these systems were linked to economic development and

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modes of land use in Australia at the intersection of capitalism and imperialism. Theories regarding the relationship between the emerging capitalist market system and the resurgence of imperial colonisation after 1870 have posited imperialism as a necessary extension of capitalist activity by opening up markets, land and labour for exploitation. One of the most well-known amongst these theories of capitalist imperialism is broadly referred to as the Lenin-Hobson thesis, which generally states that the cause of the sudden outburst of imperialist rivalry in late nineteenth century was because the volume of output generated domestically could not be absorbed and so created conditions for a downturn and depression that forced a move abroad in search of markets, forcing imperial states to “place larger and larger portions of their economic resources outside the area of their present political domain, and then stimulate a policy of political expansion so as to take in the new areas” (Hobson 1902 in Fieldhouse 1982, p. 77). Although these theories of over-production/under-consumption have been criticised, most notably on the grounds that this reductionist view largely ignores that imperialism may only be indirectly connected with economic integration and that imperialism is not a necessary function of economic expansion (Gallagher and Robinson 1953 in Nadel and Curtis 1964, p. 99), the important point for the discussion here is the relevance of this intersection to the Australian context. Whilst upsetting the chronology of colonisation for economic means, the Australian example provides clear evidence for the synergy of colonisation and capitalism. The land and resource-rich continent was a conveniently endowed cog in the wheel of the British Empire. Whilst settler colonies played a small economic role in the imperial system prior to the nineteenth century, thereafter large-scale industrialisation created a mass market for their primary products and drove growth and prosperity (Macintyre 2016, p. 20). The volume of capital and the reliance of Australia’s development upon this capital were significant. Australia’s money supply was determined by economic relations with Britain as the level of credit depended upon the state of the balance of payments that was in turn chiefly a function of Australia’s trade and payment relations with Britain (Cain and Hopkins 2002, p. 218). Thus the interrelationship between capitalism and imperialism was significant in Australia’s development. Whilst not

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the singular driver of colonisation, the imperial relationship was consolidated through both the investment of public and private capital from Britain and the importance of trade to Australia’s economy. Through the 1800s the rapid growth of the capitalist economy of the newly settled country would have run up against shortages of capital and labour and thus the decisive role of Britain is clear as growth during this time “could be achieved only at the cost of dependence on British capital and, ultimately, conformity to the rules of the game as set in London” (Cain and Hopkins 2002, p. 208). As such, capitalism remains a key way of understanding the ways in which land use was organised in the Australian context, particularly with regard to agriculture. The broader global-historical context frames Australia’s modern history as a ‘dominion’ of the British Empire whose development is largely shaped by this colonial relationship, both in terms of opportunities (such as the injection of labour, capital and technology) and constraints (the dominance of British interests and the destabilising influence of debt) (see, e.g., Schwartz 1989). Australia’s settlement economic history came to be characterised by export-driven economic growth based on basic commodity production such as wool and the discovery and export of gold, as well the deep involvement of the colonial government investment in infrastructure (Kenwood 1995, pp. 2–3) thus Australia, as a colony, was “founded within and was an integral part of the world economy from the very beginning ” (original emphasis, Lloyd 2003, p. 404). Following the supply-side theory of economic development whereby newly settled regions focus on the production of staples for export to the home country (Innis in Altman 2003, p. 232), Australia’s relatively small population base and abundance of productive land and other natural resources deeply conditioned the emergence and sustained prominence of agricultural production as an integral part of the economy. This view of economic development, in which both the trade relation with the colonial power and the nature of the staple being produced patterns not just the economic but also the social and political organisation of the developing country (Innis in McNally 1981), can be seen to help explain Australia’s early economic growth and expansion as well as the enduring ideal of agriculture as important to Australia’s rural

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identity. Similarly, Wallerstein’s ‘world systems theory’ posits a central European core (evident from the 1600s) that incorporates the rest of the world as a periphery to serve as a source of raw materials and as a channel for excess capital and production and in this sense describes the establishment of the initial colonial outpost in Australia, however localised factors and the move to a capitalist society with democratic government and social welfare tendencies designated Australia as a ‘semiperipheral’ element of the world system (Jeans 1988, p. 4). Each of these theories points to a situation in which Australia’s early economic and social character post-European settlement was heavily influenced through its relation to Britain and closely aligned to the evident abundance of natural resources.

3.1.3 The Politico-Juridical Inheritance Of course the annexation of Australian territory and associated resource base was not the only precondition of the ease with which capitalist forms penetrated the imperial relationship. Central to this was the way in which British institutions were inserted into and onto the territory, as economic conditions alone did not explain the pace or form of change. After conquest, the dominating power expands institutional reach through the insertion of language, law, currency, economic organisations and forms of government and the ways in which these rapidly came into operation in Australia is significant. Both ideologically and institutionally, one of the most significant ways in which the capitalist system was enabled through state practice in Australia was through the facilitation of a politico-juridical system that legitimised and facilitated particular approaches to land ownership and use. Foundational to claims on land was the cultural idea that ‘unimproved’ land was “terra nullius – land of no-one – until, as Locke puts it, someone ‘removes [it] out of the State that Nature hath provided…[and] hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property’” (Gascoigne 2002, p. 8). Despite contestations over the exact dating and composition of the first Aboriginal settlement of Australia (recently placed at around 50,000 years ago,

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see Tobler et al. 2017), there is consensus that Aboriginal Australians were the first to discover and occupy the Australian continent. Aboriginal patterns of production and consumption were complex, embedded and dynamic, operating across highly differentiated regions and over an extended time period (Butlin 1993, p. 65). Despite this, the view of British colonisers in 1788 was of an ‘empty’ continent, there for the taking (see Rose 1991) and legally, the concept of terra nullius became the foundation of claims to unceded land as English colonial officials deemed the native population to be so ‘uncivilised’ and backward that the land could be proclaimed empty. The profound juxtaposition of ancient Aboriginal patterns of life and economy with those of the Europeans was turbulent and destructive (Butlin 1993, pp. 142–143) and this foundational claim of territory was a profound dismissal of Aboriginal ways of living and understandings of the land. Ultimately the way in which this claim to power was inscribed on the landscape was institutional. The “colonial cadastral grid made an ‘instantaneous’ appearance in the Aboriginal landscape”, inscribing British cartographic language through the survey and map in a system that radiated outward from the initial point of settlement (Byrne 2003, p. 172). These processes mobilised the regulation of land settlement and ownership. They were administrative and slow-moving and often lagged behind actual use of the land by ‘squatters’ beyond the limits of settlement; however, they ultimately had the singular result of “transformation of the land from a place of ecological relations mastered by Aborigines to parcels of assets managed by Europeans” (Weaver 1996, p. 1005). The rationalisation of human activity that developed alongside the commodification of land and labour was fundamental to the rise of capitalism, yet it is the central role of the state in codifying processes of simplification and standardisation of measurement, such as the cadastral map or standardising weights and measures, that enabled this development. This form of statecraft, described by Scott (1998), makes units (such as citizens, towns) legible and visible to enable state oversight and control and in its application to nature and space manifests most clearly as the measurement and creation of the cadastral survey and map. The imperial inscription of cartographic language onto the Australian landscape meant that “the landscape of colonial Australia would be in immediate dialogue

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with the landscape of England” (Carter 1987 in Byrne 2003, p. 172) and therefore subject to the same processes of the state. Debates over the modes of land demarcation and measurement to be used in the rational design of settlement in Australia—specifically the debate over the use of traditional English ‘metes’ and ‘bounds’ based upon land marks and topography but resulting in non-standard shapes and sizes versus standardised rectangular or square units of measurement—is instructive (see Libecap et al. 2010). That the standardised rectilinear mode of mapping and allocating land failed, largely due to the non-commensurability of land quality and rough terrain across much of the continent, is an important example of the limits of planning and points to the underlying principles of rational planning that were an important element of settlement in the British mould. Politically, the particular nature of the settlement of Australia, characterised at first by penal populations and then increasingly by emancipated and free settlers rather than by annexed populations, meant that particular consideration needed to be given to the way in which the colony was governed. The existing autocratic ‘Crown Colony Government’ that had been automatically applied to the colony came under question because the developing colony “founded by British settlers because they wanted to re-create Britain overseas had an undeniable right to British legal and constitutional institutions”, which ultimately led to the granting of representative government to all settlement colonies (Fieldhouse 1982, p. 254). The political system of democratic and representative government was an important factor in Australia’s development as a central part of the “set of skills, attitudes, social organisation, and political institutions that facilitated movement into the modern world” (Smith 1981, p. 58). An essential part of this matrix was the way in which the political and legal institutions enabled a particular utilisation of resources. Given the timing of the British claim at Botany Bay, the role of the Enlightenment in the legitimation and direction of settlement is paramount. The basic ideas of the Enlightenment period centred upon an abiding faith in the scientific method and rational enquiry, challenging the traditional religious justifications for political and social institutions, and a fundamental belief in the possibilities of progress

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linked to the application of reason and disciplined human endeavour. These ideals were so deeply ingrained in the attitudes of the elite that “the Enlightenment was to form a central core of the mental world of what eventually became the Australian nation” (Gascoigne 2002, p. 6). The British sense of superiority, underpinned by a belief in Western civility further strengthened by the achievements of industrial progress and scientific knowledge, provided the ideological basis for conquest and dispossession (Macintyre 2016, p. 20). As has been seen, the centrality of the associated concept of terra nullius was critical to British official and moral claims on the territory yet this legal claim “needed to be buttressed by a claim of effective proprietorship over the continental expanse if it was to be secured for the long term…it required the British to do what they believed the Aborigines were not doing – to invest the land with the industry of man” (Day 2001, p. 32). Thus whilst the foundational myth of terra nullius underpinned the ongoing subjugation and marginalisation of the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia and their basic claims to territory, a moral-economic ideology of agrarianism, accompanied by various racialist and social-Darwinist ideologies of social and material progress, became dominant (Stokes 2004, p. 9). Agriculture became the ground upon which state goals became fused with economic, social and moral arguments over appropriate land use. Thus alongside the introduction of institutions that govern land were ideas and decisions about how property rights to land will be demarcated and assigned (Libecap et al. 2010, p. 3). The idea of enclosure of lands had already transformed British agriculture and the provision of land for private ownership was pursued in Australia, particularly motivated by settings for agricultural production. Driven by ideas of improvement and progress that were strengthened through the demonstrable successes of the Agrarian Revolution, the release of land was geared towards agriculture and cultivation and the basic tenets of agricultural improvement included ideas of exclusive ownership (Gascoigne 2002, p. 154). Yet alongside land releases and grants to open up the land to development was a moral concern for the sparse settlement patterns that pastoralism generated. Closely tied to concepts of land ownership and use was the assumption that settlement should be concentrated as much as possible to “maintain the apparatus of civilisation” because

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improvement of the land was deeply connected with moral improvement and progress, and debates at the time were characterised by moral arguments as to the correct and socially preferable modes of occupation (Gascoigne 2002, p. 83), importantly including the preference for closer settlement.

3.2

The Role of the State: Economic Goals as Social Goals

From the time of European colonisation, farming and agriculture have held an important and central role in Australia’s economic and social development. What is crucial to understanding the Australia context prior to World War II is the central inter-relationship of economic and social goals of the state and the particular way in which this was captured, embodied and pursued with regard to agriculture. In this it is impossible to separate out the complex relationship between the role of the state in land settlement strategies, state investment in infrastructure, and the state’s promotion and protection of agriculture for social as much as economic reasons. Anxieties over the need to occupy and civilise the continent, combined with a rich natural resource base and the significant need for economic development closely aligned with British markets, meant that the social forms attached to farming became a central avenue for the combined pursuit of these goals. Thus it is critical to examine the state’s role in the interrelated aims of land settlement, investment and agricultural production and this section provides a more thoroughly detailed exposition of these important elements in the Australian context.

3.2.1 Land Settlement Australia moved from a penal settlement to a highly privatised form of penal-capitalist organisation relatively rapidly and a key element of this was the role of the state in regulating and directing modes of settlement. Indeed, land grants and associated settlement underpinned the subsequent development of agriculture and private property and goods

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markets (Butlin 1994, p. 2). Despite early directives to the first Governor (Phillip) to found a system of small (30 acre) land grants only to freed convicts (Buckley 1975, p. 18), a more generous land grant system developed that encouraged mixed farming in the known coastal regions but saw large tracts of lands in the frontier regions pass into private hands without any significant impact upon either production or occupation rates (Powell 1988, p. 15). The establishment of white communities within Australia involved an unusually high involvement of the state, via several tiers of government, to “initiate, monitor and manage the occupation and development of rural and urban areas” (Powell 1988, p. 14) and, as such, it was the colonial government that provided the means for occupation through the delineation of spatial units and deciding access to them (Heathcote 1988, xvii). Although settlement in Australia was almost entirely urban until the 1820s (Rimmer 1988, p. 276), by 1820 the amount of land alienated from the Crown totalled more than three million acres (Buckley 1975, p. 30). In essence, settlement along the coastal regions was small-scale and ordered through strong bureaucratic controls but, by contrast, the outer pastoral frontiers were lightly administered and presented either as stateapproved yeoman settlers or as illegal ‘squatters’, pastoralists whom illegally grazed cattle along Crown lands (Powell 1988, p. 16). The interests of the landed gentry (wealthy free settlers and ex-officers that were connected to local British administrators) and the system of freehold allotments were undermined by the squatters, leading to a political struggle in which the conservative moral and political standards of England upheld by the gentry came up against resistance from the liberal agitations of the squatters (Jeans 1988, p. 5). Despite some wins for squatters around longer lease terms, settlement centred around systemic ‘Wakefieldian’ designs that promoted strong government control over the choice and selection of agricultural lands and the integral linking of Home and Colonial partners economically, socially and politically, a system that was variously adjusted to local conditions through the input of colonial Surveyor-Generals and Governors in limited recognition of the constraints of the local environment (Powell 1988, p. 16). This mode of settlement advanced despite largely mistaken concepts of potential development by early explorers that were influenced by their European

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experience, for example in 1838 when Captain Vetch calculated the future population of Australia by dividing the continent into nine expedient units and allocating population and productive capacity according to the European nation nearest in size (Vetch 1838 in Heathcote 1973, p. 61). The social implications of farming were recognised by the colonial administrators. Debates over land settlement practises continued to characterise the mid- to late 1800s and were often based upon ideals of a yeomanry social class and agrarian lifestyles, with many Land Acts passed during this period “ostensibly to produce the desired cultural landscapes and social class” with an emphasis upon the “superior qualities of rural living for the nurturing of lasting citizenship”(Powell 1988, p. 17). Australia’s early agricultural sector was increasingly characterised by a large number of small, independent businesses (usually the family farm) dispersed over vast geographical areas (Brown and Longworth 1995, p. 132) and up until the early 1900s formed the dominant industry in Australia, reaching thirty per cent of Gross Domestic Production (GDP) in 1901 (Kenwood 1995, p. 3). As the century continued there were increasing movements towards ‘closer settlement’ and political pressure to break apart the large estates that had developed despite the increase in land selection (Powell 1988, p. 18). Attempts in the 1860s to establish smaller-scale yeomanry farms by unlocking large tracts of land held by squatters were largely undermined, both by direct strategies of the squatters such as ‘peacocking’ (whereby squatters selected land adjacent to water sources and in key sections of their run and thereby making further selections unattractive) and through the economic reality of the greater advantage of extensive, capital-intensive pastoral activity over small-scale farms (Clark 1975, p. 55). Nevertheless, the role of the state in land settlement was continuous during this latter half of the 1800s, particularly after the depression of the 1890s that saw a ‘back to the land’ movement in which private and government-sponsored village settlements were established (Powell 1988, p. 18). The role of the state in land settlement processes in Australia has always been central.

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3.2.2 The Role of Government Investment and ‘Colonial Socialism’ Australia’s early development centred heavily upon investment by Britain that was administered through the colonial governments, including investments in important infrastructure such as roads and telegraphic technologies. The ‘colonial socialism’ of the 1800s entailed direct action by government in the management of the economy to attract foreign (British) resources of capital and labour through such mechanisms as publicly-supported immigration, public overseas borrowing, investment of British capital in publicly-owned fixed assets in Australia, public business undertakings in areas such as transport and communications, and public enterprises (Butlin 1983, p. 82). Strong public support for private enterprise was a defining feature of the 1800s (Butlin et al. 1982), however as the realities of distance and environment were realised, heavy investment by the state precipitated this ‘colonial socialism’ that sought to solve the problem of a weakness of capital, thus an “ad hoc solution to the problem of developing local resources in the face of considerable physical difficulties” (Butlin quoted in Holmes 1988, p. 89). The importance of Australia’s ‘state developmentalism’, namely the critical integration of the governments’ goals of “economic and social and national advancement of the people” (original emphasis) through state involvement in economic development, has been identified as one of the enduring and integral aspects of Australia’s political character and organisation (Stokes 2004, p. 15). Whilst promoting economic growth and supporting cooperation with private enterprise, state development “represented a form of collective action required because private individual and corporate action was insufficient for the tasks of building the wealth of the colonies and the nation” (Stokes 2004, p. 15). Thus the role of the state in Australia was foundational to its development. By the end of the century, the non-Indigenous population had increased remarkably to four million people and the economy had grown substantially, growth driven both through factors of supply such as the discovery of arable land and minerals and demand from the increased domestic population, as well as foreign export market growth that

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exploited Australia’s competitive advantage in basic commodity production (Maddock and McLean 1987, p. 9). By 1900 the government had accounted for forty per cent of total domestic capital formation, essentially in the areas of transport and communications, and conducted the largest enterprises in the economy (again primarily in the areas of transport and communication), employing about five per cent of the workforce and generating six per cent of the gross domestic product at the time (Butlin et al. 1982, pp. 16–17). The role of state involvement in the development of the Australian economy was significant and it is difficult to imagine an alternative path given the challenges involved. This investment in infrastructure had important social and cultural consequences as it affected the pattern of settlement by opening up further regions for occupation. The landscape of the colonial economy was characterised by the development of transport links to facilitate access to markets, usually overseas. Dominant coastal metropolises were served by fan-like long-distance transport routes and the development of inland roads and rail saw a strong expansion of the ‘country town’ with the number and population of non-metropolitan urban centres quadrupled during the last four decades of the nineteenth century (Bowie and Smailes 1988, p. 238). These towns contained a range of manufacturing establishments such as breweries, sawmills and brickworks but no real industrial activities (Maddock and McLean 1987, p. 10) and primarily functioned to service the dominant livestock farming economy. The railway system was almost entirely governmentsponsored and intensified independent regional pioneering (Powell 1988, p. 17) and was crucial to rural diversification, for example in the wheat industry that benefitted from branch railway development through the wheat belt (Pope 1987, p. 39). This impacted settlement patterns as a key driver of Australian patterns of regional development. Apart from the role of the state in facilitating the release of land, importation of labour and investment in infrastructure, the role of the state in agricultural industry development also took more direct forms. Civilian settlement schemes in the 1890s led to a “circle of mutual dependence” given the state’s role in supplying bank loans, equipment and seed, as well as their role in price-setting, the determination of land units sizes and leasehold terms, land use specifications, debt collection

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and adjustment and land forfeiture, all which were highly politicised at the time (Powell 1988, p. 18). More broadly, the government played a role in agricultural development by disseminating applied science and improved technologies and knowledge. This was achieved through agricultural research agencies and associated technical education services that were established in country districts, as well as the diffusion of innovations such as refrigeration, rural cooperatives, the development of new strains of wheat, improvements in livestock breeding and the outcome of experiments in irrigation techniques, activities that see the state as facilitator where involvement centred more upon “‘land management’ than earlier attempts at ‘land development’” (Powell 1988, p. 17). This context of strong public-private partnership in the agricultural industry, together with the impacts of the economic instability in the 1890s, combined to lay the foundations for the development of government intervention in the form of detailed policies aimed to support and stabilise rural expansion in the early twentieth century (Pope 1987, p. 39). This set the scene for later developments in government support and protection of the farm sector.

3.2.3 Federation, World War I and the Inter-War Years The federation of the six colonies into a single government had a significant effect upon the development of macro-economic management, trade and regulation and cemented the role of the state in economic development. The road to Federation of the six colonies began most officially in the late 1800s with a number of formalised discussions and draft constitutions. After the debt crisis and depression of the 1890s, discussions at the Australasian Convention Debates centred upon issues such as foreign debt, the increasing power of labour movements and union action and the important issue of defence and security, with various political interests arguing for differing levels of state intervention, labour protection and the nature of links to Britain (for a detailed analysis, see Schwartz 1989). The peaceful transition to Federation in 1901 with the

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adoption of the Commonwealth Constitution had important implications for the pursuit of economic development (Jackson 1998, p. 10), indeed had, as one of its key objectives, the creation of a common market (Kenwood 1995, p. 1). Federation installed consolidated federal constitutional powers relating to macroeconomics, regulation and economic development and provided for a free trade area between regions where tariffs had previously existed (Maddock and McLean 1987, p. 13) thus reducing some of the obstacles to national economic progress (Shaw 1990, p. 10). The processes of federation took several years and during this time the Australian economy began a phase of rapid recovery, growth and structural change. Generally, the pattern of direct public provision of productive assets such as infrastructure and utilities continued as it had prior to Federation and between 1900 and 1930 rates of public investment were roughly equal to aggregate private investment (Butlin 1983, p. 83). There was strong consensus across Australian society in favour of more direct government regulation of economic activity and public support for labour interests was growing (Clark 1975, p. 62). Politically, the wealth, social status and political influence of the large-scale pastoralists had reduced significantly (through widespread asset revaluations and debt foreclosures) and this, combined with the mounting political power of labour after the losses of the depression, saw strong pressure for unionism (Butlin et al. 1982, p. 51). Given the intersection of support for the protection of infant manufacturing industries and the increased power of labour interests, the historic Harvester judgement in 1907 saw the establishment of a basic wage (Clark 1975, p. 62), which remains a significant marker of the state’s role in the Australian economy. The early years of the nation thus maintained a focus on growth and investment with the state at the centre of this development. Despite a significant drought culminating in 1902, agriculture continued to play an important role in national economic development with the early years of the twentieth century establishing a strong role for government intervention in rural activity and agricultural production, as well as more broadly. In the years before World War I, in an economy still characterised by its reliance on exports, agricultural production diversified away from wool into the production of other agricultural

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commodities, such as meat, wheat and dairy production (Kenwood 1995, p. 6). The strong diversion away from fine wool production did bring some greater prospects of closer settlement, but still left sparse settlement based upon family farms and casual seasonal labour (Butlin et al. 1982, p. 53), with the States continuing and intensifying the settlement sequences already established prior to Federation (Powell 1988, p. 19). The Commonwealth Constitution essentially left Crown land title and land transfers to the State, thus the States retained significant power over the regulation of access and conditions of land occupation (Butlin et al. 1982, p. 56) with land use “the single most important residual function of state governments under the Constitution” (Lloyd and Rees 1994, p. 44). All States continued to pass land legislation to encourage closer settlement and by 1914 had purchased 3 million acres of privately-owned land for this purpose and settled 12,000 families, many of which were new migrants (Shaw 1990, p. 10). Nonmetropolitan urban growth slowed down, most notably amongst larger country towns with populations of around 10,000 and more, but smaller country towns continued to experience growth associated with rural development (Bowie and Smailes 1988, p. 238). This was an important factor in the development of social and cultural forms and remains an important foundation of regional settlement in Australia. Between 1901 and 1914 a number of experimental regulations and allocative measures to support and protect private businesses were introduced, however, the emphasis was on easing entry into rural enterprise and on limiting the risks of rural activity, with most other private businesses only slightly affected by these regulations (Butlin et al. 1982, pp. 51–52). This was set within a broader context of government support for agricultural research and technological development that saw large increases in yield, with production increasing exponentially in large part due to the penetration of railway lines into wheat belts that resulted in a trebling of wheat acreage nationally and a five-fold increase in wheat acreage in NSW over the twenty years to 1911 (Shaw 1990, p. 10). Government policy was expansionary and concentrated on rural settlement and diversification and varied state-by-state, though all centred upon a central theme of promoting closer settlement and non-wool land activities, mostly through provisions for land tenure that discouraged

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large land-holdings and the development of (over 150) different land tenure types with associated conditions of use (Butlin et al. 1982, pp. 56– 57). Whilst government policy did promote other forms of development, the centrality of agriculture to the growth and further settlement of the nation is clear. World War I marked an important stage in world history and Australia’s role as part of the British Empire had significant effects on the new nation. By the end of the war over 416,000 men had enlisted for service and Australia suffered the highest casualty rate of any Allied force in the war with sixty-five per cent of troops either killed, wounded or captured (Mason 1992, p. 67). Economically, the war had various impacts upon the Australian economy but with regard to agriculture, Australia’s primary produce was largely purchased by the British government through contracts to buy all of Australia’s beef and mutton exports for the duration of the war and having first option on the wool clip (Turner 1974, pp. 326–327). This was done at a fixed price and this wartime experience “led to a number of post-war schemes for the regulated market of primary produce” (Pope 1987, p. 41). More broadly, the rupture to trade caused by the war significantly sped up the diversification of output as the economy struggled to meet emergency demands for arms and equipment (Pope 1987, p. 40). This set the scene for continued state support of agriculture.

3.2.3.1 Soldier Settlement Post-World War I The instigation of a land settlement scheme for returning soldiers after World War I was a convenient, though ultimately extremely costly, solution to several problems facing government. First among these was the issue of recruitment. Given that Australia relied on voluntary recruitment to the defence forces, from the beginning of the war “government spokesmen felt obliged to promise material rewards to prospective soldiers to entice them to enlist” and the promise of provision of blocks of land represented visible material rewards (Lake 1987, pp. 25–26). As such the promise of repatriation of soldiers through the granting of land was an important factor in defence force recruitment since campaigns

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for the Australian Imperial Force at the start of World War I, with politicians committing to “generalised, sometimes grandiose, pledges of arable land for returned soldiers” (Lloyd and Rees 1994, p. 45). Despite public and official forebodings over the viability of land settlement schemes, including parliamentarians in all states noting the difficulties in achieving successful closer settlement and the findings of failure of previous civilian schemes by various reviews including the 1915 Royal Commission into Closer Settlement in Victoria, the scheme was nonetheless pursued (Lake 1987, p. 7). This is because the scheme embodied a complex and useful entwinement of state goals and cultural forms. Soldier settlement schemes “served ideological as much as economic imperatives” in that they spoke to the agrarian ideology of noble and healthy rural life and “clung to obsolete notions of the viability of the yeoman farmer, built on earlier selection acts and closer settlement schemes, aimed at reintegrating returned men into civilian life through land ownership and cultivation” (Scates and Oppenheimer 2014, p. 233). Closer settlement also addressed concerns over Australia’s open spaces and military vulnerability to security threats of invasion (Smallwood 2011, p. 3) and conveniently addressed mounting concerns over the behaviour of large numbers of displaced labour in the cities once soldiers returned from war (Lloyd and Rees 1994, p. 44). Land settlement was part of a suite of measures for re-establishment of returned soldiers, but given the apparent resolution of several problems at once and the mounting pressure being placed on both levels of government during the war to remove bored and dissatisfied ex-servicemen out of public view to aid in ongoing recruitment, the scheme was pursued hastily and despite the misgivings (Smallwood 2011, pp. 3–4). The schemes for soldier settlement varied state-by-state but centred upon provisions for agricultural land settlement. Primarily this included land allocations from the state and a system of cash advances for making the land productive (Lloyd and Rees, p. 46). The land was not given to the returned servicemen but rather administered under a complex system of interest-bearing loans that meant that potential settlers did not require capital to purchase land or leases or improve existing holdings (Scates and Oppenheimer 2016, p. 6), with settlers charged low but steadily

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increasing interest upon the amounts advanced (Dennis et al. 2009). The Commonwealth provided loans to the States to a maximum of £500 per soldier settler (though this increased gradually to £1000 by 1924) but the Schemes were legislated and administered by the States (Dennis et al. 2009, p. 1). A pamphlet distributed to returned servicemen in NSW outlined the aims of the scheme, describing the intentions to “make it possible for a man, by intelligence and industry, to establish himself as a landholder, and to make for himself and his family a good home and a good living” (1919, p. 11). Post-World War I, over 37,500 men were settled on land through the scheme (Dennis et al. 2009), however the reality was far removed from the image of virtuous and rewarding country life offered at the time. The rates of failure and the devastating effects on people’s lives were significant. Justice Pike’s 1929 Report on Losses Due to Soldier Settlement, the result of a two-year national inquiry into the soldier settlement schemes, detailed financial losses at over twenty-eight million pounds (Pike 1929, p. 6). The report finds the main causes of failure to be insufficient capital, insufficient amount of land (allotments were below the requirements of a viable unit), unsuitability of settlers either through lack of experience and training or as result of war service, and the drop in value of primary products (Pike 1929, p. 23). In addition to this the onset of drought in the 1920s, a decline in rural markets during the Depression, and high interest rates on the over-capitalised farms meant that failure was a high and “a vast gap emerged between the seductive rhetoric of a productive yeomanry and the reality of working the land” (Scates and Oppenheimer 2014, p. 239). Pike’s (1929, p. 23) findings were unambiguous: “assuming for the moment that the holder was a practical farmer, capable and industrious, it appears to me that it would be impossible for him to make a living under these circumstances”. This was reflected in the failure rates. Nationally, of 37 561 settlers allotted farms post-1918, twenty-nine per cent resulted in failure, with Tasmania (sixty-one per cent), Queensland (forty per cent) and South Australia (thirty-three per cent) representing the highest failure rates (Dennis et al. 2009, p. 3). These failures came at a high cost to the farming families in many respects (for a comprehensive and detailed account of the life histories and social, cultural and environmental history of the experience

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of soldier settlers after World War I see Scates and Oppenheimer 2016). There were many challenges facing the settlers, including physical, environmental and financial. In this way the “battle was not over”, having survived the war they faced “their private wars, against the land, against the Lands Department, and, in a sense, against themselves” (Scates and Oppenheimer 2016, p. 12). The difficulties of the soldier settlement schemes were set against the broader economic difficulties of the late 1920s and the Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s saw an increase in forms of government support and assistance for agriculture in the area of marketing and prices. Tariffs on manufacturing had been introduced to protect industries born during the war and to encourage further development, and likewise protection was heightened in the agricultural industry with the setting of high home price schemes for various rural products such as butter, dried fruit and sugar, and were largely maintained through a heavy duty on imports (Shaw 1990, p. 12) establishing the principle of a high domestic price for farm products as compensation for a wage-cost disadvantage (Kenwood 1995, p. 49). The idea of ‘protection all round’ reflected an acknowledgement of the interrelation of manufacturers, rural producers and wage-earners and thus the major drivers of inter-war public policy were focussed on distribution rather than efficiency (Butlin 1983, p. 91). Supply management was also introduced through import restrictions on agricultural commodities, as well as the introduction of quotas on production and restrictions on the volume of inputs that could be used to produce certain rural commodities, for example the amount of land that could be used for the production of sugar (Kenwood 1995, p. 49). These efforts to raise and stabilise farm incomes by exercising control over the output of farm products “led inevitably to the emergence of marketing organisations with more or less monopoly control over the sale of farm output”, with a number of state and federal marketing boards emerging since the 1920s (Kenwood 1995, p. 51). Sectoral stabilisation and the protection of producer groups through income stabilisation were the key objectives of state policy at this time. The equilibrium in world trade began to collapse in the late 1920s, with a growing world over-supply of rural products. The Empire strategy of ‘Men-Money-Markets’, whereby Australia provided an outlet for

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excess British labour and Britain provided capital for investment in rural development in Australia and a market for these products through preferential trading, began to fall apart as demand for produce collapsed (Clark 1975, p. 67). The subsequent collapse of commodity prices revealed the vulnerability of rural development in marginal areas and the effect on farmers and graziers was significant, with government help during this time taking the form of farm relief Acts that granted moratoria and prevented foreclosures for debt, schemes for debt adjustment to deal with farm over-capitalisation, and for wheat farmers the payment of bounties and the introduction of a two-price scheme like those that already operated in the dairy and fruit industries (Shaw 1990, pp. 12–13). The Australian economy’s vulnerability and dependence is illustrated by the fact that it reached the highest level of unemployment (twenty-eight per cent) at this time (Clark 1975, p. 63). Recovery after the Depression was slow in the rural sector and in the lead up to World War II, “Australia’s rural economy was flat and dispirited, and the morale of country people was low” (Smallwood 2011, p. 6) even with heavy state support. When Britain declared war in 1939, Australia joined immediately. Having had a generation brought up in a society that reinforced the ANZAC tradition, there was a strong voluntary enlistment among men who “thought enlistment an inescapable patriotic duty” (Bolton 1974, p. 463). Australia’s traditional dependence upon the British Empire was tested during challenging decisions of troop placement and Australia’s alliance with America was cemented through this time, particularly due to Australia’s location and industrial and agricultural capacity (Bolton 1974, p. 467). When Japan entered the war in late 1941, the Australian government mobilised human and economic resources on a scale not yet seen in Australia, setting up a precedent for peacetime governments (Bolton 1974, p. 459). During this phase, the Australian economy was fully geared to the war and manpower and supplies were strictly controlled (see Butlin and Schedvin 1977). Before the war, seventy-nine per cent of exports were farm products and exports accounted for fortyeight per cent of total farms sales, so the subsequent war-time restrictions on shipping space and blocking of traditional markets meant that stockpiles of wheat and wool began to accumulate (Gruen 1990, p. 19),

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despite agreements that Britain would again purchase the full wool clip when needed (Bolton 1974, p. 460). These increasing surpluses helped shape the views of farm leaders and government at the time, whom both developed the position that “rural industries needed protection from the disastrous consequences of exposing the farm sector to the freer interplay of market forces” and, along with broader reconstruction after the war, that the “government was regarded as the natural agency for ensuring successful economic and social outcomes” (Gruen 1990, p. 19). The war experience strengthened the role of the federal government and reaffirmed the “sense of nationhood” proven during World War I (Mason 1992, p. 191). The primacy of the state in the management of the economy, including the explicit support of agriculture, was reaffirmed.

3.2.4 After the War: Nation-Building and the Role of Land Settlement After World War II, land settlement for returning soldiers was a part of broader plans for the transition to a peacetime economy through the “devising of measures for obtaining a high level of employment and economic security in the post-war years” (Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates. House of Representatives, 29 September 1943, p. 165 [Joseph Benedict Chifley, Treasurer]), with a strong emphasis on nation-building initiatives. As can be seen from political debates leading up to the establishment of the War Service Land Settlement Agreements Act of 1945, there was strong political pressure for thorough and timely institution of appropriate legislation for land settlement amongst the many measures of post-war reconstruction (Butlin and Schedvin 1977, pp. 733–734). Amid consistent emotional appeals to the “nation’s honour” bound to “feelings of deep gratitude and immense respect” and calls for the “worthy sons of Australia” to receive their due reward (Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates. Senate, 23 March 1943, p. 2144 [Herbert Collett]), land settlement was afforded a quick and concrete emphasis in the early considerations of the Rural Reconstruction Commission as a specialist component of post-war

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reconstruction efforts (Butlin and Schedvin 1977, p. 734). In his Rural Policy for Post-War Australia, Prime Minister Chifley (1947) provided a cautiously optimistic outlook for the agriculture industry and identified the intersection of aims for general economic and employment development with agricultural policy and development, with the core objective to raise and make more secure the living standards of farmers through price stabilisation and the development of markets. An important part of this was appropriate land settlement policy and Chifley outlines the government’s sense of responsibility for renewed and careful attention to the programme to achieve a “great deal of sound agricultural development in many areas of Australia” (Chifley 1947, p. 15). Thus the inter-relation of land settlement policies and agricultural development with broader nation-building sentiments is clear. Following a period of pessimism and lower productivity during the war years, farm policy during the 1950s centred upon increasing farm outputs and a move to increased closer settlement and more intensive land use (Gruen 1990, pp. 20–21). Thus began a period of productivist agriculture whereby growth in agricultural outputs was pursued as an overt goal of government policy. This explicit prioritisation of production increases in government policy settings, combined with significant improvements in productivity brought about by transformative technologies, consolidated a productivist logic that profoundly affected the Australian farm sector (Pritchard et al. 2012, p. 8). This period saw the farm sector “installed as a pillar of national economic and social development” and, in a policy move that linked the growth of agriculture to national monetary and fiscal goals, farm policy was operationalised through a capital-intensive expansion fuelled by generous government interventions such as the introduction of bounties, depreciation allowances, the introduction of the home consumption scheme for wheat and the introduction of various stimuli such as subsidies, import controls and dual price schemes (Argent 2002, pp. 101–102). The priorities that this set of interventions represent place agriculture as site not just of economic objectives, but still an arena for the promotion and protection of particular producer groups within the broader economic context.

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3.2.4.1 The New South Wales Returned Services Land Settlement Scheme It is in this context that the re-commencement of the NSW Returned Soldier Settlement Scheme after World War II was begun. This scheme was designed “to encourage agricultural development” (State Records NSW) and in addition to the provision of land selection and a ‘reasonable living allowance’ provided by the Commonwealth for the first year of occupation, involved the provision of advances by the States for working capital, making improvements, and purchasing plant and stock, with repayments and interest waived for the first year of occupation of the land except for working capital which was payable immediately (Closer Settlement and Returned Soldiers’ Settlement Branch [Department of Lands]). The persistence of the family-farm form that this in part represents is an important and enduring characteristic of Australian agriculture. This demonstrates the pervasiveness of the belief in small scale farming and its support at a governmental level, even as late as post-World War II, particularly as a driver of regional development and nation-building. Over 12,000 returned service personnel were settled on the land as part of the scheme (Waterhouse 2005, p. 208). Given the significant failings of the settlement program post-World War One, it is remarkable that the scheme was re-instituted and this speaks to the power of the orienting ideals. This scheme represents an explicit expression of state goals toward particular settlement and economic forms and their intersection in the field of agriculture.

3.3

Cultural Ideals in the Australian Social Imaginary

The circumstances of Australia’s colonisation and development through the 1800s saw the emergence of a particular set of political and cultural ideals and identities that underpinned much of the later character of Australian politics and society. Each of these ideals gained strength as a national character began to emerge in the late nineteenth century and continued to develop throughout the twentieth century. Whilst

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not accounting for all dominant cultural ideals and identities over this period, those explored here can be seen to relate most directly to the experience at Goolhi and the ways in which the social imaginary promoted and valorised particular ways of being, mobilised through particular policy outcomes. Without the multi-layered legacy of land settlement processes and the cultural validation of a particular understanding of the role of the state in agriculture as a site of social and economic good, the soldier settlement at Goolhi would not have proceeded as it did. The lived experience at Goolhi, from the multi-scalar enactment of policy right through to the ways this was understood and experienced at the individual level, was and is shot-through with cultural ideals and identities. Much of the development and land settlement described so far was underpinned by an agrarian ideology based upon British and European understandings of society. Given the imported belief that a ‘civilised’ society was settled and agricultural and an ‘uncivilised’ culture was based on nomadic hunting and herding, the early grazing economy dominated by pastoralists “alarmed officials of the British Government who expressed concerns that it might result in the colonists losing ‘almost all traces of their original civilisation’”, pastoralism bringing “profits, not progress” (Waterhouse 2005, p. 66). This preoccupation with promoting small-scale agriculture meant that by the 1860s questions of land dominated parliamentary debating chambers and administrations were increasingly preoccupied with establishing ‘yeomanry’ farming, based around the idea of a “typical yeoman farm …small, freehold, family-operated for righteous and relatively non-commercial lifestyles; cultivation was considered a vital proof of bona fides, and permanent residence was another sine qua non” (Powell 1988, p. 17). This moraleconomic basis for the promotion of small-scale farming underscored the increasingly complex selection acts of the 1860s and 1870s that were based upon the idea that land settlement should be linked to longterm social purposes and, despite many environmental limitations, the “muddled agrarianism of earlier years was never completely abandoned” (Powell 1988, p. 17). Therefore, there were some key elements of this ideal that became the basis of cultural and political identities that became

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relevant to the lived experience at Goolhi. Legitimation of closer settlement, including that of soldier settlement schemes, was underpinned by this deeply entrenched moral philosophy of agrarian virtue and nobility, including the mythical figure of the settler taming the harsh and uncompromising land (Green 2001, p. 68). Alongside the belief that “country life was better, physically, socially and morally, than city life and some of its virtues derived from the farmer’s arduous struggles with the elements” (Davison 2005, p. 13), was an idea of the ‘pioneer legend’ that emerged in the 1880s and 1890s (Hirst 1978). The pastoral boom from 1860 to 1890 was founded in large part upon rural growth and the stabilisation of the rural population and during this period. Given the improvements in transport and communication and aided by the development of country newspapers, a concept of a ‘country’ identity emerged as farmers and graziers began to set up interest groups, with the first parliamentary ‘Country Party’ established in 1893 alongside other ‘sustaining institutions’ such as the Country Women’s Association and the country radio network of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (Aitkin 1985). The combination of an underlying agrarian idyll with the increasing self-identification of ‘country’ people underpinned the emergence of a ‘country-mindedness’ ideology that began to have concrete political power into the twentieth century (Aitkin 1985). The central tenets of this ideology include that Australia depends on primary producers for its high standard of living; that only those that produce a physical good add to the country’s wealth via ennobling and virtuous rural activities; that the core elements of national character are found in the countryman who tames the land and makes it productive; that for all these reasons and others (such as defence) people should be settled in the country and not the city; and that it is in all Australian’s interests to support policies that improve the lot of primary producers (Aitken in Davison 2005, xi). ‘Countrymindedness’ drew upon the moral credit of the pioneers to support the task of building a modern rural country (Davison 2005, xiv). In addition to the emergence of a ‘country’ identity, it is important to note some broader and related cultural developments that were prominent by the end of the century and that were mobilised at significant moments through the next. The first is the rise of trade unions

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and the foundations this laid for later development of Australia’s system of labourist-protectionism and associated conceptions of the role of the state. A period of protracted growth ended in the 1890s and saw a number of wide-spread industrial strikes, particularly in the shearing, mining and maritime transport industries, with the confrontations requiring intervention by armed forces (Macintyre 1983, pp. 100– 101). The strikes were ultimately broken and left a legacy of bitterness and uncertainty around future labour relations and working standards (Withers 1987, p. 249). This and the deeply felt effects of the depression of the 1890s resulted in a growing consensus for increased state regulation of economic activity and protection of labour, and the emergence and growing influence of the Australian Labour Party was an important feature of this time (Clark 1975, p. 62) reflecting the heightened class consciousness that resulted from industrial conflict and economic unrest (Macintyre 1983, p. 104). The situation was ultimately resolved through the state’s intervention to establish industrial tribunals (Macintyre 1983, p. 103) and thus important foundational aspects of Australia’s system of labourist-protectionism were laid (Lloyd 2003, p. 254). The second and related development is the increasing popularity of a peculiarly ‘Australian’ national character and identity that is often identified as emerging from this period (see, e.g., Ward 1965; Palmer 1966). Ward’s (1965) analysis suggests that this was facilitated through the birth and rapid growth of the industrial trade movement and the increasing prevalence of the ‘noble bushman’ figure in literature and song. The foundation of trade unionism in Australia relied heavily upon the influential shearers and pastoral or ‘bush’ workers of the interior who formed the largest group in the industrial disputes of the 1890s and “bore the brunt of the battle, stood as symbols of its ideology” (Ward 1965, p. 212). The values that came to form the basis of an Australian national character were seen to be “formed in the bush, on the frontiers, by a ‘nomad tribe’ of bush workers” (Jeans 1988, p. 3) such as shearers, drovers and bullockies (Docker 1991, xxi). These values and ethos of mateship, egalitarianism, stoicism, pragmatism, antiintellectualism, heavy drinking and gambling, and ready improvisation were “impressed upon the larger urban population during the last years

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of the nineteenth century by the media, unionism and a rising nationalism in search of an identity” (Jeans 1988, p. 3) promoting a sense of Australian exceptionalism (Waterhouse 2017, p. 11). For Palmer (1966, p. 51), the strength and creative value of depictions of this character in myths, songs and stories of the 1890s lay in the way they “provided the country not only with a solid backbone of character but with the basis of a national culture”. At the time these were primarily evoked in oral form in ballads and through the writings of Joseph Furphy, Henry Lawson and A. B. ‘Banjo’ Patterson (Docker 1991, xxi) and through weekly publications such as the Bulletin (also referred to as the Bushman’s Bible), the Boomerang and the Worker (Palmer 1966, p. 13). Whilst Palmer and Ward produced interesting analyses of popular culture of the 1890s, it must be noted that these analyses emerged in the 1960s, perhaps as a response to Australia’s participation in World War II (Walker 1976, p. 9) and can therefore themselves be seen as cultural products. Despite criticisms of the ways in which these works focussed upon a lost ‘golden age’ of Australian character, it can be seen that “something which can be termed Australian national culture did come into being during the latter part of the nineteenth century” (Melleuish 1995, p. 4). The power of ‘the Bush’ as a cultural idea is ongoing (see, e.g., Watson 2014). In contrast to the bush legend, yet emerging from an analysis of the same period, Hirst (1978) identified a different foundation story, that of the ‘pioneer legend’. This legend celebrated the courage, enterprise, hard work and perseverance central to the heroic experience of European settlement in the taming of the new environment to man’s use (Hirst 1978, p. 316). The pioneer legend saw settlement as a battle to win the land (Davison 2005, p. xi) and reinforced the continuity and enhancement of the British character, values and institutions in the Australian setting (Waterhouse 2017, p. 11). By silencing the social, legal and economic determinants of land settlement, the legend provided a conservative political legacy through a valorisation of individual rather than collective or state enterprise and a reverence for the past (Hirst 1978, p. 316). As was suggested earlier, the moral value of the pioneer’s taming of the countryside as the foundation for the dominance of agriculture provided moral credit and political legitimacy for the development ‘countrymindedness’ and related political claims. The overlap between

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settlement, development and the rationalising processes of agriculture were caught up in the pursuit of “security objectives of territory, economy and ontology” and the particular ways these are enmeshed and entangled in the Australian setting (Mayes 2018, p. 68). Interestingly, these cultural ideals were appropriated in the processes of wartime solidarity. Socially and culturally there was broad support for Australia’s participation in both World Wars. A continuing marker of Australia’s participation in World War I was the ANZAC battle at Lone Pine in Turkey in 1915. Despite the fact that they had ultimately suffered a military defeat, the events at Gallipoli have been interpreted as a “personal and national triumph” that took on a legendary quality, where ANZAC soldiers “confronted deprivation and death with stoic endurance and sardonic humour…they had reinforced the established values of the Australian bush…they had come to know their own manhood and that of their fellows” (Turner 1974, p. 325). Thus the “masculine ideal of the bushman had morphed into the soldier, the ANZAC” (Scates and Oppenheimer 2016, p. 4) in an important proving-ground for nationhood and national character, the ‘baptism of fire’ of war and sacrifice (Dennis et al. 2009). Likewise Hirst (1978) and later Waterhouse (2017) demonstrate how the pioneer legend was mobilised in wartime identities. For Hirst, this is demonstrated through examples of the way the ANZAC were framed as sons of the pioneers and through processes by which ‘diggers’, explorers and pioneers were linked together. Most notably, the connection between ‘settlement and development’ and the ANZAC spirit “took substantial form after the war in the soldier settlement schemes…Diggers were to become pioneers” (Hirst 1978, p. 334). Thus the expression of cultural ideals in the development of soldier settlement schemes was a complex mix of historical identities related to Australia’s development and colonial history. It is important to note that a significant aspect of the emerging political identities and understanding of national character at this time was that these were essentially masculinist. The stereotype of the typical Australian explored above represents an exclusively male representation of the ideal values of the bushman of the outback (egalitarianism, mateship, pragmatism and spurning of emotional attachments), reflecting the masculinist ideology that became dominant before and after federation

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(Stokes 2004, p. 12). As detailed by Lake (1993, p. 1), the ideals of the Australian legend put forth by Ward and discussed above, universalised the male experience of Australia’s national character whereby “Men become universalised Man: White Man, Working Man, Nineteenth Century Man, the Coming Man” with a particular set of masculinist values emerging most prominently through the Bulletin as “the most influential exponent of the separatist model of masculinity” (Lake 1993, p. 3). Women were marginalised culturally, socially and politically by the dominance of masculine culture (Lake in Docker 1991, p. xxv) and although Lake’s analysis has been widely debated (see, e.g., Docker 1991, 1993; McConville 1987), conceptions of masculine identity have been recognised as important themes in Australian cultural history, particularly given that “representations of masculine identity not only reflect men’s social power over women, but are also integral to power struggles between men” (Leach 1997, p. 63). Even the yeoman ideal underpinning the ideology of agrarianism was “essentially a masculine one…the yeoman ideal of self-sufficiency turned woman and children into unpaid drudges who worked long hours in primitive conditions and subsisted on a restricted diet” (Macintyre 2016, p. 101). These masculinist ideas have “quite practical implications for individual behaviour, social policies and institutions” (Stokes 2004, p. 12) and constitute an important aspect of Australia’s culture. Each of the cultural ideals described here came to have important bearing on the ways in which settlement was experienced at Goolhi, both in the privileging of certain populations over others and the ways in which the returned settlers took on the challenges of settlement. The ways in which the valorisation of these particular identities became linked to outcomes at Goolhi presents a fascinating example of the ways in which these identities are enacted in everyday life, given the explicit involvement of the state in the promotion and insertion of these social forms.

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Conclusion

Australia holds an interesting place in the history of capitalism and agricultural change given the period during which colonisation and subsequent economic development occurred. Aboriginal forms of farming were unrecognised by the British and necessarily disconnected from large-scale mercantile and global capital markets that were well established in other parts of the world at the time of colonisation. The imperial apparatus provided the (at the time) political and cultural legitimation for the act of colonisation, including the proclamation of ‘terra nullius’, that underpinned claims to the unceded territory. Likewise, Aboriginal ways of codifying and administering territory were not recognised or considered by the colonising administration and thus the insertion of politico-juridical modes of understanding of the landscape were introduced at a particular stage of their development in Europe and without the localised resistance of European-validated systems of property ownership and control. The complex ways in which British politico-juridical institutions combined with dominant ideologies of the time at the moment of their operation in the Australian context meant that agriculture became the prime site of the intersection of political, social and economic goals. The political and cultural construction of land as an exploitable economic resource for private gain was central to Australia’s modern economic development, both economically and socially, particularly given the centrality of agriculture to Australia’s economy and the moral ideal of progress and civility that underpinned much of the push for closer settlement as a vehicle for preferred social forms. Although there were important domestic drivers for increased agricultural production, Australia’s place in international commodity markets through the colonial relationship with Britain was a significant factor in its development. Land use and the social forms attached to this are particularly significant in a territory such as Australia, given its high prevalence of land and low non-Indigenous population at the time of colonisation. There are of course important ways in which the enactment of land settlement was mutually constitutive and highly conditioned by local conditions and communities, however state involvement in land settlement can be

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seen as a key mechanism of the development of state power in Australia because it directly contributed to these goals via the intersection of political, economic and social outcomes. The attendant emergence of cultural ideals in the Australian context responded not just to the local setting, but found their cultural base in the British inheritance. Whilst not constituting a singular explanatory force, the ideological and cultural factors underpinning colonial forms of settlement remained important foundations of closer settlement policy in Australia, up to and including the soldier settlement programmes after the World War II. The ways in which each of these forces came to bear upon Goolhi provide a fascinating insight into the ways in which place history and lived experience are integrally connected to broader macro-contexts and the importance of the state in the setting of particular conditions within which daily life is conducted. The next chapter is the first of three chapters that communicate the experience at Goolhi, importantly beginning with a deep history of the area as the uncomfortable but necessary precursor to the enactment of the soldier settlement scheme that is the focus of Moment One.

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Shaw, A. G. L. (1990). Colonial Settlement 1788–1945. In D. B. Williams (Ed.), Agriculture in the Australian economy (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Vic, Australia: Sydney University Press in Association with Oxford University Press. Smallwood, R. (2011). Hard to go bung: World War 2 soldier settlement in Victoria, 1945–1962. North Melbourne, Vic, Australia: Australian Scholarly Press. Smith, T. (1981). The pattern of imperialism: The United States, Great Britain, and the late-industrializing world since 1815. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stokes, G. (2004). The ‘Australian settlement’ and Australian political thought. Australian Journal of Political Science, 39 (1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1036114042000205579. Tobler, R., Rohrlach, A., Soubrier, J., Bover, P., Llamas, B., Tuke, J., et al. (2017, April). Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia. Nature, 544 (7649), 180–184. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature 21416. Turner, I. (1974). 1914-19. In F. K. Crowley (Ed.), A new history of Australia. Melbourne, Vic, Australia: Heinemann. Walker, D. (1976). Dream and disillusion: A search for Australian cultural identity. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Ward, R. (1965). The Australian legend (2nd ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Waterhouse, R. (2005). The vision splendid: A social and cultural history of rural Australia. Fremantle, WA, Australia: Curtin University Books. Waterhouse, R. (2017). The pioneer legend and its legacy: In memory of John Hirst. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 103(1), 7–25. Retrieved from https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=910 181823780489;res=IELAPA. Watson, D. (2014). The bush: Travels in the heart of Australia. Scoresby, Vic, Australia: Penguin Group Australia. Weaver, J. (1996). Beyond the fatal shore: Pastoral squatting and the occupation of Australia, 1826 to 1852. The American Historical Review, 101(4), 980–1007. https://doi.org/10.2307/2169631. Withers, G. (1987). Labour. In R. Maddock & I. W. McLean (Eds.), The Australian economy in the long run. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

4 Dispossession/Possession: Prologue to Moment One

The development of agriculture in Australia has been deeply conditioned by particular cultural, political and institutional inheritances that have informed the ways in which understandings of land have merged with economics and state support to express as a dominant element of policy by the end of World War II. The ways in which this was experienced at Goolhi provide the focus of the next three chapters. This chapter acts as a prologue to the in-depth study of Moment One as a way of outlining the very real ways in which the policies, economic trends and cultural ideals outlined above were realised at Goolhi. The intersection of place history and lived experience provides a useful lens into how these broader factors proceed in dialogue with experience at the microlevel. The chapter therefore provides a place-based view across time that demonstrates how the history of Goolhi echoes the wider history of land settlement in Australia. Early violent confrontations between the colonisers and the traditional owners of the land gave way to pastoral settlements and dominance of the land by non-Indigenous modes of land ownership and use and, as such, the ‘settlement’ of soldiers after World War II must be placed within the deeper context of dispossession. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_4

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This chapter includes the oral history of Violet Robinson (‘Vi’), a well-known and much loved local Aboriginal Gamilaraay woman (now deceased), interviewed as part of the series of interviews of soldier settlers from which the data for Moment One is drawn. Her account provides a moving and significant contribution to any understanding of the processes of settlement and therefore the associated and required processes of dispossession that underpin these. Throughout the colonial history of the area, the dispossession of the Gamilaraay people from the land at Goolhi has occurred at different times and through various means. The aim of this chapter is to provide place history as a demonstration of the cultural ideas and experiences that were enacted in the area as an important preface to the contribution of resident Gamilaraay woman Vi. Her account gives an insight into the lived experience of dispossession over time and this preface to her account locates this final dispossession into a chain of moments since colonisation that has led to the final movement of her family from the land at Goolhi. This chain encompassed early violent suppression of the traditional owners and residents of the land, the developing (though highly conditional) integration of local Aboriginal people into the pastoral industry of the area, and the silencing and cultural sidelining of Aboriginal culture and labour in the enaction and pursuit of the British rural idyll in the area. Each of these will be discussed as a preface to Vi’s account.

4.1

Dispossession/Possession

It was quite an interesting place at Goolhi, I really sighed when it was cut up. (Vi)

In many ways, the history of Goolhi mirrors broader trends and struggles in modes of land ownership and use in Australia and this section provides key examples of this history to elucidate the layers of history that both inform and play out in later developments in the area. As in the wider landscape, modes of traditional land ownership and use were disrupted, often violently and mostly irreparably, after ‘discovery’

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of land by the early British explorers and the subsequent occupation and claiming of land. Subsequent land settlement in the area followed the typical pattern, through appeals to the Crown as well as through ‘squatting’ to enable the spread of pastoral industry, followed by the subsequent break down of this into government-mediated but marketoriented ownership patterns. Soldier settlement represents an explicitly state-directed mode of land settlement and ownership and the insertion of this closer settlement pattern in 1950 represented the first division of the land into smaller farming units. It is therefore essential to place this mode of settlement into its deep context to highlight the deliberate and culturally-emergent nature of Moment One. Traditional ownership of the land and the violence of the early colonial experience The horses fell repeatedly in the course of the day, and they were now so weak that they sank at every soft place…In our track we saw no sign of natives, and the country seemed abandoned of every living thing. Silence and desolation reigned around. (John Oxley, diary excerpt dated August 1818 and found to correspond to his crossing of NSW within 50 km of Goolhi, in Whitehead and Cains 2004, p. 205)

Ancestral ownership of the land in the area is held by the Gamilaraay (also written as Kamilaroi, Gomeroi or Gamilaroi) people, as part of one of the largest Aboriginal nations in Australia (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), n.d.). Nearby Dandry Gorge, located in the (now) Pilliga Nature Reserve, was an important local Aboriginal meeting place. Evidence of long-term occupation of the area indicates that it is located on a traditional east-west pathway used by the local Aboriginal people, use that is shown through the location of scarred trees, grinding grooves, shelters, art sites and large campsites within the Dandry Gorge Aboriginal Place (Heritage Office 2015). The New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage (2011) has found the area to be a “very significant area for the local Gamilaroi … Aboriginal people, with modified trees, grinding grooves, rock engravings, stone tools, art sites and bush tucker providing evidence

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of a long and continuing connection to the area”. Goolhi itself was originally known as Burrumbulla or Bulumbulla by the local Gamilaraay (Humphries 1992, p. 71). It is likely that the land in the area was relatively open as Aboriginal societies prior to 1788 had developed a range of land management strategies and those groups living to the west of the mountain ranges in south-eastern Australia, including the Gamilaraay lands, created vast grasslands through ‘firestick farming’ and moved across these lands to a consistent schedule, collecting and storing grassseeds and hunting game such as kangaroos and emus that they fostered on these grass ‘pastures’ (Harrison 2004, p. 18). The earliest recorded British experience of the area was the expedition that ‘opened up’ the Liverpool Plains by John Oxley in 1818, an excerpt of which is included above. The first squatter to hold Goolhi was likely Major George Druitt in 1833 (Shumack 1999). Early attempts to settle the area in the 1830s included violent confrontations with local Aboriginal people, understood by these Europeans as a form of “warfare on the Australian frontier” (Connor 2002, p. x) but largely due to the fact that local Aboriginal plant and animal resources were unceremoniously compromised as the grazing of sheep and cattle extended into the area. Aboriginal and European concepts of land were very different both spiritually, socially, economically and symbolically, and the invasion occurred not as a single event but unevenly and region-by-region over more than a hundred years (Goodall 1996, p. 23). In the lands of the Gamilaraay, there are accounts of local Aboriginal resistance to incursions into their land, loss of resources and sexual exploitation (Christison 2006, p. 10). The invasion of squatters into the grasslands of north-west NSW during the 1820s and 1830s was one of the most rapid in Australia, driven by the international demand for Australian wool and enforced by both military and private vigilante forces (Goodall 1996, pp. 31–33). In response to the escalating violence, the NSW government established a force of around 120 armed Mounted Police that undertook expeditions along the local rivers, including into Gamilaraay territory, that involved many violent confrontations with local Aboriginal people (see Connor 2002). Notably, around 26 January 1838, a Gamilaraay camp on Waterloo Creek, southwest of present-day Moree and approximately 150 km from Goolhi, was surrounded by a group of NSW

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Mounted Police and around fifty Aboriginal people were killed in an unprovoked attack, likely as a display of strength by Major James Nunn as leader of the division sent to enforce colonial rule in the Liverpool Plains (Connor 2002, pp. 110–111). The relatively high-profile killings at Myall Creek in 1838, also located within the Gamilaraay nation, led to the trial, conviction and hanging of the perpetrators (see Tedeschi 2017) and can also be seen as indicative of the tensions in the area (for further exploration of violence in the Northern Tablelands, see ClaytonDixon 2019). Colonisation of the land and the spread of pastoralism involved the violent suppression of the local Aboriginal people that invoked a loss of societal cohesion and, together with the impact of disease and violence, reduced the traditional owners’ ability to sustain a resistance to this occupation of their lands (Christison 2006, p. 10). As a result, traditional ways of life for Aboriginal people were disrupted and often destroyed. The subsequent integration of Aboriginal people into the pastoral industry of the local area was one of few options for their continued occupation of the land.

4.1.1 The Shared History of Pastoralism? In her youth, she followed the occupation of a shepherd and, thus engaged, mastered the art of reading mainly from the study of her prayer book… (Coonabarabran Times 1929, in an account of Mary Jane Cain, quoted in Somerville 1994, p. 67)

This form of integration was evident in the Goolhi district. As noted by Harrison (2004, p. 32), the halting of transportation of convict labour in the 1840s and discovery of gold in the 1850s produced a labour gap in the pastoral industry that opened the way for Aboriginal men and women. This was the case at Goolhi. Brothers James and Ebenezer Orr purchased the property from Joseph Druitt (Major Druitt’s son) in 1852 and brought in Indian and then Chinese ‘coolies’ to work on the property as shearers and shepherds alongside white labour (Rolls

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1981, p. 161). However, a written account by Mary Jane Cain, a wellknown Gamilaraay woman later granted land and also Vi’s grandmother, describes the need for help at Goolhi (then Burrumbulla): This would be about the time of the Ballarat diggings were opened in the year 1851 or 52 to my recollections. All the white people that were engaged on this property at different work left to go mining. The Aboriginals then came to Mr Orr’s rescue. The sheep were left to starve and the crows were eating them alive. Mr Orr also sent home for a coloured race of men called Cooli men. They seemed not to be able to understand how to manage sheep or any other things and they used to be continuely (sic) losing the stock in fact they were often lost themselves. My mother and father then went to help Mr Orr to collect sheep, dogs and men. (Cain c1920 in Somerville 1994, pp. 67–68)

This speaks to the beginnings of what Harrison (2004, 2014) refers to as the ‘shared history’ of pastoralism in NSW where Aboriginal labour came to be important and valued. Work included farm labour as stockmen, shearers and shepherds, as well as domestic labour, with work paid for with rations and also for cash (Harrison 2004, pp. 32–33), although the equity of these arrangements has been largely contested (see Goodall 1996) and understood also as a form of “internal colonialism” by which a cheap and ready labour supply was ensured (Beckett 1978 in Harrison 2014, p. 41). Often Aboriginal camps were established on or close to the large runs, particularly when stock density was low enough to allow a “modified continuation of a subsistence economy for Aboriginal workers and their families” (Harrison 2004, p. 33) and thus provided a site of cross-cultural negotiations and encounters that allowed a degree of independence and autonomy for Aboriginal people on the pastoral frontier (Harrison 2014, p. 42). The displacement and dispossession of Aboriginal people thus incorporated different processes of exclusion and (conditional) inclusion. The developing syncretic relationship at Goolhi reflected the changing attitudes towards local Aboriginal people. The newcomers to this area in the 1840s and 1850s “were the first who did not shoot Aborigines to maintain their position…those Aborigines left lived on the runs” (Rolls

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1981, p. 161). Whilst the Orr brothers owned a number of adjoining properties, Ebenezer Orr lived on Burrumbulla (Goolhi) and was known for employing Aboriginal men and women as shepherds (insisting the women wear long red flannel dresses) and travelling and camping with them in a fortified cave in a small hill near the creek (Rolls 1981, p. 162). As an indication of the shift from earlier in the century, in 1855 James and Ebenezer Orr offered a fifty pound reward for the capture of the suspected murderer of an Aboriginal man in their employment (see Fig. 4.1). The tone is accusatory and they are looking for justice for Charley’s ‘barbarous’ murder “whilst tending his flock in the bush”. This could be seen as an indicator of the ways in which the relationship between the pastoralists and local Aboriginal people had developed beyond the earlier violence and antagonism. The power of the pastoral idyll at Goolhi The garden in the front of the mansion is beyond doubt a perfect Eden. (The Goolhi Station, 1891)

The contribution of Aboriginal labourers was no doubt significant and local groups remained living and working on the run during these years of large-scale pastoralism. The lease at Goolhi was bought from the Orr brothers by a business partnership led by John Humphries that, after a succession of disease, drought and then flood, ultimately went bankrupt and was sold by the mortgagors in 1865 to the Iredales and their nonresident business partners (Humphries 1992, p. 75). This was after the introduction of the Robertson Land Acts in 1861 that allowed, for the first time, alienation of the land for private ownership in an attempt to break up the larger pastoral runs and encourage smaller farms (see, e.g., Day 2001). There is evidence of limited selection at the edges of the Goolhi run and some success for these selectors (Shumack 1999), but it did not significantly disrupt the ownership of the large run by the partnership led by Iredale. Selectors were successful in obtaining only the lighter, less fertile red sandy country at the edges, whilst the rich black soil remained in the boundaries of the Goolhi property (Shumack 1999, p. 32). The common practices of ‘dummying’ and ‘peacocking’ were used at Goolhi, including by the station’s bullock team driver Joe Hodge who

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Fig. 4.1 The 1855 classified advertisement seeking information to help capture Charley’s murderer. Reprinted [adapted] from Classified Advertising (1855, October 24). The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW: 1843–1893), p. 2 (Supplement to the Maitland Mercury). Retrieved from http:// nla.gov.au/nla.news-article707928

‘selected’ a house and 100 valuable acres but was in effect holding the land for the station who bought it back at base price after an agreed term (Shumack 1999, p. 32). Thus the Goolhi property persisted as a large station despite these small selections at the edges of the boundary.

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The influence of the broader culture upon the ways in which land was used and transformed at Goolhi was powerful and an interesting example to demonstrate this is a lengthy article titled ‘The Goolhi Station’ published in the Maitland Mercury Advertiser in 1891. British ideas of rural life, informed by notions of the pastoral idyll, were at the heart of conceptions of civilisation and nature and at Goolhi this was pursued not only through the development of agriculture and grazing but also through property improvements such as the construction of a significant homestead and surrounding gardens. The article, published in 1891, reports in detail on the home and property and the civility and imperious British-ness of the holding is emphasised at every point. The lengthy article details the “mansion…furnished in the princely fashion” and emphasises the “due regard having evidently been paid to the sanitary surroundings” such as drainage, ventilation and water piped to the house. As the earlier quote suggests, the garden is likened to Eden, with a distinctly British tone: Here are to be found magnificent roses of every hue, while the other flowers would be beyond the power of anyone to describe. Such a variety and combination of hues and colours it would be almost impossible to imagine … fruits of every clime and nation are to be found in the garden… such as lemons… quinces, figs, apricots, mulberries…

The land itself was also valorised through this lens: A more compact or valuable station it would be difficult to find…The snowy-fleeced flocks are seen grazing at will on the tall waving prairie grass. And all these scenes, with the homestead and other habitations, present a picture that an artist only could portray…the plains and flats at present resemble vast wheat fields, with the grasses as green as a leek and as high as a man’s knee. The provision made for the conservation of water is bountiful.

Similarly, the livestock on the property are praised for the prize-winning breeding evident in both the sheep and cows, the quality of which are testified to not only by an itemised list of prizes won but also testimonials from purchasers of stock. This breeding is evident right down

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to the “pure-bred fox terrier” pet dog and even “the pigs like the other animals are as ‘true-blue’ as a prince of the Royal blood”. The preoccupation of the author to communicate the high-breeding of the animals and the civility and beauty is indicative. Thus this article is revealing in two ways: firstly, it depicts the actual holdings and therefore the efforts and processes of transformation that have been made at Goolhi to create a station of a particular standard; and secondly, the propensity of the author to emphasise the civility and beauty of the holding speaks to cultural sensibilities and anxieties of the time through the constant invocation of civility and beauty. Both will be explored here. Firstly, it would have taken considerable investment of money and labour to establish the house and gardens described in the article, particularly considering the distance of the station from materials and the climatic difficulty of very hot summers and inconsistent rainfall that is a feature of the area, thus reflecting the power of cultural ideals and standards of the time. By contrast, an earlier account of Goolhi, published in 1874, describes the nature of the block and the intensive transformation of the land that must have been undertaken: Goolhi is in reality a back block - somewhat similar to a few I have described in Riverina - that is, it has no permanent natural water supply. The want has been met, but not without a large expenditure. Six fine dams and live wells were constructed at a cost of from four to five thousand pound; fencing has been vigorously pushed on, and the trees on upwards of a thousand acres of land “ring-barked.” Mr. Iredale was not long in spending £8000 in improvements at this rate. But he has had the satisfaction of changing the entire character of the Goolhi country, and transforming the head-station improvement. (A tour to the North. 1874, January 19, p. 3)

Although the 1894 account is not from the view of the owners, it is possible to view, for example, the virility of the garden and the choice of plants as a reflection of broader ideals whereby cultural visions of the landscape and the desire for transformation can be ‘read’ into the garden as a site of meaning (see, e.g., Beattie and Holmes 2011). Considerable labour would have been employed not just in the initial stages of laying garden beds but also in the cultivation of plants and carting of water

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to allow the gardens to flourish. It is telling that the only mention of the farm labour is a brief one-sentence statement towards the end of the three-thousand word article that lists “over 100 hands are here, with their families, engaged on the station at the present time”. The placement of this statement at the end of the article also communicates the low status of the workers. The primary discussion centres upon descriptions of the beautiful and productive land, the civilised and sanitary home (including details of a China tea service that Mr Iredale has had painted with native Australian flora), and the well-bred stock. The article then moves on to the more lowly discussion of the poultry, pigs and pet dog and it is not until the final paragraph that the mention of the farm labourers are included, ahead only of the final statement that lists Iredale’s fondness for the “sport of Kings”. Clearly, this account is marked by appeals to class and civility, for example through the multiple invocations of ‘breeding’ and language that circles ideas of royalty and status. Notably, the significant contribution of labour is almost invisible in this highly idealised account of the holding. Although this is a single account, the structure, content, focus and language are important indicators of broader cultural emphases and can be seen to reflect broader cultural desires and understandings of value. This moment in the history of Goolhi was followed by further permutations of ownership into the 1900s and it remained a large holding up until the acquisition of the station for soldier settlement in 1949. At the time of government purchase for this purpose, Goolhi was a 45,176 acre holding owned by the Scottish Australia Company (Austin 1998). This company had owned the property since 1935 and during this time it was run by various managers and overseers, the final manager being a Mr Armstrong (Shumack 1999). This is the time period in which Vi moved to the Goolhi property, living on the station with her sister and brother-in-law and working for the station. Her situation and the nature of her work reflects her status as a young Aboriginal woman at the time, and is an indicative account of the lived experience of labour and loss in the shared history of pastoralism and the effects of closer settlement.

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Living At Goolhi

I was only a young lady when I came to Goolhi, in my teens. (Vi)

Vi was born at the Burra Bee Dee Mission, an Aboriginal reserve that was under the administration of the Aborigines Protection Board, approximately 80 km west of the Goolhi district. Prior to conversion to a Catholic mission, the land for Burra Bee Dee (originally known as Forked Mountain) was gazetted in 1892 as a result of appeals made by Mary Jane Cain, Vi’s grandmother, to the Governor as representative of the Queen (Somerville 1994). Vi moved to Goolhi when she was a young teenager to help her sister who had married a local Gamilaraay man, Bill Barker. Vi had attended the convent in Coonabarabran (and was confirmed at the age of 13), but then left school: cause in those days when you were 12 or 13, you had to knock off to give your parents a hand, to keep the others going…a lot of the others used to go away to work, the other sisters.

Vi went to live with her sister’s family to help with the young children, the youngest child was aged six weeks old when she moved in. She lived at Goolhi until the family was moved from the area to enact the closer settlement for returned servicemen. As has been discussed, Aboriginal labour was an important aspect of the pastoral industry in the area. By the 1900s, Indigenous families worked on the large stations and their families were often housed in basic accommodation on the property and this was certainly the case on the Goolhi station. The spatial relationship and physical contrast between accommodation types on pastoral holdings has been considered important in documenting the low status of Aboriginal people who worked on the properties, despite their skill (Harrison 2004, p. 109). This was a marked feature of the Goolhi station, as Vi recalls:

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We [Vi and her sister’s family] started from Goolhi…we came to, they used have a Chinaman’s hut down, down on the bank where the woolsheds are and they were flooded out of there, then they built a home on the side of the hill near the shearing sheds and that’s where all the kids were kids there, the Barkers…and ah from there on, then they were flooded out there, they were living around the hill for a while, then ah went to ‘Glengarry’ [a block and house on the Goolhi station].

Vi’s brother-in-law worked on the Goolhi estate for “years and years and years and years” and this movement from temporary and unstable shelters at various precarious and peripheral places on the property to an actual house could be seen to follow in recognition of his rising importance and responsibility as a valued stockman over time. This represents what Harrison (2004, p. 109) has called a destabilisation of the “power and status-based spatial metaphor of the ‘big house’ and ‘stockmen’s hut’” over time. Bill’s work on the property was varied, including the setting of poison trails for rabbits and fencing, but it was his role as stockmen that was paramount and a source of pride for Vi. When asked if she rode horses for the station managers’ daughter, Vi replies that: My brother-in-law used to have the doings of all of that, but if he was busy then I used to ride the pony along… She [the station manager’s daughter] used to go to school in Armidale… Bill was the head stockman and when all the different ones come there he would show them around, and he sort of cared for all the jackeroos ‘cause he knew everything.

Apart from Bill’s important role as head stockman, this quote reveals the markedly different experiences of the teenage girls resident on Goolhi, with the daughter of the manager attending a private girls’ boarding school in Armidale (a regional town centre). Vi’s experience, by contrast, was as labourer on the farm and carer for her sister’s children after being expected to leave school at 13. She also recalls that her sister’s children were schooled through the intervention of station manager’s wife who enrolled the children in the Blackfriars Correspondence School programme. For Vi, her work on the station was of a low-status and she is careful to point out that she was not the cook, but rather served the

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workers (but not the manager and his family) their meals, because the Armstrongs: had their own private place away from the men that work there… I used to help, I used to look after the jackaroos there…just got to serve the jackeroos and the book-keepers … and the station men.

The class differentiation is clear.

4.3

Love and Loss

He worked there until the settlers came. (Vi)

Vi lived and worked on Goolhi until the family was moved into Mullaley, the closest small village to Goolhi. Although the family had been eventually allowed to live in one of the houses on the station, ‘Glengarry’, during the time that the Scottish Australia Company owned the land, Vi states that this wasn’t for long. They were moved into Mullaley to “a little old house above the shop and when the baker finished we got the bakehouse”. This was to allow for government possession of the land and the subdivision of the area for the soldier settlement programme after the compulsory acquisition of the land from the Scottish Australia Company. The house and surrounding land at Glengarry was divided off as one of the blocks offered in the soldier settlement. After the compulsory acquisition and during the time immediately preceding occupation of the land by the soldier settlers Bill remained working on Goolhi, now in the employ of the government and receiving payment via the District Office in Tamworth (a larger town centre). There was a period during which the area was government-owned and subject to detailed assessment to inform the design of the subdivision, and local labour would have been required to maintain the area: He worked there until the settlers came, that’s when they used to get their money then from Tamworth, their cheques from Tamworth. As they

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came, you know, well they all come onto there ‘cause there was fences, and everything, he stayed there ‘til the end with them.

Vi’s use of the word ‘end’ is telling. Her next statement outlines what the ‘end’ was for Bill’s employment on the station: And ah, then I suppose they had their real draw then, and they drew for their blocks…

Here she is referring to the ballot system by which the final allotment of blocks was made by the government as the last step in the administration and implementation of the scheme leading to occupation of the land by the soldier settlers. She then goes on to acknowledge the difficulty with which this was experienced by Bill and the heartbreaking futility of his position: And if, he said, knowing Goolhi the way that Billy knew it, for years and years and years and years, and he knew every paddock in it, well I know a few myself, but he knew it for years and ah, he was saying when Goolhi was cut up, if they’d ever offered him a block of ground there, it would have been Glengarry, he said it was the nicest block on the place.

At this point of the conversation the disparity between the interviewer as descendent of one of the soldier settlers (whom had later married another local soldier settler descendent), and Vi and Bill’s position as disempowered and displaced Aboriginal residents and labourers, surfaces sharply: Vi: “…and then your brother ended up having it” Interviewer: “Yeah, brother-in-law, yeah” Vi: “Brother-in-law? Well, anyway [sigh…pause] Glengarry was always his home, he said if he was left a block on the land that would have been it. Oh it was beautiful up there, we really adore it up there. … It’s very good, he always said if they gave him a block that would be it, and he’d know a bit about the ground out there.”

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In the moment recorded here, two women face each other across a chasm of history and race. The pauses and silences, difficult to render in a written account, reveal the discomfort. Pointing to a trivial detail, brother-in-law rather than brother, goes little way to fill the void. This passage is powerful because it provides an immediate sense of the lived experience of the enactment of soldier settlement at Goolhi from the perspective of the dispossessed. It simultaneously communicates the deep sense of home and connection experienced by Bill alongside his futile longing for acknowledged ownership within a system of political citizenship that in no way would have granted him this land. At the time the political state of Australia did not even acknowledge the Aboriginal people’s right to vote. Despite his long connection with the land, he existed outside of the state-determined criteria for eligibility, outside of the formal application processes and the random ballot system that would ultimately determine the ownership of the block that he loved. The conditions of possibility of the lifeworld, for Bill and for Vi, were sharply determined by their political, social and cultural identity as an Aboriginal man and woman and the broader settings that determine the relative value of these against other forms of citizenship and identity.

4.4

Conclusion

This account of the lived experience of processual dispossession is a powerful and essential part of Australia’s history and underlies any examination of land settlement in Australia. This chapter weaves the history of place with Vi’s account to demonstrate the ways in which the state integrally influences the conditions of possibility of the lifeworld and how this is critically related to the position of the social actor in wider cultural, political, economic and social systems of power. The ways in which broader socio-historical forces shaped and were shaped by the experience at Goolhi speak to the interdependent processes of change because it is how these processes are enacted that creates and recreates the lifeworld of social actors. The particular calibration of settings by the state underpins the available options and modes of settlement that are deliberately geared towards preferred forms and away from others. Vi and

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Bill’s disempowered political, social and cultural position prohibits them from accessing particular identities and forms of life. The plausible identities available to them are circumscribed by the conditions of possibility that result from these state settings. This demonstrates the inevitable relationship between macro- and micro-contexts and provides an essential precursor to the consideration of state action inherent in land settlement processes post-World War II. The role of the state here is explicit and aligns with dominant cultural ideals in the privileging of particular identities and social and economic forms. The next chapter provides an in-depth exploration of the enactment of exactly these forms.

References Austin, P. (1998). The old land companies. North Richmond, NSW, Australia: Land Book Co. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). (n.d.). Glossary. Retrieved from http://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/ collections-online/digitised-collections/indigenous-australians-war/glossary. Beattie, J., & Holmes, K. (2011). Reflections on the history of Australasian gardens and landscapes. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 31(2), 75–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/14601176.2011.556366. Christison, R. (2006). Thematic history of the former Coonabarabran Shire. Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia: Warrumbungle Shire Council & High Ground Consulting. Retrieved from http://www.higround.com.au/docs/ THCoona.pdf. Clayton-Dixon, C. (2019). Surviving New England: A history of Aboriginal resistance & resilience through the first forty years of the colonial apocalypse. Anaiwan Language Revival Program. Connor, J. (2002). Australian frontier wars, 1788–1838. Sydney, NSW, Australia: UNSW Press. Retrieved from ProQuest Ebook Central. https:// ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.une.edu.au/lib/une/detail.action? docID=870800. Day, D. (2001). Claiming a continent: A new history of Australia (New ed.). Pymble, NSW, Australia: Harpercollins Publishers. Ferris, N., Harrison, R., & Wilcox, M. V. (2014). Rethinking colonial pasts through archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Goodall, H. (1996). Invasion to embassy: land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin in Association with Black Books. Harrison, R. (2004). Shared landscapes: Archaeologies of attachment and the pastoral industry in New South Wales. Studies in the Cultural Construction of Open Space. Sydney, Australia: UNSW Press. Harrison, R. (2014). Shared histories: Rethinking ‘colonized’ and ‘colonizer’ in the archaeology of colonialism. In N. Ferris, R. Harrison & M. V. Wilcox (Eds.), Rethinking colonial pasts through archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heritage Office. (2015). Dandry Gorge. Database number: 5062870 File number: DOC 09/8609 & DEC08/983. Retrieved from http://www.enviro nment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?id=5062870. Humphries, K. (1992). Admirable ancestors: A story of Stephen and Susannah Humphries descendants in Australia. Griffith, NSW, Australia: K. Humphries. New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage. (2011). Memorandum of understanding between the Pilliga Nature Reserve Aboriginal Consultative Committee and the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). Retrieved from http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/joi ntmanagement/Pilliga.htm. Rolls, E. C. (1981). A million wild acres: 200 years of man and an Australian forest. West Melbourne, Australia: Nelson. Shumack, E. (1999). Going bush to Goolhi. Gunnedah, NSW, Australia: Elva Shumack. Somerville, M. (1994). The sun dancin’: People and place in Coonabarabran. Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press. Tedeschi, M. (2017). Murder at Myall Creek: The trial that defined a nation. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Simon & Schuster. The Goolhi Station. (1891, November 17). The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW: 1843–1893), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla. gov.au/nla.news-article19003356. Whitehead, J., & Cains, F. (2004). Tracking and mapping the explorers (Vol. 2). Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia: John Whitehead.

5 Moment One: The Lived Experience of Soldier Settlement at Goolhi

As the expression of explicit state action within a cultural context that valorises both farmer and soldier, the enactment of a soldier settlement scheme at Goolhi is a clear example of the ways in which settings at the macro-level deeply inform lived experience. This chapter provides particulars of the soldier settlement scheme and an in-depth account of the lived experience of the soldier settlement programme around the time of the Goolhi settlement itself, the formal process of which began in 1949. As has been explored in the methodology section, the indepth data communicated here comes from a series of taped interviews conducted approximately within the years 1989–1993 for the purposes of recording accounts of the events surrounding the early years of the soldier settlement of Goolhi. These accounts are from seventeen of the original settlers (including ex-soldiers and their wives) and seven of their children. Whilst these stories do not represent all of the settlers’ views nor claim to provide a full account of the years covering the enactment of the settlement, they do provide a rich record of the first-hand experiences of the soldier settlers in this district. These historical accounts are made up of recollections and memories of the experience recounted years later, yet © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_5

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provide powerful insights into the lived experience of policy enactment in the area. The very fact that these are the stories that are recounted is testament to the importance given to this particular mode of sensemaking in the retrospective ordering of memory. These stories represent an account of the lived experience at the forefront of land settlement policy and as such provide insight into the lived experience and actual processes of change. By setting these experiences into their deeper context of the longer process of dispossession in the area, the relative political and socio-cultural position of these social actors is highlighted. It is through this prism of cultural identity that these soldier settlers understood the processes they were part of and the state goals that they were enacting.

5.1

There for the Taking

As has been outlined, the soldier settlement schemes were enacted through state and federal legislation and in NSW this included powers that allowed the state to compulsorily acquire large runs of agricultural land and this is what happened at Goolhi. The land was then subjected to detailed assessment by the state with regard to soil type, water resources, timber and other land cover and divided into smaller areas, now called ‘farms’ (Harris 1961). Given the difficulties of the soldier settlement schemes after World War I and the large failure rate attributed in large part to inadequacy of holdings both in terms of size and productive capacity (Rural Reconstruction Commission 1944), careful attention was given to the design of the subdivisions and this was the case at Goolhi. A Field Officer Report dated 11 November 1948 (War Service Land Settlement Division 1948) details the assessment of the 45,175 acres and outlines the designation of appropriate land use types based on these assessments. The report recommends subdivision of the land into thirty-two farms and designates each of these as appropriate for either wool-growing and breeding (six); wheat-growing and fat lambs (fourteen) or fat lamb raising (twelve). These designations are then linked to state estimates of appropriate yield projections and productivity as produced by the Department of Agriculture. Consideration is given to local variables that might impact upon the ability of settlers to meet these

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projections and, in the case of Goolhi, reduced output is allowed with regard to the variability of rainfall and distance from rail. The report lists the grouping of paddocks into farms and ultimately recommends “that the State proposal to sub-divide Goolhi into thirty-five farms be rejected, but a proposal to subdivide into thirty farms be approved” (War Service Land Settlement Division 1948, p. 4), although ultimately the property was split into thirty-one farms. This is an important point, because it reflects the use of field officer assessments and recommendations to carefully determine productive units that are appropriate to local conditions. The inclusion of the concept of a ‘Home Maintenance Area’ was an important feature of the settlement programme post-World War II and involved the careful determination of the size of farms that “when used for the purpose for which it is reasonably fitted, would be sufficient for maintenance in average seasons and circumstances of an average family” (Duggan 1948 in Harris 1961, p. 11). The field report shows a flexibility in state determinations of productivity where consideration is given to local conditions in the design of the division of land and expected output. This is a significant contributing factor to the success of the programme at Goolhi and is in sharp contrast to design of programmes after World War I. Of the thirty-one soldier settlers allotted blocks in 1949, the following sections communicate the recollections of eleven of the male settlers1 and six of their female partners. Individual speakers are not identified on the tapes and references given in brackets refer to the digitised recordings of T as ‘Tape’ number and ‘S’ as ‘Side’ of the tape that they are sourced from. When speakers are in a group, they are indicted as Speaker 1 (S1) or Speaker 2 (S2) and so on where relevant.

1 At

the time of the interviews, sixteen of the original settlers were deceased. Interviews with most of the remaining settlers were conducted but the original records have been lost. The findings were self-published by the interviewer, Ms Elva Shumack, in a local history Going Bush to Goolhi in 1999. Only the primary data from the surviving recorded interviews has been used in this section.

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5.1.1 Drawing a Block We went back to get our things, to settle the wild country. (T5S2)

The next step in the enactment of the land settlement involved the call for applicants and the opening of the land was widely advertised. There was an application process through which eligible applicants had to demonstrate prior experience or knowledge of farming, followed by a ballot of qualified applicants by the War Service Land Settlement Board (Harris 1961, p. 76). After being advised of their success in selecting a block in the Goolhi settlement (however “they all seemed to find out unofficially” [T11S2]), a further ballot was drawn to allocate the blocks. The decision to apply for blocks was not always individual, with one settler recalling the strong encouragement from his parents: I’d been away in Sydney for about four months and I came up to see my father and mother at the weekend and he had the papers there for Goolhi and I was supposed to fill them in but I’d had a fair sort of a night out and I had to catch the train pretty early the next morning and I wasn’t going to fill them in. At any rate he convinced me that I should fill them in, so I did fill them in and just as well he did because that, you know, that was it that ballot. (T1S1)

The decision to complete the forms was a life-changing decision, an opportunity that his father had not been able to obtain for himself: Of course he was getting on in years and I think it was, there was an age limit at those times that after you got over a certain age you couldn’t go for a ballot, you couldn’t go to the ballot. Unfortunately he didn’t get a block before he reached that age. But he had, he had two goes, World War I and the Second World War, so he’d, he’d put his age up in the first one and back in the other one. But when I drew the block I asked him would he like to, you know, to come out and do share-farm and after he got on in years I took over the farming part of it and he used to look after the stock and he stayed there with me actually ‘til you know, for health reasons he shifted to town. (T1S1)

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This indicates the long-term success of this soldier settler and the way in which the scheme provided a profound opportunity for him and his father. The opportunity to be selected for land settlement was a significant one yet the success or otherwise was, after the application process, random. Applicants were advised of their success in drawing a block, most of whom did not live locally and some of which were still away on service: For my part I was in the Royal Australian Navy at that time, I still stayed in the services on the frigate between Flinders Naval Station and Williamstown in Victoria, Melbourne and a telegram arrived. A signalman came up to me and said “What’s this about Gool-ey sir?” and I had a look at the telegram, and it said “You have drawn Block Y, Goolhi. Love, Dad.” and I must have looked a bit flabbergasted and I said, “Well, I think I’m a rich man! (T7S2)

Overwhelmingly, the response of the men was positive but their knowledge of the area was varied: S1: I distinctly recall Col in Moree who quoted me the facts that I’d had drawn Block O and I had no idea where it was. I really wanted to go out in the Western Division with a big acreage and I’m very pleased that the message came through. S2: I’d been brought up in that area, Tambar Springs, and so to me it was quite a thrill. (T7S2) To officially be able to accept their blocks, the soldier settlers were required to inspect their allocated blocks and their initial impressions of the land were powerful: My first impression leaving Gunnedah, was “Hell, what have I come to?” – it was all Saffron Thistles [introduced noxious weed] and red scoured ground, but when I got out on the plains it was beautiful black soil country with a sprinkling of red in it and I was very, very impressed. (T7S2)

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Understandably, there was a level of trepidation amongst the men who were taking on farming an area they weren’t familiar with: All we could see was Plains grass nine feet high and people had said ‘They’re dangerous blocks, those black soil plains blocks’. Beautiful country but it had only been grazing country and they said ‘You know, in a drought, you can go broke on that block’. But, you know, we had that opportunity and we had to accept it. (T7S2)

Indeed, one settler recalls that a potential settler declined the block based on his inspection: I know one particular man that went to the, that drew a block there, he came out there and took one look and said ‘Not for me!’. And that was how one of our settlers did a get a block. (T7S2)

Before the settlers moved out and began farming their blocks, the town held a function for the group to officially welcome them to the town. This was attended by the Mayor, church officials and local dignitaries. As is often the case, the stories of this night centre upon a humorous anecdote that sets the tone for the friendships that began to form that night and that were an important part of their experience. The night of the welcome event one of the men invited the others up to his room for a toast to their future at Goolhi. The group of men and their partners gathered in the small hotel room with the promise of a drink of Scotch (whisky): He said ‘How about you come up and have a drink with us? I’ve gotten hold of a decent bottle of Scotch…I want to celebrate with you, I’ve always wanted to be a farmer or grazier and now I’ve got the opportunity’. So off we go up the stairs. … Well, Tom proceeds to make a little speech about how he had worked all his life on this and that and had always had visions of being a man with some nice sheep and a wee wool clip and retire a gentleman grazier. He spent a quarter of an hour doing this, walking about … he really was going high about this. Anyway I couldn’t see any scotch and the glasses were sitting there and Tom had made no move to get the scotch you see. Anyway, obviously he was drawing to a

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close of his speech so he wandered down to the pillow end of the bed and he had just about finished the speech part of it and he picked the pillow up and put it down again and looked startled and said ‘Wowee, they’re sudden ‘round here!’. The scotch was gone! He said, ‘I only put that there ten minutes ago’ and here he is, you could see the cogs going, he’s got these fellows up here to give ‘em a drink and he had nothing to drink. And then all of sudden there’s a bit of a yell from under the bed…well Roy, when they’d been talking, had grabbed the scotch and gone under the bed. ‘Come out of there you so-and-so!’”, Tom hadn’t missed it up ‘til then! (laughing) (T5S2)

This early teasing (and sometimes sardonic) camaraderie is often evoked in the stories. After drinking too much alcohol at the welcome event and causing a “bit of an affray”, Tom was complaining of a headache the next day: …they said, ‘You’ll have more than a headache, they’re going to forfeit your block for the commotion you put on last night!’ and old Tom was in a stew, he was going to go off and apologise to them [lots of laughter] and they had him on like that for half an hour! (T5S2)

The friendships between the soldier settlers are a constant theme through the data and will be dealt with in more detail further on. It is important to acknowledge here that they had all seen military service prior to the events at Goolhi and, despite coming from all over NSW and from different occupational and educational backgrounds, shared many cultural similarities. The camaraderie that developed may well have been in large part due to this, but it was built upon a strong sense of shared experience, from the very start: People never had their wives there [yet] if they were married… we were quite enjoying the idea actually, no one had the responsibility other than just going onto a strange area and you were all in it together, all pioneering together, all young and fit, all pretty much equal. And that was ok. (T4S1)

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Everyday Life

One point I would like to make was that we talk about the good old days, well they were tough old days. (T7S2)

Although block selection represented a significant opportunity, the soldier settlers and their families submitted to the requirements and realities of taking on the role of soldier settler, realities that were challenging and difficult. This section describes the everyday living conditions endured by the soldier settlers as they worked to establish homes for their families. Their decision to take on the challenges of living at Goolhi could not have been made easily. The land was remote and undeveloped and lacked basic infrastructure such as houses, permanent water, adequate access roads and electricity. Faced with a difficult and, at times, extreme physical environment, the settlers and their (often young) families persevered: Most of us left jobs, houses with electricity, went out to practically nothing… it’s probably to the credit to most of the fellas that they put up with it. (T7S2)

Conditions were challenging but were framed as being part of the opportunity they had been given: It was just one of those things you had to contend with, if you wanted to stay there. But it was an opportunity, you know, to draw one of those ballots, it was just a marvellous opportunity. (T11S2)

The earliest soldier settlers moved out without their families late in 1949, but from January 1950, wives and children started to relocate to Goolhi too. Most of the properties did not have houses and so the old Goolhi homestead provided early accommodation for the majority of families, whilst other settlers stayed in temporary shelters and tents. Sixteen of the families lived together in the homestead and surrounding outbuildings and huts:

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We came to Goolhi on our wedding anniversary on the 2nd of January 1950 and we all had came [sic] out a couple of days before and scrubbed out a few huts so our accommodation wasn’t too bad. We had 3 huts, we were very selfish, we had a hut we slept in and we had a hut we, shearers’ huts they actually were, a hut we slept in, a kitchen hut and a storage hut. (T4S1)

Facilities at the huts were very limited and the various outbuildings themselves quite basic: Well it was just an old out-station and it had, you know, very basic two rooms and a little bit of a front and back verandah, but the front verandah it was a skillion but it only had a dirt floor, dirt floor in it. (T2S1) We didn’t even have any electricity or anything like that, we had those kerosene Aladdin lamps and open fires. (T1S1) When I first went out there I had an old meat safe, I don’t know how old it was, it belonged to my mother, I must have been about 8 year old when she bought that and all. It was a bit like a fly-proof safe with blinds on the side and a couple of felt wicks that fed water out of the top tank on it. You were always carting water for that. We modernised that a bit, we used to get a couple of bricks and sit in the top tank and fill a four gallon tin and tip it upside down and that’d give you an extra capacity so you could go away for the day, sort of thing, and the end of the night… it would keep it going. (T1S1)

Other settlers lived in tents and other make-do shelters: He had an old army American bell tent so we decided we’d camp up there…we put that tent up, oh I supposed we would have lived in that for the best part of the summer and then the summer rains set in. It was such a good season when we went there, Plains grass feet high, and then it started to rain (laughing). It weren’t real comfortable, it weren’t real comfortable at all… No, we had outside a bit of a galley where we used to cook of course it was pretty good in the fine weather but it wasn’t real good racing back and forth cause there wasn’t room inside to do anything. (T1S2)

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Most of the families moved on to using kerosene fridges and Primus (portable gas) cooktops: I think everybody had a sleeping hut and a sort of storage hut to live in … most of us got our kerosene refrigerators in through the doors somehow, it was a bit of a squeeze to try and get them through the little doors. And we cooked on the little gas cookers, kerosene cookers I mean, Primuses yes, some pump up and some just the wick Primuses. (T4S1)

Everyday necessities had to be managed. Bread was only obtainable from the closest village, Mullaley, and was brought out to the settlers by the mailman. This was often done by horse and sulky due to the roads when it was wet and was delivered to the homestead where the majority of families lived. One settler recalls that he and a fellow settler Hugh would “canter down the lane” to collect bread at the homestead: We would go in the evening on horseback and canter down through the lane…anyhow coming back we’d get to the base of this red hill of Hughie’s and Hughie’d see the little light on the hill, ‘cause at that time he’d built a little hut on the hill with the aid of his brother… and he had his wife there and as soon as we saw this light come up over the top of the hill, Hughie would let out a loud yahoo and go galloping off on the horse and I’d say ‘Hughie you’ll kill yourself on all those rabbit warrens!’ [laughing]. (T7S2)

At the homestead there “used to be a rush to get to cow milk because everyone was down there trying to milk their cow in the cow bale” (T7S2). Water had to be carted and often the mineral-rich bore water needed to be softened before it could be used in the household for drinking or washing clothes as “it was hard, so it was terribly hard to get clothes clean at all” (T6S2). Amongst these daily challenges some families had young children, such as the family with a young toddler: Her great delight was trying to get out to play in the mud but I didn’t like that so she had a little fence put round the front of our huts and bags put on the floor so as to keep her nice and clean. Some of the other

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kids used to coax her out though and into the mud and they would have a lovely time when we weren’t watching! (T4S1)

Each family at the house had three rooms each, and each family had “one of those big wash tubs, the big round ones” and toilet facilities were shared (T11S1). There were few washing machines, simple pump-action ones until power was connected through 12-V, or later 32-V, plants (T11S2). A permanent electricity supply was not connected until 1965 (T1S1). As such, the introduction of homemade power plants was quite a breakthrough: It seemed terrific, even then, to be able to go out and start an engine and turn a light switch. Of course we were still limited then to the kerosene refrigerator, although we had the power from the 32-volt plant, we never bothered about to run a refrigerator, you would have had to run the thing constant all the time, we never worried about that. (T1S1)

Due to the almost constant rain in the first couple of years, it was difficult for the settlers to erect homes and many stayed in the temporary accommodation for over a year (T1S2). These early years of flood exacerbated the difficulties of isolated living with limited infrastructure. Access roads were consistently cut off by the water and this prevented the transport of supplies to the settlers and made early attempts at farming very difficult. The isolation caused by the floods was an early challenge faced by the settlers as a group and it is clear that it was a foundational experience for the feeling of community at Goolhi: How we coped food-wise was whoever had food, if anybody ran out, you’d share around what you had. (T4S1)

Many of the settlers relied on rabbits as a food source, fondly known as “underground mutton” (T2S2), or poultry such as ducks that were bought out and kept around the living area (T4S1). The problem of getting in supplies due to flooding often resulted in very difficult situations that required the soldier settlers to work together when “all the farms ran out of tucker” (T5S1):

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When it was real wet, and we couldn’t get out, the creeks were all up … we were looking at the larder, we were going to make a bolt for town…we had a loaf of bread and anyway it was mouldy so we got the knife out and we pruned and cut it away and cut it away and we finished up probably with about a third of a loaf of bread, in the middle of it that didn’t have any mould in it and I found a half a tin of plum jam and about three inches of blue mould on it and we spooned all that off it carefully [laughing] and we decided we’d have to, we’ve got to get out. (T2S2)

Groups would ride on horseback towards Mullaley, six or eight on horses and “meet them at the little bridge if that had washed out and we’d row our little boat across the water there and get our bread and our mail…the only way we’d get our bread and mail!” (T4S1). As one settler recounts, the isolation was just one of the factors that needed to be overcome to survive out there: We still had to walk or use the tractor, I did walk a couple of times to Mullaley, to get stores as well as to go to the Mullaley pub, but it was quite a while, 9 miles, so we just had to do those things. I think probably we talk about the hardships but, you know, if you didn’t do that you just didn’t survive. (T7S1)

It is therefore clear that the soldier settlers and their families encountered significantly difficult conditions in their position at the frontline of the enaction of the land settlement policy. The realisation of policy goals of the state entailed high levels of personal sacrifice and hard work. This of course extended to the early attempts to start farming, which were also worsened by the difficult weather conditions.

5.3

Hard Work, Hard Country

This wet and dry business, you know, on Goolhi. (T7S1)

As has been seen, weather conditions in the first years of the soldier settlement exacerbated the challenges of isolation and a lack of adequate

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infrastructure and also made efforts to get started with farming even more difficult. Basic plant machinery meant cultivating the land was very difficult, especially with the limited equipment owned by the soldier settlers: S1: What sort of a plant did you have to start with? S2: Oh pretty rugged, pretty rugged [laughing]. (T1S1) The stock and equipment that came with the station upon purchase by the government was divided up and allocated to settlers based on ballot draw, with settlers receiving such provisions as salvaged building materials, water tanks and also stock (T1S2). This, along with the provision of loans for developmental improvements and stock, helped them at the start along with a living wage that was paid during the ‘assistance period’ (usually the first year) to cover most of the everyday living expenses (Harris 1961, pp. 79–80). This assistance was critical to their survival. They were fairly, fairly hard times, as far as money goes and that sort of thing and, ah, most of the settlers there lived on an allowance. I think it was four pound six a week I think it was. And that had to buy the petrol for your vehicle and keep you in food and clothing and all that sort of thing… Well we never starved to death. You had the essentials, that was the main thing. (T1S2)

The difficulty of the floods wasn’t limited to periods where the land was underwater, but the effects it had on the heavy soils: The first year we went there it was so wet and the ground set like cement and to try and plough… with a plant like that you didn’t do much of a job. (T1S1)

The land had largely not been farmed and it was difficult to get the land under cultivation, “it was pretty tough going to get it worked up” (T11S2): S1: Did you plant any crops that first year?

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S2: We tried to… I got to working, I ploughed up about 100 acres, hadn’t any fence around it of course. I ploughed it all up and every time that I ploughed it up it would rain again, and then it was covered in, it used get covered in nut grass, and no sooner that you ploughed it up it would be a about a foot high, and you’d have to plough it up again, and I ploughed it and ploughed it and ploughed it and then it was getting late in the year, up around the end of July, so I decided I’d sow it now or never so I went down to have a look at it and the ground wasn’t too bad so I ran the harrows over it to dry it a bit so that I could get the tractor and combine over it … I was going to sow and put about half a box full into the combine and the wheels sunk down in the ground so I took it home. The combine wheels just wouldn’t get in the ground. (T4S1) Harvesting with the equipment available to the settlers made the harvest of any crops difficult too as early headers were inefficient when with “every bushel he stripped he was losing thruppence” (T11S2). Settlers learned the hard way that the crops were very vulnerable and returns uncertain. When one soldier settler had managed to get a crop in, he was talking to another about his plans for spending the proceeds. His interlocutor cautioned “you haven’t got any money for that until the weight of it is over the weighbridge in Gunnedah, no guarantees until you get it off ” (T11S2). He was eventually proved right as the crop ended up of such poor quality that cattle were grazed on it rather than the grain harvested. Much later the farmer acknowledged his mistake: He said, ‘You know you were right’. I said, ‘Right about what?’. “About that wheat”, he said. (T11S2)

These early times were challenging and the country was hard. Those with stock also found the undeveloped land a challenge: I had enough trouble keeping my sheep together … you know all we had was a little old pony fence, about this high, I think the thistles and the grass kept them in more than the fence did! (T2S1)

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In the face of these difficulties, one settler recounts his decision to stay on in the early months: My previous boss came down from Mungindi and asked me to come back for an increased wage. Whether I should have gone or not I don’t know to this day, but I said to him, ‘I made the break, I’m quite happy and this is where I’m staying’ and he said, ‘Well, you live on bloody rabbits and damper by the look of this place!’ [laughing]. (T7S2)

When it wasn’t raining, the soldier settlers were confronted by the extreme temperatures and the difficulty this brought to the physical labour. When fitting posts for fences at the edge of the property near the Kerringle Forest, one settler remembers the heat: My father was with me and we had a four gallon kerosene tin full of pretty hot water, it was about 108 in the shade, not a breath of air in that area there, it sort of, it’s just scrub … and ah, that was my Christmas dinner, that was all we had for Christmas dinner. (T1S2)

Similarly, the heat was a challenge for moving sheep, in this case moving the mobs to the shared shearing shed to be shorn: Freddy and I took ours down and we were so hot and thirsty we drank after the sheep out of that dam, it was just so dry and we were so hot! (T10S2)

Bushfires were an ongoing concern and after the floods in 1950, the group experienced significant bushfires in the following year (T7S1). The settlers had to fight the fires as best they could, with very limited equipment and physically raking back the fires: We didn’t have any gear, our gear, we just had a few old, I suppose you’d call it, billabong pumps, hand pumps and … one fire-fighting plant that probably wouldn’t start. (T2S2)

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The conditions were extreme. The (now) Kerringle State Forest borders some of the blocks and they would attempt to control the fires as they moved through the scrub, a very unpredictable and dangerous job: I never liked, I never liked going out into that country, you’d never know where the fire could come from. I had a couple [of close calls], matter of fact, that big fire. I’d ridden a horse out there about eight hours before and there’d be no sign of a fire anywhere out in there and I’d ridden right through on a horse and come back out, what within five hours it was all burnt. (T2S2)

One soldier settler talks of trying to monitor the fire line at the forest where the fire breaks that they had burnt made no difference to the advance of the fire, when: The signal came through that it was hopeless, we should take the women and children and fly…[we] had a little Land Rover and the thing was on two wheels going around corners. We were heading in front, rushing ahead of the flames that had leapt out of the forest … Alf took the opportunity to take old Mrs Harris in his arms and kiss her goodbye, that’s how serious it seemed [laughing]. He didn’t miss an opportunity! [laughing]. (T7S1)

Very little area was under cultivation at that time and the only breaks in the expanses of Plains grass were the narrow access tracks, so the fires spread very quickly: It started out the back of Borah Creek, on the flat country, most of them were probably a summer storm, lightning strike set fire to a tree and it would smoulder away there for, you know, months on end and get the right set of circumstances and the right wind and away it went. But that was dreadful, dreadful wind, it was blowing a gale and the heat was, well all the eucalyptus and that, when the fire came out of those, well, it took a couple of mile there in half an hour. It would light one lot up and then the heat… you could smell the eucalypt oil strong as anything in the air and the flames would come forward two or three hundred feet and then … and that’s how it came through and took it a very short time to come through… It was burning on along about a four mile front and we just

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never had the, in those days we never had the gear or the men to handle it. (T2S2)

The conditions and the heat meant that “the flames just started up in the middle of a paddock, the leaves were so hot, it was such a temperature and the leaves as they lobbed through would set fire to the grass. A fire could start up miles away from the main fire” (T7S1). The difficult dry season meant that damage to crops was limited as “they were pretty poor, they were damned enough after all that dry weather and all that without anything else.” (T2S2). There was little that could be done for the stock in the extreme circumstances: We were out at the forest and he rode a horse in to try and locate the actual position of the fire. The first thing we knew was he came back in a canter and a gallop out of the forest and said, ‘Go for your lives, get home, its coming and you’ll never stop it!’. That was enough for me, I took off. Lucky for me I had the sheep down the front … and I’d always been told old bushmen’s stories to get the sheep in a mob and let them ring in and only the outside ones will get burnt, the outside ones will put the fire out, you’ll only lose the outside ones… That was quite a scare for most of us. I’d never seen, I’d seen bushfires but not a fire going through the tops of tress, I’d never seen that before. (T7S1)

Another major obstacle to early efforts was the extent to which rabbits had infested the area and the effects that this had had on the land. Despite the fact that the government was committed to controlling the rabbit population before the blocks were taken up (T7S2; Harris 1961, p. 77), this wasn’t always possible: I’ve never seen so many rabbits… every Kurrajong tree would have an area of seventy or eighty feet across around the base of the tree that would just be one big rabbit warren and you could sit there with a .22 rifle and you could fire off a packet of bullets without any of them moving, they just didn’t take any notice. I remember the Department of Lands, they had contract rabbiters on there … and they used put out a couple of poisoned trails a week… they’d have rabbit drives with three families of them you know, Mum and Dad and Grandpa and all the kids, and

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they were there for about fifteen months and they took 33,000 rabbits off those two blocks… my place, there that was just a seething mass of rabbit burrows … any bit of green came they ate it as quick as it would come… all that grew was variegated thistles and if you happened to go out there you would think the whole ground would move, there was so many of them out there. (T1S2)

The effects of introduced rabbits on the landscape were significant throughout Australia and a state-directed introduction of the biological control agent, the Myxoma virus, was introduced in 1950 to control rabbit populations (Zukerman 2009). After battling to control the rabbits through more labour-intensive means, the virus was very successful at Goolhi: [He] went over to Tamworth and picked up a couple of rabbits that had been inoculated and he let them go at the Goolhi creek and within six weeks, this was a terribly wet year and mosquitoes would eat you alive, well within six weeks all those rabbits were infected all over Goolhi for that and within, virtually in three months it virtually wiped the rabbits out. It cleaned them up. (T1S2)

This was a significant step forward. Despite the many challenges in the first years, early progress and a fortunate set of circumstances meant that the soldier settlers were able to become established. As the weather improved “eventually things sorted themselves out” (T7S1). The tough early weather conditions, combined with the fact that the price of wheat “wasn’t real good” (T11S2), meant that many of the farmers decided to use the low quality first crops as stock feed (T11S2). Fortunately this coincided with a strong increase in the price of wool so “the price of wool was always rising, no matter what you paid for them you’d make more out of the wool” (T4S1). As observed by one of the settlers, this was in part due to world events at the time: Of course the big thing was the Korean war that lifted the price of wool and you only need something like that to get people on their feet and I think I am right in saying that was a big boost to us all as we’d been living on an allowance from the Lands Department. (T7S2)

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Cultivation involved the constant efforts of driving tractors day and night to tear up paddocks and clear logs (T11S2) and once crops were in and ready to harvest, the machinery the soldier settlers had was not always up to the task. Yet there was a sharp increase in productivity as the settlers became more established: But the next year that was a really big year, and we had this massive crop of wheat and the machinery, you couldn’t buy new machinery and we had this old tractor and ah, I think there was about 600 acres and we probably left as much on the ground as we got because you know those wheats, those Charter and those, grew to 4 foot 6 high and it would fall over and then got rotten, if you got it into the machine you couldn’t get it out. You’d get drum shakes and ah, I remember the night-driving … you only had to hit the wrong bit of a choke and overload the thing and either something flew to bits in the front of the header or something flew to bits in the back or both, you wouldn’t know what would happen. But that gave us a pretty good boost that. (T1S1)

Eventually, cropping became a major part of production in the area, especially on the highly fertile black soil plains. The achievement of establishing cropping on their land was a source of pride, as one son of a soldier settler remembers: It was a beautiful looking crop, I can remember Dad going over there and it was this high and went as far as you can see, in those days a thousand acres was a big crop. (T11S2)

As a group, there was a growing sense of achievement and solidarity. The pride in their achievements, particularly at harvest time, speaks to the challenges that they had overcome: Before harvest we used to have this garden tour we used to call it, not a cook’s tour, it was a garden tour, we’d all pile into a car or a truck or a ute or something and we’d do the rounds of the crops and we’d drive around, drive ‘round together and have a look, it was a real good day. (T2S1)

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It is worth noting the humour here, by ‘garden’ they of course mean the thousands of acres of crops that were ready for harvest. Many of the challenges of the early years had been met together, especially due to the isolation and lack of facilities that were only exacerbated by the weather conditions. The next section examines the significant role that the support of both the settlers and the broader community played in the eventual success at Goolhi and the deep sense of community that developed.

5.4

Good People, Good Times

They were tough old days but God you had a lot of fun. We shared each other’s joys and sorrows. (T11S2)

It was largely through working together that many of the challenges at Goolhi were overcome and this united effort was both essential to and a result of the friendships that developed. They all shared in the “fellowship you all had in the forces, that was part of it” (T11S1), but the soldier settlers attribute their sense of community to the practical help that they offered each other without hesitation. This encompassed both everyday challenges associated with isolated living, as well as extensive help when tragedy struck. The everyday practical help started from the very beginning: The first time I ever met Vera and Hugh I was riding the old horse around the sheep and Hughie had that old Dodge truck, that old green truck…and I went out back into the paddock and there’s Hughie and Vera just with a box and carrying David [their young son], they were headed off back home you see, ‘cause they were bogged up in the mud there and I pulled up and had a yarn to them… and I said ‘Oh well, if you’d like to wait ten minutes or quarter of an hour I’ll go get the old 4WD and pull you out’…so they grabbed their gear and went back to the truck and… we towed them through the gate. He came back in two days and from then on it was ritual, when Hughie and Vera wanted to go town, the night before Hughie’d ride over on his horse and tell me he’d be over,

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about around about ten and if he didn’t turn up could I come and meet him with the truck [laughing] and of course this went on most of the year. (T5S1)

This became essential help in flood times, as has been demonstrated earlier with the recounts of a team of men on horses going for supplies when the area was cut off by water and the sharing of food when families ran out. Given the distance to town, they would pool their efforts in regular times too as: …to go into town was a bit of an adventurous sort of a trip and … you’d usually get an order for five or six people, you fill up the old truck with heaps of orders, grocery orders, and shopped around. (T1S2)

There was also an overriding concern for each other’s safety. After needing to stay overnight when on a trip to Mullaley during the floods to get supplies, on his way home one of the settlers was “met halfway by a team of horsemen coming out to search for me because I’d stayed overnight!” (T7S2). Nowhere was this more explicit than help during emergencies. One example is the account of a house fire that neighbouring settlers were quick to attend and help as much as they could: All they got out with was his, was virtually what they stood up in, probably they were very lucky that they didn’t lose their lives in the thing. I know that after that they had a working bee there … they farmed and did the whole lot in one day, the whole lot was done. But, that’s, you know, that was nothing extraordinary. People would do it. (T1S1)

This is reinforced by the settler whose house was lost in the fire and who felt the generosity of the local community in the aftermath: I got the family outside and within twenty minutes the roof fell in… but the point about it is… we spoke about togetherness on Goolhi and the point about it is that’s where I found it and, I felt very humbled, that they got together. There were seventeen tractors pulled into my paddock

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on the Sunday and ploughed that five hundred acres… that’s the type of people that I feel obligated to. (T7S1)

This community spirit was mobilised in many different ways. The local community hall was built and then extended through donations received via woolshed dances (T1S1) and the community tennis courts built by the soldier settlers with sandy gravel moved in by tractor (T5S2). A local school was established through community efforts to source a building and to apply for and support the appointment of a teacher. At first the teaching was done in a temporary school at the homestead: The parents got together and advertised for a teacher, she came from down South, she fitted the bill…she was living with one family and eating with another… we turned one of the [old] maids’ quarters into the school room…TK was the main architect and brought a double toilet over from the woolshed and we were in business. (T7S2)

The building they sourced was originally located in another district and was relocated by the soldier settlers themselves: When they got the Nay Siding school that was a voluntary effort and the P&C [Parents and Citizens’ association] put a price in to go down and bring it back and that was to dismantle the school and cart it back to Goolhi, and just off-hand I think they put in a quote of about 50 pound, and of course the settlers took all their lorries and saws and cut this thing out and brought this thing back. And anything like that it was quite an event, you know, and you made a fair bit of fun out of it. Yeah, yeah, you always had to [laughing] get past Mullaley [Pub], that was, always seemed to be a stumbling block there. Like the beer was hot, the beer was terrible, but the company was good. (T2S2)

This emphasises the strong inter-relation of social fun with community activities. The soldier settlers were quite isolated and doing things together was an important antidote to the isolation. Even normal telephone infrastructure was not in place for years, with one telephone located at the main house for emergencies only:

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S1: Well before the phones went in you really didn’t have any normal contact with people, did you? S2: No, that’s right, it was quite a red letter day when [it was connected] …as rough as it was, only a party line. The settlers had a strong sense of having to make their own fun. This often involved the closest pub (public house or tavern) that was located at Mullaley, or travelling together to local social events such as dances or balls. The Mullaley pub is at the centre of a lot of stories: S1: Yeah, well, the Mullaley pub was a fair centre of activity too wasn’t it? The only sociable place around. S2: Yeah, well, you could get very sociable there. [laughing]. (T1S1) It took a large amount of effort to participate in the local social events given the isolation and lack of adequate roads: S1: Well, I’d say you wouldn’t be bothered now. To come [to the dance], I’d leave home in the car and then had to get across the flat which was about three-quarter of a mile of black mud. I’d put the chains on the car when I left home and I’d have to, when I got out to the boundary gate, when I got to the reasonable road I’d take the chains off and throw them on the ground there and then go to the ball. [I’d] have a pretty fair sort of a time, most of these balls were held in the middle of winter, and I‘d pull up at the gate to come back. You’d be half-stunk, struggling, you’d have to put the chains on and come across. We used to think we’d have a good time, and I suppose we did because we’d saddle up for more. S2: In those days I suppose it was the only social thing about. Different now, isn’t it? S1: Yes, you had to make your own social life. (T2S2) As with much social culture in modern Australian history, the consumption of alcohol and drunkenness was a significant feature of the settler’s social life. It is interesting to note that all mention of the soldier settler’s own drinking is recounted in amusing and light-hearted ways, whilst

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observations of damaged and problematic drinking are reserved for local itinerant labourers that the settlers’ observed working on farms or drinking at the pub. This inherent demarcation of harmless recreational drinking by the settlers has associated notions of respectability and status when countered with the stories of drunk labourers. This echoes social constructions of responsible/irresponsible populations with relation to drinking, particularly public drunkenness, in Australian history and culture (following Allen 2015). Consider the difference between these accounts, which serve as typical examples of the types of stories presented of each group, the first of which is a typical soldier settler story: We’d had a very, very successful woolshed dance … it was money being raised for the hall and anyway it was very successful, we had an extra good night. And matter of fact I saw [him] dancing that night and that’s a fairly rare occasion… a very, very good dance I’d say. And after it was all over, it was ‘round about 3 o’clock in the morning, I don’t know what they were playing with, a football or soccer ball or what it was, because they still got their dinner suits on and all the rest of it … next thing a game of football started and they’re tackling each other and the ash is flying feet high… [laughing]…yeah they were charcoal grey, I don’t know… where it came from but that’s all they were when they finished! (T2S2)

Drinking here is framed within a positive account of sociability and community good. By contrast, the stories of irresponsible drinking are always also stories of itinerant labourers, such as the following: [The soldier settler] gave him a job and he had to dig the hole out…he’d started to dig this hole out and of course he’s not that far from Mullaley and he disappeared, he kept going in and getting on the grog and [the soldier settler] went down two or three mornings in a row and no sign of him on the job. So he reckoned [there was] only way that he could get him, so he pinched the pick and shovel and took it back up to the house so [the labourer would] have to come and get it and when he went up to get it he sacked him. He probably stayed back for three months ’til he sobered up, or three weeks, whatever it took to sober up and that sort of thing and when [the soldier settler] said he was right he came back and

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did the job. It was that funny just how [the soldier settler] had to go up pinch the tools just to get rid of him. (T2S1)

Here the drinking is framed as a disruption to productive work and participation, an interesting distinction with regard to the ways in which alcohol consumption is presented in stories of the settlers. The ways in which the soldier settlers integrated with the local community, beyond the employment of labourers, was integral to their eventual success. Although there was some nervousness from the local community at first (T6S1), the reality was that both the local neighbours surrounding Goolhi and the broader Gunnedah community provided practical support to the settlers that significantly affected their success. From the very start, this local advice was critical: I have to emphasise this - he [local neighbour] fathered and mothered us when we went there, he informed us about everything. He gave us all the lowdown on what to do on this area and how to get drunk and how to get home safe (laughing) … they were all good friends of ours and they all came up and advised us, we were all raw cockies actually with the exception of one or two, and they showed us the way to do it, you know. (T7S2)

At times, this support was expressed as practical assistance such as in this account of a local neighbour: A great old man, he’d stop. Those old men that age, they’d class their own wool and all that, [they had] above average knowledge of wool and sheep and that sort of thing. I remember that when those creeks run and you’d be trying to shift sheep and you’d be there on your own with a knocked-up dog and five or six hundred sheep and four-five foot and six inches of water deep and you couldn’t get them across and he‘d sort of just turn up, you know, he’d just sort of turn up from nowhere and get them going up the front, get a couple going. He used to love to have a bit of a yarn. (T2S1)

Importantly, the support extended to business people in the township of Gunnedah, particularly sellers of machinery and suppliers of fuel and

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other consumables. In addition to the official welcome given by the town and the support given by businesses that allowed the soldier settlers to delay the payment of accounts for fuel and home supplies by up to six months (T1S1), significant assistance was given by suppliers of essential machinery. Without the practical help, it would have been very difficult for the settlers to get ahead: But a lot of, you know, the business houses in Gunnedah in those days could help the fellows out … they never had any money, and you’d go in there and in those days the banks, [even with] the title of the place you’d have no borrowing capacity at all, the banks they wouldn’t lend you any money on the value of the farm so you [were] more or less dependent on the good offices of, you know, the machinery firms. I remember old Tom Torrens, he was the agent for Dalgety’s [an agricultural machinery supplier] and I was in there one day and I was admiring this two-stand [shearing] gear and …all that and that was an enormous amount of money in those days and Tom suggested one of those would be very good and I said, ‘It would be, Tom, and there’s only one thing standing between me and purchasing one of those [and it] was the dollars!’ and Tom suggested I take it out. He said to me, ‘That’s right… I suppose you’ve got sheep have you?’, and I said ‘Yeah’ and he said ‘You shear them?’. I said ‘Yeah’, and he said ‘You’ll sell the wool won’t you?’ and I said ‘Yeah’, and he said, ‘Well one day you’ll have money won’t you?’, and I said ‘Hopefully Tom’. Well he said, ‘Well, take it out then and pay me when you can.’. Of course then there was the wool boom and I was actually able to pay… they just did that sort of thing so they must have had a bit of faith in the fellows. (T1S1)

This sort of assistance should not be underestimated as it meant that settlers could quickly improve their productivity with the increased efficiencies that suitable machinery and equipment facilitated. As has been explained earlier, the equipment that the settlers came with was very limited. The broader social support for the soldier settlers was also expressed through offers of practical help from qualified workers in town: They seemed to have a pretty good relationship with the people in town because I can remember that people that worked in, like mechanics, and people that actually worked in jobs in town they came out there and gave

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their time… Some of them turned up with their tools, and other people turned up out there with a welding plant. They just seemed to get on well with the people and they had a pretty good relationship with the town. (T1S2)

The settlers were able to capitalise on a series of fortunate circumstances and establish themselves. Ultimately, the experiences of the settlers resulted in a very strong sense of connection that persisted over time. Many of them talk of the “special sort of relationship there, between the settlers” (T1S1) and that “you wouldn’t find a better group, it would be nearly impossible” (T11S1). Helping each other through the various challenges was a central feature of the community and a resounding sentiment through the data is the idea that “you were never ever on your own if you ever got into trouble” (T1S1). This sense of belonging and support was enough to bring one of the elderly soldier settlers to tears upon remembering it, even years later: When I left the district, I had to retire early, sell out, on account of my wife’s illness, and the people got together and gave me a send-off. I wear the watch today that they gave me…and I think that actually I should have given them something…The point about it is I have a little penny on my, on my watch key, which says ‘1949’. That’s my lucky year, to meet so many good people in that particular year…ah, [pause] cut me off for a minute, I’ve gone a bit… (T7S2)

The settler’s voice is heavy with emotion as he asks for the tape to be stopped. The tape is turned off and then restarted (after an indeterminate time) with the same speaker moving on to a different subject. The public expression of emotion would likely have sat uncomfortably with the soldier settler given the cultural expectations of his generation and associated notions of masculinity in the Australian context. The fact that recounting the feeling of friendship and support many years later still evokes a response such as this speaks to the powerful connections made between the soldier settlers at Goolhi.

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Encountering the State

He never even took his hat off! (T5S1)

The final theme of the stories to be examined here is the way in which the soldier settlers experienced the state, as, as the successful applicants, they were required to submit to a regime of surveillance and control under the conditions of the scheme. Given the problems with the policy outcomes after World War I, this was seen as integral to avoiding similar failure rates. In particular, the first year of a settler’s occupation was regarded as crucial to their success and so a ‘plan of development’ was sought for each block and “operations were closely supervised by the Department’s senior local officer, the District Surveyor” and “frequent and regular inspections of each holding were made by Departmental field officers” (Harris 1961, p. 79). Administratively, in NSW, work connected with War Service Land Settlement was integrated with the Department of Lands, with the Minister for Lands (advised by the Closer Settlement Advisory Board) overseeing twelve Land Board districts that were each under the control of a District Surveyor, whom in turn had a number of local field staff (Harris 1961, p. 72). This represented significant bureaucracy and administration. Financial advances were made to the settlers for stock, plant and equipment and settlers had to apply for each of these, which was a slow process: What you had to, in those days, if you wanted to buy something, you’d have a look around and find what you wanted and then you’d have to get in touch with the District Surveyor and tell him you’d found the horse or the whatever it was, or a milking cow, and then you’d go to the fellow and tell him that you’d got permission from the District Surveyor to buy the article or whatever it was, and then filled in the necessary paperwork, posted it off and with a bit of luck the fellow that you bought it off he’d have to probably wait six weeks before you got your money! (T1S2)

Indeed, all of the stories of experiences with state administration were stories of frustration. The soldier settlers were also provided with an allowance to assist with the building of a home after earlier plans for the

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Crown to carry out all property improvements such as housing, fencing and the provision of water supplies was abandoned due to the inability of the government to obtain suitable contractors to complete the works (Harris 1961, p. 124). In 1950 the allowance for the erection of a residence was £2000 (Harris 1961, p. 125) including a £150 advance for the erection of a temporary dwelling that would be eventually used as a garage (Harris 1961, p. 77). The state made available “standard plans and specifications of suitable type dwellings” (Harris 1961, p. 77) as the type and size of housing suitable for assistance was limited. Whilst some of the settlers did manage to make use of these allowances, some did not: S1 (male):

We could spend so much on a house and most of them were ready-cut, there were only a couple of different styles on the place, I think there were three…anyway of course we tried, when we got this big wool price stuff Pat and I applied for the money to build a house and then they said we had enough to build our own and this went on and time went on and time went on then old Stokesy, the Director, Stokes, the boss fellow from Tamworth… S2 (female): [interrupting] …came into our shed, the kitchen part – and he never even took his hat off! – and he looked into the bedroom and said, ‘Huh, the mosquito net‘s collecting the dust.’. Just like that! He didn’t give us the money. S1: He wouldn’t give us the money, the money to build us a house. Oh well, [I said] I’ll build one ourselves and we did. S3: But you lived in the shed for a while? S1: For five years. (T5S1)

The practicality of the policy at the ground level was not always apparent. The requirement to apply within a certain timeframe of occupation of the block often brought added difficulty, particularly given the weather conditions and an unavailability of builders and equipment. The settlers “couldn’t get a builder, you couldn’t get roofing nails, you couldn’t even buy an old fuel stove” and when the settlers took delivery of the pre-cut

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houses, the floods meant that construction was delayed and the timber was damaged: Well, he got word that the ready-cut home had arrived on the trucks in Gunnedah so I took my truck in and … I got home with mine and the weather looked pretty threatening so they… dumped it there and went back and got the rest of it …and it was about 7 months before they could get that up to the house to unload it and that. Yeah, it was a green iron-bark, well a hardwood, and they were all warped and twisted like propellers. Wasn’t real easy to move around, that’s for sure. I think most of the houses there they were already cut and they were done out of timber and they were pretty basic. In one way I wasn’t sorry that I didn’t put one of them up because the white ants got into a lot of them afterwards. (T4S1)

Even at a much smaller scale, there were frustrations. When one of the settlers applied to purchase a refrigerator after making do with a meat safe, he was rejected as “at that stage the Silent Nights were coming in and they said that was a luxury item and it wasn’t allowed to me, so my brother took pity on me and bought one for me!” (T7S2). The power of the state was therefore felt at the micro-level at Goolhi during the early years as a condition for their settlement of the land. The settlers did not enjoy operating under the surveillance of the District Surveyor and it didn’t take long for the relationship to become strained. Some of the settlers received stock from the station in the ballot of stock and equipment that was conducted early on and holding and moving stock was particularly difficult in the undeveloped, unfenced country. In these trying conditions, it was an affront when the state official challenged the settler’s autonomy and questioned his work: We weren’t there for that long and next thing we get word from the District Surveyor and he wanted us to muster our sheep… and you know we had all, you know, grass and thistles and we only had an old set of net and yards and that’s all we had and we struggled with them and got them into the yard and that and when I got there, I turned up, Keith got his in first and then I went and got mine, ‘cause mine weren’t that far away, and put them back in, put them into the yards and the old District

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Surveyor said oh, he said, ‘No need to count the sheep…I can see by the way you’re handling your stock that you’re experienced’ and all that sort of thing and I, (laughing) very politely I said, ‘You’re going to count these sheep, you’re going to count them one, two, three. You can’t count them’, I said, ‘You can’t count them in three’s or five’s, you’re still going to count them…There’s six hundred and twenty-three of them and there’s a stag there you can have for a killer if you like. (T261)

Strict compliance to the rules became the settler’s only form of resistance.

5.6

There for the Ride

I remember violets all under that tank. (T4S1)

There is a clear distinction between the accounts of the early years of the Goolhi soldier settlement as given by the children of the settlers compared with the settlers themselves. The accounts by the adults (at the time of settlement) centre upon their place in the processes of the settlement and the realities of farming in a harsh environment. By contrast, the memories from those who were children at the time of settlement are concerned with more day-to-day experiences, such as stories of play, how they got to school, who the teachers were and the number and names of family pets and horses. The interviews in which these experiences are given were conducted in groups, and there is a strong sense of connection and shared memory underscored by friendly laughing and teasing. The memories are more strongly phenomenal than the adult accounts, for example the first memory of Goolhi recounted as “we just turned up there one night, it was dark” and the strongly descriptive account of one (then) child’s first memory of Goolhi: There was this old car and the girl was skinny as a broom, with a red pleated, red skirt on with straps over it. I can still remember, as plain as anything, because Dad had said, ‘Here we are’, you know, and she had to wait and let us go through and shut the gate. I can still see it, you had

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this really old square car…my very first thing on Goolhi, I still remember all you could see was the old wooden gate and Plains grass. (T10S1)

As a group they share stories of similar small memories and goodnaturedly argue over the names of horses (“…no, the old sulky horse Jack, he was chestnut with a white blaze” [T10S2]) or teachers. Often animals are a feature, such as this memory of the floods: When the water came up, I opened the door and there was a blue cattle dog and a blue-tongued lizard…then when I went into the storeroom there, went back to get the flour, and there was a big black snake curled on the top! (T10S1)

There is a lot of laughing about their shared experience of school and the different ways in which they got there each day. Some rode horses or a sulky but for some it was a long walk: We had to cross the log to get to school, and walk home for dinner and walk back. When the creek went down you could walk across the stones but when the creek was up you had to use the log. It was an old log that had fallen across the creek. If it was too high, you had to walk the long way ‘round. (T10S1)

There is a shared sense of pride in their fortitude as children and a strong sense of the fun they had: We never had so much fun in our life, it was so wet we couldn’t really take the sulky so we had to take the horses and we’d go through every waterhole and splash water everywhere. [laughing] (T10S1)

Ultimately they communicate a strong sense of connection and shared history, and clearly admire their parents and their situation: It’s still all there, if you stripped away TV and ways of getting around… everyone would toughen up [to be] as morally as strong and physically as strong, it’s all still there. If we came here at that age we would have done it too. We would have taken on the world, we tried to. (T10S2)

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It is important to include these recollections, as it speaks to the intergenerational effects of the policy. The conditions of settlement not only imbued the adults with a sense of community and achievement, but significantly also framed the early lives and sense of belonging of the children that grew up at Goolhi. The lived experience of this policy had profound effects upon the lives of those that enacted it on the ground.

5.7

Conclusion

Moment One represents a particular high point in the articulation of state goals and their explicit expression in policy priorities in the Australian context. Combined with the broader setting of strong state support and protection of agriculture, these soldier settlement schemes are clear examples of the ways in which the state instigated processes that privileged particular social and economic forms. As the site of expression, farming provides a useful overlap of economic and social outcomes and the ways in which these settlers were able to enact cultural ideals meant that the orientation of their lifeworld was clear. By working hard to bring what was seen as unproductive land into production and to build a tight-knit community of small-scale farmers and their families, these settlers were able to construct identities and ways of life that clearly aligned with broader cultural systems of value. As is demonstrated by these in-depth stories of this time, these settlers took on significant personal hardships in the enaction of state goals. The ways in which the state provided for particular conditions of possibility were material in this instance, but leveraged off dominant cultural ideals to ensure that these conditions were also economic, social and political. Both the socio-cultural-historical conditions of the emergence of and participation in economic activity outlined here and the actual processes involved in the settlers’ embodiment of cultural identities and ideals provide further evidence of the social and cultural embeddedness of markets. These findings are deepened via an examination of the multi-scalar factors that led to positive outcomes at Goolhi in the post-War period and will be explored in the next chapter.

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References Allen, M. (2015). Policing a free society: Drunkenness and liberty in colonial New South Wales. History Australia, 12(2), 143. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14490854.2015.11668574. Harris, T. D. (1961). Soldier settlement in Australia: Post-World War II experience (Unpublished dissertation). University of New England, Armidale, NSW. Rural Reconstruction Commission. (1944). Second Report: Settlement and Employment of Returned Men on the Land . Canberra, ACT: Government Printery. War Service Land Settlement Division. (1948). War Service Land Settlement proposal: Report by Field Officer, GOOLHI Estate, Emerald Hill near Coonabarabran [War Service Land Settlement Scheme. Box 17], Series SP777/1. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved from https://recordsea rch.naa.gov.au/scripts/AutoSearch.asp?Number=7938422&O=I. Zukerman, W. (2009). Australia’s battle with the bunny. ABC Science. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/08/2538860.htm.

6 The Luck of the Long Boom: Epilogue to Moment One

The outcomes of the soldier settlement scheme at Goolhi were a result of a complex mix of factors at multiple levels of scale. The particular combination of macro-, meso- and micro-contexts meant that the community at Goolhi was consolidated quickly and held up as an example of a successful outcome of the soldier settlement scheme. This chapter provides an analysis of these various factors leading to the noteworthy ‘success’ of the scheme at Goolhi as a way of investigating and demonstrating the critical interrelatedness of contexts in the provision of particular settings at the micro-level. The focus is on the period after World War II known as the ‘Long Boom’ and this chapter acts as an ‘epilogue’ to Moment One before the focus moves on to the development of contemporary setting for Moment Two. The success of the War Services Land Settlement scheme after World War II was measured simply as the inverse of its failure, with official failure rates significantly lower than those following the World War I scheme where failure was indicated when a soldier settler left the farm. As can be seen from Table 6.1, the failure rate for the scheme post World War II was significantly lower than that after World War I. The analysis of the earlier failures provided by the investigation of the Rural © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_6

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Table 6.1 Total farm allotments and failure rates of soldier settlement scheme by state

State New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Western Australia Tasmania Australia

Total settlers allotted farms post-WWI

Failures among original settlers (%) post-WWI

Total settlers allotted farms post-WWII

Failures among original settlers (%) post-WWII

9,302

29

3,057

11 (approx.)

11,140 6,031 4,082

17 40 33

5,926 470 1,022

4 10 (approx.) 9.8

5,030

30

1,010

10 (approx.)

1,976 37,561

61 29

551 12,036

28 10.11 (approx.)

Source of data Dennis et al. (2009)

Reconstruction Commission (1944) had seen a direct response to the major challenges and this time efforts were made to ensure that land was of sufficient quality, the holdings of a viable size, the applicants were experienced and/or sufficiently trained and that sufficient financial and technical support was provided by the government post-settlement (Dennis et al. 2009, p. 2). This more thorough planning and administration combined with favourable post-war economic conditions resulted in a greatly reduced failure rate overall. This chapter aims to provide a more complex understanding of what success (rather than non-failure) meant at Goolhi and the multi-scalar factors of this success.

6.1

Early Success at Goolhi

Despite (or because of ) the testing start, Goolhi’s subsequent and relatively rapid success both in economic and social terms was often held up as an exemplar of the merits of the settlement scheme. For instance, an article entitled These Soldier Settlers Show What Can Be Done (1954, p. 34), detailed Goolhi’s “flourishing community of about 200” and the

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fact that as of 1954, over half of the soldier settlers had repaid their commitments to the government, 90% lived in their own comfortable homes and the “rest are in a healthy financial position, well on the way to independence”. The article praises the “fine community spirit” that had built a school, tennis courts, cricket club and community hall, with funds raised by the settlers themselves (1954, p. 34). In a later series of articles by the then Minister for Transport, Goolhi is held out as an example of a “very thriving community” where ex-servicemen were “able to wrest a comfortable living from this country” and, assisted further by the Department’s construction of all-weather access roads, “stories of prosperity are common”. Demonstrating the firm entwinement of social outcomes with economic development and land settlement aims, the Minister argued that “more important to the State is the production which these sums represent…their prosperity is a measure of the increase in primary production” (Wetherell 1955, p. 5) and thus Goolhi stands out as a successful example of this interrelationship. The implementation of government policy directly affected the formation and success of this community, with descendants of these settlers still living in-place almost seventy years later. Success of the scheme at Goolhi can therefore be seen through two lenses. Economically, the majority of settlers were able to survive on their farms and even to achieve financial independence. This was part of a broader overall success of the scheme in economic terms. Socially, there is evidence in the stories recounted in the last chapter of the relatively rapid development of social capital at Goolhi and the community continued to thrive until the 1980s when broader structural factors began to have an impact. Overall, the community was a significant success for at least three decades, where success is understood as soldier settlers and their families remaining on their farms and the continuation of community events and activities. The subsequent dislocation of the community, which will be discussed in later chapters, was ultimately due to broader structural change than any success or failure of the soldier settlement scheme itself.

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Multi-scalar Factors of Success

Despite the greatly reduced overall failure rates of the scheme both nationally and by state, the particular success of the community at Goolhi was not an experience that was repeated across all soldier settlement areas (see, for example, Sparkes 1996). The soldier settlers were fortunate to experience a complex interaction of factors that contributed to their success and it is important to examine the interrelation of these elements across multiple levels of scale and across time.

6.2.1 International At an international level, there were important factors that influenced the economic climate of the post-war years. A global economic boom, likely a cyclical phenomenon associated with low levels of investment during the period 1930–1945 and related to the release of pent up demand during the war period, coincided with the allied countries’ reconstruction policies that aimed to achieve full employment and to avoid a return to restrictive trade and currency practices (Maddock 1987, p. 97). This was formalised in the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 that set up an international financial order that facilitated cross-border receipts and payments between the trading nations that signed up to it (Endres 2005), of which Australia was one. In addition, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 contributed to a great increase in world demand for many basic materials, but in particular for wool. By 1950–1951, the average price of wool had risen to more than eight times its average during World War II and along with high export prices for most Australian farm products associated with world food shortages after the war, contributed significantly to prosperity in the Australia farming community (Gruen 1990, p. 20). At Goolhi, this resulted in an early consolidation of income that allowed the settlers to repay debt and greatly improve their standard of living in a short period of time given the timing of the settlement. In NSW, soldier settlements were established from 1945 (Harris 1961) and in many ways it was fortunate

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timing that Goolhi settlers were in place to take advantage of the international economic conditions, and in particular the boom in wool prices, given the farm types at Goolhi. This timing was an important factor that provided an early and solid foundation upon which both economic and social success could then be built. Other soldier settlements established earlier in the time period struggled to establish themselves as quickly as that at Goolhi.

6.2.2 National 6.2.2.1 Economic Policy Priorities These international conditions impacted the economic climate in Australia and influenced the ways in which the Australian government chose to manage the economy both during the immediate post-war years and the long boom period. A balance of payments crisis in 1952 led to significant effects in the agricultural sector through government efforts to increase exports. Government policy was chiefly aimed at increasing output and government action included tax concessions to stimulate developmental expenditure, accelerated depreciation allowances and generous approaches to pricing policies in farm industries where it was in a position to influence the prices received by farmers on the home market, such as wheat (Gruen 1990, p. 21). The driving idea during the 1950s and 1960s was that of ‘development’, which involved the ‘natural’ evolution of the economy through closer occupation of the continent and the subsequent move from extensive to intensive land use—a notion that included government sponsorship of closer settlement schemes such as that for returned servicemen—and had broad political support, resulting in substantial capital formulation in Australian agriculture and output increases averaging about 3–3.5% per annum during most of the 1950s and 1960s (Gruen 1990, p. 23). State goals therefore entailed explicit and significant support for agriculture which had direct stabilising effects on producers at the micro-level. Growth in the agricultural sector was part of broader national economic growth and was tied to the privileged place, it held in national

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policy priorities. Nationally, an annual growth rate of over 4.2% was maintained throughout the 1950s, rising to 5.1% through the 1960s, with this period characterised by full employment, higher productivity and improved earnings (Macintyre 2016, p. 211). A key part of farm policy at this time was to ensure sectoral stabilisation through a focus on farm income, with a growing focus on increasing exports in order to earn income to pay the growing import bill (Botterill 2016, p. 672). By the mid-twentieth century, agriculture in Australia had become such a capital-intensive industry that it became “a problem involving the investment priorities of the government” (Shaw 1990, p. 16) but ongoing support for it was ensured by the ‘agricultural exceptionalism’ that had developed in national policy (Botterill 2016, p. 669). It is important to note that the privileged position of agriculture that these measures in part represent was influenced by an electoral system that effectively gave greater weight to rural votes (Green 2001, p. 68), a rural gerrymander that ensured the power of rural interests within the political system, further strengthened by the central place of agriculture to the nation’s economy at the time. The agricultural boom of the 1950s and 1960s came to be seen as a golden age of the “full flowering of the closer settlement ideology and the pioneer legend” (McCann 2005, p. 35). The intersection of economic and political primacy ensured state support for agriculture and this had direct effects on outcomes at Goolhi. The period to the 1970s represented a time of considerable farm prosperity and this was echoed at Goolhi as the community continued to thrive. The first measure of the population at Goolhi in the national census in 1954 recorded thirty-one dwellings and a total population of 132 people. By 1961, the census reports forty-one dwellings and a total population of 178 people (ABS 1961, p. 25). In a community of this size, an increase such as this has considerable impacts. It is estimated that during this period there would have been at least forty-six full-time permanent farmers plus sharefarmers, contractors and casuals working at Goolhi (W. O’Gorman, personal communication, 2016) as the impact of these policies was realised. The community at Goolhi benefited from the policy priorities of the period as a direct impact of macro-state settings.

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6.2.2.2 Access to Resources Another important factor in increased farm productivity and prosperity during this period was the rapid development and dissemination of technology into the agricultural sector. Although these advances were happening at a global level, the adaptation of advances to the Australian context was integral to their success and the government played an important role in this through the funding of research and development. Improved pastures, increased use of fertilisers, the development of improved crop varieties, and the development of rabbit eradication measures were all important factors in increased productivity (Freebairn 1987, p. 141). As participants in the soldier settler scheme, the settlers at Goolhi were able to take advantage of these advances through their interactions with administrators and surveyors. Every settler was required to have a Development Plan determined by agreement between the Closer Settlement Advisory Board and the Commonwealth Director of Land Settlement (Harris 1961, p. 126). In addition, given national (and international) shortages of building and fencing materials, settlers were also assisted through the Department of Lands’ active advocacy for and success in obtaining priority for settlers needs and imports and up until 1952 were provided as a priority to soldier settlers and at cost plus freight and handling (Harris 1961, p. 127). The timing also coincided with the growth of mechanisation in agriculture, as indicated by the increase in the number of tractors on rural holdings from 41,943 in 1939 to 242,348 in 1960, with a peak in annual increase in 1951–1952 when over 20,000 additional tractors were recorded (ABS 1961, p. 942). Thus the timing of the Goolhi settlement proved fortunate as they were able to take early advantage of the introduction of rabbit control measures, improvements in agricultural science and technology and obtain priority access to the limited supplies that were available. As such, the conditions of possibility at the farm level were influenced by broader state settings that not only assisted with the provision of land and basic income in the establishment phase, but also skewed access to resources that had a direct impact on chances of success, at a time during which opportunity for improvements was high.

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6.2.2.3 Improvements in Policy Design A further significant factor in the success at Goolhi was the design and implementation of the War Services Land Act (1945) itself and the ways in which the programme was changed in response to the failure of the soldier settlement schemes after World War I. The improved design of the programme was underpinned by some key principles learned through the detailed findings of the Rural Reconstruction Commission, in particular the Second Report (1944). The five key principles were (from Harris 1961): 1. Settlement to be based on opportunities available in types of production in which there are sound economic prospects; 2. Only suitable applicants to be selected for land settlement; 3. Holdings to be sufficient in size for efficient operation and a reasonable income; 4. An eligible person is not to be precluded from settlement on the grounds of a lack of capital alone; 5. Adequate guidance and technical advice to be available to settlers through agricultural extension services. Each of these principles was addressed in the design of the War Services Land Settlement Act (1945) and its implementation. The rigorous identification of past mistakes was used to inform policy design (Boadle and Whitford 2012, p. 217) and each had an impact at Goolhi and overall. Up until 1952/1953 these principles were adhered to despite pressure from public opinion, pressure groups and governmental authorities (Harris 1961, p. 128) and it is clear that the implementation at Goolhi, including the consideration of local factors through the inclusion of local field reports, resulted in viable and productive blocks at the time of the scheme. The improved design was not the only factor with regard to the programme’s administration as again fortunate timing of the settlement of Goolhi was significant in amplifying the positive aspects of the scheme. The allowance for housing was periodically increased from £750 in 1945, to £2000 by 1950 when the Goolhi settlement was established,

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then cut back significantly in 1952/1953 to £300 (Harris 1961, p. 125). The cuts in the 1952/1953 year also saw a sacrifice of quality blocks over an increased quantity as pressure to increase the number of settlers at the lowest price began to be ceded to (Sparkes 1996, p. 202). Similarly, advances for utility trucks, shearing plant and working capital were eliminated in all but very special circumstances by 1952/1953 (Harris 1961, p. 130), so in many respects the Goolhi settlement was very well-timed to take advantage of the most generous moments of the scheme. Overall, the soldier settlement at Goolhi was fortunately timed to take full advantage of the conditions surrounding its enactment at the national level. Settlers were in-place to take advantage of a number of favourable aspects of the political and economic context: the prevailing economic conditions, political support and related agricultural policy priorities of the state, improved research and development in agricultural practices; and improvements in the design and allowances of the soldier settlement scheme. These were important elements of the success at Goolhi and point to the complex relationship between macro-settings and contexts and how these are experienced at the micro-level.

6.2.3 Local In addition to those national influences on the scheme’s enactment at Goolhi, there are a number of local factors that can also be seen to have had a significant impact. The quality of the land at Goolhi was an important factor, given the location of the settlement on primarily fertile black soils of the Liverpool Plains, considered one of the State’s most productive agricultural areas (Abbs and Littleboy 1998, p. 3). This area is now recognised as one of the most productive agricultural areas in Australia based upon a soil type that has a natural chemical fertility and a high capacity to hold water after rain or irrigation, as well as the location within a zone providing good natural rainfall (600–800 mm per annum in an average season) and access to good quality groundwater for irrigation (Briggs and Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology 2009, p. 1). The land had largely not been cultivated before

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the soldier settlement (Abbs and Littleboy 1998, p. 3) and had therefore not had the fertile soil structures and nutrients diminished through prior farming. Despite initially not advised for wheat production due to the inability of the early wheat varieties to sustain growth in the soil type, advances in crop development meant that higher yield became possible with the introduction of new wheat varieties (Duggin et al. 1984). Highly localised variables therefore had an impact on the ongoing success of farming in the area. As has been mentioned, increased farm mechanisation was also a factor in production increases in the post-war period and the way in which this uptake occurred at Goolhi was in part patterned by local factors. The impact of mechanisation was significant and increased the share of farm output spent on non-farm inputs and this increased capitalisation heightened the dependence of the rural sector on the rest of the economy (Freebairn 1987, p. 139). The 1950s and 1960s saw a greatly increased output-to-labour ratio as increased mechanisation released more land to cultivation, improved harvesting and transportation, and increased the speed of production timelines (Freebairn 1987, p. 140) and all of these impacts were felt at Goolhi. The significant point here is that local social capital was an important factor in the uptake of mechanisation at Goolhi. The informal capital provision by local businesses that allowed settlers to take possession of and use productivity-improving equipment before settlers had the income or equity to purchase them outright was a significant factor in early success at Goolhi. This social capital was an indirect result of broader political support for the returned soldier settlement programme and indeed of the valorisation of the identity of ‘farmer’ and ‘soldier’ as expressed at a local level. This therefore represents a notable and tangible way in which economic action and outcomes occur in dialogue with broader cultural systems of value. Social capital played an important role in the social success of the community at Goolhi and the ways in which it was built by the soldier settlement community were in part a result of the localised conditions relating to both the geographical location and related isolation, as well as the geographical dispersion of blocks. The geographic location of the settlement and relative isolation from other communities, amplified by the lack of adequate road structure and the timing of extreme

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local weather events such as the floods in 1950/1951, meant that the community created opportunities for social connection amongst themselves. In order to overcome difficulties such as the isolation and weather events, the community members formed mutually beneficial relationships to coordinate action, such as in the coordinated effort to provide food during the floods or in the coordinated sourcing of a building and a teacher to form a school. In addition, the geographical dispersion of the blocks conveniently located the recreation area at the centre of an overall circular-shaped settlement which meant that residents were equally drawn from the surrounding areas to the central meeting point. Neighbouring settlements (for example that at Ghoolendaadi) tended to longer, more rectangular overall shapes that meant that residents at the outer edges were often drawn to larger neighbouring villages, rather than to a relatively equidistant meeting point like that at Goolhi. These localised conditions contributed to the rapid and cohesive social improvements achieved early in the settlement that quickly became integral to the social fabric of the area. There were three significant examples. Firstly, the school was established in 1951 through the actions of the soldier settlers (Shumack 1999, p. 87) and remained in operation until 1986. This provided vital education to the many young children in the area and was a central core of social activity, including an active Parents and Citizens Association, inter-district sporting competitions, and many social activities such as concerts and dances, as well as celebrations such as those for Empire Day (Shumack 1999). Secondly, the community hall and tennis courts built by the coordinated actions of the soldier settlers provided a central place for connection. This was the case for many rural communities, and as such the community hall became the “twentieth century symbol of community spirit and connectedness” (McCann 2005, p. 36). Soon after the first four tennis courts were built with clay from one of the settler’s blocks, another two were added and the tennis courts became the central focus of social interaction for the community with games every Sunday, with the Tennis Club remaining in operation until 1998 (Shumack 1999, p. 94). Third, local engagement with more formalised social organisations became an important driver of social connections and events. The Goolhi and District Progress Association was formed in 1953 and became the

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organisation “that worked for the betterment of the district” with formal membership, elected offices, meetings and finances (Shumack 1999, pp. 90–92). The Country Women’s Association established a Goolhi branch in 1951 and was an important element of social life for women in the area. A Goolhi branch of the Junior Farmers Club (an outreach programme of the Department of Agriculture) was formed in 1954, with the branch going on to win the most successful club award in 1962 and local members, children of the soldier settlers, receiving Star Junior Farmer awards in the mid-1960s (Shumack 1999, p. 95). Each of these examples provided more formally organised opportunities for social connection but also for the coordination and celebration of a local Goolhi identity. In this consideration of the development of localised social capital, it is important to note that this cohesion likely also reflected the shared structural position of the settlers. Their social and political position not just as returned servicemen but also as young, white, (and predominantly male) Australian citizens was a pre-condition of their suitability for selection as part of the state-articulated requirements for the programme. Whilst their economic position was mediated somewhat by the egalitarian nature of the scheme that precluded lack of capital as a prerequisite for participation, this shared social and political identity provided a foundation for the strong likelihood of cultural overlap between the settlers. As inheritors of the cultural ideals explored in earlier chapters, the settlers were united in their embodiment of a complex overlay of brave returned soldier, stoic pioneer and noble farmer. Whilst these are not determining identities, the ways in which the settlers were firstly given access to these opportunities and then the ways in which they perceived, framed and then acted on these opportunities, remain embedded in the shared inheritance of these cultural norms and the ways in which the community developed at Goolhi at the local level. This has relevance to their standing in the broader local community too, as the related social status within broader social systems of value provided the foundation upon which their relationship within the broader community developed also. This had direct benefits, both material (the provision of credit and machinery that

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enabled a more rapid consolidation of profits), practical (the local knowledge and assistance from existing neighbours) and social (the broader acceptance and welcome of district and town residents).

6.3

Conclusion

This examination of the multi-scalar factors that led to success at Goolhi brings to light the multifaceted processes inherent in social action. The conditions of possibility at Goolhi were fundamentally impacted by state settings but the multiple contexts that mediate and intersect in actual outcomes worked together in the processes of change at the micro-level. The interrelationship of particular state settings (that supported and privileged agricultural forms and were expressed in and through soldier settlement land schemes and heavy industry support) with elements of the international, national and local contexts of action, deeply shaped the outcomes at Goolhi. Whilst the impact of these processes on particular households was highlighted through the examination of Moment One in the previous chapter, this chapter mapped the links between these lived consequences at Goolhi with broader socio-historical processes. The next chapter begins the focus on Moment Two with an examination of the development of the matrix of ideals that led to the deeply changed policy settings that inform contemporary experience at Goolhi.

References Abbs, K., & Littleboy, M. (1998). Recharge estimation for the Liverpool Plains (New South Wales, Australia). Australian Journal of Soil Research, 36 (2), 335–357. https://doi.org/10.1071/S97049. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (1961). Year Book Australia, 1961 (Cat. No. 1301.0). Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ DetailsPage/1301.01961?OpenDocument. Boadle, D., & Whitford, T. (2012). Learning from past mistakes: The rural reconstruction commission’s use of history in Australian public policy

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making during the 1940s. Rural Society, 21(3), 210–218. https://doi.org/ 10.5172/rsj.2012.21.3.210. Botterill, L. C. (2016). Agricultural policy in Australia: Deregulation, bipartisanship and agrarian sentiment. Australian Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 667–682. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2016.1239567. Briggs, H. S. & Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology. (2009). Submission to the Senate Enquiry into the impacts of mining in the Murray Darling Basin. Submitted September 2009, retrieved from https:// www.aph.gov.au/. Dennis, P., Grey, J., Morris, E., Prior, R., & Bou, J. (Eds.). (2009). Soldier settlement. In The Oxford companion to Australian military history (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ acref/9780195517842.001.0001. Duggin, J. A., Allison, P. N., Sim, I., Urwin, N., & New South Wales. Department of Environment and Planning. (1984). The natural grasslands of the Liverpool Plains, New South Wales: A report based on original research. Sydney, NSW: Department of Environment and Planning. Endres, A. M. (2005). Great architects of international finance: The Bretton Woods era. New York: Routledge. Freebairn, J. W. (1987). Natural resource industries. In R. Maddock & I. W. McLean (Eds.), The Australian economy in the long run. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Green, A. (2001). Bush politics and the rise and fall of the Country/National Party. In S. Lockie & L. Bourke (Eds.), Rurality bites. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press. Gruen, F. (1990). Economic development and agriculture since 1945. In D. B. Williams (Ed.), Agriculture in the Australian economy (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Sydney University Press in association with Oxford University Press. Harris, T. D. (1961). Soldier settlement in Australia: Post-World War II experience (Unpublished dissertation). University of New England, Armidale, NSW. Macintyre, S. (2016). A concise history of Australia (4th ed.). Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. Maddock, R. (1987). The long boom 1940–1970. In R. Maddock & I. W. McLean (Eds.), The Australian economy in the long run. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McCann, J. (2005). History and memory in Australia’s wheatlands. In G. Davison & M. Brodie (Eds.), Struggle country: The rural ideal in twentieth century Australia. Clayton, VIC: Monash University ePress.

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Rural Reconstruction Commission. (1944). Second Report: Settlement and Employment of Returned Men on the Land . Canberra, ACT: Government Printery. Shaw, A. G. L. (1990). Colonial Settlement 1788–1945. In D. B. Williams (Ed.), Agriculture in the Australian economy (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Sydney University Press in association with Oxford University Press. Shumack, E. (1999). Going bush to Goolhi. Gunnedah, NSW: Elva Shumack. Sparkes, R. (1996). ‘Forty acres and a crow’: A comparison of soldier settlement in Australia after the two World Wars (Unpublished dissertation). University of New England, Armidale, NSW. These soldiers show what can be done. (1954, 2 April). Land (Sydney, NSW: 1911–1954), p. 34. Retrieved from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10692 0213. Wetherell, E. (1955, October 4). Tent life to affluence in a few years. Muswellbrook Chronicle (NSW: 1898–1955), p. 5. Retrieved from https://nla.gov.au/ nla.news-article107759245.

7 Unpicking the Stitches: Dynamics of Change

Australia has undergone significant economic, social and cultural change in the period since World War II and the long economic boom of the 1960s. This was critically influenced by policy responses to the global stagflation of the 1970s and the considerable changes brought about by increased immigration and the opening up of the economy. Over time, the changes aimed at economic outcomes have had significant social and cultural impacts and within this reorganisation of national priorities, agriculture and farming have also experienced a considerable shift. The farm sector became a prime site of economic reform and the position of Australian farmers during this time period is starkly different to that explored in the previous chapters. Changes include the removal of industry protection and centralised marketing and pricing arrangements. The social consequences of reform have been minimised or ignored through a political reframing of farming that recasts it as a purely economic or business activity defined by criteria of efficient use of resources, productivity and risk management. These changes have shifted the available options for farmers as they respond to a changed state posture and a diminished significance in social and cultural contexts. This chapter examines the changes in the development of the matrix © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_7

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of ideals that shape the contemporary context for an in-depth look at Moment Two.

7.1

Changing Economy, Changing Paradigm

Australia enjoyed a prolonged period of prosperity after World War II that spanned more than two decades. This period, commonly referred to as the ‘Long Boom’, was characterised by a cycle of growth driven by increasing investment in mass manufacturing production, full employment and rising incomes that in turn promoted mass consumption and rapid population growth (Broomhill 2008, p. 226). Through the 1950s and early 1960s, inflationary pressures were largely controlled through government policy to impose periods of deflation through wage and price freezes, tax increases and tightened monetary policy, yet from the mid1960s these measures became more difficult to implement in industrial democracies such as Australia (Dyster and Meredith 2012, pp. 232– 233). From the early 1970s, there was a significant downturn in the global economy and there emerged associated economic difficulties in Australia given its structural reliance on basic commodity production. This continuing dependent position of Australia in the international economy meant that it was vulnerable to dramatic fluctuations in income and the deterioration of Australia’s terms of trade in part led to a balance of payments crisis in 1980–1 and 1981–2 (Broomhill 2008, p. 21). The Bretton Woods Agreement that had structured the operation of international finance and trade since 1945 broke down and its replacement by various forms of floating exchange rates changed the world economy and Australia’s relationship to it (Whitwell 1993, p. 16). In 1974, the major industrial economies entered a severe recession, ostensibly triggered by the oil price shock of 1973 that acted as a catalyst for ubiquitous economic deceleration, and whilst this did slow economic growth, it failed to address the underlying causes of inflation, resulting in the previously unseen phenomenon of stagflation (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 235). This coexistence of inflation and unemployment was keenly felt in Australia with a number of significant economic indicators reversed

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during this period. Unemployment was on a scale unprecedented in the post-war period yet a ‘wages explosion’ occurred in 1973–1974; industrial disputation was at record levels; the scale of the budget deficit and the size of the public sector borrowing requirement were both unprecedented and there were marked fluctuations in the exchange rate and sudden rises in interest rates (Whitwell 1993, p. 15). The contraction in world trade that occurred in 1975 was the first in the post-war period and continued stationary and sluggish world trade adversely impacted the Australian economy, leading to a slowdown in growth. This was amplified by the oil price rise that in turn reduced the proportion of money that major industrialised nations’ spent on Australian exports (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 242). A second oil price rise in 1979 again slowed global growth rates and Australia’s economic performance worsened, with a reduction in growth, serious deterioration of the current account and the trebling of foreign debt over a short period (Broomhill 2008, p. 231). During this time Australia’s traditional approach to government and economic policy, broadly defined as labourist-protectionism with a focus on the nation-building role of the state (Lloyd 2003, p. 417), came under significant pressure for reform. The economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s therefore provided the impetus for major reform and structural change. The Australian economy went into recession in the early 1980s and the responses of the Hawke-Keating Labor government were mixed, yet marked the beginning of the more market-orientated approach of economic rationalism in Australian economic management. Whilst the introduction of the Prices and Income Accord of 1983 between the state and the trade union movement was an attempt to promote economic recovery with a Keynesian-style expansionist fiscal policy that still attempted to control inflationary wage movements (Broomhill 2008, p. 231), many of the changes instigated by the Labor government were fundamentally different in nature. The floating of the Australian dollar in 1983 and the significant deregulation of the financial sector were critical events that “signalled the demise of the old Australia – regulated, protected… it was the decisive break made by the Hawke-Keating government with Labor dogma and Australian practice” (Kelly 1992, p. 76). These reforms reflected the ideology of ‘economic rationalism’, an approach that draws

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on neoclassical economic theory where “greater efficiency is the sacred goal…increased competition and the unlocking of market forces are the key means to obtain it”, implying a retraction of government intervention in the economy beyond the establishment of a framework in which market efficacy is maximised (Whitwell 1993, p. 10). This has been seen as a thorough renegotiation of the role of the state that was occurring through much of the developed world at the time. Similar programmes of reform had been undertaken in Britain by Prime Minister Thatcher and in the United States by President Reagan (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 266) and notably in New Zealand (see Schwartz 1991), although in Australia there were more concessions made in line with Australia’s social democratic traditions (Redden 2017, p. 10). In Australia, the worsening current account deficit through the 1980s undergirded a sense of crisis that framed economic policy and reinforced the government’s legitimisation of fundamental economic restructuring and widespread liberalisation (Conley 2009, p. 107). Reform led to the corporatisation and/or privatisation of many public enterprises at both the federal and state level, the reduction in protection from imports, easier access to foreign capital and less direct control over the Australian financial and monetary system (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 266). Increasingly, the political discourse was dominated by the drive to international competitiveness to the point at which “all other goals – including social reform, full employment and equity – must await the globalisation of the economy” (Broomhill 2008, p. 232). Globalisation can be seen as “the institutional successor to the development project” that had dominated the post-war period of Keynesian economic management (McMichael and Lawrence 2001, p. 163). As such, it represented a significant renegotiation of the role of the state in Australia. The increasingly important drive towards further globalisation of the Australian economy continued to be enacted through the 1990s as the world entered an economic recession. Recovery from recessions affecting OECD countries at the beginning of the decade was slow, given political upheavals such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, tensions in Eastern Europe and the Gulf War (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 299), as well as the impact of the financial deregulation of the 1980s that resulted in conservative public expenditure in a continued bid to win and retain the

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approval of markets given the new dominance of finance capital (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 295). This had adverse effects in Australia, particularly due to weakening international commodity prices. However an increasing involvement in the expanding economies of East and South Asia, and also China as it began to integrate into the region, significantly helped Australia’s exports (Dyster and Meredith 2012, pp. 299–300). In Australia, political rhetoric continued to reinforce the largely bipartisan support of economic liberalism and globalisation as the most appropriate response to national and global economic pressures. Political messages aimed at ensuring popular support or at least tolerance of constant and often painful economic liberal restructuring and globalisation centred upon three core messages: the unsustainable nature of Australia’s past economic structure and policy responses (importantly including industry protection and state expenditure); the benefits available to everyday Australians if globalisation and a liberalised economy were embraced; and the idea that there was no choice but to pursue globalisation and associated restructures as developments in the world political economy would force adjustment in Australia anyway (Conley 2009, p. 225). The move to neoliberal settings within a globalised economy and the accompanying programme of reform was therefore presented as inevitable, particularly given the bipartisan support for these changes at the time. Beginning most notably and forcibly with Labor Treasurer (and later Prime Minister) Keating’s 1986 public statement that Australia must internationalise or face becoming a ‘banana republic’, and intensifying with the Liberal government’s (1996–2007) embrace of these globalisation goals within their neoliberal agenda, Australia became more and more open to the globalised economy (Broomhill 2008). This was driven in part by external pressures such as the increased power and hegemonic role of the US and its emphasis upon globalisation; the exposure of long-term structural weaknesses in the Australian economy brought about by global economic restructuring; and the increasingly powerful pressure from international corporations, money markets and political institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) to globalise and adopt market-orientated policies in both external and domestic policy spheres (Broomhill 2008, p. 236).

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Microeconomic reform continued to focus on competition as a major economic driver and this was brought to bear across public and private sectors. Government enterprises and utilities were privatised, the rules of the labour market were changed with the breakdown of industry-wide wage-setting and the introduction of individualised contracts, unemployment services were privatised, and the ceding of independence to the Reserve Bank in setting interest rates were all important parts of microeconomic reform aimed at increasing competition at all levels of the economy (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 348). Both external pressures from a global financial market to pursue neoliberal macroeconomic policies, together with domestic policy choice at the microeconomic level, led to an “almost complete policy convergence on neoliberalism” in Australia during this time (Bell 1997, p. 358). Australia’s position in a changing world economy shifted further in the first decade of the twenty-first century, influenced in large part by a sustained resources boom. Substantial macroeconomic reform stalled in the 2000s but incomes rose with historic rises in the terms of trade and mining investment (Fraser 2015, p. 13), with an almost continuous upward trajectory in terms of trade until 2008 due to the resources boom (Conley 2009, p. 95). Australia had weathered the economic unrest of the East Asian Crisis in 1997 surprisingly well given its reliance on the area as a substantial export market, with over half of Australia’s exports going to the region at the time (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 336). From 1991 to 2008, the Australian economy expanded by just under eighty per cent, a record seventeen-year expansion, with growth moderating into the 2000s (Conley 2009, pp. 112–113). External trade was driven by the exceptionally strong performance of the Asian economies that underpinned international demand for Australia’s exports and although Japan’s share of world trade decreased as a result of slower economic growth, China’s external trade doubled its share between 2000 and 2009 due to growing industrialisation and trade liberalisation (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 300). This period of economic growth, largely driven by external forces, was overseen by the Liberal Howard-Costello government and this government undertook a series of policy changes that had significant

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ongoing impacts. Whilst the obvious reforms of liberalisation and ‘de’regulation had already occurred, this period saw a combination of fiscal and social policy change that “consolidated Australian neoliberalism after its initial phase of structural economic reforms” (Redden 2017, p. 9). Significantly, this period saw an extension of state intervention through ‘micro-structuring’ reforms that expanded the state’s sphere of influence through regulatory change from regulation-of -competition (through the economy-wide activity of national regulators), to also include regulationfor-competition, a far more intrusive form of regulation that involves “direct control and prescription of the market behaviour of individual firms, as well as of the operation of the market itself ” (Chester 2008, p. 8). This is an example of ‘roll-back’ and ‘roll-out’ neoliberalism (Peck and Tickell 2002) and points to the more subtle ways in which state power is realised in actual settings. Although little was done during this time to advance ‘de’-regulation or liberalisation, marketisation was advanced through fiscal adjustments that firmly enacted the core neoliberal principle that “people should live their lives through markets” by instituting an asset-based welfare system that linked personal capital and investments with government and finance industry incentives that encouraged self-reliant individualism in newly marketised arenas (Redden 2017, p. 10). This effectively implicates people into the economy in new ways. As an example, the introduction of a non-targeted, non-asset tested First Home Owners Grant in 2000, aimed at increasing entry into the housing market and stimulating market activity, did little to make housing more affordable, indeed has been linked to a decrease in house affordability and ‘leakage’ to middle- and high-income buyers (Kupke and Rossinin 2014, p. 78). The policy has remained largely untargeted and is still in place, an example of “unashamedly enrolling housing policy” for the purposes of promoting home ownership to stimulate purchases that “were likely to have happened without the need of this demand-side subsidy” (Randolph et al. 2013, p. 71). This can be seen not only as a way of enrolling increasing numbers of the public into a heightened political self-interest in national economic management, particularly that favouring capital accumulation in markets, but is also a clear example of Howard’s ‘asset-based welfare’ whereby citizens are encouraged via

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government incentives to “acquire, as a form of investment, appreciating assets that they might later liquidate to fund their welfare needs” (Hay 2013 in Redden 2017, p. 10). This complicates the position of the social actor by fracturing their political and economic position. The ways in which policies of the Liberal Howard-Costello government consolidated Australian neoliberalism by amplifying markets in property, finance, health and education, and by linking personal capital with public funds, had significant effects. A series of changes to taxation, welfare and superannuation policy led to the world’s highest tax expenditures, a situation described as an ‘investor state’ wherein “public revenue is diverted away from egalitarian redistribution and flows to those with private resources to deploy – and flows in proportion to the volume of those resources” (Redden 2017, p. 9). Thus although domestically the proceeds from the once-in-a-generation commodity price boom were used to pay down debt and set against future liabilities as well as some increase in infrastructure investment, a “very substantial amount was spent, including on untargeted transfers (so called middle class welfare) without sufficient regard to the future prospects for servicing those ongoing transfers” (Fraser 2015, p. 7). These regressive yet politicallyuseful expenditures meant that Australia entered the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 with a structurally weak budget underpinned by high government spending (Fraser 2015, p. 8), not to mention the deeper regulatory change that “subtly redefined interrelated roles for the state, welfare, markets and citizens” (Redden 2017, p. 11). These complex realignments represented subtle re-formulations of value by subverting traditional approaches to income redistribution by the state. The GFC resulted in the deepest global recession in seventy-five years and although Australian financial conditions were stressed during this time and the economy slowed, the financial system remained resilient with over 700,000 jobs created in a global context in which over 30 million jobs were lost (Parkinson 2011, p. 100). Australian banks were not able to avoid the global liquidity crisis of 2007, although relatively few of the sub-prime instruments from the United States were known to have been sold to Australians. Once the full weight of the crisis hit in 2008 the central role of financial regulators (the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission,

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the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Commonwealth Treasury) became central to the stabilisation of the banking system through the banning of short-selling equities and by making funds available to the banks as inexpensively as possible (Dyster and Meredith 2012, pp. 356–359). Due to government action in the form of stimulus spending (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 361) and deposit guarantees (Bollen et al. 2015, p. 92), Australia emerged relatively well from the global crisis with low unemployment, solid economic growth, a stable and profitable financial system, and low levels of government debt (Parkinson 2011, p. 100). The GFC exposed serious weaknesses in the global systems of finance and forced an examination of the role of the state in regulating finance and economic management. The Australian case demonstrated the ways in which regulation and state intervention could mitigate some of the more extreme consequences.

7.2

Trade Liberalisation and Australia’s Place in the World

An important part of the recent economic history of Australia is the shift in dominance of economic relationships from a historically-contingent imperial preference to a greater integration and engagement with Asian economies. This shift towards Asia has been an important part of Australia’s economic development and the integral role of trade liberalisation to successive reform agendas has been central to these changes. For most of the twentieth-century Australian governments embraced protectionist trade and industry policies that “were part of a wider protectionist structure which had wide-ranging political, economic and social aims” yet both sides of government have since pursued freer trade as a core part of policy and economic reform (Conley 2009, p. 202). As a founding member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the multilateral organisation overseeing the global trading system prior to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, Australia was an early party to global negotiations on trade relations and has embarked upon unilateral, bilateral and multilateral trade liberalisation since the 1970s, particularly following the breakdown of the Bretton

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Woods system of fixed exchange rates and the turmoil associated with the first oil price shock (Endres and Rogers 2014). Given the export orientation of Australian agriculture, these trade stances have had a major impact on agricultural producers. Distortions in international markets brought about as a result of protectionist policies of the United States and the European Union (particularly the Common Agricultural Policy), such as export subsidies that depressed prices for important Australian commodity exports on world markets, became a focus of Australian government negotiations and led to Australia’s active involvement in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in the 1980s and early 1990s (Botterill 2016, p. 678). Australia led the Cairns Group during these negotiations, initially a loose group but ultimately a coordinated coalition of like-minded countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil and representatives from Asia and the Pacific as well as Eastern Europe, that had united interests in agricultural trade liberalisation and that became an enduring negotiating coalition (Kenyon 2006, pp. 262–263). The group’s specific aims were to “seek the removal of market access barriers, substantial reductions of agricultural subsidies and the elimination, within an agreed period, of subsidies affecting agricultural trade” (Cairns Group Declaration in Kenyon 2006, p. 60). Their efforts during these important international trade negotiations were largely a success and effected further liberalisation and significant rules changes in the multilateral trade negotiations, including budget and quantity cuts in export subsidies in European Community and US trade (Kenyon 2006, p. 270). Despite the impacts that Australia may have had through these processes, Australia’s decision to unilaterally liberalise agricultural trade through the 1980s and 1990s has been criticised due to the fact that this action “proceeded ahead of the normal reciprocity of trade relations” and that the reluctance of other countries to follow Australia’s example has left “Australian policy makers with few ‘policy levers’ to assist the domestic farm sector and an international trade policy environment that diverges considerably from the free trade model… there is minimal evidence of the benefits accruing to Australia from ‘going it alone’” (Pritchard 2005b, p. 2).

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A notable development is the recent dominance of China in Australia’s trade relationships and rising prominence in foreign investment. China is now Australia’s largest trading partner, with China purchasing more than a quarter of Australia’s total exports in 2015, including more of Australia’s agricultural produce than any other country (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2018). In 2015 Australia entered into the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) which means that over eighty-five per cent of Australia’s goods exports to China (by value in 2015–2016) now enter duty-free or at preferential rates, rising to almost ninety-eight per cent by 2029, which advantages Australia over its major agricultural competitors including the United States, Canada and the European Union and counters the advantages Chile and New Zealand currently enjoy through their FTAs with China (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2018). This volume and direction of trade represent an example of the transformation of the global economy that is “unprecedented in the last one hundred years… geo-strategic and geo-economic weight is moving, inexorably, from the Western advanced economies towards the emerging market economies” (Parkinson 2011, p. 113). Given the volume of China’s agricultural trade with Australia, it is not surprising that increased Chinese investment in the agricultural supply chain has been occurring. The “conjunction of trade, investment and the flag [has] typified the international economy from its origins, no more so than in the development of Britain’s formal and informal empire” and given the prevalence of state-owned corporations in China and the attendant power of the regime to support or discipline privately owned corporations, there has been concern that China’s increasing investment in Australia carries a sovereign risk (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 366). The importance of foreign investment to Australia’s economy has been recognised by successive governments and therefore Australia has had a relatively open stance to foreign investment, including China. This open stance requires management. Support and maintenance importantly rest upon the operation of a regime of review of foreign investment (including the Foreign Investments Review Board or FIRB) and the constraints of a fragile political consensus (Mendelsohn and Fels 2014, p. 62). Chinese investment has grown significantly in recent years, increasing from $4 billion to around $87 billion in the ten years

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to 2016, and the instigation of ChAFTA promotes further growth of Chinese investment into Australia, in particular by liberalising the FIRB screening threshold for private Chinese investors in non-sensitive sectors from $252 million to $1,094 million (DFAT 2017, p. 3). Backgrounded by historical anxieties about Asia (Conley 2009), the particular inclusion of agriculture and agribusiness as a sensitive area (DFAT 2017, p. 3) is largely a result of heated public debate. This has centred upon concerns around the extent, motives and implications of foreign investment and culminated in the most significant revision to the foreign investment regime in its forty-year history with the inclusion of a new threshold mechanism for review of agricultural land by foreigners and the introduction of a public foreign ownership register of agricultural land irrespective of purchase value (Sippel et al. 2017, p. 254). Despite these changes, the government actively promotes foreign investment. This ultimately receptive regulatory and political environment, together with a reputation for quality production, the availability of vast rural properties, and relatively low land prices has seen Australia emerge as an attractive site for the increased financialisation of farmland as “a preferred region for financial entities entering agricultural production” (Sippel et al. 2017, p. 253). The increasing entry and influence of financial capital in agriculture is an important new trend in Australian agriculture.

7.3

Farm Sector Reforms

The fundamental changes to the ideological orientation of Australian government policy that pervaded policy developments from the 1970s had significant consequences for the agricultural industry. Moving from traditional policies based on economic protectionism and the welfare state, initial reform began with the Whitlam government’s re-evaluation of agricultural assistance from measures of welfare for particular industries to one based on overall economic efficiency, notably instigated with the establishment of the Industries Assistance Commission in 1974 (Higgins 2002, p. 9). The 1974 Green Paper on agriculture, also commissioned by the Whitlam government, presented a watershed moment that marked a “move away from the post-war policy approach

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and placing greater emphasis on market signals” (Botterill 2016, p. 674). Until the 1970s, the creation of a small farm yeomanry had been a consistent policy of Australian governments through schemes aimed at price fixing and production control (Barr 2009, p. 14) and, despite significant issues impacting the sector such as the dissolution of preferential trading with Britain after their entry to the European Common Market in 1973 and the increasing cost-price squeeze on farm incomes, policy such as the initial implementation of the Rural Adjustment Scheme (RAS) in 1977 still valued keeping farmers on the land because the “social value of farming [was] still regarded as a crucial consideration” (Higgins and Lockie 2001, p. 183). This changed dramatically through the 1980s. The “elevation of the efficiency goal over all others” (Lawrence 1987, p. 203) was the basis of the extension of an adjustment scheme that sought to consolidate debt and assist with farm build-up and farm improvement through subsidised lending, along with financial assistance for farmers who chose to leave the land (Kenwood 1995, p. 55). The underlying message was ‘get big or get out’ (Lawrence 1987, p. 89) and the net effect was to encourage trends towards larger farm sizes (Pritchard et al. 2012, p. 9). New criteria of efficiency and fiscal discipline dominated government discourse (Lawrence 1987) and the belief in the benefits of free markets and multilateral agricultural liberalisation gained centrality as the guiding vision for agricultural public policy in a move that “radically transformed the relationships between the state and the market within Australia’s rural economy” (Pritchard 2005b, p. 1). It was the 1980s that saw the broader intensification of economic rationalism in Australia, demonstrated through the particular set of economic policies pursued during this time such as the deregulation of the banking and finance sectors, the floating of the Australian dollar, a reduction in the level of protection for Australian industries, and the privatisation of services (Tonts 2000, p. 53). Importantly for the agricultural industry, this also included a clear shift to the advocacy for multilateral trade liberalisation, identified by Pritchard (2005a) as one of the important ideological shifts towards ‘agricultural liberalisation’ in Australia.

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These moves deeply changed the political and cultural context of farming in Australia. As an indicative example of the intensifying redefinition of farming that was occurring within the broader economic framing at the time, the Rural Adjustment Scheme was extensively restructured in 1988. The changes acted to amplify ‘signals to the market’ and prioritise improved farm management, productivity and efficient use of resources over farm family assistance in a move that overtly discouraged farming being seen as a family enterprise, representative of a “significant move towards a more intensely neoliberal policy-making agenda” (Higgins 1999, p. 139). By requiring individual responses to broadly structural problems (Lawrence 1987, p. 202), the farmer was repositioned as business owner and manager with an increasing emphasis on ideas of farming as a business (and not a lifestyle) that requires rational management, promoting the ideal of self-reliance “as the solution to farm adjustment policies” (original emphasis, Higgins and Lockie 2001, p. 185). This “‘advanced liberal’ form of governing” (Higgins 2002, p. 70) positions state support as a block to active self-management practices and, together with attempts to de-socialise farm practice and attachments to farming as a lifestyle (which hitherto had not been seen to conflict with farm productivity), promotes economic efficiency as “the truthful end-point of conduct” (Higgins 2002, p. 74). The 1980s thus marked a period in which “the entire policy discourse about agriculture in Australia had been turned upside down” (Pritchard et al. 2012, p. 9), indeed a true inversion of economic and social drivers of policy. This shift in discourse around farming continued into the 1990s as part of broader shifts in political and economic discourses of the time. The marker of these shifts remains the elevation of the concept of efficiency and the continued political neutralisation of the concept of competition and the market. Policy discourses continued to “frame markets as normal, boring and apolitical… as opposed to politically motivated state intervention” whereby the “creation of winners and losers by competition is also normalised as being simply part of economic life” and as such, it is not individual firms and industries that should be protected, but rather the competitive process that requires protection (O’Keeffe 2018, p. 22). This deep inversion underscores the individualisation of responsibility that moves the criteria of success to individual

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response within the neoliberal criteria of worth. Lawrence et al. (2013, p. 31) define neoliberalism as a series of pro-market values, ideas and policy settings designed to increase national competitiveness through a reorientation of the roles of the state and private enterprise (including state interventions to protect particular interests), and is expressed in the agricultural sector as measures to promote farmer self-sufficiency and to reinforce the primacy of free trade to future competitiveness. The dominant politico-economic discourse, firmly rooted in neoliberal economic theory, promotes market efficiency in agriculture as the engine for economic growth in the sector, a capacity that is “best advanced through policies that give space to the efficiency-enhancing prospects offered by market freedoms” (Pritchard and Tonts 2011, p. 29). This in turn promotes a ‘competitive productivism’ (Dibden and Cocklin in Lawrence and Campbell 2014, p. 265) that prioritises resource and labour efficiency, together with an expansion of output, as the “fundamental imperatives of farming” (Lawrence and Campbell 2014, p. 265). As established by Argent (2002, p. 99), productivist strategies include intensification, concentration and specialisation and each of these have impacted the farming sector in Australia. Farmers were required to adapt to these new state settings through a reorientation and revaluation of farm practice in more purely economic terms within a context that frames success or failure in individualistic terms.

7.3.1 Case Study: Australian Wheat Board Given the prevalence of broad-acre cropping (particularly of wheat), in the Goolhi area, analysis will focus on the deregulation of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) as a clear example of the government’s neoliberal policy settings. During the period 1948–1989, the Australian wheat industry was subject to continuous government intervention, central to which was the statutory monopoly of the AWB that existed as the sole seller of wheat in the domestic market and sole exporter of wheat to global markets (Piggott 1990, p. 297). This monopoly operated to the advantage of growers by cushioning them from volatile world prices through differential pricing whereby a high domestic price was

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achieved by limiting imports and the pooling of ‘home’ and export returns. This mechanism provided growers with higher incomes than under free market conditions (Lawrence 1987, p. 143). Domestic prices for consumers were pegged to a fixed price for producers and, seen to be in the ‘national interest’, this price stabilisation scheme continued with strong political and public support (Cockfield and Botterill 2007, pp. 45–46). Based upon agrarian values such as a belief in the essential value of agricultural activity, basic egalitarianism and belief in the value of pooling risk and equality of returns, these arrangements for stabilisation received strong political support until the late 1980s (Botterill 2011, p. 632). As Cockfield and Botterill (2007) argue, the subsequent dismantling of wheat marketing regulation in Australia provides a revealing example of the shift in prevailing values in Australian agricultural policy from one based on agrarian collectivism and sectoral stabilisation, to one focussed on the values of efficiency and competitiveness underpinned by a deregulated system. An important turning point in this approach came with the review by the Royal Commission into Grain Storage, Handling and Transport in 1988 which concluded that “the current system of grain distribution does not meet the criteria of economic efficiency, cost effectiveness and integration” (Royal Commission into Grain Storage, Handling and Transport 1988, p. xxv). Similarly, the Industries Assistance Commission report in 1988 called for the removal of the AWB’s monopoly on domestic sales and a reduction in the AWB’s role as single-seller and, as a result of debate surrounding the release of these two reports, the Commonwealth Wheat Marketing Act 1989 legislated important changes, including the deregulation of domestic pricing and greater commercial flexibility for the AWB (Piggott 1990, p. 300). This marked a critical point in the institution’s history, whereby the loss of the domestic monopoly arrangements represented the first of a number of moves towards full deregulation (Botterill 2011, p. 632). This position deepened with further policy moves in 1997 when the process of privatisation was begun by corporatising the AWB (changing it from a statutory authority), despite the outcomes of a consultation process that indicated strong grower opposition to privatisation (Cockfield and Botterill 2007, p. 48). Full privatisation was achieved in 2001

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when one of its two classes of shares was floated on the Australian Stock Exchange (McCorriston and MacLaren 2007, p. 638) and this transformation to AWB Limited, a private body designed to maintain grower control through a two-class share system, came with a complex set of changes both internally and within the industry. Although the deregulatory pressures had been building for many years, it was the fallout from the Oil-for-Food scandal (revealed in the early 2000s) that was the catalyst for the final undoing of the already privatised AWB Limited. However it is interesting to note that, as detailed by Botterill (2011, p. 637), the findings of the Cole Inquiry into the scandal revealed the extent to which AWB Limited had become fundamentally sales-driven as a result of earlier deregulation policies, which in turn had critically changed the internal culture and operating context for the organisation. As a footnote, the last element of collective marketing, represented in its final form through the privileged class of grower-controlled shares, was removed in 2008 (Botterill 2011, p. 639). The dissolution of the AWB is indicative of an important turning point. The continual process of deregulation of the wheat industry since the late 1980s has seen policy move from a primary concern with the welfare of producers to the maximisation of profits (McCorriston and MacLaren 2007, p. 637). As Cockfield and Botterill (2007, p. 52) state, “the dismantling of the centralised domestic wheat marketing system reflected an acceptance of arguments for efficiency and benefits to consumers of competition… efficiency and policy consistency have become more important than sectoral stability and the preservation of particular producer groups”. This, then, represents an instructive example of intensifying economic rationalism and neoliberal settings in Australian government policy objectives. It is ironic that whilst criticising the US and the European Union for retaining policies of agricultural protection largely based on strong agrarian sentiment, it was actually this same agrarianism that underpinned political support for the National Party during this time (Berry et al. 2016, p. 933). Despite the opposition of growers cited above, politically there was little resistance to the dismantling of these arrangements. Support for the changed settings was largely bipartisan and there was

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driving support from the key farmer group the National Farmers Federation (NFF). It seems puzzling that producer groups would support these ‘reforms’, however it is important to understand the historical formation of this particularly powerful lobby group. Formed in 1979 through the amalgamation of the farm sector’s many lobby groups, the group became dominated by policy officers from grazier organisations that had a strong free market orientation and overrode the ‘farmer’ groups that supported collective marketing and stabilisation policies, thus resulting in a lobby group intent on trade liberalisation and reducing support for manufacturing rather than for any compensatory support for agriculture (Botterill 2016, p. 674). As time went by, political allegiances in rural areas were based primarily on a ‘country’ identity that was culturally enmeshed with unquestioning support for the conservative National Party that in turn prevented any widespread critical examination of policy drivers. Any producer opposition to the removal of the AWB went unheard. Although not a simple case of a nation-building ‘then’ contrasted against a neoliberal ‘now’, the broader shifts to economic imperatives over social outcomes are reflected in a consideration of these differences and can be demonstrated to be relevant in the case of the deregulation of the AWB. Interestingly, it has been shown that the deregulation of the Australian wheat market has not in fact resulted in an adequately contestable market for growers, but rather that, as a result of misplaced assumptions of competition such as costless market entry, these growers are now disempowered within a deregulated wheat export market that has increased the power of large and frequently multinational firms as buyers (O’Keeffe 2017, p. 81). The impact of this at the level of lived experience of these farmers provides useful insights on the impacts of these shifts.

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Globalisation and the Disruption of Traditional Cultural and Political Identities

The significant restructuring of the Australian economy since World War II has driven deep change in Australia’s social, cultural and political priorities. Changes to the format and volume of immigration, changing patterns of urbanisation and centralisation, and social trends to higher education and professionalisation have all significantly disrupted traditional Australian identities. Central to these contestations are the changes to immigration policy during this time and the ways in which settings moved from race-based controls based on preferred cultural identities. The period between 1950 and 1973 accounted for the highest net immigration to Australia in the twentieth century, forty-one per cent of this occurring between 1964 and 1971, as a major part of post-war economic growth strategies and as a counter to security concerns about the levels of population in such a geographically large country (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 216). Despite the numbers, tight and racially driven immigration restrictions meant that these flows were predominantly from Europe. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 “used immigration controls to produce a largely British society by denying non-white immigrants entry to Australia and by actively recruiting and assisting white, preferably British, immigrants” and, combined with assimilationist policies in the 1950s and 1960s, acted to repress cultural differences and promoted the primacy of British heritage (Bilodeau and Fadol 2011, p. 1089). This restrictive ‘White Australia Policy’ was not broken down until 1973 and this has been recognised as an important part of the relinquishing of a national political identity that had previously been fundamentally inseparable from deeply racist beliefs (Kane 1997, pp. 118–119). This national identity had grown obsolete in an increasingly heterogeneous and globally connected society. With the introduction of new legislation in 1973, the immigration regime became non-discriminatory on the basis of such things as race or ethnicity, but rather people were chosen on grounds of skills and family connections, which opened up immigration from many different

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countries (Dyster and Meredith 2012, p. 219). The increased diversity of immigrants and Australia’s official embrace of multiculturalism (though the politics of this are complex and contested, see for example Jakubowicz 2011; Jupp 2007) has resulted in significant social change. Immigration was largely concentrated in the nation’s capital cities and this resulted in a demographic gap between these centres and the rest of the country, with, for example, dramatic changes to the ethnic and cultural make-up of Sydney compared with the rest of NSW (Green 2001, p. 69). Along with the faster development of identity politics within dense city populations and the uneven economic impacts of economic change, there has been a growing divide between rural and urban political concerns whereby “it is rural and regional Australia losing the battle over national culture and identity” (Green 2001, p. 70). This has had important political and cultural ramifications for the place of agricultural and regional interests in the national context over time, particularly when compared with the culturally homogeneous, Britainoriented society post-World War II and the place of the lauded figure of the farmer explored in previous chapters. A related and important part of the social, cultural and political changes are the wide-ranging structural changes of the labour force over time and in Australia this has been significant. Overall, there has been a decline in the importance of goods-producing industries and a rise in person- and knowledge-based service industries, in large part due to the decline in importance of manufacturing (dropping from 13.6 per cent of total employment in 1993 to 8.1 per cent in 2013) and agriculture (5.1 per cent in 1993 and halved to 2.6 per cent in 2013) (Wilkins and Wooden 2014, p. 422). This has been accompanied by important trends related to education that have seen a significant increase in people with post-school qualifications over the same period. Over the two decades to 2013, the proportion of the labour force with a university degree more than doubled from about 12 per cent to almost 28 per cent (Wilkins and Wooden 2014, pp. 418–419). In addition, over the last fifty years Australia’s ‘male breadwinner’ labour market, with most jobs being full-time and filled by males or single females, has been gradually disappearing, with the rise of female and parttime employment (Borland and Coelli 2016, p. 519). Accompanying

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these labour market changes are significant changes to the economic geography of Australia, including tendencies towards centralisation as economic activity and service provision is shifted into regional centres (Argent and Rolley 2000). The implications of the move to an open and deregulated economy in Australia were profound and the benefits and costs of these reforms were spread unevenly, given the “selective nature of economic development and how it engages or disengages both people and places” (Stimson 2011, p. 43). Each of these trends has had important cultural and therefore political consequences. These long-term changes to the Australian economy have informed a “shift in the balance of power between the country and the city, between non-metropolitan and metropolitan Australia” wherein the political preoccupation with attempts to build a vibrant and economically self-sustaining countryside have waned significantly since the neoliberal 1980s (Brett 2011, pp. 14–15).

7.4.1 Political Representation and Change The representation of agricultural and regional interests in Australian politics has shifted significantly since World War II. Claims to special treatment and a disproportionate share of political power and resources for the ‘bush’ were traditionally based upon a country-city compact, centred upon the three main tenets of the historical economic relevance of agriculture to Australia’s economy; national security and the need to create and maintain a populated countryside; and the contribution of country people to the distinctiveness and moral character of the nation (Brett 2011). As the power of each of these has diminished, so has the “economic and symbolic power of voters in rural Australia” (Green 2001, p. 71). Traditionally represented by the National Party, originally formed as the Country Party after World War I, the politics of regional areas has shifted to include breakaway parties such as One Nation, and the rise of Independent candidates in many areas. Both of these trends reflect a diminishing of traditional National Party political representation that can largely be traced to the “long-term decline in the importance of the rural sector to the health of the nation’s economy [and] … the growing

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chasm between the values and attitudes of rural and urban Australia” (Green 2001, p. 65), paralleled by changes to an electoral system that had effectively given greater weight to rural votes for most of the party’s history (Green 2001, p. 68). An indicative moment in the history of the changing role of the political voice of regions was the significant change to voting patterns at state and federal elections in 1998. In a traditionally two-party system, the small One Nation party won 22 per cent of the vote at Queensland state elections and 9 per cent of the national vote at the federal elections of the same year, which was largely read as an electoral backlash that reasserted rural issues onto the national agenda and destabilised many country electorates (Brett 2011, p. 54). The party’s platform was based on social and economic populism, combining support for economic protectionism and state-subsidised loans for farmers and small businesses, with opposition to foreign investment, and large-scale Asian immigration (Gibson et al. 2002, p. 824). The success of the party has been read as an expression of resistance to aspects of globalisation given the key elements of these interventionist and populist positions (McMichael and Lawrence 2001, p. 164). Whilst the political influence of the One Nation has diminished over time, the continued importance of Independent candidates and micro-parties, particularly from rural areas, has continued. The election of independents has become “an enduring low-level trend over the past three decades despite continued major party loyalty” (Curtin and Costar 2015, p. 287) and breakaway parties such as Katter’s Australia Party and the Palmer United Party emerge “as channels for disaffection across regional Australia” (King 2015, p. 305). Changes to Australia’s racial, ethnic and gender politics have “sharpened the urban/rural divide” (Brett 2011, p. 41). Politically, each of these changes has impacted upon the relative importance and power of agricultural identities and priorities in the national context. As land management becomes the practical nexus of competing economic and political positions with regard to climate change, the divide between city and country will continue to be an important political consideration.

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Walking the Line: Current Policy Responses

Land use in Australia sits at the centre of many policy contestations as landscapes reckon with legacies of prior state postures and economic priorities. As has been noted by Pritchard and Tonts (2011, p. 33), arguments by Australian agricultural and trade economists for the potential benefits available to Australian agriculture if and when conditions of perfectly efficient global market conditions are realised presupposes a set of utopian conditions that have never been met and this pursuit of agricultural efficiency has “blinkered governments from some of the potentially adverse associated implications” (Pritchard and Tonts 2011, p. 49). This flattening-out of human lived experience fits with Pusey’s (1991, p. 171) observation that economic rationalism creates and itself depends upon a hyper-objectification of the market that decouples sociocultural contexts and premises of state action from those of economics. As Pusey (1991, p. 225) observes, when primary steering functions are given to the economic system (over both the state and civil society) culture and identity and the processes through which they are formed take on a new meaning as merely a “resisting ‘environment’ of the economic system that has to be made more economically ‘rational’ and ‘productive’”. This is clearly identifiable in the case of Australian agriculture. In an analysis of the maintenance and justification of market liberal agriculture in Australia, Pritchard (2005b) identifies three dominant characteristics: the reliance on forward-looking econometric models in policy legitimation that necessarily narrow policy discourse to technical and abstracted concepts of the ‘national interest’; a tendency to de-emphasise and ‘write-out’ negative social and distributional implications of policy that effectively silences the systematic generation of highly uneven economic outcomes; and the tendency to define the politics of food, agriculture and society through the conception of ‘market distortions’ that denies the social and political embeddedness and concrete realities of the operation of markets. More than perhaps any other industry, farming involves a complex interplay of personal, social, cultural and economic values, given the deeply embedded relationship of farmers to their land, as farmers live,

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work, recreate and socialise on their farms where land is “more than a place to grow crops; farms are locations with history, symbolic meaning, and repositories of emotion” (Quinn and Halfacre 2014, p. 118). This point was reinforced repeatedly during the research into the Goolhi community, with particular reference to the powerful legacy of community and identity that was a central part of the soldier settlement experience in this area. By focussing on farming as a business, policy approaches “ignore the cultural attachment to the land and the personal anguish” (Higgins and Lockie 2001, p. 190). Australia, as has been shown, holds an aggressively neoliberal stance that promotes a decontextualisation of agricultural policy. As Grant (2015, p. 155) notes, global resistance to the liberalisation of agriculture has been high, particularly in developed countries where “agriculture and food touch on questions of national identity that transcend the prosaic and arcane language of trade negotiations”. Compared with the nuanced appreciations for the “complexities of food, agriculture and citizenship in particular sovereign spaces” that are held around the world, Australia has a “quite unsophisticated policy framework …that understand the politics of food solely as a market relation” (Pritchard 2005b, pp. 11–12). Whilst resisting a characterisation that posits a clear delineation between ‘nation-building’ and ‘neo-liberal’ states, it has been shown that moves to rely solely upon economic legitimisation and criteria for policy stances within Australian agriculture have had very real consequences given the historical, cultural and social embeddedness of agriculture. However, it is important to note that the diminished importance of traditional agricultural-based identities and agrarian sentiment in the Australian context over time does not mean that they are absent from political and cultural forms in Australia today. Despite the fact that Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world and considering the systematic reduction of support to agriculture that has occurred with little direct opposition, recent research demonstrates not only an abiding set of agrarian beliefs and agrarian sentiment in Australia, but also particularly strong support for government support for agricultural industries (Berry et al. 2016, p. 937). This “deep cultural attachment to farming as a special and worthwhile activity” has underpinned a form

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of ‘agricultural exceptionalism’ that has allowed a quarantining of agriculture from some more extreme forms of industry reform (Botterill 2016, p. 669), yet the impacts of reform have been mixed across agricultural sectors with significant adjustments costs as Australia moved from a “complex web of regulatory programs and subventions to a situation where the agricultural sector is one of the most lightly assisted in the world” (Botterill 2016, p. 680). There is therefore a tension between the popular agrarian sentiment amongst the Australian public, and the policy positions of the federal government. Although support exists in the form of broad-based policies such as funding for rural research and development, support for farm financing, drought relief and tax concessions (Botterill 2016, p. 675), the position of Australian farmers in terms of international trade is vastly different to that of the countries that it competes against on world markets. The most recent federal government Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper 2015 (Commonwealth of Australia 2015) is a study in walking the line between the invocation of agrarian sentiment to shore up popular acceptance of policy and the continued pursuit of further deregulation, increased foreign investment and more thoroughly liberalised trade. By pointing to the foundational achievements of past policy that has resulted in “reduced regulation”, “increased export markets” and “refined settings for foreign investment”, the paper effectively writes out the effects that these structural changes have had, whilst at the same term invoking sentimental claims that “agriculture is at the heart of our identity” and the purported aim to “keep families on the farm as the cornerstone of agriculture” (Commonwealth of Australia 2015, p. 1). Given the outcomes of previous policy across rural landscapes, the continued and reinvigorated pursuit of similar policies seems to be at odds with these sentiments. As an example of the deepening neoliberal language, one of the key policy principles and priorities listed in the report is the reduction of “unnecessary regulation at all levels of government to lower restrictions on farm management decisions and encourage investment”, as well as a continued emphasis on “productivity and profitability” as the central measures of farm activity (Commonwealth of Australia 2015, p. 2). This language continues the framing of farm success or failure as a farm-level

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responsibility within an enabling and hands-off approach by government that silences the exigencies of farming. As the climate crisis continues to impact landscapes in increasingly dramatic ways, for example the exceptional fire season of the summer of 2019–2020, the swing back towards state intervention in the management of landscapes may well be felt in terms of ecological services as the impacts upon land are felt. As the policy focus on efficiency pushed farm businesses and market outcomes towards highly productive land use, a new focus on the impact of climate change may well aim to involve government to mediate the ecological costs of this position. As a clear example of significant shifts towards state intervention, the National Farmers Federation, previously the demonstrated champions of reduced state intervention in agriculture, have come to place government regulation at the heart of their Roadmap 2030 (2018). This document came about as a result of an extensive research and consultation process, with contributions from over 380 members, industry stakeholders and government representatives nationally (NFF 2018), and is striking in its explicit call for state action. In particular, one of the ‘pillars’ of the report focuses on sustainability and involves a key goal that the “net benefit for ecosystem services is equal to 5% of farm revenue” (NFF 2018, p. 6). As farmers manage more than fifty-one per cent of Australia’s landmass (NFF 2018, p. 10), the call for state involvement to regulate the impacts of a purely marketised use of land makes good sense. The call for state intervention in the market is clear within the actionable goals of the report, including the establishment of a government-backed Environmental Stewardship Fund (albeit “aimed at seeding a marketplace for private sector investment”) that includes investment in a “conservation tax instrument”, “biophysical asset management [that] balances production with conservation”, a “natural capital accounting system”, and “remuneration for positive environmental contributions”; as well as a call for the introduction of ‘Green Loan’ commercial bank products which reward sustainable farming practices (NFF 2018, p. 24). Given the neoliberal bent of prior policy positions from this peak industry body, this deeply changed position may well represent a Polanyian movement to protect land from the impacts of the unregulated market.

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Both economically and culturally, the position of farming and agriculture in Australia has diminished over time. This chapter has sought to contextualise Moment Two by discussing the global, regional and national shifts in policy orientation and the impacts of this on changing state policy agendas. Agricultural policy in Australia has shifted significantly from a position committed to the integration of social and economic benefits founded upon land settlement, sectoral stabilisation and the protection of producer groups, to one oriented to efficiency and market competition that recasts farmers as self-reliant business managers in a denial of the largely structural nature of farming difficulties. Central to the inversion of economic over social policy drivers is the bracketing-off of human experience from econometric modelling that decouples economic policy formulation from the socio-cultural contexts such policy is embedded in. When the Goolhi community was established, state goals were explicit and embraced concepts of development that supported agriculture as a valuable part of nation-building (both economically, culturally and socially defined), support that was manifested through various protectionist and stabilising schemes and instruments. Intensifying with the rise of economic rationalism in the 1980s and 1990s, state interests shifted significantly and began to be framed in terms of efficient use of resources and the benefits of competition in a deep renegotiation of the state-market relationship. The systematic decontextualising of policy objectives impacts many arenas but is particularly amplified in the agricultural sector given the necessarily placed and embedded nature of farming. Farmers are required to re-value their farming practice in terms of efficiency and business management in a way that complicates everyday life in a farm setting that has meaning and worth beyond the economic imperatives. Through shifts to the dominant discourses of worth and to the macro settings within which farmers operate, the state continues to assert its influence on the conditions of possibility of the lifeworld by requiring particular responses from farmers. Moment Two provides an in-depth examination of these responses and their impacts at

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the micro-level. The next chapter is the first of two chapters examining this lived experience of change.

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8 Moment Two and the Lived Experience of Economic Action at Goolhi

This chapter is the first of two chapters that move into an exploration of the lived experience of the deep policy change explored in the previous section and the subsequent effects at a micro-level. By examining the impact of change for particular households and across time, this section highlights the subjective and ‘lived’ nature of change. The anchoring of this examination of change at one location allows a meaningful glimpse into the ways in which broader and more abstract policy movements have social and personal outcomes. As has been established, descendants of the Goolhi soldier settlers that are still farming in-place, and those that left, are particularly well-placed to act as key informants of the change process at the micro-level given that they live with both the economic and emotional legacy of a long family history in the area that is itself conditioned by policy. Alongside accounts from employees of the large corporate farm in the area, these accounts communicate the complex effects of slow-running social and politico-economic processes. This chapter looks at the particular ways in which the deep social embeddedness of farming has complex impacts on economic actions and the next extends this to considerations of farm succession and impacts on the local community. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_8

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Contemporary Context

Given the transformation in policy priorities and the broader economic context outlined in the previous chapter, there has been substantial structural adjustment in the farming sector in Australia. Significantly, in the thirty years to 2011 the number of farmers in Australia declined by 106,200 people, a reduction of forty per cent and largely attributable to the increase in large-scale farming operations (ABS 2012, p. 3). Although the Australian farm sector continues to be dominated by small farms, average farm size has increased and production has become more concentrated into the largest farms. By 2005, the top twenty per cent of broad acre farms accounted for around sixty-four per cent of output (Productivity Commission 2005, p. 31). However, the long-term decline in terms of trade for farmers means that as farmers look to technology and economies of scale to capture their share of possible gains in business efficiency, they themselves fuel the compression of their terms of trade by increasing supply (see Barr 2004). Farms that cannot or will not pursue productivity increases become less and less viable and this provides the catalyst for a continuing decrease in farm numbers and the increased concentration of production by fewer and fewer farms (Barr 2004, p. 63). The rates of return on capital are positively correlated to farming size (Pritchard et al. 2012, p. 108) and the resultant restructure in Australia has been primarily expressed as farm amalgamation through processes akin to ‘neighbour acquisition’ (Pritchard et al. 2012, p. 72). These overall trends to larger farm size are clearly demonstrated at Goolhi. Of the thirty-one blocks selected as part of the soldier settlement scheme when it was released, only four remain in the hands of direct descendants of these soldier settlers and all four have increased farm size through the acquisition of neighbouring or nearby properties in pursuit of economies of scale. Indicative of the cost to small communities documented by numerous rural sociologists both nationally and internationally, the expressions of local community so lauded in the early years of the community’s development have steadily declined and disappeared. For instance, the school closed in 1983 and the tennis courts and cricket club are abandoned, with only very intermittent use of the local

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community hall. Experience at the micro-level of the Goolhi community, particularly that of those farmers living with the emotional and economic legacy of earlier settlement policies, provides an interesting and useful insight into the lived experience of change at the intersection of the differing policy positions and outcomes. Given the structural changes and trends evinced here, this is an unavoidably small group of participants. Interview data was collected from all four remaining households in 2016, including two households that had recently transitioned ownership to the next generation and both generations were interviewed. A further household that had taken the earlier decision to sell the farm was also interviewed to examine the decision points around leaving or staying from a contrasting perspective. In addition to the remaining households that operate at the level of two or three aggregated soldier settlement blocks that have emerged through relatively small-scale expansion, the Goolhi area also provides an example of the increasingly common trend to very large-scale corporate farm ownership and management. Interviews were conducted with both the owner and a local manager of a farm comprised of nineteen smaller farming blocks into a holding of over thirty-five thousand acres. Although driven by external capital injections not available to small family farms, the rapid expansion of the holding was facilitated by the social and economic processes and policy settings outlined earlier and provides an interesting counterpoint to the struggles towards efficiency and productivity happening at the smaller scale right next door. All of these interviews provide striking insights and indicate the significant change to subjectivity and everyday life brought about by the inversion of economic over social policy drivers and measures of success. Dominant themes in the data analysis point to the deep embeddedness of economic decision-making and the multifarious impacts this has on everyday life and the future prospects of farms, farmers and communities.

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Embedded Economic Action: Debt Stress and Its Role in Low Capital Investment

… and that’s what you have to do, every generation you have to double the size of the place. (I4)

Discussions of the economic realities of farming have been considered from many perspectives since the post-World War II period. Whilst many farm-related policies were welfarist in orientation immediately following the War, the emergence of determinations of the ‘low-income farm problem’ and attendant concerns of farm profitability became dominant from the 1960s (Higgins 2002, p. 13) and contributed to the shift to more purely economic assessments of farm operations. Central to these assessments was the emerging concern of the ‘cost-price squeeze’, the situation in which the prices which farmers received for their products tended to fall relative to the prices they paid for farm inputs (Gruen 1990, p. 23). Otherwise known as the farmer’s terms of trade, there has been a general decline in output prices relative to input prices over the last forty years in Australia (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources [ABARES] 2017). Whilst farmers often focus on profit, this is closely related to productivity and the need to increase output for every unit of input over time, particularly because farmers cannot control either the price of inputs or the price they receive for outputs (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources [ABARES] 2017). Thus at a farm level, attempts to protect real income include adopting new technologies or techniques to increase efficiency and productivity however output and quality of output can be heavily effected by variables such as weather and farm-level decision-making, and prices are vulnerable to global commodity markets. For family farms, funding for expansion and improvement is limited to the funds available to the family, the profits the business can generate and the funds it can borrow. From 2000–2001 to 2016–2017 average broadacre farm debt more than doubled, mainly resulting from an increase in average farm size, with the largest increases in borrowing for land purchase and on-farm investment (Martin et al. 2018). Borrowing

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for ongoing working capital also rose in line with increases in average farm size and greater mechanisation and intensification of enterprises (Martin et al. 2018). Debt is central to farm investment and an important consideration for farms is the ratio between debt and equity as this will impact upon solvency, profitability and repayment capacity. These are central to everyday living concerns as farm businesses need to provide for living expenses/family drawings and payment of taxes after covering all its costs which means that “at the end of the day, what is left after paying input, overhead, finance, tax and living costs is all that is left to reduce debt, reinvest in the business, invest off farm or improve lifestyle” (Grains Research & Development Corporation 2013, p. 2). The interrelationship between the cost-price squeeze of rising input costs and declining returns and stresses relating to debt-equity ratios was a central theme in the findings. For interviewees, the lived experience of farming is critically influenced by the pressures of the cost-price squeeze and the impact of debt. The relationship between high costs of land and equipment and unstable returns remains the central pivot upon which decisions about farm operations, debt and farm futures turn. Those interviewees whom have been farming in the longer term see that this situation has become more pressing over time: I3: We were going ahead for so long, going forward, and now we’re going just sideways and that’s just due to the price of commodities I guess. The last four years have been pretty ordinary for us…. I4: Yes it’s the cost of things. When we got married in the late seventies and our children were born in the eighties, the crops cost about $40 an acre to grow and we used to get $120 a tonne for wheat and now they cost $250 an acre to grow and if we grew a brilliant crop of wheat we’d still only get $300 for it, we haven’t grown a good crop for four years because of the rain. So that’s the way things are at the moment.

This was echoed by the interviewees that had chosen to leave and cited as a major consideration in their decision to leave: Economically, farming is the bottom of the barrel. Up until after the Second World War and up to the end of the eighties you could still make reasonably good money. After the end of the eighties the gap between

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profit and loss just got narrower and narrower… To finance it’s not only the farm, the price of the block, but it’s also the equipment, it’s just exorbitant prices. And let’s face it, our grain prices, well sheep and cattle are ok, but grain prices have been depressed for years. So how to you generate that income? You can’t, which is a shame. (I10)

Decisions aimed at increasing productivity often turn on the pursuit of better economies of scale to capture productivity increases and therefore profitability. These economies of scale are often either pursued via increasing the land area for cultivation or land with higher arability, or through investing in more efficient equipment. Here the interviewee speaks of coming up against the limits of holding size: Well our place wasn’t viable, you’ve got to get big or get out these days. It wasn’t big enough… we were doing a lot of improvement to run more on what we had but it was impossible, physically impossible. So, yeah, let’s go again [buy more land]. (I14)

Although debt is relatively cheap compared with earlier periods of recent economic history in Australia, the servicing of large amounts of debt to invest in more land or more efficient equipment remains a key consideration in decision-making. Both of these options require significant investment and, for the smaller non-corporate farms, means going into further debt which acts as a constraint on expansion: Most of the farms ‘round here own the farm next door now. Like, our business owns two and a piece of another farm, like there’s a farm next door to us…and it’s got no one on it, we split it up four ways. Just ‘cause a farm’s that expensive that it’s really hard to buy the farm next door even. (I1)

The strain of extra debt goes beyond the purchase of land: …and that’s not the end of it either then you’ve got to stock it or buy farming gear on top. That’s what hurt when we bought the place down there, we had to take another loan to buy more stock, we can’t have property here and not make money out of it. (I14)

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The competing demands of needing to increase efficiencies versus the cost to invest in these improvements were a dominant theme in the interviews. It is important to note the lived experience of these constraints as it is the often phenomenological experience and set of attitudes that inform decisions to take on more debt, or not: I10: It was stressful financially because that margin between profit and loss just got narrower and narrower and a lot of people that had invested in new machinery, they got caught and it all went head over heels on them. I don’t think we bought a new piece of machinery for years, we bought second hand. Which kept our repayments, our lease payments down, kept them down. A lot of people had hundreds of thousands of dollars back in 2000, owing on machinery. We went a different way, we bought reasonably good second-hand and owed nothing on it. I11: well, you have to live within your means.

The increasing relative costs of equipment was often highlighted as a driving factor in more general changes to farming practice and a constant frustration to smaller farmers: I4: The biggest change in cropping, is in those days everybody kept up their machinery. Nowadays everybody gets a contractor in, like we haven’t got a spray rig, our header only left this year because we couldn’t afford to [replace it], every year we get a contractor in to harvest the wheat and spray. I mean no one used to spray, they’d just farm their land so those farming practices have changed over the years. But in the main, people used to get on their tractor and work their land. Everybody had a header and harvested their own wheat and most people had a workman and now obviously nobody’s got a workman, only the companies have the workman, but people can’t afford the headers so they get contractors in. I3: Headers are now worth six hundred grand I mean so it’s just not in the picture to buy a header. Same as planters, combines used to be about five thousand dollars so you’d just go and write a cheque for a combine and now the same thing is worth a hundred and fifty thousand, so we’ve been left behind there somewhere along the way. I4: We haven’t got a no-till machine and we should have one but we can’t afford a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

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This quote indicates important points at which the escalation of equipment costs has necessitated a further penetration of market logic. The inability of farms to fund high equipment costs means that the work is fractured and outsourced to independent contractors, which speaks to larger processes of change within modern neoliberal settings. The decision to not go into further debt to fund equipment purchases, whilst seen as the prudent choice, is pervaded by a sense of frustration and of being left behind: I think it’s price. If you put more technology into things it costs more so you’ve got to make more money to buy it. And machinery is a poor investment because it’s going to wear out and so you’ve got to replace it and you just feel like you’re standing there banging your head up against this brick wall cause you’re trying to get yourself ahead and it’s just a merry-go-round. (I1)

The underlying pressure to maximise productivity is ever-present: We need to expand and you can’t expand if you don’t have the right machinery or infrastructure for it, like there’s no point. So step one is spend a lot of money [and] definitely using technology, it has to be about just getting every little bit out of your land. You’ve got to use every little bit of the land you’ve got and use it the best you can. (I12)

It is interesting to note here the inter-generational differences in attitudes towards capital investment. This is reflected both in the move from original soldier settler (first-generation) to the second-generation, and the move from second- to third-generation. In reflecting upon his father’s attitude to debt in contrast to his own, one second-generation farmer observes: No, he never took on a debt, beside the initial place which took him forty years to pay off. He was just happy doing what he was doing. We, on the other hand, want to get a bit ahead looking at our retirement, the kids, what can we leave them, if anything, can we afford to retire at whatever age and all that sort of stuff. I mean, you’ve got to chase the money. That’s why we’ve gone into debt, (laughing)… bit silly chasing

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extra money by going into debt, borrow a heap to make extra so that at the end of the day hopefully you’ve got a nest egg you can sell or do whatever with. (I14)

This attitude of acknowledgement of the push to go into debt in a way that the first generation hadn’t needed to was reflected amongst all of the second-generation farmers. This was mediated by the expression, as demonstrated above, of the need to do so carefully and within limits of the burden of the extra debt: I14: We make do with the old stuff, repairing it all the time but it costs us nothing. I15: We’re not big enough to really warrant, I suppose if you were big you could probably warrant it but not at this stage. I14: Though a new tractor would be great, wouldn’t break down, put a big front-end loader on it, be ideal, front wheel assist. Another thing on my wish-list.

By contrast, the third-generation farmers both self-identify and are seen as being more readily accepting of the need to go into debt as a driver of efficiency. Whilst acknowledging the important legacy of low-debt outcomes, there is a strong motivation to go into debt as a way to move forward: Most other farms around here are up, they know about it and utilise technology to maximise it and Dad has been pretty old school but we’re fortunate, minimal debt on the property and that was his goal and at his age he doesn’t want to dive into too much debt whereas I’ve got to take three steps backwards to go five steps forward… Just going through a period of change and a change we probably should have gone through twenty years ago but Dad was under the impression of paying debt and he conservatively though that he wants to have a farm with no debt on it so that he knows that he’s done all that he can in his life to set me up and our family up, which is great, but it’s not, there’s very few farms that would not have debt and you need debt to move forward and to get to new farming systems. (I12)

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These strategies are identified as high-risk and it is this increased level of personal risk and the lived effects of this risk that is identified as a limiting factor upon accumulating debt: I3: You look at the young ones, we’re more the old-fashioned ones, they understand the margins are very fine and they just work to it you know. I4: They’re the young ones who, because the margins are so fine people like us think ‘Oh my God, we can’t do this and we can’t do that’, and they’re saying ‘Well we’re going to have to just borrow another and we’re just going to have do this and we just have to do that’, and they have a go but we just couldn’t sleep!.

As this quote suggests, the margins are very fine and are an important aspect of the cost-price squeeze/debt-equity ratios and their lived effects. Increasing and fluctuating input prices, such as those for fuel, fertiliser and freight, add to the stress of decision-making: I11: Chemical and fertiliser, so two enormous big inputs whether you’re cropping grain or cattle, they too fluctuate enormously from year to year so it really affects your margins on your crops. So farmers look at what their growing crops are going to be, their rotations, and know within a small margin of what the output should be, but if you’ve got fertiliser going from three hundred to seven hundred in one year, how can you possibly absorb that? No other business absorbs that. I10: Like with grain prices we’ve gone from three hundred dollars a tonne to two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars a tonne for some grain, so we’ve had a twenty to thirty per cent cut in our income in the last six to twelve months! I mean people would be marching in the streets with banners! I mean that’s the free market. All the fertiliser costs, I mean that’s supposed to be supply and demand but it’s manipulated to some extent.

This precarity of returns and tight margins feed into the hesitancy around debt-fuelled capital investment. Mediated through the prism of lived experience, investment decisions are entangled with concerns for succession and the balance between providing for retirement and the creation and maintenance of a viable business into the future. This prism involves

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direct considerations of day-to-day life, both in the benefits and costs of further investment. As an example, the hesitancy at capital investment has direct impacts on daily life at farm level through the ongoing compromise between efficient ways of working and investment in new equipment as it is at the farm level that frustrations with inefficient practice are lived: We don’t have a shed with a cement floor, we’re working on a dirt floor. I was just like ‘I want to bulldoze this shed, put a cement slab down, new shed’. I’m in a silo, cleaning a silo out, in an underground comb bottom silo and I’m just like ‘I just want to push this silo over with a front-end loader and spend eighteen thousand for a new silo!’. You know it’s up off the ground and you just open the door and all the grain falls out and they’re sealed airtight so you don’t have pest problems. There’s just so many things, so many dollars to spend, but it’s prioritising what you do need. So this year it’s GPS and a planter which are two things I think will improve our yields and our efficiencies, but it’s an outlay. It’s been hard … and these are just basic little, these are not on a big scale at all and that sort of money and Dad’s like ‘We’ve got a combine down there that works perfectly fine’ and it holds three hundred kilos and you have to stop every half an hour to fill it up when you’re planting but, hey, it’s there and it does the job. And I’m like ‘Yeah but a new planter will hold four tonne and you won’t have to stop once in a day and there’s no breakdown’.. Just seed placements and overlapping your seeds and just the amount of money spent on just doing little things. I think we’d save but it’s hard because of the outlay and we have machinery that works – (sarcastically) oh it works fine, we don’t need that! - that’s the battle but bit by bit. (I12)

Apart from frustrations at farm level and associated impacts upon farm efficiency, investment and expansion are balanced against quality of life considerations: That will be the next decision [we] have to make – do we buy another farm when we feel like we’re comfortable to or do we enjoy life? It’s a great thing and buying a bit of land it’s a wonderful feeling but it’s also a shackle at the same time, it comes at a price… the more land you buy the harder you have to work because the more work there is to do. And

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yeah it brings all these benefits of size and all that but do you want to just keep working harder and harder and harder as you get older or are there other things out there? (I5)

Either way, it can be seen that decisions regarding business are actually bound up in the repercussions for lived experience in a way that other less place-based and situated economic activities may not be. This has important consequences because the processes by which patterns of land ownership change directly impact upon the way in which land is used and have ongoing economic, social and environmental repercussions. Constrained investment over time and associated impacts on efficiency make farms more vulnerable to viability concerns when profit margins are slim and the cost-price squeeze is tightening. At particular moments, it will undergird major decisions, especially when concern is given to extended members of the household: The choice to stay and have the younger generation carry on was to expand, we would have had to have two plants because there was no other farms close and we just couldn’t see the future in saddling our sons or our daughter with a million dollar debt … so, yeah, we just couldn’t generate that kind of income so we left the farm. (I10)

The reluctance to enter into further debt either to invest in improvements or to take the decision to expand or exit impacts upon land ownership patterns. Lower efficiencies brought about by constrained investment over time and associated compromised viability of local farms opened the way for rapid expansion by the corporate farm in the area. After buying the first property, the company was actively approached by neighbouring farms offering to sell their land and operation as they were unable to operate productively any longer: It’s opportunities and I think we bought into this area at the time when it was pretty tough and a lot of properties that we bought were people that were in their eighties and they weren’t able to run their properties productively and they didn’t have children that wanted to get involved and their properties were too small anyway to make it attractive for their

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children, so once we bought in the area we were approached generally. [We] have really bought over the fence, people approaching us. (I17)

The entwinement of economic and personal decisions at play in farming complicate any analysis of processes of capital investment in small farm operations. Both ongoing investment decisions and the impact this has on farm viability will ultimately determine land ownership patterns and these are both directly affected by the lived experience of the cost-price squeeze and the pressure of debt. Constrained capital investment due to limits on capital for small-scale operations means that investments leading to increased property development and efficiency are not taken full advantage of and therefore cyclical lower profitability means families are more likely to sell, both because the asset is no longer attractive because of size and/or the returns are not enough and equity has been eroded, but also because the level of debt that would be required to develop the property to competitive levels of efficiency comes up against farm-level constraints. This will continue to impact changes in land ownership as these slow-moving effects are yet to be realised: There’s a lot of farms that are just eating their equity, they’ve tripled in value and they’re using that to stay there, like there’s a decision that should have been made. (I5)

As noted by the owner of the corporate farm, the constraints on ongoing investment become the factor that makes the land itself attractive to corporate ownership as it is chronic under-investment that allows capital improvement: You’ve got to keep in mind that two thirds of your return is in the capital growth of your actual assets, so you may not be getting a monetary return but if you’re improving your land and basically a lot of the land that we bought has been run down because a lot of the people we bought from haven’t had the capital to put into improvements and different types of farming, then I think part of our reason for buying a lot of this land is to improve its value so that when we sell we’re getting a return that way. (I17)

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These processes then are mediated by access to capital and the associated ability to absorb the harder edges of the cost-price squeeze. The ‘monetary return’ for the large-scale investor is the primary income of the farm and critical to investment in improvements, ongoing farm viability and everyday lifestyle. It is informative to contrast the previous quote from the owner of the large corporate farm where access to capital is much higher and the land is framed more purely as an economic asset, with that of the small scale farmer caught in the squeeze between access to capital and familial relationships and responsibilities. The small-scale farmers’ ability to absorb financial shocks becomes a key determinant of farm ownership but this is by no means taken as a purely economic decision. Here he is recalling a time of drought: There was a lot of guys that went out at that stage. The only people that really stayed in the industry were those whose parents that were strong enough, had the backing behind them to be able to carry them through. I have several friends that it nearly bought them to their knees but most of our generation’s fathers all started with nothing, most of them were ex-servicemen that come home and got their soldier settlement blocks and survived and then they made lives for themselves but I have several friends whose parents stepped out on a limb and bought extra country and God knows what else but you know they really, really tested the family resources to get through it. A few of them got through it and a few of them didn’t. We were in that position that we were sort of borrowing on our parents, they were retiring and they were lending us money to go into our own operation and what not…and we weren’t prepared to take the risk of possibly losing our father’s life’s work so I decided to get out of it so that Mum and Dad had enough money to retire happily and you know, live their life and so we yeah [sold the farm]. We were one of many of that era, so we’ve seen a few changes. (I18)

Thus, it is at critical points of access to capital that decisions are taken. These moments of vulnerability are the moments at which penetration of large-scale capital into farm land ownership occurs and this is not just the case at the small scale. The corporate farm itself identifies the

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critical juncture at which many farms currently sit and the opportunities and attractiveness of this situation for large-scale capital investment, including their own decision to list the large aggregate farm for sale: It’s going to have to be a large corporate or fund that buys it and it’s more valuable as an aggregation rather than splitting it all up again. We’re at the point where in order to continue to develop it we’d have to put a lot more money into it. To get the pastures to the point where they’re really productive we’d have to put another ten years and another five million dollars… There are a lot of people in this area that will need to sell and so if it’s a big fund then this will be the start of a really productive aggregation. So I think that’s what is attractive about it too, there’s a lot of people that would sell, for the right money, and you know we just had so much on our plate just to develop this that we weren’t interested in taking on any more land, we’d achieved what we wanted but I think if someone’s got one hundred million dollars to spend then this would be an ideal sort of seed property…It’s a real window of opportunity. (I17)

The aggregated holding is comprised of nineteen smaller farms, a total of thirty-five thousand acres. On average, the farm size of those being interviewed sits at four thousand acres. It is therefore a stark contrast to posit that this aggregated holding is attractive as a ‘seed property’ to be leveraged into further expansion and development. After this interview was conducted, the holding described here was sold as part of a holding to a Chinese company for $38 million (Cranston 2017). This is representative of a broader trend to increasing foreign ownership of agricultural land in Australia, in particular Chinese ownership which has been exponential in the last couple of years. In 2015–2016, the area of agricultural land owned by Chinese interests has increased from 1,463,000 hectares to 14,422,000 hectares in 2016–2017 despite a slight fall in overall foreign ownership over that year (Australian Taxation Office 2017, p. 8). As such, these decisions being made at the farm level, in response to the changed settings of the state over time, have very real consequences as the point at which foreign capital is able to penetrate the landscape, in this instance on a very large scale. When the criteria for success and profitability turn very much upon farm-level efficiencies that rely upon high levels of capital investment

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to achieve economies of scale, the difficulties facing small-scale operators are clear. The ongoing and multifaceted impacts of the cost-price squeeze and debt stress and the lived experience through which economic decisions are mediated mean that the processes by which land becomes available for large-scale capital penetration are often acted out at farm level. With farmer’s terms of trade critically linked to fluctuating global commodity markets in a policy environment that favours trade liberalisation and deregulation, the interrelation of economic discourses and material conditions is evident in this case study. This demonstrates the ways in which the conditions of life at the micro-level emerge in response to broader settings, particularly those orchestrated by the state, that require particular responses and strategies to be enacted. Yet given that these strategies necessarily imply capital investment they also imply debt and the ways in which farms and farmers engage with these processes are heavily mediated by social and personal concerns. Specific state postures with relation to agriculture have therefore elided the set of responses available to farmers and the long-running effects of these changes have set up the circumstances for ongoing change in the landscape. In effect, the social changes taking place serve to recast agricultural land as a commodity (again) by dissolving the social and cultural ties of social actors to the landscape.

8.3

Impacts on Lifestyle—Stress, Pace and Intensity

I’d like to be doing what we’re doing now way back then, it just seemed to be so much simpler. Less pressure, less stress. (I14)

The experience of living within the cost-price squeeze and with debt stress has a number of impacts beyond the complex relationship to capital investment. Australian agriculture is highly variable both internationally and domestically, ranking highest in terms of volatility of national agricultural output value internationally and highest in the Index of relative volatility in annual value of output of all Australian economic sectors,

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which drives a number of strategies at the farm level (Jackson et al. 2020, pp. 6–7). Two of these strategies and their impacts will be explored here. The first represents the need to pursue farm activities at a far greater intensity and pace and the changed pace of life and intensity of production that interviewees identify as being related to the necessary focus on the farm as a business unit. The second relates to the increasing need for off-farm income. Both are strategies for pluriactivity to increase farm income (see Vanclay 2003) and both have impacts on everyday life. Pursuing production increases and income streams in a constant need to stay ahead of the cost-price squeeze means that the cycles of farming have intensified: When your winter crop was in the ground you went and did your stock work, your maintenance and things like that. But now when you’ve got your winter crop in you’re preparing for your spring crop and your summer crops and …so it’ s much more intense now…there was a busy season and a not so busy season whereas now, it’s just full-on all the time. So it’s definitely changed. (I10)

Of course also driven by technological innovations and increased knowledge of farming systems, these more intense cycles of production have nonetheless changed the lived experience of farming. Similarly, the second strategy to ensure viability is the pursuit of off-farm income to “keep the home fires burning” (I14): If you look at any farm that’s going along quite well financially there is always some sort of off-farm income, the wife may be a teacher or they do off-farm contracting. It’s very hard economically, farming. (I10)

As is suggested by this quote, this is usually a combination of one member of the household holding employment off-farm (often the wife), or the contracting out of services that can be performed by machinery that has been a significant investment for the business, which helps to justify outlay on large purchases: We’ve contracted machinery, like our header we’ve gone and harvested next door to justify that machine because machinery is so expensive, if

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you don’t do that it makes it harder to justify owning it, so we do that. (I1)

The need for off-farm income is repeatedly stated as necessary by all of the small-scale farms as a way to off-set low or unstable incomes: There’s not many farms in this area that don’t have off-farm income. There’s not many at all. Everyone’s either contracting in bailing hay, harvesting or picking or spraying, or carting cattle or hay, everyone has off-farm income in this area. (I12)

The relationship between working off-farm and financially difficult periods is clear throughout the interviews: Then we decided to …split this block up between us, ‘cause it was a bit more affordable and that was the start of a very long lean process of trying to paying something off. Then we got into contract hay baling to try and make ends meet because we weren’t getting anywhere and then there was all the drought years. (I5)

Similarly, income brought in by both members of the household is very common with all of the wives of the in-place farming households also working both on- and off-farm. Women’s contribution to farming is historically under-recognised, indeed it was not until 1994 that women were able to be recognised as ‘farmer’ on the national census, with estimates of Australian women’s contribution to this sector reaching 48 per cent of real farm income (Newsome 2020, p. 57). It has been estimated that women provide 84 per cent of all off-farm income (Binks et al. 2018, p. 10). It is also worth noting the highly gendered nature of farm work, with research showing that farm women typically undertake almost all domestic and household labour, are involved in the financial management of the farm, are often expected to be the ‘reserve’ labour force ready to undertake work tasks (including on-farm physical work) when male labour is unavailable, and all in addition to off-farm paid employment (Pini 2004, p. 54). Exactly this division was evident in the households interviewed and besides seasonal contracting by the male farmer when required, regular off-farm employment was held by each adult female

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household member. Most often this requires travel into town, which has a significant impact on lived experience: It’s a drag. Two or three days I can handle, I couldn’t handle any more. Two days even I find a bit tiring. I got permanent work two days a week in town which does help. We do have to, it is helping because we’ve got [children at boarding school] so to try and keep them up there. So we’ve got this year and next year to go. Then hopefully we can start paying off the farm then and once then, yeah maybe then I can retire and just work at home full-time then. (I15)

Each of these strategies—increasing farming intensity and pursuing offfarm incomes—impacts upon the lived experience of farming most directly through increasing the demands upon members of the household. The cycle of debt stress, where the cost-price squeeze pushes farms to increase efficiencies through capital investment facilitated through higher debt or to stabilise income through off-farm work or by pushing to a more intense mode of production, drives the reframing of farming as a ‘business’ and not as a lifestyle by positioning farmers at the sharpest edge of the economic realities of rising costs and unstable incomes. The theme of increased stress and worry that this reality entails was constant in the interviews: Some nights you’d wake up and have a couple of, what do they call them, anxiety attacks. I’ve probably had a few of them, debt-related anxiety attacks. Yeah, geez and sort of you just go from there I think you, just as you get older you learn it will come, just give it time, but as you get older you realise you haven’t got that much bloody time left! (I5)

This is seen as the most significant change in farming: Back in those days, all you needed was a strong back, now you need a strong brain. It’s a business now not just a lifestyle… you’ve just got to make money because the debt you’re involved in is frightening…The biggest change is the mental side of it, the anguish at payments, repayments, but a lot of that is our fault, taking on more country and whatever. (I14)

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It is interesting to note here that the broader structural changes to the farming sector, including the move to deregulated markets and the withdrawal of state-based services such as centralised marketing, are invisible here as the necessary response to remain viable in this broader context is reframed as an individual issue. As an example of depoliticisation, where individual responses to structural change are reframed (Palumbo and Scott 2018), this fits with earlier discussions of the changes to subjective experience that become embedded in neoliberal economies. This becomes part of the deep change to the experience of the farmer where daily life is reframed, measured and oriented to a more purely economic foci. Modes of experiencing farming are deeply changed through this process: I5: “That’s agriculture, there’s no love or passion anymore, you see the people that are successful in agriculture they don’t fall in love with anything, they don’t fall in love with cows [for example]. I mean that’s what’s changed. I mean my Mum, she was like “That cow’s Daisy” and you know it couldn’t stand so she’d make poly pipe splints for it and plaster and [care for it] for 3 weeks and now you drive down in the paddock and go bang. Simple as that. Now that’s quite sad in a way, that’s quite sad, there’s no way I’m going to spend that amount of time…Yes, that’s how they farmed, it was all about passion and lifestyle and… I6: That passion is beautiful but it was also based on the fact that they could afford to make a living, the returns on what they were producing on the cost of their property was making sense. As the property prices have increased and commodities haven’t kept up with that then commercial realities come into play.

The pressures of rationalising and managing time and resources to always focus upon the most economic outcome becomes the central determinant of farming practice for these farmers. Exposure to the basic equation of increased prices and unstable returns, amplified through the prism of high household debt, the individuals involved experience a heightened burden of income-focussed activity upon their time and practice and thus a shift in subjective experience. Here the interplay of broader economic and policy settings with situated material conditions result in a particular form of lived experience. Retractions of state support for

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agriculture have resulted in a far more precarious economic situation for farmers and this has required a particular response (the pursuit of on- and off-farm income strategies) that have subsequently impacted everyday life. It is in this way that macro-settings, particularly those of the state, come to condition the set of possibilities of the lifeworld and the conduct of everyday life.

8.4

Experiencing the Changing Role of the State: New Burdens in a ‘Free’ Market

Old guys say ‘Oh farming was tough’ and it would have been physically, you didn’t have any equipment, like work-wise it’s got a lot better for us. But I mean we’ve got a lot of mental stress. (I5)

The mental stress alluded to here and discussed in the previous section is not limited to the economics of farming but also to the (interrelated) changed role of the state. The focus of this section is to explore the impacts of the changed role of the state, both its retraction and its extension. As has been established, when neoliberalism is understood as a complex form of statecraft, state power and authority can be strengthened rather than weakened through the market (Palumbo and Scott 2018, p. 3) and this can be seen in the case study community. The move to increased privatisation, liberalisation and marketisation in the Australian policy setting has had deep effects at the level of lived experience both through the retraction of state functions, such as the withdrawal of centralised marketing and storage and handling services in the wheat industry, and through the interrelated upsurge of compliance requirements and market actors that now pervade farming processes. Interview data indicates changes to everyday life brought about through shifts in government policy that promote self-reliance, business management and the individualisation of risk characteristic of neoliberal settings impact not just through the lived experience of exposure to increased risk and responsibility as a result of direct exposure to markets, but also in the

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increased burdens of interaction with market actors. Both of these aspects will be explored here. Although agriculture in Australia has always been part of a global system of commodity production and trade, farmers in Australia have traditionally operated within a protective and welfarist approach to policy that largely shielded producers from direct market exposure. The increased exposure of farming to globalised markets through the retraction of state protection has had complex effects at the level of lived experience. Firstly and fundamentally, exposure to globalised commodity markets and the related increased level of risk and individualised responsibility significantly shifted the context of farm practice. Here the broader penetration of market logic is described by the owner of the corporate farm: You’ve got to either get big or get out because the market is just relentless and we are exposed to … the export market not the local market and that dictates the price so you’ve got to be very efficient and have the scale that you can achieve those efficiencies. It has to pay a return, we’re a business, so we can’t just do it for the lifestyle, it puts certain pressures and it sort of sets the playing field where we’re trying to survive in. (I17)

These pressures are felt even more keenly at the small-scale farm level. Within a policy context that frames farm-level risk within the bounds of individual business management, the precarious position of the farmer directly exposed to global markets on top of climatic variability is one of frustration and, often, futility: I can put up with anything Mother Nature can throw at me, I don’t like her sometimes, but basically that’s my job. My job is to anticipate what she’s going to do and put all the measures in place to protect my business and make sure we get through to the other end. Like everything from marketing to new systems like controlled traffic and zero-till farming, you know like better ways of applying fertiliser and lowering our costs, all of these things we can do to limit risk, you know, like less inputs where we can, making sure we always get a crop, all those things …but when someone just wakes up the next morning and sorghum was worth $3–2.80 and now they got it down to $1.90 …I mean that’s just,

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that’s just not fair, it does my head in!… It’s all manipulated by funds managers now, that’s the scary thing. American funds are bigger than the Australian economy so they just push, they don’t care which way it’s going, whether it’s going up or down, they’ll push it as high as they can and then they’ll take a position and then they’ll push it the other way and they’re big enough to do it until they can’t push it anymore, until the real fundamentals take over then they swap their position over. (I5)

Beyond feelings of futility at being exposed to a market pushed to perverse extremes unrelated to notions of direct supply and demand, the dissonance between the basic logic of profit-taking in a complex and globalised market setting and the precarity of agricultural production is well understood by the interviewees: Farming is a funny business in some ways because every other business out there basically says ‘Well, it costs us this much to manufacture and we need to make a profit of ten or fifteen or whatever percent … so this is the price we’ll sell for”. But farmer’s don’t get that … we get the price that’s on the world market, it doesn’t matter if it cost us more to grow it or lineball or less to grow it, that’s the price, so …and the fact that I guess we are a small market, a small part of the market that has to boat it a long way to where it will be going to. (I1)

A recurring theme was the frustration at liberalised trade within a world system in which levels of regulation and protection are highly varied. Whilst being proud of the efficiencies and productivity that they have been able to achieve, farmers in the area are aware of the global context that liberalised trade exposes them to and the inequities that exist. The idea of the ‘level playing field’ that is cited in political discourse around deregulation is considered a nonsense: It’s a load of rot because we are the only ones playing by the rules. We have all these free trade agreements that we have but then they’ve all still got their subsidised markets, like Europe, America, other countries like Argentina… If only we could get paid a decent price, and that’s where playing on this level playing field is so wrong, if we could get paid for

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what our commodities really are worth …it’s the only industry where you buy at retail and sell at wholesale. (I5) ’Level playing field’, I hate that term. Oh no, there certainly is not. We bought a header and part of the deal when we bought the header was that they threw in two tickets over to where it was built [the US] … we went out and visited a local farmer over there that owned their machinery. Well he was growing great crops, he was very similar to us in real terms and growing good quality and the same amount of yield as us but he was getting paid a bit more for his wheat and that was before he got subsidised and he was paying about half the price for these machinery. You talk about level playing field, they’re that far in front of us it’s unreal! (I1)

Within this broader exposure to global markets sits the more specific example of the dissolution of the Australia Wheat Board (AWB). The removal of a guaranteed base return that the dissolution of the AWB and pool-based payments represents is part of the new exposure of farm income to unstable global markets. Frustrations with the instability of returns pervaded the interviews, particularly when the intersection of management practices and efficiency improvements are met with an indifferent global market. These producers were once protected by the provision of state-based centralised grain handling and marketing services that provided not just income protection through the provision of base prices, but also streamlined the processes of selling their wheat by providing a single transaction point beyond which the farmer did not have to engage with market processes. This was repeatedly cited in the data as a major disruption to the experience and outcomes of farming practice within the broader context of policy change. This is contrasted with the time when the AWB provided a stable and guaranteed return: That’s changed things a lot because when I was managing the place you just had to grow the wheat and deliver it because the wheat board looked after it from there and nowadays you’ve got to shop around for the best prices and I wasn’t geared that way… You delivered there [the central silos] and as long as you did everything right you had your delivery ticket, once you delivered it you were paid fair average payment based

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on the pool. But you’ve got to do your own shopping around now… It’s a different ball game. (I7)

The pressure of tightened terms of trade in cropping was clear and was linked to the dissolution of the AWB: While we’re getting this money [price], we’re not going to make any money. I think the worst thing that happened to the way we sell our wheat is the end of the single desk. It’s just we have nobody out there selling wheat for us. (I4)

Significantly, participants saw the AWB as performing crucial functions and reducing the burden of risk to farmers: That moved the risk off farmers to a fair degree ‘cause we had that Board there that was managing selling overseas so they could sort of ‘shore up’ a good price and took a lot of risk off us. (I13)

The link between price and marketing is fundamental yet the participants noted three major ways in which the new arrangements make this difficult to manage. Firstly, the loss of the capacity to combine wheat into large parcels of competitively high quantity and quality for effective marketing on the world market was an important theme: Marketing is a new ball game, the wheat board just took care of it and everybody got a satisfactory result, but now it just depends on the quantity and to be able to bargain, they’re not interested in a couple of hundred tonne, they want thousands of tonnes if possible. (I3)

Farmers acting as individual producers are not able to mobilise as effectively in a world market as the centralised marketing body was able to. In addition to the new vulnerabilities brought about by the marketisation and liberalisation and the effects on lived experience described here, the second major impact centres around the proliferation of market processes and actors that the privatisation that the dissolution of the AWB represents. The deregulation of the AWB and the dissolution of centralised grain handling and marketing exposed farmers not just to

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global markets but also to the processes required of these markets. As such, the second major impact of these new arrangements relates to the new demands upon the skills and capacities of farmers that diverge from their main occupation, a particular change from their parents’ time when “you grew it, you just grew it” (I5). Farmers now need to engage with markets in ways that make requirements upon their time and capacities to act beyond the processes of production. The disaffection with the more recent requirement to act as marketeer as well as farmer is deeply related to the new burden that these newly on-farm tasks demand as a major source of frustration: It’s another job, it’s every day an hour in the office or more if you want to look at everyone’s [web]site, what they’re doing. It’s a lot more office work with computers than there used to be which is, well there’s something wrong there. You get texts every day from buyers, it’s a lot more to it. (I4)

Given these major challenges, all participants expressed scepticism about the alleged benefits of deregulation, both from a standpoint of returns but also as a response to the increased burden of having to deal with multiple market actors and processes: …the deregulated market they reckoned was going to be better for us but you ring around all the buyers and they’re within a dollar of each other, there’s no competition in that… Instead of just one wheat board, we have a million of them, just more phone calls. (I1)

The new intricacies of the process in many ways necessarily alienate the function from being within the farmer’s purview, given the scale of operations that small-scale farmers are responsible for. The infiltration of technical knowledges and increasingly technocratic processes mirror wider trends in social and economic organisation that are deeply tied to late capitalism, and represent a significant way in which market processes impact lived experience: It’s a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. I really struggle to get my head around it. And they’ve just changed it recently and I don’t know any

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farmer that says it’s easy, everyone I’ve spoken to says it’s a really hard process…I don’t know whether it’s worth investing in a broker to do it, there are brokers. I don’t know if it’s worth it. It’s just so much fine print and there’s so many options of marketing your grain. Mum and Dad have said it so many times they’ve sold grain today and then tomorrow it’s jumped twenty dollars a tonne, so many times and then you think there goes twenty or thirty grand, that side of it is frustrating. That’s why people think you’re mad for farming because it’s just unknown. (I12)

In addition to a potential gap in knowledge and expertise there exists an unequal position in relation to market processes. Due to time pressures, limited technological or other skills or cash flow pressures, full engagement with marketing processes is limited and ultimately results in losses to farmers through lower prices: …it’s all about the price. And that’s one thing we have to get better at, it’s marketing…It’s a real weakness of nearly the majority of farmers, they’re not good marketers. A lot of the farmers still there farming are quite good at making a cow fat or growing a good crop, but then once it’s in the silo within about a week they get a bit itchy. A lot of them just don’t want to deal with it, send it into town, so straightaway they [grain traders] just go (rubbing hands together) ‘You beauty!’, every week they just drop the price ten bucks. (I5)

Therefore, in addition to the new skills and demands on farmers’ time that marketing produce represents, exists a pervasion of market processes and actors into a process that was previously streamlined through a centralised state agency. This can then come to have perverse effects on farmer returns by shifting the relative position of power available to producers when new functions become subject to specialised knowledge and mediated through access to capital, time and the unequal negotiation of complicated processes, in this case the newly privatised grain handling and marketing services. Trapped by material conditions such as inadequate silage facilities and low cash-flow, small-scale farmers are not able to effectively ‘play the game’ in the same way as larger-scale operators. This is amplified by the fact that the requirement of farmers to engage with processes of bulk grain handling and storage beyond the point of

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delivery is further complicated by the recognised lack of true competition in grain handling networks. This lack of competition has been identified as an issue for producers (Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport 2015) which further complicates the capacity for farmers to leverage any advantage in the ‘free’ market. This is often a result of the historical context of the development of grain handling networks. In the NSW example, the Grain Elevators Board (GEB) was established in 1916 to centralise grain handling processes (GrainCorp 2017a) and after being privatised in 1992 then merged with the corporate and fully privatised remnant of AWB, AWB Limited, in 2008 (“AWB, GrainCorp to merge into $2b giant” 2010). As such Grain Corp continues to operate as a major bulk handling and marketing company, promoting itself as the “largest Eastern Australian grain storage and transport network” (GrainCorp 2017b), and in regional areas often holds historically-conditioned privileged access to the once centrallyowned handling facilities. This means that they are often the central actor through which silage and handling is conducted with little involvement of other market actors and a lack of viable choice for farmers, in a situation described as “oligopsonistic” in regional markets (O’Keeffe 2017, p. 81). This results in a situation in which farmers are often faced with limited options that result in a decision to sell that is less geared to maximising returns on a volatile market and more focussed upon limiting losses: We trade mainly with Grain Corp just because that’s where we deliver our grain, they hold our grain, so they charge a fee to sell to a different grain buyer…we deliver to Grain Corp because we don’t have enough on-farm storage – not many people do if you’re growing that tonnage, it’s not practical or efficient, not good business to have that much storage – and you get two months free storage in Gunnedah so you don’t have to worry about treatment of pests or worry about that side of that and they’ll store it before they charge you a per cent per tonne you’ve got. I think we had it in there and we didn’t sell it because we were waiting for the price to do something because it was terrible and I think it was getting towards five or six hundred dollars a month we were getting charged to store it so it’s like we’d better sell it, it was starting to eat, and you know the price wasn’t going to jump enough to cover those costs so it was better to just

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bite the bullet and get it done and dusted. Some people I speak to say they just deliver it and sell it for cash on that day, they get that much cash in their bank and that’s the choice they make so they don’t have to… ‘Cause they charge like five dollars a tonne for this fee and some fees for this fee and we give you this much and then there’s deductions, they call it shrinkage and little fees like that annoy people. (I12)

The proliferation of market processes and actors through the penetration of privatisation and marketisation of services fundamental to the selling of grain does not occur in an ahistorical, non-geographically conditioned or universally accessible ‘free’ market. The producer’s ability to play the game is conditioned by complex factors, including most fundamentally their physical location, and by privatising and marketising services that condition market access the lived experience of the farmer is deeply changed. Negotiation of these processes becomes central to the role of the farmer beyond the base function of farming itself and this has complex effects upon lived experience. Likewise the infiltration of market processes into the daily life and burden on farmers is also evident in the proliferation of compliance requirements that underscore and reinforce market position: First it came out with the paddock-to-plate idea that you could follow meat from the supermarket in Japan all the way back to the paddock that it came from and now that’s happening with grain, people want to know how it was grown, was is it grown with this chemical or that fertiliser, has it come into contact with all these things the same as the meat industry. Now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing necessarily because that’s got to do with the market knowing that when they buy Australian produce its meeting all the standards and it’s got this great quality that Australia’s always banked on I guess but that compliance comes down to the paperwork back on the farm, back in the paddock! (I6)

As a further example, the penetration of complex classification systems to facilitate differential pricing in the market has further complicated market access and returns. Prior to 1974, the prices AWB paid for grain were based on a simple grading system of FAQ or “Fair Average Quality”, where a composite sample from each area was sent for grading and

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payments to all producers from the area were based upon the quality of this sample (Botterill 2012, p. 57). Over time the grading of wheat became more finely tuned to the requirements of the market and the highly detailed process of testing and proliferation of grades has complicated the farmer’s market position with respect to expected returns. Where farmers would once be able to calculate their returns based on the pool, they are now reliant on highly specific individualised testing that exposes them to further uncertainty: I5: You look at the spread on wheat now, like I don’t even know how many [grades] there is now, there’s that many of them. When my father was growing it FAQ – Fair Average Quality, that’s what it stood for, that was it. So I mean that’s why our jobs are a lot more stressful…Well you got paid for what you grew whereas now if you’ve got 13% [protein] grain they pay this, if you’ve got 12.9% grain you drop into a category below then you lose $20 or $25 a tonne which they don’t lose. They’re just holding you at gunpoint, it’s all they’re doing ‘cause they just blend it all together and they just say ‘Beauty we bought that parcel for $25 a tonne less!’, ‘cause it’s all the same wheat. Where it’s going to there’s no difference in price… I6: When it’s all going into that one big silo! I5: The thing that really twists your head, really twists your head about this is if you talk to the people that manufacture the equipment that test all this, they’ll unequivocally tell you that 0.2–0.4% is the most accurate their best machines are. So we’re running on a system that’s 0.1% yet their testing equipment can only (shakes head) …how are you supposed to win on that? Talk about having six bullets in when you’re playing Russian roulette!

This demonstrates the ways in which the farmers’ complex yet often disempowered position to the market and its processes becomes a burden upon their lived experience. The constant need to negotiate multiple processes becomes an added burden on farmers’ time and in a situation in which their strategic capacity is limited by material conditions as well as the structural conditions of the regulatory system required by the process, the impact is deleterious. Thus the experience of policy change based more on ideological consistency than a real consideration

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of the lived outcomes reveals frustrating and negative impacts. Among statements that the AWB “should never have gone” (I3) and “we wanted to keep it” (I1), was a disbelief that it had occurred under a political coalition that were supposed to be pro-farming: Crazy, crazy. The wheat board was our single desk trading and now individual farmers are trying to market their crop. Like you’re trying to sell your crop but I don’t want you to buy her crop so I’ll sell mine a bit cheaper… the farmer has to have cash flow so they do take cut prices. I could not understand why an ex-farmer, well supposed farmer and a Liberal Prime Minister, why they did away with it, John Anderson and John Howard. They should have vetoed as far as I’m concerned. Crazy! (I10)

This disrupted sense of voice in the processes that determined these policy settings speaks to the incongruence of a political coalition that straddles the divide of a traditional Liberal ideology of a free market and the political preferences of small-scale farmers whose existence was in many ways predicated upon protectionist agricultural policy. This sense of powerlessness is multiplied across both the technocracy of the processes detailed above and through the indifference of market processes that have actively challenged the farms’ existence. Amongst those left there is a sense of resigned determination: The only answer to that is to use it, use it in your tools…You’ve got to say ‘use this tool that we hate’. At the end of the day some farmers will bubble to the top and some will go down because of it all, I mean it’s happened, there’s no point in crying over it any more. Learn how to use the tools that they’ve tried to destroy us with. (I5)

This feeling that policy settings have been calibrated to undermine the interests of the small-scale farmers is highly divergent from the position of farmers during the establishment of the community. From policy settings aimed at producer stabilisation and the promotion of social as well as economic benefits of agriculture, the advancement of policy centred upon the liberalisation, marketisation and privatisation of all facets of agricultural production have thus deeply changed the farmers’

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subjective position to the role of the state. In many ways, the retraction and extension of state power have deeply impacted upon the lived experience at Goolhi.

8.5

Conclusion

This chapter has analysed the findings of Moment Two and found a complex set of effects of the changed relationship between the state and the market brought about by a change to policy priorities. The changing role of the state, both its retraction and its extension, provide key points of discussion of lived experience given the very real impacts on daily life. These impacts relate not only to the exposure of farm incomes to volatile global markets and the necessary survival strategies at farm-level, but also to the proliferation of market processes and actors into the farmer’s field of action that manifest as new burdens in a ‘free’ market. The increased burden of risk and the increased need for technical and other skills to manage functions that used to be performed by other (usually state) actors, as well as the increased burden of compliance, are important themes in the consideration of lived experience and daily life. The interplay between the lifeworld of the farmer and the broader social and economic forces manifests as a particular calibration in the conditions of possibility that permeate the lifeworld. As such, daily life is inscribed with the consequences of particular state settings and the consequences of this inform long-running socio-historical processes of change. This chapter has explored the impacts upon daily life of the changed statemarket relationship and the next looks at how these in turn impact upon individual and community identity. By slowly dissolving the social and cultural ties of farmers to the land, these processes serve to recast it as a commodity and prepare it for the penetration of capital on a new scale.

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References Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2012a). Australian social trends December 2012: Australian farming and farmers (Cat. No. 4102.0). Retrieved from https://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/3794FDCDA8D5 275ACA257AD0000F2BE9/$File/41020_australianfarmingandfarmers_ dec2012.pdf. Australian Taxation Office. (2017). Register of Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land: Report of registrations as at 30 June 2017 . Canberra, ACT: Australian Government. Retrieved from https://cdn.tspace.gov.au/uploads/sites/79/ 2017/09/Register_of_Foreign_ownership_of_Agricultural_Land_2017.pdf. AWB, GrainCorp to merge into $2b giant. (2010, 30 July). The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/business/awb-graincorpto-merge-into-2b-giant-20100730-10yq0.html. Barr, N. (2004). Australian Census Analytic Program: The micro-dynamics of change in Australian agriculture 1976–2001. Canberra, ACT: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Binks, B., Stenekes, N., Kruger, H., & Kancans, R. (2018). Snapshot of Australia’s Agricultural Workforce. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Canberra. CC BY 4.0. https://doi.org/ 10.25814/5c09cefb3fec5. Botterill, L. (2012). Wheat marketing in transition. New York: Springer. Cranston, M. (2017, April 30). China’s Union Agriculture increases farmland, takes Minnamurra for about $38m. The Financial Review. Retrieved from https://www.afr.com/real-estate/chinas-union-agriculture-increases-far mland-takes-minnamurra-for-about-38m-20170428-gvurf3. Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (ABARES). (2017). Productivity matters for farm profit. Canberra, ACT: Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (ABARES). Retrieved from https://www.agriculture. gov.au/abares/Pages/productivity-introduction.aspx#productivity-mattersfor-farm-profit. GrainCorp. (2017a). Our history. Retrieved from https://www.graincorp.com. au/about-graincorp/company/our-history. GrainCorp. (2017b). Our operations at a glance. Retrieved from https://www. graincorp.com.au/careers/graduate/about-graincorp.

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Grains Research & Development Corporation. (2013). Key financial ratios fact sheet. Canberra, ACT: Australian Government. Retrieved from https://grdc.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/117322/8116-key-fin ancial-ratios-fs-pdf.pdf.pdf. Gruen, F. (1990). Economic development and agriculture since 1945. In D. B. Williams (Ed.), Agriculture in the Australian economy (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Sydney University Press in association with Oxford University Press. Higgins, V. (2002). Constructing reform. Hauppage, NY: Nova Science Publishers. Jackson, T., Zammit, K., & Hatfield-Dodds, S. (2020). Snapshot of Australian Agriculture 2020. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Canberra. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.25814/5e3a4ad8f 80e7. Martin, P., Levantis, C., Shafron, W., Philips, P., & Frilay, J. (2018). Farm debt: Broadacre and dairy farms, 2014–15 to 2016–17 . Canberra, ACT: Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (ABARES). Retrieved from https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/surveys/debt. Newsome, L. (2020). Beyond ‘get big or get out’: Female farmers’ responses to the cost-price squeeze of Australian agriculture. Journal of Rural Studies, 79, 57–64. O’Keeffe, P. (2017). Contestability in the Australian wheat export industry. The Journal of Australian Political Economy (79), 65–86. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.une.edu.au/docview/ 1917630276?accountid=17227. Palumbo, A., & Scott, A. (2018). Remaking market society: A critique of social theory and political economy in neoliberal times. London, UK: Routledge. Pini, B. (2004). Farm women and off-farm work: A study of the Queensland sugar industry. Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work, 15 (1), 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/10301763.2004. 10669304. Pritchard, B., Neave, M., Hickey, D., & Troy, L. (2012). Rural land in Australia. (RIRDC Publication No. 12/038). Canberra, Australia: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. Retrieved from https:// rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/12-038.

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Productivity Commission. (2005). Trends in Australian agriculture: Productivity Commission Research Paper. Canberra, ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/agriculture. Vanclay, F. (2003). The impacts of deregulation and agricultural restructuring for rural Australia. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 38(1), 81. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2003.tb01137.x.

9 Moment Two and Its Social Consequences

This chapter continues the study of Moment Two. The particular ways in which altered settings provoke particular responses at the microlevel have complex effects and extend deeply into the sociality of those involved. The withdrawal of state support and services delivered a new sense of precarity that turned upon the elevation of businesses efficiency and productivity as the orienting principle of daily life as farmers were forced to implement strategies to stabilise and increase income. This has personal and social effects as farmers work to integrate competing imperatives in a landscape configured through familial legacy and attachment to place. In this context, decision-making is again complicated as farmers look to negotiate between different identities and therefore criteria of action. The ways in which the past and future echo into current decision-making is significant.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_9

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The Past and the Future: The Lived Experience of Decision-Making

If we had to move to town tomorrow, Rocky is the dog I’d take…Rocky could be a town dog…we’d need somewhere with a shed … you know what I’m saying? Even if we moved closer to [our kids] we couldn’t live in a suburban street where you know what your neighbours are doing or you hear them having an argument, or whatever…. (I16)

The multiple and complex impacts described so far are amplified due to the intersection of economic and social identities that is characteristic of small-scale farming in Australia. Often farming occurs in a place that comes with a legacy of meaning and family history that adds a further and complex layer through which economic decisions are considered. This section looks at the ways in which both the past and the future are embedded in decisions that ultimately impact upon the ways in which land ownership is patterned, beyond considerations of capturing economies of scale, and considers the more personal impacts of making decisions for the future that are conditioned by issues for family succession, or the loss of this. The processes through which land ownership and use are determined are embedded within a set of considerations that are not just economic in nature and the lived impact is influenced by considerations for both the past and the future. Firstly, it is important to note the terms used by the interviewees when discussing the decision for the next generation to farm in-place. Repeatedly interviewees term this ‘coming home’ which infers a deep level of personal involvement in the decision: We were sort of at the stage where [our son] was ready to come home…Oh yeah he was, yes, definitely [interested to farm] and we sort of raised him to go on the farm, I mean he went through school and then he went down to Ag’ college. He was, yeah, real keen to come home. (I11)

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For this family, the decision was made to leave as the burden of debt was seen as too much to take on for the next generation despite the interest and desire to return. This consideration for the welfare of the next generation and the difficulty of the lived experience of farming is a constant consideration in the data. All of the interviewees stressed the need for children to become qualified in some way that was independent of the farm before considering taking on the farm business due to the precarious financial position that they may find themselves in in the future. This was described as the need to “get something behind them” (I7) as an insurance against future scenarios and a protection against the difficult situation that the earlier generation have found themselves in: So, yeah, we don’t want to leave our kids with a debt, our debt… [it is] cruelty to kids, to leave them the family farm! If either of them want to come back onto the farm they need have a degree or a trade, something to fall back on… If things get a bit tight he can go out and do a bit of carpentry, pick a bit up on the side and do a bit which is good but I’m qualified for nothing. Jack of all trades, expert of none. (I14)

For farmers ageing-in-place, there are few options when they have spent their whole working lives farming. Here their past determines their future options: My sisters live in the city and they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a farmer, they think you’re whinging all the time and you know, it’s just the way it is, we’re just not making the money and they don’t understand and they say well if it’s that bad for God’s sake tell him to go and get a job in town and you cannot do that! Farmers cannot just go to town and [get another job]… that’s just who they are. What’s he going to do at the age of 70? Especially one that doesn’t use a mobile phone! (I4)

This lack of options for older farmers is critically linked to their sense of identity and self, given their long personal history that comes with working on the family farm: It’s all I know too, I’ve never done anything else. When I first left school I did think about the Army or Defence Force but Dad was home, there

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was a depression in the cattle market then, in the early 70’s- mid-70’s, and Dad sent two boys away to boarding school, he was selling everything he could ‘cause he’d never go the bank for anything, he sold everything he could … to try and keep us in school and he got me through to the fourth form. (I14)

When questioned about their reasons for staying through the difficult times, interviewees often cited the centrality of farming to their identity as part of their sense of the past and continuity: I3: I was here for the long haul, that’s the way I’ve always been, on the farm and that’s the way it is, we’ve always had our ups and downs. I4: He is a farmer through and through, that’s what he is, that’s who he is. I3: Unfortunately! (both laughing). This is also linked to a sense of legacy that those who stayed feel that they are part of. When asked about his reasons for staying, one interviewee replied: I14: Sentimentality. I never wanted to shift. My wife occasionally, when things were bad, would look at land, a beautiful spot up at Niangala. I15: Over at the coast, somewhere where it rains! (laughing). I14: But no I’ve never really thought about shifting, never wanted to… you’d like to think you can carry on the family name, family tradition I suppose. There is a sense of grief and loss when elements of this tradition are lost. The difficulty in separating out the emotional lived experience and the practicalities of economic decision-making when it comes to the family farm are clear as the tensions and incongruencies of competing identity logics become manifest: I5:

I mean it sort of like unshackles us… if you just look at it and go ‘That’s a farming block and that’s wrong and that’s wrong and that’s wrong’, it doesn’t worry me but if you start thinking what your

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father built and then you go ‘Stop, stop, just stop thinking about that!’. Because it is what it is, it is where you grew up…but it’s better to sell that and be doing better… You probably find maybe that’s the case with a lot of people that have had to go, as sentimental as it is, if they were here they might be that miserable being that lonely and broke with no hope that like at least you know you’ve had time to build a life somewhere else…I’m very aware of what my parents did and where they lived and but I mean, I sold the family farm and I haven’t been hit by lightning yet and it wasn’t a bad farm, I could just see and it was probably a very difficult decision to make because it was the family farm (voice breaks) um yeah, it’s still hard actually, (pause) yeah, yeah. I6 : ‘Cause your father built the house that he put his wife into you know, and the old cottage where your grandfather lived and where your grandmother (came) as a young bride at 19 or 20… was all still there and it’s all that stuff. We’ve actually got some family photos taken next to the sawmill that was made to cut the wood that built all the fences and the houses and that’s all still there and that’s very hard to walk, well not walk away from but no longer own I guess. I5: So yeah, that’s a very big emotional thing, it’s right up there with marriage and all those sorts of things I reckon, some days its taxing and other days it’s not but look I mean it was a good decision, it was a good financial decision and like I said, you can’t… I mean that’s how you have to farm now, if you farm with emotion you’re gone and everyone used to farm with emotion once and I think that’s sad but what we’ve done, there’s a few negatives to it but majority of it, financially it’s been a terrific thing we’ve done. This complex statement weaves together the intersecting dimensions of decision-making and the consequences of these decisions upon lived experience. The farmer struggles at the intersection of competing identities, as rational and efficient business manager on the one hand and as proud son and grandson on the other. This echoes distinctions between yeoman farm family and entrepreneur farm family types that showed

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the orientations of the farm family towards either of these types influenced farm goals (such as continuity of a viable unit versus profit-making business), farm management strategies and the local social implications (Hildenbrand and Hennon 2005, p. 359). It is the struggle between alternative identities and therefore associated alternative orientations to farm goals and practice that are so difficult here and that have concrete outcomes. The dissonance between assessing the quality and viability of farming the family land in purely economic and rational terms becomes intolerable when viewed through the human lens of past and future. Years after selling the farm the emotional impact of this decision, even though it was the most rational and economically viable of the options, is still keenly felt given the sense of the past that pervades their thinking. Their connections with the place and the past are captured through photographs as a way of bringing some of the place with them, which suggests an attempt to move into the future with some of the legacy preserved even if the farm is no longer theirs. These strands of past and future are woven in amongst the economic thinking that drove the decision and cannot be separated from the emotional impact upon their lived experience, thus demonstrating the deep embeddedness of economic decision-making in the context of family farming. This sense of loss operates across generations as well as within the daily life of those farmers that left. There is an acknowledgement of the ways in which decisions to leave impacted the lives of the next generation and the sense of disappointment: I11: By the time we sold he [son] had a job so it was, I guess it was a bit hard but we went to the stage that you have a job, you’re getting an income, so yeah… I10: I talked to him about it later and he said well yeah, he wasn’t very happy that we left the farm in the first place but after a while he realised, yeah… I11: I mean not when you go your whole life thinking that’s what you’re going to be, I’m going to be a farmer, and then… but… I10: He’s since got a job… The kids have moved on, we’ve moved on. There is life after farming.

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This life is, however, deeply changed. For those that have left, whether through selling the farm or retiring, the changes to daily life are significant. I10: It was a totally different way of life. I11: I think that’s what it is. That’s it, it’s just a totally different way of life. You’re not going by a clock you’re going by the sun, when it comes up you get up when it goes down the farmers come in. We’ve only just got out of that… I would rather be out there, I can get out and even just going for a walk around the farm. The consequences of selling the farm extend to the day-to-day life of those that left in a way that would not affect others changing employment in a less embedded and explicitly placed economic role. The economic identity of farming is therefore tied to daily life and lived experience in many ways beyond the economic or financial implications. This means that the choice to farm, particularly by otherwise qualified and educated younger generations such as this interviewee recently returned to the farm, becomes critically linked to factors beyond the financial reality: The main reasons [for choosing to farm] are it is a great lifestyle, being self-employed, you are your own boss, and being able to have the choice to farm the way you want to farm. It is a good business, on paper it is a good business, a good asset though it has its troubles at times, the last few years have been tough … That and being family-owned… If we did sell it would be impossible to buy it back, you just can’t buy land back, so you know I’m grateful for that, I’m lucky for that I suppose. And I enjoy it, I enjoy being on a tractor and I like farming and planting and harvesting and just seeing that whole yearly process and even though the things don’t change too much here year to year there’s still little differences and I enjoy it, it’s good, it’s good… Just the summers are just dry, really dry summers, so you’re missing out on that summer crop income for the last four years which sort of compounds each year as well off your income. I don’t think many businesses could handle losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because you rely on the weather. But they say farming is

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a lifestyle not a business. If I was a business man I’d be owning a building company, I’d still be in construction. (I12)

Again, it is the complexity of this quote that brings out the interconnectedness of factors in decision-making around the choice to take on the family property. The precarious financial reality is balanced against the considerations for family legacy and the everyday lived experience of farming. Despite an acknowledgement of the variability of returns and the risks to income, the balance shifts to farming over the stability of income guaranteed by employment in a different industry for which the speaker is fully qualified when evaluated against the lived experience of autonomy and satisfying work. This demonstrates the significance of factors beyond economics in decision-making around farming life choices. When the economic is so embedded in the social, the processes by which change occurs must also be reconciled within relationships that are often familial. Whether this means succession or selling, again the decisions become deeply involved in the context. In the case of planning for succession, a number of factors, both personal and technical, need to be negotiated: It was starting to get a bit harder to keep up to the boys… and it was time they had a go on their own. They’re good, they were working hard and doing a good job out there. I think it was the time we moved. I’ve seen other blokes in my time stay on their farm too long and they go from a very very good farm and they go down down down ‘til the old fellow can’t handle it anymore and his young blokes move on because they don’t get a go there. I made up my mind when I was young that when I couldn’t run the place well it would be time to move on. And we are very fortunate we’ve got a couple of boys out there doing well. (I17)

The importance of planning and the ability to negotiate difficult decisions through the family structure and relationships are critical to the processes by which land ownership churns: Mum and Dad looked ahead, knew that it was coming one day and made plans for it and made the transition a lot easier. You see quite big

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operations get sold for that very reason, like Pinecliff was a really big farm in there just there the other side of Mullaley and the family decided they wanted to go their separate ways, and had to sell it. Farms are so expensive you can’t afford to buy your siblings out, or your families out. (I1)

Here is an observation of how the process moves to the market once the balance tips to family members’ differing priorities when succession is not the focus. When succession is the goal, it is necessarily negotiated through familial relationships that come with attendant social constructs and factors that complicate the ways in which ownership is decided. This is delicate and complex and mediated through interpersonal dynamics and a highly gendered set of relationships within the family structure: From the start, being so traditional, Mum and Dad have always been that it goes down to the male side. It hasn’t been that awkward, we’ve been pretty open, been able to sit around Christmas lunch and spoken about it. I don’t know, they’ve been really good, I’ve been lucky my sisters have always been self-supportive and they all have their own families, they’re all sorted and happy. … Inter-generational transfers are probably one of the hardest, it’s just so conflicting and on paper it just doesn’t look right, I’m the villain in the situation. I just, you know, if Mum and Dad died tomorrow and I sold the farm the next day, you know I mean it wouldn’t happen, but you know the potential …and I know [my wife] feels terrible about it, she doesn’t feel comfortable. I said ‘Look it’s going to take years, it’s going to take years of you busting your gut out here, going through the droughts and the floods and the fires before you’ll feel like you’ve earned it’. Knowing that I’ll support her and knowing that she is welcome and the family has been really good to her has made it easier. But I can only imagine in farming families where it doesn’t work like that and all it takes is a snide comment here or a bit of bitchiness there and it all goes to shit. You can’t have bitter feelings or anything. We’ve been lucky… Just making sure it’s fair and not too unfair and everyone is on the same page. (I12)

The financial consequences of the socially placed and conditioned terms of succession are therefore delicately balanced in a deeply embedded understanding of family, gender roles and tradition that impact upon the

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processes related to land ownership. Consideration for the past and the future inherent in these relationships and negotiations exist as part of the complex matrix through which economic decisions are considered, made and enacted. This section has highlighted the ways in which deeply social processes are significant factors in the decisions at farm level beyond the economic dimension. These factors will therefore have an impact on the future patterns of land ownership: I don’t know what will happen in the future, there’s not many of the handing down, not many of them stayed. (I7)

This hints at the ongoing processes of change that continue to impact the characteristics of farming as the structure of land ownership is mediated through family relationships and social processes grounded in lived experience. This has important consequences not just for patterns of ownership and attendant modes of land use, but for the experience of farming at the local level when broader trends in production impact communities.

9.2

The Changing Face of Agriculture and the Lived Experience of Community

You’ll never get back what’s gone. We’re all to blame. As soon as you buy out a neighbour you’re part of the problem. Like that Eagles song, call somewhere Paradise and then kiss it goodbye. (I5)

The ways in which the multifaceted and embedded modes of decisionmaking are enacted have significant impact upon the ways in which land ownership becomes patterned and therefore the ways in which human labour is engaged in farming. As patterns of succession, neighbour acquisition or farm sale are realised, the dynamics of labour employed in the area are changed and this has significant impacts upon the surrounding community. The increase in farm size and reduction in farmer numbers,

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as well as the rise of corporate farms with employees rather than ownerfarmers, changes the contours of community life in important ways given the deeply changed relationship to land and identity that these changes represent. In the data, the impacts on the current and future face of agriculture and its expression in community life centre around the number of people in the area, the age demographics of this cohort and the character of their relationship to the land as either a landowner or as an employee. Each of these changing characteristics was identified as being critically linked to the lived experience of community. It is clear that the economic reality of farming in the Goolhi area and more broadly has led not just to exit from farming, but also to processes of neighbour acquisition that together have contributed to a decline in the number of people employed in farming overall. Even when considering only the four years to 2010–2011, the number of people employed in farming in Australia decreased from nearly 2.9 per cent of all workers in 1996–1997 to 1.7 per cent overall by 2010–2011 (ABS 2012b). This reduction in people clearly impacts the community: [There are] a lot less people, like back then most farms they had the farmer that owned the farm and then employed a man, or a family as well, so each farm had two families, well now we own the farm next door and run it just by ourselves, so the population out here is probably a quarter of what it used to be or less. You know, It’s unbelievable the amount of less people, like there used to be enough people out here to run a tennis tournament and that sort of thing down at the Goolhi Hall and these days it just doesn’t happen. (I1)

As has been detailed earlier, the closure of the school and the decline of community activities accelerated from the mid-1980s and from a recorded high of 178 residents in 1961 (ABS 1961), the 2016 census reported the total population of the area as 88 (ABS 2016) a reduction by nearly half. In addition to the reduction in numbers, there was a reflection upon the importance of demographics and age to the experience of community. This change in age profile is intricately connected to the social processes surrounding farm decision-making and sits within

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broader employment trends, increased education and more centralised populations that impact upon farming futures: The average age of farmers is fifty-five, it’s got to be thirty-five, that’s when young men are the most productive, they’ve got the vision, they’ve got the energy, they’ve got the desire. They’re going to be the ones that are able to adopt the technology. [Now] they become an agronomist or join a rural bank, they’re still connected with agriculture but they’re not actually doing it. Poor old Dad is working into his seventies. This is the difficulty of sons, nine out of ten have gone into other [employment]… why would you come back onto the farm? You were getting virtually nothing and you could go into the city and join a merchant bank and get a hundred and fifty thousand a year and work a forty-five hour week! (I17)

This tendency for the younger generation to work outside of farming reflects broader trends in the Australian context. The age profile of farmers compared with workers in the general population is significantly skewed towards older workers. Not only is the median age of farmers fifty-three years compared with thirty-one years for the general labour population, but the largest differences in age distribution are apparent at both ends of the age spectrum with twenty-three per cent of farmers aged sixty-five and over compared to just three per cent of the general working population, and only two per cent of farmers aged between fifteen and twenty-four compared with seventeen per cent in the general working population (ABS 2012a). Beyond structural changes in the farm sector, this reflects a cultural shift: I10: Back then nearly everyone went back to the farm, except for those that had sold out. I11: If you had a farm it was in your blood and that’s where you went. I10: It was a good future. Factors such as increased education and income security draw the younger generation away from farming where going ‘back to the farm’ used to be the standard future for families from the land. This skewed age profile also means that the characteristics of the community are impacted

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by these demographics and the lived experience of those left is very much changed. Part of the earlier success of the Goolhi community rested upon the age demographic of community members and the similar life stage they shared, both at the point of the soldier settlement but also for the generation after that. Central to this was the experience of starting families and the effects of sharing this experience, a situation that the reduction in numbers and ageing demographic has sharply reduced: When we got married there were a lot of people here at Goolhi my age and we had a great life. I mean we all had babies, a day wouldn’t go by when someone didn’t call in for coffee, the kids had sleepovers every weekend, but they grew up and now they’ve all gone. And when they [son and daughter-in-law] come out here, she’s not going to have that life because the people aren’t here. There’s only half the people here and all the women work, so they don’t have that community like we did simply because the people aren’t here anymore. That’s the pity of it when they all left, it just left a real hole. (I4)

The difference identified here is that it is not just the density of population but the shared life stage that enriched the lived experience at Goolhi. The community has fractured along lines of low population density, but also across the disparate life stages of those left and the lack of community-forming effects of shared experience. Another dimension of this fracturing is the changed relationship to farming that the increase in corporate farming represents. Those workers that live or work in the area are there as employees rather than as landowners and this shifts the relationship to the community: Corporates have come in and you have people that are here for a short period of time as part of their career development, they come in as managers or they come in as whatever and then move onto bigger and better opportunities then often they don’t invest into the community as well, but people who either see themselves as generationally being here or have always grown up here, invest back in… even only [in the last] ten years, it’s just taken another step down again and part of it is when you get a big farm that just buys ten farms out or something like that it really punches a hole in the middle of your community. The people that come

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in to work on them… it just changes the dynamics, it’s different. I mean the conversations you would have with someone like that compared to someone who owns their farm I mean it’s just different. The camaraderie’s different, they’re there one minute and gone the next, like I got a better job or I got sacked or whatever. (I5)

The employed worker, often not connected to the area beyond the farm operation, obviously holds a very different position from the thirdand fourth-generation farmer. This does not discount the friendships or possibilities for community and all of the interviewees were inclusive in their comments: There’s still a strong friend base in the farming community. We’re all still farmers. (I1)

However the central relationship to the farm and to the nature of work means that workers often don’t live on the farm or have longterm commitments to the area, which disrupts both the basis of and opportunity for community activities and connections. There was a constant recognition of the deep changes that have been wrought since the earlier sense of community surrounding the soldier settlement and the descendants: The community spirit is not there now though, it’s certainly not there. Because people are coming from different walks of life whereas they all had the common denominator once, the soldier settlers, they all had that spirit, and survival spirit, and to succeed whereas they’re all just individuals now. (I3)

The increasingly atomised individual faming units, spread more disparately across the landscape and operating under the pressures outlined in earlier sections, have significantly less opportunity for social activities. As has been explored, the lived experience of farming becomes more tightly focussed upon the business of returns and an increasingly intensive mode of life that in turn impacts upon the community more broadly:

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The tennis courts have gone to rack and ruin, but that started happening years and years ago, before people started to move out… Everyone just got too busy trying to make ends meet and social life just fizzled out … Everyone had time to pull up and either help a neighbour or just pull up on the side of the road and have a yarn, now it’s just zoom, straight past. (I14)

It can be seen then that the lived experience of community in the Goolhi area has been, and continues to be, impacted upon by shifts in the ways in which labour is required and utilised in farming operations. Changes to population density, age demographics and attendant life stages, and shared experiences and identities have all disrupted the strong sense of community involvement and identity that was apparent at Goolhi for many years.

9.3

Conclusion

Given the intersection of social and economic identities, decisionmaking processes are embedded in considerations of the past and the future as implications of history and legacy become entwined with identity and the future of the farm. An important expression of these decision points becomes the patterns of land ownership and subsequently the ways in which the quantity and type of labour are engaged in farming operations in the area and therefore impact directly upon the experience of community, which further influences lived experience. Thus the examination of this data brings to life the embeddedness of economic decision-making where decisions relating to economic outcomes are in fact rooted in considerations of the personal and which make the landscape vulnerable (or not) to broader processes of change. Whilst large-scale corporate farms may become the vehicle for significant shifts in land ownership patterns, it is in fact the slow-moving socio-cultural processes informing farm decision-making that ultimately provide the enabling environment for this change. Therefore an examination of the ways in which experience at the micro-level informs and influences these processes is illuminating. The complex effects of changes to

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macro-settings include the fracturing of identities at the farm-level where farmers are required to frame their farm practice and farm goals in particular ways in response to these broader settings. The macro and the micro are integrally linked.

References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (ABS). (1961). Year Book Australia, 1961 (Cat. No. 1301.0). Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ DetailsPage/1301.01961?OpenDocument. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (ABS). (2012a). Australian social trends December 2012: Australian farming and farmers (Cat. No. 4102.0). Retrieved from https://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/ 3794FDCDA8D5275ACA257AD0000F2BE9/$File/41020_australianfa rmingandfarmers_dec2012.pdf. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (ABS). (2012b). Labour force and other characteristics of farmers. In Year Book Australia, 2012 (Cat. No. 1301.0). Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by% 20Subject/1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Article%20-%20Labour%20f orce%20and%20other%20characteristics%20of%20farmers~303. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (ABS). (2016).Census of population and housing: Goolhi (SSC11706) General Community Profile (Cat. No. 2001.0). Retrieved from https://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/ 2016/communityprofile/SSC11706?opendocument. Hildenbrand, B., & Hennon, C. B. (2005). Above all, farming means family farming: Context for introducing the articles in this special issue. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 36 (3), 357. Retrieved from https://soci.uca lgary.ca/jcfs/.

10 Conclusions: Conditions of Possibility

It is clear that there has been significant change across the two moments explored in-depth here. This change has been articulated across both the broader context, emerging from deep social, political, economic and cultural shifts expressed in and through policy priorities, and has been deeply felt at the local and personal level. The case study of Goolhi demonstrates the ways in which social change emerges from the socialhistorical context and how the lived experience of this change at the micro-level is historically placed and integrally tied to the macro-settings of the time. Modes of economic organisation, profoundly directed by state action, fundamentally affect the conditions of possibility for a social actors’ lifeworld and whilst many aspects of life at Goolhi have changed across time, it is this element that has remained constant. As a central part of the social imaginary, these politically, economically, socially and culturally available set of conditions pattern criteria of worth and orientations of behaviour towards particular goals and towards particular identities. The in-depth exploration of two moments in the social history of a place (Goolhi), when placed within the long and deep social and historical context, serve to highlight the complex relationships involved in the lived experience of change. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_10

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10.1 Overview As such, this research case study is not simply an examination of the actual changes in the Australian context and at Goolhi but rather provides evidence of the complex relationship between the macro- and the micro-contexts, the ways in which individual action and meaningmaking is shaped by broader socio-historical forces. Grounded in evidence of lived experience, it illustrates the ways in which shifts in macro-settings, particularly those directed by state action, impact upon daily life through a reshaping of the conditions of possibility at the micro-level. In and through this fundamental shaping of the material, political, social and economic conditions of daily life, the broader cultural imaginary impacts upon decision-making, identity formation and social relations. This work is a case study of situated knowledge as empirical evidence for the claim that changes in the macro-level settings deeply affect the set of conditions at the micro-level and the orientation of the lifeworld. The long place-history of Goolhi provides a useful reflection of the development of broader trends in Australia’s social and economic history. Long-running processes of land settlement were set in motion and deeply shaped by the colonisation of the continent by the British Empire and the particular ways in which agriculture emerged as a site of economic and social development. The proclamation of terra nullius allowed for the violent insertion of British forms of institutional and political power that were culturally endorsed as ‘civilising’ processes, of which agriculture became a key symbolic element. As an integrated part of the global economy from very early in its colonial history, agriculture became a powerful vehicle for state-directed development at the intersection of strategic sites of state interest. Economically, agriculture and farming were a powerful income-generating sector of a young economy wherein basic commodity production became a useful fit with broader relations of the British Empire. Trade was heavily geared towards Britain and to enable increased production, the state played a central role in the development of infrastructure with heavy investment and an ongoing form of ‘colonial socialism’ or ‘state developmentalism’ that explicitly placed the state at the centre of economic development. Politically, agriculture

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therefore represented a legitimate site of state control in the service of a particular vision of nation-building. Likewise, the social implications of farming as a situated and regionally-located activity meant that the promotion of farming and the provision of infrastructure into more and more remote locations eased anxieties over a vast and largely unpopulated countryside. Agrarian ideals of virtuous and hard-working citizens, based historically within a British rural idyll, were given particular Australian character through a reckoning with the realities of the Australian landscape. This wrought a unique set of cultural ideals—country-mindedness, tough bush workers, a pioneering spirit and Australian exceptionalism—and provided the moral-economic basis for ongoing state support of agriculture. Farming provided preferred settlement types of culturally homogeneous communities that offered a clear governable population within the British politico-juridical inheritance. Together these factors provided the matrix of ideals and legitimisations that led to the explicit operation of state power in the direct involvement and promotion of agriculture in the pursuit of interrelated social, political and economic goals post-World War II. At this time, as the historical setting for the first moment of in-depth study, policy priorities in this arena took the form of explicit producer protection and directed land settlements, such as the soldier settlement programme examined here. The lived experience of this soldier settlement programme at Goolhi primarily involved a high level of personal hardship in the service of state goals. The lifeworld of these soldier settler farmers was framed by a set of conditions of possibility that allowed for the core functions of farming and the enactment of socially and politically-endorsed identities to be central to daily life. Through the provision of a particular set of material and socio-cultural conditions—access to land ownership, financial support during the term of establishment, access to funds for plant and equipment and for the building of a home, access to knowledge of farming systems and expertise, technologies and innovations, and all within a context of strong protection and support of the agricultural sector—the key activity of the farmer/soldier settler was made clear. Whilst the actual enactment of cultural ideals was often difficult, the broader settings provided for a way of life that centred upon bringing

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under-utilised land into production and working together within clearly delineated identities and strong collective understandings of community. This resulted in a clear criteria of worth that were endorsed at all levels, from cultural ideals to inter-personal relationships: the value of hard work, stoicism in the face of difficulty and care for others through practical support. There was therefore a strong alignment between the objectives of farming as an identity determined via these criteria. Sensemaking through accounts of this time clearly align with broader socially endorsed cultural ideals. As an example of the interrelatedness between multi-scalar factors impacting upon the social and economic life of a place, Goolhi stands as an instructive example of the embeddedness of economies and the impact of cultural settings. This is equally true for those political citizens empowered through their social and cultural position, the soldier settlers, and those disempowered by virtue of their social and cultural position, the local Indigenous residents and traditional owners. This provides further indications that the set of possibilities available for individuals are critically influenced by the broader settings and that a central factor determining an actor’s conditions of possibility remains the experience of the state. The contrast between the social and cultural and, via the institutionally mediated access to land ownership, political and economic status of the actors at Goolhi, demonstrates the sharply delineated conditions available to these groups. Together with an examination of the combination of factors at multiple levels of scale that impacted upon the establishment of the soldier settlement at Goolhi and its ‘success’, these elements of lived experience at Goolhi serve to highlight the interrelation of the cultural and the material, the social and the individual. Although this study covers a small case, it also acts as a powerful window into broader cultural systems of power and how they have real impact at the micro-level. Since World War II, processual shifts in the dominant political paradigm have transformed the relative importance of economic management in the hierarchy of state goals. This has brought deep change to the expression and configuration of state power in a significantly restructured national and global economy. Irrespective of these changes, the determination of conditions of possibility for farmers at Goolhi

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remain essentially configured by the state. Rather it is that the forms of statecraft have shifted along neoliberal lines to fragment the points of control and to amplify the importance of the market. State power has morphed in complexity and now operates less directly through mechanisms such as control over trade settings, the removal of protections and services, and the reregulation of market processes to include more and more fragmented points of state intervention, such as detailed systems of compliance that mediate market participation and complex taxation systems that serve to promote or discourage particular behaviours. With regard to farming, there has been a renegotiation of priorities away from social imperatives and towards the pursuit of economic outcomes and this is because the landscape of macro-settings has changed. Economically, the relative importance of agriculture has weakened within a broader context of economic crisis and significant structural change. Politically, farming has become less powerful as a legitimate concern for state expenditure within a significantly restructured economy and neoliberal industrial reform. Socially, agrarian identities are less important within a highly urbanised population that has fragmented along economic and social lines. The reality of significant reductions in the number of farm owners and the impacts this has had on communities means that there is a loss of cohesion and local community integration. This is part of a broader reconfiguration of the population via increased volume and diversity in immigration, through significant economic restructure that has disrupted traditional socio-economic and class identities, and the multitude of impacts resulting from the intervention of modern communication technologies and the rise of identity politics. Farming has therefore lost much of its exceptionalism within the social imaginary and within state goals and has become subject to broader change that is integrally tied to neoliberalism and processes of globalisation. As a result there is a less direct, yet no less important, relationship between the articulation of state goals and the interpretation and enactment of these at the level of lived experience. The available set of conditions of the lifeworld are now framed by a macro-context more sharply focussed upon economic processes and where economic criteria

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of worth are elevated within the culturally available matrix of possibilities. These criteria include a focus on the individualisation of responsibility for economic success and the importance of entrepreneurial behaviour, which in the arena of farming brings forth the identity of ‘efficient business manager’ whose success or failure pivots upon individual performance rather than any recognition of the structural factors at play. This comes with different and more complex connotations for identity and everyday life than traditional ideas of farming. Critically, there is a complication that occurs when criteria of worth become tied to contemporary broader understandings yet remain embedded in an imaginary that has not forgotten the traditional understandings of ‘farmer’ and, importantly, within a place that remains an emotionally and socially configured landscape for those living with the familial legacies of farming in-place. Thus the orientation of the lifeworld is now more complex and oscillates between one framed by an identity of ‘efficient business owner’ and those that are more socially and emotionally determined. This is particularly pronounced when considered in concert with the actual changes that have taken place through the reorganisation of policy in this area. The conditions of possibility provided for by the broader contemporary settings are far less stable and this impacts upon the lifeworld and the conduct of daily life in multifarious ways. Both the marked disembedding of economic relations brought about by the increased exposure of farm activities and incomes to volatile world markets and the removal of state support and services has important consequences for orientations of everyday life in two important ways. Firstly, the precarity of farm income that comes with the removal of state support and the direct exposure to global markets means that farm viability in this context requires high levels of capital investment in either land or technology to reach the required economies of scale and to absorb price shocks. In smaller farms, income-generating activity (essentially servicing debt) becomes the key orienting principle of farm activity and decision-making whether it be through the intensification of farming practices or the pursuit of off-farm incomes, both of which entail consequences for daily life. Secondly, changes to institutional settings and the deliberate extension of the range of market processes and actors require more of farmers both in terms of their knowledge and of their time

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and as a result daily life is impacted in multifarious ways. The proliferation of market processes, such as the interaction and negotiation with market actors and the requirements of compliance as a critical condition of market participation, become additional requirements of everyday life. The impacts of both of these consequences of the reconfiguration of the conditions of possibility are expressed socially and personally at the micro-level. The intensification of income-focussed activity and the increased burdens of market processes complicate the orientation of everyday life and necessitate a preoccupation with economic activity that reduces the availability of time for other activity and impacts negatively upon opportunities for community participation. The intersection of economic and social identity within the arena of farming complicates decision-making and impacts upon the ways in which land ownership is patterned through slow-moving social processes of farm ownership change. As an example, chronic underinvestment in farm operations may exist as a personal- and household-level response to and attitude towards debt rather than as a context-free business decision and economic action. In turn, this leads to a number of repercussions for farm futures that are ultimately configured through personal and familial, and therefore ultimately social, processes. The particular set of institutional conditions within which farmers act in contemporary settings are no less influenced by the state than in times of direct and explicit state involvement in agriculture, rather they are deeply determined by the range of available options and actions that exist in direct response to the posture of the state in this arena. Ultimately, there has been a clear and fundamental shift in the matrix of ideals informing policy settings in Australia and, critically, there has been a fundamental and related shift in the orientation of the lifeworld of farmers in the Goolhi district since 1950.

10.2 Key Contributions and Conclusions This case study, whilst not claiming to be representative, is an opportunity to gain insight into situated knowledge of some important facets of social change. The examination of two moments in the social and economic history of this place is not meant to imply a delineation of

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epochal shifts, but rather looks to these moments as especially informative high points of particular formations of the relationship between the state and the economy and how this has changed. This approach utilises both a diachronic and synchronic lens to examine both how contexts have emerged and developed over time and to interrogate particular moments of this historical emergence. The examination of social change conducted here tells us about the experience of modern capitalism, about the changed and changing relationship between the state and the market and, significantly, the ways in which it remains experiences of the state, as the dominant force in the configuration of conditions of possibility of the lifeworld, that is central to lived experience. The conditions of possibility represent the socially, politically, economically and culturally available set of options within which actors may conduct their life and, despite very significant change in the ways in which this is expressed, the influence of the state upon these available conditions remains a critical dynamic. Ultimately, it is the way in which these historically situated forms are interpreted through the complex and continual dialogue between the individual and the social that reveals social reality. As such, this study provides empirical evidence for theoretical claims of the embeddedness of economic life and reveals the economy’s dialectic. Taking seriously Polanyi’s assertion that the privileging of the principle of gain in market society, together with an understanding of the ways in which actors seek to protect social assets as much as material ones when taking economic action, will lead to a qualitatively different experience of for human life, this study shows how this is indeed lived. Implicit in this is a critique of any analysis that seeks to posit an external or autonomous realm of economy by revealing the multi-scalar social processes that structure and shape economic life. By integrating an examination of the social, institutional and political forces at both local and extralocal scales, this study contributes a direct example of Polanyi’s methodological invitation to look to ‘moments’ that capture particular state-economy forms and examine the differences between them to reveal the deeply embedded and qualitatively different lived experience of change. Investigating the history of Goolhi encompasses an examination of the shifting practices of the state to provide evidence of the downward impacts of macro-level

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movements in policy, markets and statecraft on everyday behaviours and subjective experience The first of the key conclusions therefore emerges as the recognition that the lived experience of the economy and society exists as an active relationship between the cultural and the material, the social and the individual. Changes in the macro-level settings deeply affect the conditions of possibility at the micro-level, the orientation of the lifeworld and the conditions of meaningful actions of individuals. Following Weber, the set of possibilities that emerge in direct dialogue with the powers and forces of broader social-cultural-historical settings provide the conditions for social reality. Here the focus is on the ways in which discourses of nation-building manifested in opportunities for and exclusions of particular types of citizens at Goolhi in 1950, and then in turn influenced the ways in which this was enacted, as a result of complex historical processes. These processes and settings shaped the particular ‘cast of mind’ required by social actors to not only submit to challenging circumstances in the service of state goals, but also to in turn value and find meaning in this action and in the embodiment and symbolic reproduction of particular cultural identities. These identities, in conversation with the available institutional and cultural settings, provided a clear orientation of daily life. The finding that individual orientations of life are impacted by settings at multiple levels of scale makes an important contribution. It contributes to theories by Lefebvre and others that shifts in macro- and meso-contexts impact an individual’s conceptions, perceptions and experiences at the level of everyday life. The idea of a social imaginary that encompasses collective understandings of worth and overarching narratives of possibility is an important aspect of much social theory but the link between economic systems and internalised rationalities and behaviours is clear in the theoretical work of Weber. The conflicted and complicated lifeworld of contemporary farmers at Goolhi results from deep changes to cultural settings and a complication of criteria of worth that force them to re-evaluate the orientation of everyday life in ways that submit to state settings. Through the deliberate extension of market processes and the removal of state support and services, the conditions of possibility have become

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destabilised and reoriented in a way that necessarily elevates economic concerns. This has complex impacts upon the lifeworld, including the impact on social and community relations, and the possibility of understanding and directing actions in terms of identity. The internalisation of neoliberal values such as the individualisation of responsibility and risk intersects with competing understandings of self that are tied to emotional, familial and social understandings of self that exist, importantly, in-place. This oscillation complicates farm decision-making and informs slow-moving social processes of change that undergird patterns of land ownership and therefore have wider implications. This is the point where the macro and micro collide in an almost dialectical way; where the accumulation of decisions at the micro-level start to impact upon patterns of land ownership, facilitating a further round of the commodification of land with all its social, cultural, economic and political implications. This speaks directly to theoretical models of neoliberalism that emphasise the context-dependent ways in which it is realised within a landscape. As the changes in state settings orient farmers towards market-centred behaviours within an increasingly corporatized sector, social, familial and emotional ties are dissolved. This serves to recast land (again) as a commodity by transforming the social landscape to unmoor farms from the social forces that would otherwise inhibit or slow down this recommodification. The current pace of change means that social actors at vastly different positions within the process of change exist right next to each other within the landscape, which disrupts identities and communities. The stark difference in decision-making and relative market position between inter-generational farmers and corporate farms becomes even more apparent when these operations sit side-by-side. As such the case study traces the ways in which land has been caught up in ongoing and long-running processes of institutional, political and economic change and provides an empirical example of the ways in which neoliberalism involves an ongoing transformation of inherited formations and the downward impacts of cumulative change. The study therefore makes direct contribution to theoretical work by Peck and others that posit neoliberalism as an ongoing and process-dependent project that emerges in and through collisions with existing forms at all levels of scale.

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Consequently, the second of the major findings is the demonstration that the relationship between macro and micro can be uncovered through a research approach that looks to situated, historical, comparative and concrete examples of actually-existing economies. The case of Goolhi provides clear evidence of the ways in which economic activity is socially and culturally embedded and that this should be understood as historically situated, following Polanyi, and demonstrates the value of research that ‘places’ local economic practices within broader macrocontexts, such as those called for by Peck amongst others. This case study has shown the ways in which economic action is contingent upon a complex set of contextual factors that themselves emerge from longrunning processes. The value in this approach is the disruption of any belief that contemporary state settings are the only way in which relations of power and social forms can be configured and the examination of the ways in which these settings were different at different times denaturalises the orthodoxy of accounts that place the market as the natural and inevitable solution to the distribution of state resources. This enables a view upon the ways in which change has had particular consequences for particular households and, by using a long perspective, demonstrates the ways in which this has changed across time. No set of possibilities at the micro-level can be understood outside of its historical context and this research provides direct empirical evidence of the value of accounts that consider change within contexts at multiple scales. The third key finding is the paradoxical discovery that despite the fundamental changes in the lived experience of farming at Goolhi and the explicit shift in state priorities, the permeation of state power remains the dominant force regulating the conditions of possibility for farmers at Goolhi. State involvement has moved from explicit state goals aimed at social, economic and political outcomes that were made manifest in policies of state-supported agriculture and directed land settlements patterned by small-scale farming, to a more subtle and complex range of settings that no less critically impact upon everyday life. As has been seen, the particular posture taken by the state with regard to the penetration of the market into new arenas, international trade settings, the provision of support and services, and the proliferation of compliance

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and other administrative requirements of market participation fundamentally shape the ways in which daily farm activity is oriented towards particular activities and not others. This demonstrates a fragmentation of points of control and a sublimation of state power. The experience of the state in 1950 was at formal points and processes of reporting and supervision and the orientation of activity towards state goals was explicit and conditioned by state support. Contemporary settings involve less direct penetration of state power but rather occur at multiple sites and in ways that do not explicitly mark state involvement. The state is less visible yet remains powerful in the orientation of action at the micro-level. This reveals the development of a mode of statecraft that permeates the lifeworld in subtle ways and consequently ensures state power and control in ways described earlier by Palumbo and Scott (2018). Thus state power continues to be central to the set of possibilities of the lifeworld, yet has moved from explicit programmes to less direct, fragmented modes of control. The fourth key finding relates directly to the future implications of policy. This research has shown the ways in which changed state settings have served as the impetus for the corrosion of social and personal ties to the land. Despite creating the institutional settings for the establishment of a small-scale farming community post-World War II, the particular calibration of settings over the last couple of decades has resulted in a landscape that sits balanced to tip ever more quickly back towards large-scale farm operations. The changes in the relationship between the state and the market have been deeply felt in agriculture as a necessarily placed economic activity. The combination of particular settings that require particular responses at the farm level has resulted in slowmoving processes that are beginning to be felt as land becomes more vulnerable to ownership change in a slow dissolution of personal, familial and community ties to the land. This effectively recasts land as a more purely economic asset beyond the individual and social implications and allows for the penetration of capital on a much larger scale. State power is implicated in the ways in which markets are enabled or constrained and in the mediation of market participation. As these settings tip in favour of large operations that can absorb the shocks of price and climate events, the resultant configurations of farms and patterns of land ownership will

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in turn affect the surrounding communities and also the management of land. These are important consequences, especially when considered in terms of the central importance of agricultural production and distribution to human society and political stability, and to critical questions of urgent response to climate crisis.

10.3 The Return of the State? When I was growing up, my school playground in Gunnedah bordered the local cenotaph built in memory of soldiers of both World Wars, in effect a monument to our nation’s participation in the world political system conditioned by our colonial past. The school and much of the community would faithfully attend memorial services held on ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day every year. This monument sat on a prominent corner of the main street and was difficult to miss if you were in town. Today, the cenotaph is dwarfed by an enormous McDonald’s restaurant that cuts right up to the memorial’s edge and has completely swallowed the garden playground I remember. Two street blocks away at the opposite end of the small main street, a redevelopment of the streetscape completed in 2000 includes a bigger and bolder statue of an impressively muscled miner erecting a structure that also looks a bit as though he’s planting a flag. It bears inscriptions in memory of both “the men who lost their lives in Gunnedah mines” with names, ages and years of death of twenty men who died from 1897 to 1986, as well as an inscription describing an almost year-long workers strike that occurred in 1995–1996. In the nearby public toilets, verses from legendary Australian poets such as Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson are etched on the back of each toilet door in large cursive, and the loudspeaker plays a constantly looping recording of the same. There are no markers to Aboriginal or Gamilaraay culture as part of this public area. I include this vignette to acknowledge that places have complex and intersecting histories and many stories can be told of a single location. The entanglement of economic, political and cultural symbolism and silence inherent in these two street corners in a small rural town in Australia hints at the competing interests and change that rolls

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across landscapes. Place is a useful container to examine change because it provides a constant point of focus to examine the intersection of multiple and deep histories. With this complexity in mind, it needs to be acknowledged that although I have woven threads of histories together to examine the role of the state in the place called Goolhi, there are of course threads that I haven’t taken up. This is because, at its heart, this book is a classic sociology in that it is a reflection on the role of the state and the impacts of modernity on the human subject. As the arbiter of the settings and institutional rules of the game and all of the ways in which these are expressed, the state remains a key agent in our human history. The concept of ‘state’ is not singular and not determinative, but rather emerges from and within society as a manifestation of the particular underlying values and power dynamics of the society in which it exits. How the state manifests in and across time emerges from and creates histories, a constantly evolving and adapting set of institutional practices and processes that empower and constrain. This agrees with Polanyi’s reading of how human systems of value transform over time and relate to overlapping and context-dependent processes. Recent crisis flashpoints have proven Polanyi’s critique of market society right—neither land nor labour can or should be commodified and when they are the market will go too far unless and until the state steps in. In Australia, the unprecedented fire season of 2019/2020 revealed a vulnerable and decimated landscape that tipped at last to breaking point. As multiple fire fronts burned across the country and the town I lived in counted down the days until it completely ran out of water, air quality in many parts of Australia rivalled major global cities in terms of catastrophic levels of air pollution. My daughter’s school swimming activities were abandoned because the teacher couldn’t see the kids in the modestly-sized town pool due to the thickness of the smoke. This is surely crisis point. As a sociology concerned with the lived experience of a place and people at the intersection of the state and the land, this book has not sought to examine the deep and complex ways in which modes of settlement, particularly that of productivist agriculture, have drastically changed and damaged the physical environment since colonisation. For just 250 years the mistaken attitude of dominion, over a continent stolen from those that have cared for and sustainably

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managed the land and water over an enormous timescale, has led us to this point. As a modern nation we have taken great wealth from the land through our participation in the global economy, whether through farming or mineral extraction, in a way that has skewed our economy and our national political system and character and we will wrestle with the legacy of both going forward. The resource curse, or what in Australia Judith Brett (2020) calls the ‘coal curse’, remains a delimiting factor in Australia’s political and environmental future. Left unprotected on a largely global scale, the land and environment is now in crisis. The state must step in in the regulation of the market to ensure responsive actions and adaptations to deal with the climate crisis. Perhaps a rare positive of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has been a renewed acknowledgement of the role of the state in civil society. Australia’s early response was one of the most successful in the world given the prompt action taken by all tiers of government in a way that convincingly demonstrated a concern for human life over economic outcomes. In a country that has marketised many aspects of social infrastructure and pursued a hollowing out of state provision of services, this action was welcome but not without flaw, given the reliance on privatised security forces in Victoria and the subsequent breaches of quarantine, as well as the emergence of deep systemic failures in Australia’s aged care system. However, the relatively swift and decisive closing of borders and social lockdowns, combined with impressive government expenditures to those effected by subsequent business closures, proved an effective early strategy in containing infection rates. The success of these early measures also rested on the Australian public’s support for and willingness to submit to the heavy-handed response. The legitimacy of government action rested in large part on the advice of experts and scientists and tapped a deep social value of taking care of the most vulnerable in society, even if it involved individual sacrifice. Overall the public acceptance of these measures, in a country dominated by discourses of sacred budget surpluses and welfare bludgers, may have revealed the Australian population’s latent appetite for state intervention, though this will be tested through the inevitable economic recession. Recognition of the value and necessity of supporting the vulnerable in a time of need, as well as the

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return to the authority of the scientific expert in evidence-based policymaking, moved along by strong bipartisan support, provides a small hope that we may see a Polanyian movement yet.1 That said, political rhetoric from the Liberal government swiftly returned to a pro-business, antiuniversalist normal through deliberate targeting of stimulus measures to shore up specific voter groups, and ideological measures such as the exclusion of universities from financial supports and a convenient reorganisation of funding models for higher education away from humanities programmes within the university sector. The health crisis and subsequent global fallout has also delivered a reassessment of some key tenets of neoliberal economic development that led to the off-shoring of manufacturing and Australia’s growing dependence on global supply chains. Whilst other countries have supported and protected industries into mature tech manufacturing hubs, Australia has fallen behind in many respects. Australia now ranks the lowest in terms of manufacturing self-sufficiency of all 36 OECD member countries (below semi-developing countries Chile and Mexico) and the ratio of Australia’s manufactured imports to its manufactured exports is higher than for any other OECD country (Stanford 2020, p.63). Industry protection and support is of course never just an economic decision, as this book has shown. Protecting agricultural producers in the 1950s and the drive to settle regional areas with the state’s preferred social form was as much for social and political reasons as it was economic. A rediscovery of the state as a vehicle to realise social and environmental outcomes through economic policy may facilitate a way forward for the modes of energy production and farming systems that the land and labour now need. Policy decisions and state postures are choices. A recognition of the state’s role in setting the conditions of possibility for citizen’s lives and a recommitment to goals that reach beyond economic measures set and assessed though a neoliberal lens is timely. We all need to ask the basic

1 For

a further development of this point, see: Palumbo, Antonino and Scott, Alan (2019) ‘Polanyi’s double movement and the making of the “knowledge economy”’. In Roland Atzmüller, Brigitte Aulenbacher, Ulrich Brand, Fabienne Décieux, Klaus Dörre, Karin Fischer, Birgit Sauer (eds.) Capitalism in Transformation. Movement and Countermovements in the 21st Century. London: Edward Elgar, pp. 274–288.

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question, ‘What is the proper role of the state?’ and this book has examined the impacts of the changing role of the state as neoliberal economic values ascended. Responses to the pandemic have revealed we expect and endorse more from the state than purely economic management. In looking forward, it is essential to also look back. I would like to end this book with a deep recognition of the traditional owners of this land, and to the Gamilaraay nation whose lands include Goolhi. Colonisation of this country was brutal and it is upon this physical, economic and cultural violence that any experience of the state turns. I acknowledge the many and immeasurable ways in which I have benefited from the processes of colonisation, both directly as a grand-daughter of a World War II soldier settler where I have seen and heard and felt the direct link to dispossession, as well as all of the ways in which I walk in the world as a descendent of white settlers. Many of these I am still uncovering and examining and I hope this book, whilst the focus is on the development of the modern Australian economy and its impact, contributes to truth-telling in Australian history. Soldier settlement programmes post-World War II were an instrumental part of processes of dispossession of Indigenous people from their land. Central to land settlement practice today are the ways in which dispossession of Aboriginal communities in rural landscapes occurred through multiple and multi-scalar processes across time, with direct moments of dispossession occurring as part of soldier settlement as late as 1950 as this book has shown, and are critically bound up with state programmes that privileged some forms of citizenship and ‘deserving’ populations. This point of intersection, between identities that were formed through particular practices and performances of ‘Australian-ness’ post-World War II and the ways in which land use schemes such as those for soldier settlements interrupted modes of land ownership that often included large pastoral runs that (conditionally) allowed local Aboriginal groups to remain on land, raise important issues that we still haven’t reckoned with today. Significant research questions around how these processes of dispossession were mobilised and to what level considerations of Aboriginal populations were given in the enactment of policy directives emerge from the realisation that these processes continued into recent national memory. The ways in which logics of settlement and preferred identities were

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normalised and how these contribute to Indigenous relations today are of significant contemporary relevance. Ultimately, this case study has communicated the lived experience of change at Goolhi over time to demonstrate that processes of social change happen at the micro-level and are integrally informed by the broader social imaginary in how this conditions the culturally, socially, politically and economically available possibilities for individuals. There is an intersection of identity and conduct of life that is mediated by these conditions of possibility and criteria of worth that are expressed through the social imaginary and critically impacted by state policy settings. The situated meaning-making for social actors is therefore historicallysituated and cannot be understood outside of these processes. The ways in which these broader settings have, and continue to, impact upon concrete effects and formations at the farm level hold important consequences for the land and labour that constitute our country now and into the future.

References Brett, J. (2020). The coal curse: Resource, climate and Australia’s future. Quarterly Essay, 78, 1. Palumbo, A., & Scott, A. (2018). Remaking market society: A critique of social theory and political economy in neoliberal times. London, UK: Routledge. Stanford, J. (2020). A fair share for Australian Manufacturing: Manufacturing renewal for the post-COVID economy. The Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute.

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Index

A

Aboriginal 1, 10, 11, 23, 71, 72, 97, 106–111, 115, 116, 119, 120, 271, 275 ageing 245, 255 agrarian ideology 84, 91 agribusiness 184 agricultural production 32, 34, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50, 70, 74, 75, 81, 97, 184, 229, 237, 271 agri-food 46, 48 ANZAC 95 attachment 52–54, 95, 186, 196, 243 Australia 1, 2, 5, 9, 12, 14, 25–28, 40, 44, 47, 48, 50, 55, 65, 66, 68–71, 73–79, 82–84, 86–88, 90, 92–98, 105–108, 120, 140, 160–162, 165, 173–178, 180–188, 191–196, 198, 199,

208, 212, 221, 228, 244, 253, 260, 265, 271–274 Australian Wheat Board (AWB) 187–190, 230, 231, 234, 235

B

belonging 6, 149, 155 Britain 33, 65, 67–71, 73, 78, 80, 87, 88, 97, 176, 183, 185, 260 British Empire 1, 65–67, 69, 70, 83, 87, 260 burden 215, 226, 228, 231, 232, 235, 236, 238, 245, 265 bush 93–95, 107, 111, 193, 261 business 12, 47, 54, 77, 78, 82, 111, 147, 166, 173, 186, 194, 196, 199, 208, 210, 211, 216, 218, 223, 225, 227–229, 234, 243, 245, 247–250, 256, 265, 273

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. Baker, A Sociology of Place in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6

311

312

Index

C

Cain, Mary Jane 109, 110, 116 capital 32, 34, 41, 46, 67–71, 78, 79, 84, 85, 87, 90, 97, 161, 164, 165, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184, 192, 198, 208, 209, 211, 214, 216, 219–222, 225, 233, 238, 264, 270 capitalism 13, 16, 25, 26, 31–35, 39, 40, 42, 44, 51, 57, 66, 68–70, 72, 97, 232, 266 Castells, Manuel 41, 42 change 2, 6, 8, 10, 12–18, 23, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41–44, 46–50, 56, 57, 68, 71, 97, 120, 124, 169, 173, 179, 180, 191, 192, 194, 198, 200, 207, 209, 214, 215, 218, 222, 225, 230, 232, 236, 238, 249, 250, 252, 253, 257, 259, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268–272, 276 China 27, 67, 115, 177, 178, 183 citizens 68, 72, 168, 179, 180, 261, 262, 267, 274 closer settlement 26, 75, 77, 82, 84, 89, 92, 97, 98, 107, 115, 116, 161, 162 collectivism 188 colonial 2, 65, 66, 68, 70–72, 76–79, 95, 97, 98, 106, 107, 109, 260, 271 colonial socialism 26, 78, 260 colonisation 9, 10, 25, 26, 40, 42–44, 66, 69, 70, 75, 90, 97, 106, 109, 260, 272, 275 commodity 33, 34, 38, 44, 46, 48, 70, 79, 82, 86, 87, 97, 174, 177, 180, 182, 210, 222, 226, 228, 230, 238, 260, 268

community 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 12, 20, 24, 42, 44–46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 76, 97, 133, 142–144, 146, 147, 149, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 166–168, 196, 199, 207–209, 227, 237, 238, 252–257, 261–263, 265, 268, 270, 271, 275 comparative 9, 16, 17, 37, 269 competitiveness 52, 176, 187, 188 conditions of possibility 2, 13, 27, 28, 120, 121, 155, 163, 169, 199, 238, 259–262, 264–267, 269, 274, 276 constraints 40, 70, 76, 183, 212, 213, 219 context 2, 8, 9, 11–18, 20–23, 25–28, 31, 33, 35, 37–39, 42–44, 46, 48, 50–52, 55, 57, 65, 66, 69, 70, 75, 80, 82, 89, 97, 98, 105, 107, 121, 123, 124, 149, 155, 157, 163, 165, 169, 173, 180, 186, 187, 189, 192, 194–196, 199, 208, 226, 228–230, 234, 243, 248, 250, 254, 259–261, 263, 264, 266, 267, 269 corporate 2, 13, 38, 47, 78, 207, 209, 218–220, 228, 234, 253, 255, 257, 268 cost-price squeeze 185, 210, 211, 216, 218–220, 222, 223, 225 costs 12, 85, 163, 188, 193, 197, 198, 208, 211, 213–217, 225, 228, 229, 234 crisis 49, 80, 161, 174, 176, 180, 181, 198, 263, 271–274 cultural shift 254, 259

Index

culture 1, 5, 91, 94, 96, 106, 113, 145, 146, 189, 195, 271

D

daily life 8, 13, 14, 53, 98, 217, 226, 235, 238, 243, 248, 249, 260, 261, 264, 265, 267 debt 47, 70, 79–81, 87, 160, 175, 180, 181, 185, 210–216, 218, 219, 222, 225, 226, 245, 264, 265 decision-making 209, 212, 216, 243, 246, 247, 250, 252, 253, 257, 260, 264, 265, 268 deregulation 27, 28, 44, 47–49, 56, 175, 176, 185, 187–190, 197, 222, 229, 231, 232 dialogue 72, 105, 166, 266, 267 Diggers 95 disembedding 49, 264 dispossession 2, 11, 12, 26, 74, 105, 106, 110, 120, 124, 275 disruption 1, 6, 147, 230, 269 district 3, 9, 23, 28, 80, 109, 116, 123, 144, 149, 150, 169, 265 double movement 38 dynamics of change 38, 48

313

economic relations 33, 35, 69, 264 economies of scale 11, 12, 48, 208, 212, 222, 244, 264 efficiency 12, 27, 48, 86, 148, 176, 184–189, 195, 198, 199, 208–210, 213, 215, 217–219, 221, 225, 228–230, 243 embeddedness 1, 17, 36–38, 155, 195, 196, 207, 209, 248, 257, 262, 266 emotional 28, 88, 95, 207, 209, 246, 248, 268 employment 11, 68, 88, 89, 111, 119, 147, 160, 162, 174, 176, 192, 223, 224, 249, 250, 254 equipment costs 214 equity 110, 166, 176, 181, 211, 219 everyday life 2, 27, 36, 96, 199, 209, 223, 227, 264, 265, 267, 269 exceptionalism 94, 162, 197, 261, 263 expansion 67–70, 79, 80, 89, 178, 187, 209, 210, 212, 217, 218, 221 export 70, 78, 81, 83, 87, 160–162, 175, 177, 178, 182, 183, 188, 190, 228, 274

E

F

economic action 17, 28, 36, 37, 39, 166, 207, 265, 266, 269 economic development 25, 42, 43, 45, 48, 68, 70, 75, 78, 80, 81, 97, 159, 181, 193, 260, 274 economic rationalism 175, 185, 189, 195, 199 economic reform 173, 179, 181

family 3, 6, 34, 48, 51, 53, 55, 85, 106, 116, 118, 125, 132, 133, 144, 153, 186, 191, 210, 244, 245, 247, 248, 250–252 family farm 34, 77, 82, 209, 210, 245–247 family history 207, 244 farm amalgamation 48, 208

314

Index

farming 2, 5, 8, 11–14, 23, 25, 26, 32, 33, 41, 47, 52–56, 75–77, 79, 85, 90, 91, 97, 107, 126, 128, 133–135, 153, 155, 166, 173, 185–187, 195, 196, 198, 199, 207–213, 219, 223–230, 233, 235, 245, 246, 248–250, 252–257, 260–265, 269, 270, 273, 274 farming forms 57 farm level 163, 210, 217, 221–223, 228, 252, 270, 276 farm operations 27, 210, 211, 219, 256, 265, 270 farm policy 27, 48, 89, 162 farm sector 80, 88, 89, 173, 182, 190, 208, 254 farm size 185, 208, 210, 211, 221, 252 farm viability 219, 220, 264 fictitious commodities 38, 39 financialisation 184 fire 95, 137–139, 143, 198, 251, 272 flood 111, 133, 143 foreign investment 183, 184, 194, 197 friendship 128, 129, 142, 149, 256 frustration 150, 152, 213, 214, 217, 228–230, 232 future 51, 77, 93, 128, 180, 187, 209, 211, 216, 243–245, 248, 252–254, 257, 265, 270, 273, 276

G

Gamilaraay 10, 106–110, 116, 271, 275

gender 55, 194, 251 global financial crisis (GFC) 180, 181 globalisation 2, 12, 14, 25, 27, 43, 45–48, 50, 52, 56, 176, 177, 194, 263 global market 187, 195, 228, 230, 232, 238, 264 Goolhi 3, 5, 7–12, 14, 22–27, 31, 54, 65, 91, 92, 96, 98, 105–120, 123–131, 133, 140, 142–144, 147, 149, 152–155, 157–169, 187, 196, 207–209, 238, 253, 255, 257, 259–262, 265–267, 269, 272, 275, 276 government 12, 48, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 78–84, 86–89, 108, 115, 118, 119, 135, 139, 151, 158, 159, 161, 163, 174–185, 187, 189, 196–198, 227, 273, 274 grading 235, 236 grain handling 230, 231, 233, 234 grain trader 233 grief 246

H

harvest 2, 136, 141, 142, 213 Harvey, David 40, 41, 56 history 1, 3, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 22, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 35, 54–56, 65, 70, 83, 85, 95–98, 105, 106, 110, 115, 120, 145, 146, 154, 181, 184, 188, 194, 196, 212, 245, 257, 260, 265, 272, 275 home 1, 3, 18, 68, 70, 85, 86, 89 Howard, John 179, 237

Index

I

ideals 26, 55, 66, 74, 77, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 105, 114, 121, 155, 168, 261, 262 identity 2–5, 8, 13, 15, 18, 21, 24–27, 32, 51–57, 71, 92–94, 96, 120, 124, 166, 168, 190–192, 195–197, 238, 245, 246, 249, 253, 257, 260, 262–265, 268, 276 immigration 67, 78, 173, 191, 192, 194, 263 income 47, 67, 86, 160, 162–164, 166, 174, 178, 180, 185, 188, 210, 216, 220, 223–225, 230, 238, 243, 248–250, 254, 264 in-depth 2, 9, 12, 13, 15, 19, 22, 23, 26, 56, 105, 121, 123, 155, 174, 199, 259, 261 Indigenous 74, 116, 262, 275, 276 individual 2, 10, 17–22, 24, 28, 32, 33, 36–38, 43, 50–52, 55, 56, 78, 91, 94, 96, 125, 126, 179, 186, 226, 228, 231, 237, 238, 256, 260, 262, 266, 267, 270, 273, 276 individualisation 186, 227, 264, 268 industrial reform 263 infrastructure 70, 75, 78, 79, 81, 130, 133, 135, 144, 180, 260, 261, 273 institutional 14, 17, 26, 45, 47, 49, 65, 66, 71, 72, 105, 176, 260, 264–268, 270, 272 intensification 185, 187, 211, 264, 265 intersection 8, 25, 31, 32, 41, 43, 69, 81, 89, 90, 97, 98, 105,

315

162, 209, 230, 244, 247, 257, 260, 265, 272, 275, 276 interview 12, 13, 15, 19, 22–24, 27, 106, 123, 125, 153, 209, 213, 221, 224, 225, 227, 230 investment 67, 68, 70, 75, 78, 79, 81, 87, 114, 160, 162, 174, 178, 180, 183, 184, 198, 210, 212, 214, 216–223, 225, 260, 264

K

Keating, Paul 177

L

labour 13, 31–34, 38, 39, 41, 42, 48, 69–72, 78–82, 84, 87, 93, 106, 109, 110, 114–116, 118, 137, 166, 178, 187, 192, 193, 224, 252, 254, 257, 272, 274, 276 land 1, 3, 6, 9–13, 26, 31, 35, 38, 39, 41, 44, 47, 54, 66, 67, 69–79, 82–86, 90–92, 94, 97, 105–110, 112–116, 118–120, 124, 125, 127, 130, 135, 136, 139, 141, 152, 155, 158, 163, 165, 166, 169, 184, 185, 195, 196, 198, 210–212, 214, 217–222, 238, 246, 253, 254, 262, 264, 268, 270, 272–276 land ownership 2, 14, 71, 74, 84, 106, 218–220, 244, 250, 252, 257, 261, 262, 265, 268, 270, 275 landscape 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 26, 44, 45, 53, 55, 56, 66, 72, 73, 77,

316

Index

79, 97, 106, 114, 140, 195, 197, 198, 221, 222, 243, 256, 257, 261, 263, 264, 268, 270, 272, 275 land settlement 10, 11, 14, 26, 44, 47, 65, 66, 72, 75, 77, 83, 84, 88, 89, 91, 94, 97, 105, 107, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 134, 159, 164, 199, 260, 261, 269, 275 land use 2, 25, 39, 41, 43, 66, 69, 70, 74, 79, 82, 89, 97, 124, 161, 195, 198, 252, 275 large-scale 69, 81, 97, 111, 194, 208, 209, 220–222, 257, 270 Lefebvre, Henri 39, 40, 46, 50, 267 legacy 26, 91, 93, 94, 196, 207, 209, 215, 243, 244, 246, 248, 250, 257, 273 legend 92, 94–96, 162 lifestyle 51, 77, 91, 186, 211, 220, 225, 226, 228, 249, 250 lifeworld 10, 27, 28, 37, 56, 120, 155, 199, 227, 238, 259–261, 263–268, 270 lived experience 2, 9, 12, 19, 20, 22, 24–28, 31, 33, 36, 37, 43, 44, 51, 53, 55, 56, 65, 91, 92, 98, 105, 106, 115, 120, 123, 124, 155, 190, 195, 200, 207, 209, 211, 213, 216, 218, 219, 222, 223, 225–228, 231, 232, 235, 236, 238, 245–250, 252, 253, 255–257, 259–263, 266, 267, 269, 272, 276 living wage 135 local 9, 11–14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 25–27, 38, 52, 53, 56, 76, 78, 97, 98, 106–111, 116, 118,

119, 124, 125, 128, 143–147, 150, 164–169, 207–209, 218, 230, 248, 252, 259, 262, 263, 266, 269, 271, 275 loss 6, 33, 67, 85, 108, 109, 115, 188, 212, 213, 231, 233, 234, 244, 246, 248, 263

M

machinery 33, 135, 141, 147, 148, 168, 213, 214, 217, 223, 230 macro 2, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 25–28, 38, 50, 51, 53, 98, 121, 123, 157, 162, 165, 199, 227, 258–260, 263, 267–269 macroeconomic 80, 81, 178 marketing 48, 86, 173, 188–190, 226, 227, 230, 231, 233, 234 marketisation 49, 179, 227, 231, 235, 237 market processes 230–233, 235, 238, 263–265, 267 markets 8, 25, 28, 31, 33, 35–41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 57, 68, 69, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 97, 155, 161, 176–180, 182, 185–187, 190, 192, 195–198, 210, 214, 222, 226–232, 234–238, 251, 263–270, 272, 273 Marx, Karl 13, 16, 32–34, 38, 41 masculinity 55, 96, 149 Massey, Doreen 18, 52, 53 matrix of ideals 26–28, 169, 174, 261, 265 meaning 2, 16, 17, 19–22, 24, 44, 46, 51–56, 114, 195, 196, 199, 244, 267

Index

mechanisation 166, 211 memory 19–22, 44, 124, 153, 154, 271, 275 methodology 17, 19, 38, 56, 123 micro 2, 12–14, 16–20, 22, 25–27, 51, 105, 121, 152, 157, 161, 165, 169, 200, 207, 209, 222, 243, 257–260, 262, 265, 267–270, 276 microeconomic 178 modernity 1, 8, 13, 15, 16, 272 Moment One 12, 26, 27, 65, 98, 105–107, 155, 157, 169 Moment Two 13, 27, 157, 169, 174, 199, 238, 243 multi-scalar 18, 25, 27, 46, 91, 155, 158, 169, 262, 266, 275

N

National Farmers Federation (NFF) 190, 198 Nationals, The 161 nation-building 11, 14, 88–90, 175, 190, 196, 199, 261, 267 neoliberalisation 14, 16, 44, 45 neoliberalism 2, 31, 35, 43–51, 178–180, 187, 227, 263, 268

O

off-farm income 223–225, 227, 264 oral history 12, 19–23, 56, 106

P

pandemic 273, 275 participation 94, 95, 147, 155, 168, 263, 265, 270, 271, 273

317

past 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 44, 51, 66, 94, 164, 177, 194, 197, 243–246, 248, 252, 257, 271 pastoral industry 106, 107, 109, 116 pastoralism 74, 91, 109–111, 115 Peck, Jamie 17, 35, 37, 38, 45, 46, 50, 179, 268, 269 phenomenological 16, 54, 213 Pilliga 107 pioneer 92, 94, 95, 168 place 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 12–14, 16–18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 32, 38, 42, 48, 52–54, 72, 89, 97, 107, 117, 120, 144, 148, 153, 161, 162, 167, 179, 192, 193, 196, 207, 212, 214, 222, 228, 230, 243, 244, 248, 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 271, 272 place history 17, 18, 26, 98, 105, 106 Polanyi, Karl 17, 35–39, 49, 57, 266, 269, 272, 274 policy 2, 9, 12, 14, 26–28, 43, 45–47, 52, 66, 69, 80, 82, 83, 86, 89, 91, 92, 96, 105, 124, 134, 150, 151, 155, 159–162, 164, 165, 169, 173–182, 184–191, 195–199, 207–210, 222, 226–228, 230, 236–238, 259, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 270, 274–276 political discourse 176, 229 political economy 25, 31, 32, 39, 41–43, 57, 177 politics 90, 192–195, 263 population 12, 15, 22, 33, 35, 39, 42, 67, 70, 72, 73, 77–79, 82, 92, 93, 96, 97, 139, 140, 146,

318

Index

162, 174, 191, 192, 253–255, 257, 261, 263, 273, 275 power 15, 18, 20, 26, 31, 38, 40, 42, 49, 51, 57, 67, 70–72, 80–82, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 114, 117, 120, 124, 133, 152, 162, 177, 179, 183, 190, 193, 194, 227, 233, 238, 260–263, 267, 269, 270, 272 precarity 216, 229, 243, 264 price 83, 86, 87, 89, 112, 140, 144, 151, 160, 161, 165, 174, 175, 177, 180, 182, 184, 185, 187, 188, 210, 212, 214, 216, 217, 226, 228–231, 233–237, 264, 270 priorities 12, 27, 31, 52, 65, 89, 155, 162, 163, 165, 173, 191, 194, 195, 197, 208, 238, 251, 259, 261, 263, 269 privatisation 47, 49, 176, 185, 188, 227, 231, 235, 237 processes 2, 9, 14–17, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44, 46–50, 56, 57, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 77, 81, 91, 95, 106, 110, 114, 120, 121, 124, 153, 155, 169, 182, 195, 207–209, 214, 218–220, 222, 227, 230, 232–238, 244, 250, 252, 253, 257, 260, 263, 265–270, 272, 275, 276 producer welfare 47 productivist 44, 48, 89, 187, 272 productivity 27, 51, 52, 89, 124, 125, 141, 148, 162, 163, 173, 186, 197, 208–210, 212, 214, 229, 243 profitability 197, 210–212, 219, 221

protection 47, 49, 66, 75, 80, 81, 86, 88, 89, 93, 155, 173, 176, 177, 185, 186, 189, 199, 228–230, 245, 261, 263, 274

R

railway 79, 82 reconstruction 88, 89, 160 restructure 12, 177, 208, 263 revenue 180, 198 risk 21, 82, 173, 183, 188, 216, 220, 227, 228, 231, 238, 250, 268 role of the state 2, 13, 14, 26–28, 38, 49, 72, 75, 77–80, 91, 93, 121, 175, 176, 181, 227, 238, 272, 273, 275 rural life 6, 84, 113

S

school 3, 116, 117, 144, 153, 154, 159, 167, 208, 215, 225, 244–246, 253, 271, 272 sectoral stabilisation 47, 86, 162, 188, 199 self 8, 25, 55, 245, 268 self-sufficiency 96, 187, 274 sense-making 9, 19–22, 37, 55, 124, 262 situated 9, 13, 15, 20, 21, 31, 37, 50, 55, 56, 218, 226, 260, 261, 265, 266, 269, 276 small-scale 11, 26, 32, 42, 44, 66, 76, 91, 155, 209, 222, 224, 228, 232, 233, 237, 244, 269, 270

Index

social actor 120, 124, 180, 222, 259, 267, 268, 276 social capital 159, 166, 168 social forms 10, 57, 66, 75, 96, 97, 269, 274 social imaginary 39, 43, 44, 51, 55, 91, 259, 263, 267, 276 social relations 17, 32, 36, 42, 46, 51, 57, 260 socio-cultural 42, 124, 195, 199, 261 socio-cultural processes 31, 41, 257 sociology 1, 8, 16, 53, 272 sociology, economic 13, 16, 25, 26, 31, 36, 56 sociology, historical 15, 16 sociology, of place 1, 2 soldier settlement scheme 3, 14, 26, 66, 84–86, 92, 95, 98, 123, 124, 155, 157–159, 164, 165, 208 soldier settlers 3, 5, 12, 13, 23, 27, 85, 106, 118, 119, 123–125, 127, 129, 130, 133–138, 140–142, 144–150, 157, 159, 160, 163, 167, 168, 207, 208, 214, 261, 262, 275 space, politics of 13, 25, 31, 32, 39, 40, 52 statecraft 25, 49, 50, 72, 227, 263, 267, 270 state goals 27, 74, 84, 90, 124, 155, 161, 199, 261–263, 267, 269, 270 state intervention 38, 44, 45, 80, 179, 181, 186, 187, 198, 263, 273

319

state support 11, 26, 83, 87, 105, 155, 162, 186, 226, 243, 261, 264, 267, 270 stress 211, 216, 222, 225, 227 structural change 6, 81, 159, 175, 192, 197, 209, 226, 254, 263 subjective experience 43, 53, 226, 267 subsidies 67, 89, 179, 182 substantivist 25, 37, 57 subsumption 34, 40, 48 succession 55, 111, 207, 216, 244, 250–252 T

technology 5, 70, 78, 80, 89, 163, 208, 210, 214, 215, 254, 261, 263, 264 terms of trade 174, 178, 208, 210, 222, 231 terra nullius 71, 72, 74, 97, 260 trade 12, 26–28, 40, 46, 67–70, 80, 81, 83, 86, 92, 93, 160, 175, 178, 181–183, 185, 187, 195, 197, 228, 229, 245, 260, 263 traditional land ownership 10, 105–107, 109, 275 transformation 2, 32–34, 40, 41, 43, 46, 49, 50, 56, 57, 114, 183, 189, 208, 268 truth-telling 275 U

unstable returns 211, 226 urban 39, 40, 76, 79, 82, 93, 192, 194

320

Index

V

values 15, 25, 42, 48, 50, 52, 57, 93–96, 187, 188, 194, 195, 268, 272, 275 violence 107–109, 111, 275

W

War Services Land Settlement 157, 164 weather 11, 131, 134, 139, 140, 142, 151, 152, 167, 210, 249 Weber, max 34, 51 welfare 39, 47, 71, 179, 180, 184, 189, 245, 273

welfarist 50, 210, 228 wheat 2, 79, 80, 82, 87, 89, 140, 161, 166, 187–189, 211, 213, 227, 230, 231, 236 World War I 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 95, 124–126, 150, 157, 164, 193 World War II 3, 10, 12, 26, 27, 66, 75, 87, 88, 90, 94, 98, 105, 157, 173, 174, 191, 193, 262, 275

Y

yeomanry 77, 85, 91, 185