Half a century ago …
During the 1890s the Maitland Mercury initiated a series of articles under the heading ‘Reminiscences of Maitland and the District’. These articles commented both fondly and critically on the Maitland area of times past, noting what was lacking in earlier times and highlighting what ‘progress’ had brought since.
The first item in the series was published on 21 October 1893. Below are the opening paragraphs.
Perception and perspective
Commentaries like those in these opening paragraphs made judgements. Their descriptions were at least as much about perception and perspective as about facts.
According to the 1893 account, in 1843 there were ‘no towns worthy of the name’ (yet West Maitland had a population of more than 1700 and East Maitland over 1000, enough for each to be defined as an urban centre in the census today), and no ‘fine buildings’ (yet several grand houses had already appeared on the rural estates and a few in Maitland itself). Coaches were ‘primitive conveyances’.
Frederick Terry, View of West Maitland from the Hunter, NSW, 1855
A H Fullwood, The Hunter at Maitland, c1886
The Aborigines were ‘treacherous’ (more accurately it might be said they were fighting against the loss of Country); bushranging was in ‘full swing’ and crime ‘generally rampant’, times were ‘stirring’ and at times ‘troublesome’ and ‘more excitement and adventure were crammed into a week than is now to be found in a year’. The times, the Mercury seemed to be saying, had by 1893 become more settled and peaceable, surely an improvement, but life was not as exciting or as action-packed as it had been.
This was part of the price of progress, perhaps, but it was a price that most people would have been prepared to pay. Much of the ‘excitement’ and ‘action’ of the past had involved criminality and it had been dangerous to live with. Relative peace would have been welcomed. The place was becoming ‘civilised’ and less of a wild frontier community.
The ‘hardy pioneers’ had ‘subjugated the forest primeval making it peaceful, productive and happy looking’. It might equally be said that they had destroyed a magnificent ecosystem to create a farming economy. In this there was benefit, but there was also loss which went unacknowledged. To the Mercury in the 1890s, development equalled progress. It represented opportunity being taken. Damage to, or the disappearance of, natural assets was not considered important.
Judgements about the past are always rooted in the times in which they are made. Commentaries on the Maitland of the 1840s today would be quite different from those made during the 1890s.
References
Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: early Maitland as the Mercury reported it in 1893’, Maitland Mercury, 16 May 2021.
