This booklet of songs and poems has been prepared as a souvenir for the National Railway Heritage Conference - Thinking Rail: Lessons from the Past, the Way of the Future,Tamworth, 28-30 September 2005.The conference was held as part of events associated with the 150th anniversary of the beginning of steam railways in NSW and immediately preceded the official opening of the Australian Railway Monument and Rail Journeys Museum, newly established at Werris Creek Railway Station. The material chosen draws attention to the rich contribution railways have made to Australian writing, music, photoqraphy, art and culture in general.

Today, what does 'New England' mean? The 2005 telephone directory lists nearly a hundred enterprises using the name, from 'New England Embroidery' to 'New England Tractors'. Half of them are in or around Armidale, but others are scattered through Uralla, Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Inverell and Moree, and as far south as Tamworth, Quirindi and Gunnedah. Obviously, the name has a living significance. It offers a sense of place reaching beyond any one town or district, which to the enterprising mind also means reaching an extended market. On the other hand, it has geographical limits. In the north, there is the Queensland border. On the western slopes the pleasant reaches of the Gwydir River throw up some feeble terminological competition. So we find 'Gwydir Glass', 'Gwydir Olives' and 'Gwydir Air'. There is no 'New England' beyond Moree. To the east, across the escarpment, the name is no use at all. There, the coastal rivers, the beaches and the ocean provide a sens of place for which the name is totally irrelevant. But within certain boundaries, 'New England' reigns supreme. It has a real existence in local imagination.

"There was also a very non-descript sort of a person, who, on enquiry I found to be one of the 'old gentlemen' for whose use and pleasure the schooner is more constantly employed than she should be; for it appears there are a number of these 'old gentlemen' who are called invalids, and for whom the country provides very comfortable quarters; amusement and food, and a free passage to and fro whenever they feel disposed to pay a visit to their friends or having some money, feel that they would like a little more extended recreation than they can obtain at their marine residence. The 'old gentleman' under notice may be thus described: - He was of low stature, very repulsive looking, dressed in an old swallow-tail coat that had no doubt at one time adorned a very genteel person, but which, under the present circumstances appeared very much out of place. His head was covered with an old cloth cap, and his feet were not covered with a very dilapidated couple (not pair) of shoes. He, too, had provided for himself, for under his arm was a bundle containing sundry scraps, the result very likely of the previous day's begging. This sketch will convey a very inadequate idea of this 'old gentleman', whose restlessness and imbecility were such to give one an idea of a wild animal confined within the limits of a few yards. The whole of the voyage down he scarcely remained stationary five minutes together." ('Mercury', 24 March 1870, p. 3.) ... This impression, made by a visitor to the Port Arthur Penal Establishment In 1870, refers to an emancipist pauper, an individual from the group forming the principal component of colonial Tasmania's aged-poor population, and the virtually exclusive component of that convict settlement's invalid depot. It is also representative of a group ideology, a 'mentalité', which defined the aged poor emancipist as undeserving of society's succour. While such thinking dominated post-transportation Van Diemen's Land, the management and perception of pauper invalids nevertheless underwent a profound transformation in this period. By 1901, in stark contrast to much of the preceding half century, invalid paupers were accepted and treated as a deserving part of Tasmanian society. Charitable institutions, once a cog in a repressive carcereal regime, became an integral element in a comprehensive health management system for the aged-poor. Many mechanisms played a role in this transformation. While the whole story is beyond the scope of this article, one facet, resistance to incarceration, contributed considerably to the process of social change.

As early as the 1870s and 80s it was common throughout parts of Australia for settlers to collect Aboriginal artefacts and curiosities of natural history -- stone axes, snake-skins, unusual feathers, egg-shells and so on -- bringing them home and putting them away in cabinets or drawers. Some collectors were highly discriminating and even created small private museums. Teachers also encouraged children to help in building up museums for their schools, hoping thereby to give them an intelligent grasp of their environment. This was an effort in keeping up with contemporary educational theory. Many colonists of that generation showed a newfound interest in knowing more about the Australian countryside and especially their own corner of it.

This special issue of Historic Environment contains nine papers from the National Railway Heritage Conference: Thinking rail, lessons from the past, the way of the future , held at Tamworth, in northern New South Wales, between 28-30 September 2005. The conference, organised by tile University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre, was part of celebrations of tile sesquicentenary of railways in New South Wales. A steam-powered engine and carriages conveyed their first passengers along twenty-two kilometres of track, between Sydney and Parramatta, on 26 September 1855. Thereafter the railway system in New South Wales, like those elsewhere in Australia, developed into a principal driver of colonial, and then state industry, as well as a facilitator of nation building, with a network in excess of 11,000 kilometres. In recent times though, tile role of rail in modern transport and logistics has been devalued. Rail has been all but eliminated from the lives of many, with the closure of numerous rural and regional lines, the heightened share of road haulage in moving freight and the inadequacies in many metropolitan rail systems (most notably in Greater Sydney).

Modern Australia has inherited many colonial period tales of alleged early victims of injustice, involving both exile and disinheritance. Many of them, like the Tichborne affair, were deliberate fabrications created to claim estates in the 'Home Country'. Touristic Tasmania still boasts such an instance in the publicity associated with the island's north. Yet the truth of this particular tale is that it was a convenient, if startling, screen for predatory behaviour rather than a poignant attempt to inherit one's proper wealth and station.

This special issue of 'Historic Environment' contains nine papers from the National Railway Heritage Conference: 'Thinking rail, lessons from the past, the way of the future', held at Tamworth, in northern New South Wales, between 28-30 September 2005. The conference, organised by the University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre, was part of celebrations of the sesquientenary of railways in New South Wales. A steam-powered engine and carriages conveyed their first passengers along twenty-two kilometres of track, between Sydney and Parramatta, on 26 September 1885. Thereafter the railway system in New South Wales, like those elsewhere in Australia, developed into a principal driver of colonial, and then state industry, as well as a facilitator of nation building, with a network in excess of 11,000 kilometres. In recent times though, the role of rail in modern transport and logistics has been devalued. Rail has been all but eliminated from the lives of many, with the closure of numerous rural and regional lines, the heightened share of road haulage in moving freight and the inadequacies in many metropolitan rail systems (most notably in Greater Sydney).

The years 1840 to 1856 witnessed significant change in the island colony of Van Diemen's Land. It commenced with the introduction of probation to the convict system and ended with the transfer of governance from imperial to colonial control, the so-called advent of 'responsible government'. It was this period that saw the development of a charitable institutional system administratedby the Convict Department. The principal invalid establishment was an integral constituent of the Impression Bay Convict Station, located on Tasman's Peninsula. The repercussion of this genesis was that colonial Tasmania's aged poor were initially managed through incarceration in government institutions under strict discipline and supervision. These institutions were essentially regimented penalenvironments, and they were founded as a means to isolate, seclude and control pauper emancipists who were perceived as a social contagion. The incipient charitable institution housed an undifferentiated pauper population in which all inmates were seen as undeserving.In the mid 1850s and early 1860s a number of socio-economic factorsresulted in a sudden expansion in pauper invalid numbers. This induced a substantial degree of anxiety amongst the middle class fearful of a breakdown in control over the emancipist and convict population. This essay examines the initial measures taken by Tasmania's new colonial authorities to address a crisis in pauper invalid numbers in northern Tasmania. The issue is explored in relation to invalid overcrowding of government institutions in Launceston and the measures taken in developing an institutional response. This was based upon the founding of a generalised institution, the Launceston General Hospital, intended to respond to a multitude of pauper categories.