Under the Escarpment: a late modern history of Bellingen

Set in a subtropical valley in northern NSW, this is a book on the history of late capitalism as reflected in one small Australian town. Local histories are usually works for the archive, parochial chronicles designed to preserve at least some trace of people and places that seem destined to vanish from memory, but this is a book on late modernity, the idea of history itself and on the art of writing about it.

Beginning with an invasion of ‘new settlers’ in the 1970s, Under the Escarpment is an essay on late modern history in a valley in northern New South Wales and of the small town of Bellingen that sits on the river that runs through it.

The new settlers recapitulated the invasion of the colonial settlers who a century earlier had come to the valley and taken the land of the Gumbayngirr people. There were conflicts over land use, forms of tenure and the economy of the valley, over what, from the outset, was called ‘lifestyle’, over the style and look of the town itself, and over nature: the forests that surrounded the town, and the river that flowed out of them.

The story of arrival, conflict, and change is told in a series of long overlapping events. As events played out the town came to foster a peculiar sense of its own destiny. Perhaps it had something to do with its small size, its localized media, the way the little society seemed to be enclosed in its own valley, set on its beguiling river, in under an escarpment that reflected its moods back on itself. The town saw itself as cultivating an aesthetic culture and was intent upon imagining itself as a ‘creative town’. According to its own image, the town of Bellingen played itself, staging its civic performance against the backdrop of the escarpment.

Still, history does not play out quite as hoped for or expected.

Check a review of the book on Bellingen Area

$25.00 a copy.

 

Inquire about copies at Alternatives Bookshop, Bellingen, and Book Warehouse, Coffs Harbour. Also at: 

northbankinstitute@gmail.com 

Read sample pages Under the Escarpment sample