Australian History Research Articles

Impact of Australia's catastrophic 2019/20 bushfire season on communities and environment. Retrospective analysis and current trends

2019/20 Australia's bushfire season (Black Summer fires) occurred during a period of record breaking temperatures and extremely low rainfall. To understand the impact of these climatic values we conducted a preliminary analysis of the 2019/20 bushfire season and compared it with the fire seasons between March 2000 and March 2020 in the states of New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, and South Australia (SA). Forest and fire management in Australia were asked to provide data on the number of fires, burned area, life and house loss, as well as weather conditions. By March 2020 Black Summer fires burnt almost 19 million hectares, destroyed over 3,000 houses, and killed 33 people. Data showed that they were unprecedented in terms of impact on all areas. A number of mega-fires occurred in NSW resulting in more burned area than in any fire season during the last 20 years. One of them was the largest recorded forest fire in Australian history. Victoria had a season with the highest number of fires, area burned, and second highest numbers of houses lost for the same period. SA had the highest number of houses lost in the last 20 years. Black Summer fires confirmed existing trends of impact categories during the last two decades for NSW and Victoria. It showed that the smoke from the bushfires may be a significant concern in the future for the global community, as it travels to other countries and continents. Based on preliminary data, it will take many years to restore the economy and infrastructure in impacted areas, and to recover animal and vegetation biodiversity.

Rethinking Men’s Dress through Material Sources: The Case Study of a Singlet

Singlets occupy a special place in the wardrobe of Australian men, though they might be worn as underwear or sportswear, for work or leisure, daily or as fashion. The semiotic approach favoured by cultural and fashion studies analyses has tended to link the singlet – in particular the iconic Chesty Bond singlet – with working-class masculinity, connecting different groups’ singlet-wearing to a masculine ideal. Turning to the growing use of material culture approaches to dress, I explore what it might mean to think about singlets in Australian history in a different way: by paying attention to materiality and taking everyday practices into account.

Australian Quarantine Policy: From Centralization to Coordination with Mid-Pandemic COVID-19 Shifts.

Combining a historical institutionalism approach with institutional isomorphism and punctuated equilibrium, this article analyzes quarantine policy change across 120 years of Australian quarantine history. By anchoring its analysis within specific time periods (the years before the Spanish flu, seven decades of inaction, and multiple post‐1997 pandemic updates and responses), the authors highlight when and why policies did or did not change and how the constant push‐and‐pull between state and Commonwealth institutional ownership altered policy possibilities. The heart of the analysis showcases how Australia's successful COVID‐19 response is a unique output of prior quarantine policies, institutional evolution, and mid‐pandemic alterations of key national pandemic response plans.

Locating the public interest in mega infrastructure planning: The case of Sydney’s WestConnex

In Western liberal democracies the planning of mega transport infrastructure projects is guided by public interest claims typically expressed through legislation and political mandates. But with the infrastructure boom being observed in many cities since the Global Financial Crisis, and the need to address unprecedented levels of urbanisation, the level of politicisation directed at infrastructure projects draws attention to how the public interest is treated in the planning and management of complex mega transport infrastructure projects in diverse local contexts. Looking to Sydney, an advanced neoliberal city building the largest transport infrastructure project in Australian history, we examine how public interest is asserted in a way that reinforces legitimacy of the process and consensus for the project. Under these conditions, planners fail or are unwilling to raise additional or new public interest issues. The vagaries of public interest mean that in being open to interpretation the public interest can be easily captured by the interests of capital and of ruling politicians. This raises important questions for urban studies about the role governments and, in particular, public-sector planners can play in advocating for actually existing public interest issues such as environmental sustainability without it amounting to just rhetoric with no follow through.

„Game of Kompetenzen“? Eine Analyse der Einsatzmöglichkeiten von „Game of Thrones“ im kompetenzorientierten Unterricht in Geschichte, Sozialkunde & Politische Bildung

“Game of Competences?” An analysis of possible uses of “Game of Thrones” in competence-orientated history lessonsThis paper assesses whether the popular TV series “Game of Thrones” can be used for teaching (medieval) history in schools. Based on the Austrian history curriculum, it can be said that these representations of an imagined medieval past are a valid and important tool for teaching medieval history as well as for developing certain skills and competences needed to critically analyse and deconstruct representations of the past. This paper analyses various aspects of “Game of Thrones” (such as ethnic diversity, gender, Eurocentrism, etc.) and describes their potential for a didactic approach in history lessons. Additionally, the possibilities of using “Game of Thrones” for a general approach to analysing and teaching the politics of medievalism in the history classroom are discussed.

„Wo bleibt der demokratische Geschichtsunterricht?“ Der Umgang mit der NS-Vergangenheit in Schulbildung und Gesellschaft am Beispiel von Taras Borodajkewycz und Hans-Ulrich Rudel

“Where are the democratic history lessons?” Dealing with the Nazi past in education and society in Austria with the examples of Taras Borodajkewycz and Hans-Ulrich RudelIn post-WWII Austria, the way the Nazi past was dealt with was far from frictionless or consensual. As opposed to the preceding ideologies of Fascism and National Socialism, a new democratic mentality had yet to be formed. In this regard, history lessons at universities and at schools are central spaces for analysing the processes of de-Nazification and democratization. Therefore, the following paper discusses two examples of highly controversial teachings that reflect the larger level of Austrian history after 1945: Taras Borodajkewycz (1960s) and Hans-Ulrich Rudel (1983).

Geographies of local government

Geographies of local government

Subtle genetic clustering among South Australian colonies of little penguins (Eudyptula minor)

Information on the extent of genetic differentiation among seabird populations is essential for conservation planning. Here we used, for the first time in little penguins (Eudyptula minor), a next generation sequencing approach to investigate population genetic structure, gene flow and inbreeding among eight colonies in South Australia. We found that Troubridge Island individuals were genetically distinct from the other sampled colonies, and that colonies on all islands were connected by moderate levels of gene flow possibly due to migration from the Kangaroo Island colonies. While further genetic sampling is needed, these data support the idea that South Australia may be a zone of subtle and rapid genetic change for little penguins.

Wage-setting and gender pay equality in Australia: Advances, retreats and future prospects

This article re-examines the main principle applied in the pursuit of gender equality in Australian wage-setting systems (equal remuneration for work of equal value) through the lens of a typology of contrasting approaches to gender (and overall) wage equality. It focuses on landmark legislative initiatives and cases over four epochs in Australian wage-setting history, from the first national equal pay case in 1969 to current provisions under the Fair Work Act. Our analysis indicates that there is no guarantee of a progressive trajectory, from narrowly conceived strategies that limit comparisons to the same work, through the revaluation of female-dominated work, to a more comprehensive approach capable of redressing systemic disadvantage. Rather, the Australian pattern has been one of advances, retreats and constantly changing barriers. We argue that although the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value has potential to challenge the reproduction of gender inequalities within wage-setting systems, this is highly contingent on the strategies in place and ultimately requires recognition that wage disparities reflect the accumulation of structural inequalities and gendered practices.

J.C. Byrne, Entrepreneurial Imperialism and the Question of Indigenous Rights

ABSTRACT This is a study of Joseph C. Byrne, an Irish entrepreneur who embarked on a number of colonial schemes and fashioned himself as an emigration expert. In 1848 he published Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies. From 1835 to 1847, followed by a number of emigrant guides to the individual Australian colonies, the Cape of Good Hope and Port Natal. Descriptions of indigenous peoples proliferate throughout Byrne’s guides. While his texts were informed by his own travels, he also quoted liberally from official correspondence, newspapers, and other contemporary works. His accounts reflect both his own opinions, and also a broad spectrum of imperial attitudes and approaches towards Indigenous peoples. This article explores Byrne’s ideas of how Indigenous peoples might best serve the interest of British emigrants: that is how they might or might not be made ‘useful’ to British subjects, and also, in some cases, how their inevitable demise would provide ‘peculiar advantages to emigrants’. His accounts of Indigenous people illustrate the problems posed by the ‘native question’ in imperial thinking, and the way in which Britain grappled to envisage the future place of indigenous people within its colonies in the face of growing settler demands for land.

Rainfall Mechanisms for One of the Wettest Tropical Cyclones on Record in Australia—Oswald (2013)

Abstract Tropical Cyclone Oswald (2013) is considered to be one of the highest-impact storms to make landfall in northern Australia even though it only reached a maximum category 1 intensity on the Australian category scale. After making landfall on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Oswald turned southward, and persisted for more than 7 days moving parallel to the coastline as far south as 30°S. As one of the wettest tropical cyclones (TCs) in Australian history, the favorable configurations of a lower-latitude active monsoon trough and two consecutive midlatitude trough–jet systems generally contributed to the maintenance of the Oswald circulation over land and prolonged rainfall. As a result, Oswald produced widespread heavy rainfall along the east coast with three maximum centers near Weipa, Townsville, and Rockhampton, respectively. Using high-resolution WRF simulations, the mechanisms associated with TC Oswald’s rainfall are analyzed. The results show that the rainfall involved different rainfall mechanisms at each stage. The land–sea surface friction contrast, the vertical wind shear, and monsoon trough were mostly responsible for the intensity and location for the first heavy rainfall center on the Cape York Peninsula. The second torrential rainfall near Townsville was primarily a result of the local topography and land–sea frictional convergence in a conditionally unstable monsoonal environment with frictional convergence due to TC motion modulating some offshore rainfall. The third rainfall area was largely dominated by persistent high vertical wind shear forcing, favorable large-scale quasigeostrophic dynamic lifting from two midlatitude trough–jet systems, and mesoscale frontogenesis lifting.

Criminalizing children: welfare and the state in Australia By David McCallum Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society Series, 2017. 978‐1845656676, 316 pp, Hardcover $116.00, Paperback $35.99.

Criminalizing children: welfare and the state in Australia By David McCallum Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society Series, 2017. 978‐1845656676, 316 pp, Hardcover $116.00, Paperback $35.99.

The Role and Regulation of Child Factory Labour During the Industrial Revolution in Australia, 1873–1885

AbstractThis study investigates child factory labour in Victoria, the most populous and industrialized colony in Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Three sources of primary data are analysed: Royal Commission reports, texts of bills and statutes, and parliamentary and public debates. The findings inform current academic debates by enhancing understanding of the role played by child workers during industrialization. They show that children were low-cost substitutes for adult males and that child labour was central to ongoing industrialization. A wide range of industries and jobs is identified in which children were employed in harsh conditions, in some instances in greater proportions than adults. Following the reports of the Royal Commission, the parliament of Victoria recognized a child labour problem serious enough to warrant regulation. While noting that circumstances were not as severe as in Britain, it passed legislation in 1885 with provisions that offered more protection to children than those in the British factory act of 1878. The legislation also offered more protection than factory laws in other industrializing colonies and countries. The findings throw light on the character of colonial liberal reformers in a wealthy colony who sought to create a better life for white settlers by adopting policies of state intervention.

Post Memory Violence

Post Memory Violence

Authorizing geographical knowledge: John Arrowsmith, mapmaking and the mid nineteenth-century British Empire

This article examines how the prominent mapmaker, engraver and publisher John Arrowsmith (1790–1873) functioned as a geographical authority in the mid nineteenth-century British Empire. Through previously unexamined archival material I analyse Arrowsmith’s close relationship with the Colonial Office and consider his semi-official position as a mapmaker to the British Empire. I analyse Arrowsmith’s cartographic credibility and the power of maps through a case study focusing on Australind, a private colonization venture targeted at Western Australia in 1840. I analyse the ‘social life’ of a map Arrowsmith supplied for the Western Australian Company largely based on explorer George Grey’s information by examining its contested epistemological status in the Australian colonies. Using literature on trust, authority and the social histories of maps, this article highlights the mutability and spatial contingency of the power of maps and their makers in imperial and colonial knowledge-making. By studying the map’s shifting position in the processes of truth-making in the metropolis and the Australian colonies I contribute to growing literature on the processual nature of maps. Importantly, I demonstrate how maps like Arrowsmith’s not only contributed to the popular imagination of empire at home but were documents of indirect agency as the British invaded and explored different parts of the world.

Sovereignty: Indigenous Counter-Examples

Abstract Through assertions of ‘sovereignty’, modern nation states lay claim to an undivided authority. It is commonly suggested that this kind of political assertion superseded the overlapping authorities of medieval theological imagination. But in settler colonial states, Indigenous sovereignties endure to the present, not washed away by the ‘tide of history’, and in many cases Indigenous peoples embrace Christian identities along with traditional law and custom. The peculiar complexities of Australian history reveal many counter-examples to the conventional modernist tale, and in particular, the article seeks to show how Indigenous Christians snatched the King James Bible from Protestant doctrines of discovery. This discussion comes at an historically significant time as Australian state governments contemplate treaty making with the First Nations, each of whom exercise their own alternative model of sovereignty within local jurisdictions. This article argues that biblical theologies can support the making of modern treaties.

‘Record of my journeyings in the Coral Sea’: Randolph Bedford’s 1906 album of the Solomon Islands

Albums and scrapbooks are rarely the focus of research. This article examines the motivation and context for a unique and rare album compiled by a ‘special correspondent’ – George Randolph Bedford, an aspiring Federal politician, journalist and writer – who visited the Solomon Islands in 1906 on a personal fact-finding mission. His scrapbook contains 212 photographs and a series of articles on the Solomon Islands that he had published in illustrated weekend newspapers in Australia in 1906 and early 1907. The Australian colonies had just federated, Britain had just passed control of Papua to Australia and, in the New Hebrides, Britain and France were about to announce a condominium had been formed. Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands were also the subject of imperial manoeuvring. In Queensland, Kanakas were being sent home as the labour trade was abolished. The scrapbook is therefore a window on to imperial diplomacy, colonial expansion and Australian visions of a relationship with the Pacific, the boom in illustrated newspapers, early photography and personal ambition to become an expert on the islands.

LAWCHA and the Future of Global Labor History

Like other national labor history associations, the Labor and Working- Class History Association (LAWCHA) has experienced the shifting tides of globalization in labor history, both intellectually and organizationally. Many of us try to situate our scholarship in a transnational and comparative context in ways that highlight the forces of global capitalism, the transnational migration of workers over centuries, the historical patterns of international labor organization and solidarity, and the responses of workers to the restructuring of a global economy under neoliberal regimes. The invigorating effects on our field have been notable as historians and scholars in a range of disciplines have created common ground for collaborative investigations, organized conferences, published collections of essays or documentary sources, and realigned journals to reflect these transnational shifts.It must be pointed out that transnational investigations and international collaborations are not new in the field of labor history or in labor activism and organization. However, we are without question in a new era, because these developments are now quickened by enhanced social media communication capacities and the wider exchange of information and ideas. At the same time, global crises facing working people spawned by new forms of labor exploitation, precariousness of work, attacks on the right to unionize, climate change, right- wing repression, and increasing levels of mass migration have motivated academics and activists to adopt new approaches to studying and organizing workers.LAWCHA has come to embody some of these developments. From its earliest days, our journal, LABOR: Studies in Working- Class History, has provided a vehicle for transnational studies in the Americas and, in recent years, has cast a wider global net. We have seen international participation in LAWCHA annual conferences grow from 2013 in New York through 2017 in Seattle and 2019 in Durham, North Carolina, along with rising numbers of conference panels and plenaries devoted to comparative and transnational history and contemporary international labor activism. LAWCHA collaborated with the Australian Association for the Study of Labour History to mount an international conference in Sydney in 2015 on comparative US and Australian labor history, the fruits of which were subsequently published in 2018 in a volume of essays titled Frontiers of Labor: Comparative Histories of the United States and Australia. LAWCHA’s website continues to highlight the ongoing work of other labor history organizations internationally and news of labor struggles around the world.LAWCHA’s Global Affairs Committee, established in 2013, has reorganized in the past year, added new members, and defined an ambitious agenda for the coming year. We plan to enhance the visibility of global labor history and activism on the committee page of LAWCHA’s website (www.lawcha.org/committee-portal/global-affairs-committee/); we have thrown support to two international conferences—one commemorating the International Labour Organization’s anniversary and another on global labor migration; committee members are committed to contributing short articles, reviews, and opinion pieces to LAWCHA’s Labor Online; and we have conducted a wide- ranging survey of LAWCHA members that points to important avenues for future work in the field.The global affairs survey yielded interesting and provocative results. About one- fourth of LAWCHA members (110) responded to the survey. Over 40 percent of the respondents had belonged to LAWCHA for fewer than five years, suggesting a younger cohort of members. A substantial majority indicated interests in research, teaching, and labor activism with a transnational focus and geographical interests literally spanning the globe. While most had not regularly visited the LAWCHA Global Affairs Committee web page, strong majorities indicated interest in seeing reports on recent transnational scholarship and labor activism. They also faithfully read Labor Online. Many agreed to get more involved by attending international conferences and workshops and contributing short reports and essays on international themes. Most tellingly, the survey respondents offered wide- ranging suggestions for future focus and organization, from actively building transnational connections and collaborations between scholars and activists, especially those in Latin America, to creating more inclusive panels at the annual meetings, making greater use of social media tools like Facebook and Instagram to strengthen international ties, and diversifying leadership of the organization to reflect international interests.The path forward—toward an organization with stronger international ties that reflect the proliferating transnational and comparative interests of LAWCHA members—is clearly illuminated by the views expressed by current members and by their burgeoning scholarship and activism in the field. We encourage you to share news of your own scholarship and activism with a global focus, contribute reports and opinion pieces to Labor Online, and volunteer your energies to help us enhance LAWCHA’s global activity and visibility.

The Slav Avant-garde in Australian Art

Australian art history includes a peculiar short period during which the European avant-garde values were brought to Australia by a group of Slav artists who gathered in Adelaide in 1950. They were brothers Voitre (1919–1999) and Dušan Marek (1926–1993) from Bohemia, Władysław (1918–1999) and Ludwik Dutkiewicz (1921–2008) from Poland, and Stanislaus (Stanislav, Stan) Rapotec (1911–1997) from Yugoslavia, later joined by Joseph Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski (1922–1994) from Poland. Each of these artists went on to leave their individual mark on the overall Australian art practice. This brief moment of the artists’ working and exhibiting together also enriched their later individual work with the very idea of a common Slav cultural memory.

Race, technological modernity, and the Italo-Australian condition: Francesco De Pinedo's 1925 flight from Europe to Australia

Writing about fascism and aviation has stressed the role technology played in Mussolini's ambitions to cultivate fascist ideals in Italy and amongst the Italian diaspora. In this article we examine Francesco De Pinedo's account of the Australian section of his record-breaking 1925 flight from Rome to Tokyo. Our analysis of De Pinedo's reception as a modern Italian in a British Australia, and his response to that reception, suggests that this Italian aviator was relatively unconcerned with promoting Fascist greatness in Australia. De Pinedo was interested in Australian claims to the forms of modernity he had witnessed in the United States and which the Fascists were attempting to incorporate into a new vision of Italian destiny. Flight provided him with a geographical imagination which understood modernity as an international exchange of progressive peoples. His Australian reception revealed a nation anxious about preserving its British identity in a globalising world conducive to a more cosmopolitan model of modernity.