Outback Research Articles

Investigating the role of non-helpers in group living thrips.

Behavioural variation among individuals is a hallmark of cooperative societies, which commonly contain breeders and non-breeders, helpers and non-helpers. In some cases, labour is divided with non-breeders "helping." Conversely, in some societies, subordinate non-breeders may not help. These individuals may be (i) an insurance workforce ensuring continuity of help for breeders when other helpers are lost, (ii) conserving energy while waiting to breed themselves or (iii) simply of too poor physiological quality either to help or breed. In the Australian Outback, Acacia thrips Dunatothrips aneurae (Thysanoptera) glue Acacia phyllodes into "domiciles" using silk-like secretions, either alone or cooperatively. Domicile maintenance is important for humidity, so repair can be interpreted as helping. I found that not all females helped to repair damage; some repaired partially or not at all ("non-helpers"). At the same time, some co-foundresses are non- or partially reproductive ("non-breeders"), and their role is currently unknown. I first tested the possibility that helping and breeding are divided, with non-helping females breeding, and non-breeders helping. In a lab experiment, I rejected this idea. Experimentally damaged domiciles were typically repaired by reproductive females, and less so by non- or partially reproductive individuals. To test whether non-helpers are an insurance workforce, I successively removed repairing females and found that non-helping females from the same domicile did not increase effort as a result, rejecting this hypothesis. Then I tested whether non-helpers were conserving energy waiting to breed. In a field experiment, I removed all other females, allowing either a helpful female or a non-helper to "inherit" her domicile. Isolated like this, non-helpers laid very few eggs compared to helpers or naturally occurring single foundresses, despite similar ovarian development. My findings show that labour was not divided: reproduction and helping covaried positively, probably depending on individual variation in female quality and intra-domicile competition. Non-helping females were neither an insurance workforce nor conserving energy waiting to breed. They are likely simply of poor quality, freeloading by benefiting from domicile maintenance by others. I hypothesize they are tolerated because of selection for indiscriminate communal brood care in the form of domicile repair.

O49 - The birth of maternity specific virtual reality training in outback Queensland

O49 - The birth of maternity specific virtual reality training in outback Queensland

A GLOBAL NORTH: TRANSFERS, EXCHANGES and TRANSNATIONAL LINKS BETWEEN VICTORIA AND SOUTH YORKSHIRE, 1880–1914

This article seeks to establish transnational links between South Yorkshire and the colony of Victoria in Australia during the late nineteenth-century. Examining definitions of ‘northernness’ and challenging arguments that depict northern identity and culture as inward-looking, it explores the relative absence of ‘northernness’ in narratives of migration and makes the case for the interconnection of ideas, events and individuals across cultural, political and national boundaries. Exploring Sheffield’s links and relationship with Victoria this article places recent research about population transfers, civic identity, protest and business practice in a global perspective that highlights overlaps and connections over disjunctures, difference and the particular. Throughout, the emphasis of the article is on the diverse and wide-ranging nature of these links in an imperial context. Against this background, neither steel workers in Sheffield, nor the shearers in outback Australia appear as insular and inward-looking, as has often been asserted. In short, the article poses questions about the nature and scale of a transplanted northern identity, and the relevance of the environment of the Australian colonies to a developing sense of what it was to be from Sheffield.

Frontier Narratives That Take on Flesh: Tracing Legacy, Labour, and Legitimacy in Outback Queensland, Australia

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the notion of legacy through the ways graziers in Outback Queensland, Australia, draw on material, narrative, and embodied traces of past ‘events’ to emplot their lives during times of uncertainty. Through an ethnography of pastoral work and storytelling on stations, or ranches, we show how settler‐colonial narratives of the frontier and legacy circulate as affective forces in pastoralists' daily lives and become embodied through labour. We argue that pastoral families respond to both the failure of modernist grand narratives and more personal events by renegotiating stories of the frontier to legitimate their ongoing presence in Outback Australia and give meaning to their lives. While these narratives are existentially useful for pastoralists, we argue that they remain tied to exclusionary and unsustainable structures and ideologies that prevent pastoralists from adjusting to contemporary crises.

Building Blocs: Raw Materials and the Global Economy in the Age of Disequilibrium

“Building Blocs” charts a global history of the last great crisis of globalization—the transwar decades from the 1880s through the 1940s—by centering strategic minerals needed to make steel. Little studied, but critically important, alloying minerals like tungsten and manganese were only needed in small amounts, but they were essential to the foundations of both national prosperity and security: steel and military production. Herein lay a fundamental problem: none of the industrial powers possessed adequate domestic deposits of these minerals, which were concentrated in remote locations such as central India, the Caucasus, southern China, Brazilian jungles, the Australian outback, and southern Africa. In a world in which steel was power, “Building Blocs” shows that resource anxieties motivated interwar quests for autarky and autonomy in the form of self-contained blocs. The scramble for strategic minerals escalated tensions and put rivals on the road to war, reshaping the forms and structures of geopolitical entities and international institutions throughout the transwar period.

Examining the Social, Civic, and Political Impact of Local Newspaper Closure in Outback Australia

Scholars across the globe have focused intently on mapping news deserts and gaps where public interest journalism is lacking or in peril. However, little attention is paid to understanding the impacts and changing media-related practices of people who live in communities that lose a designated news service—notably a local newspaper. This article draws on a focused ethnographic study of a small outback mining town, Lightning Ridge (population 2,284), in central New South Wales, Australia. The research was conducted over a two-month period and involved participant observation, 31 interviews with residents and relevant stakeholders, and examination of several media platforms relevant to the town. The article begins with an overview of Australian policy interventions to address the decline of public interest journalism. It then discusses the impact of a local newspaper’s closure via three themes—social, civic, and political. This is important because much of the policy focus in Australia is on the threat “news gaps” present to democracy. However, it is also necessary to understand the nuances of local media’s role in shaping everyday social connections and ritualistic practices and elevating issues to local networks of power. The article concludes by considering how current policy interventions can learn from failed attempts to fill the news gap in Lightning Ridge.

Terrain: A conversation in dancefilm between self and the Australian outback landscape

This article examines the connections between embodied and somatic spirituality that are revealed in the making of the dancefilm Terrain: Dancing on Stolen Land, filmed and performed by the author on Maiawali and Karuwali Country, known as the Channel Country, in the Diamantina National Park in outback Australia. Through a phenomenological approach, the author investigates her responses to the vast Australian outback. Using the language of responsive dance captured on film and in text, she discusses place, site-specific performance, invisibility, listening and cultural mindfulness, as experienced through improvisational performances on a contested landscape. On this ancient terrain, she pays her respect and acknowledgement to the traditional owners of this unceded land, past, present and emerging. https://vimeo.com/745881539

Bottoms up down under a Case Report of Emergency Vaginal Breech Delivery using Telehealth in Australian Remote Community

This report describes the use of Telehealth in outback Australia. In this case, an obstetrician could reach out and guide a primary health care worker to successfully resolve an obstructed delivery during the vaginal breech birth of an indigenous woman in a remote regional community. The events occurred in a small community health centre, approximately 300 km from the nearest obstetric service. The mother presented unexpectedly with contractions of active preterm labour leading to precipitant delivery. At the time of the video link, the Obstetrician saw a young aboriginal woman lying supine on a table, her skirt raised and her legs parted. A baby's lower limbs and body lay prone and unmoving, the head and neck still within the vagina. The woman was exhausted, and her care attendants were uncertain what to do. The situation was highly critical. After a moment of summation, the Obstetrician garnered the resources available, including the woman's sister, who was standing by her side, and the primary health care worker and coached them through the required steps of delivery to allow extraction and immediate neonatal resuscitation. The outcome was excellent, a testament to the mother's resilience and the support of her team. The case highlights inequalities faced by regional Australians; the isolation of profound distance, the scarcity of resources and opportunity, the proclivity of disease and risk, and the insatiable attrition of healthcare services inexorably stretched beyond their means. In this setting, it offers hope by acknowledging the success of innovative technologies such as Telehealth which can broaden the reach of virtual, face-to-face communication and allow us to connect in real-time to areas not otherwise accessible.

Animating Country

ABSTRACT Eleven Animation students from Australia and the UK spent two weeks in the Australian Outback with the Guwa-Koa Traditional Owners and co-created a five-minute stop motion animation as part of the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival. Over the two-week intensive ‘Bootcamp’, the students researched, planned, created and screened the film as a creative interpretation of a Dreamtime story shared by Elder Minnie Mace. The course was designed to facilitate students’ cultural inquiry and critical awareness of Australia’s colonial history through open dialogue, discussion and co-production, while gaining first-hand insights into the ethics of cross-cultural co-production. It is a fundamental tenant of the course that all stories and artefacts created through the collaboration remain the property of the Guwa-Koa Traditional Owners. The students and schools maintain permission to screen the works.

Performing encounters (and encountering performance) at Auckland Zoo

Performing encounters (and encountering performance) at Auckland Zoo

Outback Queensland

Outback Queensland

Geraldine and Geoff Harris – Exploring Outback Queensland's National Parks

Geraldine and Geoff Harris – Exploring Outback Queensland's National Parks

Baby birds beat the heat thanks to singing parents

Baby zebra finches hatch into one of Earth's most inhospitable environments, the Australian outback, where summer temperatures can exceed 40°C. Fortunately, zebra finch parents can prepare their young for this dangerously hot climate by singing to them before they hatch. When temperatures rise above 26°C, parents emit ‘heat calls’ that warn their embryos of high environmental temperatures. Unlike their normal vocalizations, heat calls have a high-pitched frequency, a fast rhythm and can prompt embryos to develop differently in preparation for the heat. Notably, birds that are serenaded by heat calls as embryos tend to be relatively small, a characteristic thought to help them lose heat more efficiently and produce more young throughout adulthood. Despite the lasting influence of heat calls on zebra finch physiology, the mechanism through which they act remains a mystery.Led by Eve Udino (Deakin University, Australia), a team of researchers also from Deakin University, Clemson University, USA, and the Doñana Biological Station, Spain, questioned whether the energy-generating units inside cells (mitochondria) are the missing piece to this musical puzzle. Mitochondria use oxygen to convert food into cellular energy (ATP), while a portion of this oxygen is also diverted to produce heat. Since changes in mitochondrial function during development can have long-term effects on animal physiology, Udino and colleagues suggested that zebra finch mitochondria may be responding to heat calls produced by their parents. The team collected eggs from zebra finches maintained at an outdoor aviary in Geelong, Australia, and incubated the eggs at a blistering 37.5°C. A few days before they were due to hatch, the team played recordings of heat calls to the developing embryos. The newly hatched chicks were then raised in nests at various temperatures, ranging from 22°C to 34°C. Once they turned 13 days old, the team obtained some blood from the chicks to assess the function of the mitochondria in their red blood cells.The researchers first discovered that nest temperature can alter how well zebra finch mitochondria work. The birds raised in hotter nests had less efficient mitochondria, meaning that their mitochondria produced less ATP and consequently more heat than the mitochondria of birds raised at cooler temperatures. Remarkably, embryonic exposure to heat calls improved mitochondrial efficiency across all nest temperatures (22–34°C), suggesting that heat calls re-program how zebra finch mitochondria balance ATP versus heat production.While a nest temperature of 34°C may seem hot, zebra finches can experience temperatures that are much, much higher. Therefore, Udina and colleagues took the study one step further and exposed a group of the 13-day-old birds to a brief heatwave, warming the youngsters’ nests to 44°C over the course of 2.5 hours before checking the mitochondria again. This time, the mitochondria of birds that had listened to heat calls as embryos tended to be less efficient. Although this may seem disadvantageous, the team suspects that there may be benefits to reducing mitochondrial efficiency under extreme heat conditions. High rates of mitochondrial ATP production can produce toxic reactive oxygen species, compounds that can wreak havoc on proteins, lipids and DNA. Making mitochondria less efficient at extremely high temperatures may help birds reduce the damaging effects of reactive oxygen species.We often think that a bird's life begins once it hatches, but birds can sense and respond to events going on in the outside world before they enter it. As zebra finch parents sound the heat alarm, their embryos get to work altering their physiology. So, next time you hear zebra finches calling in the Australian heat, don't think of their sweet songs as ‘music to the ears’, but rather, as ‘music to the mitochondria’.

Thomas Maschmeyer is building batteries fit for the Australian outback

Thomas Maschmeyer is building batteries fit for the Australian outback

On the road again: Displaying knowledge of place in multiparty conversations in the remote Australian outback

In this article we examine displays of epistemic status and stance among long-term Anglo-Australian residents of remote communities through a case study of a 2-h interaction by four men who have demonstrated sophisticated knowledge of locations in their region. We show how equal access to knowledge of places is oriented to, as well as how differences in rights to authoritatively claim knowledge emerge in disputes over details of locations which are resolved when it is established that one member can provide more specific or up-to-date knowledge. This study not only contributes to understanding epistemic management practices in contexts where there is a high degree of shared knowledge, but also grounds the exploration of new insights into the ways in which the epistemics of referring to places appear to diverge from what has been described for referring to persons.

Gummatous neurosyphilis in an elderly patient in the Australian outback: a case report

IntroductionNeurosyphilis is an infection caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum, which causes infiltration and thickening of brain meninges. Despite being an Old World disease, the rates of infection continue to rise. This clinical challenge involves early and accurate diagnosis, as neurosyphilis masquerades with various clinical symptoms and is often missed during initial presentation to the hospital. A comprehensive history and clinical examination are essential to detect suspicious cases early for further cerebrospinal fluid examination and neuroimaging. Patients treated with benzylpenicillin for a specific duration often show promising clinical and cognitive improvement, thus emphasizing the need for constant vigilance in our day-to-day practice.Case presentationA 77-year-old Caucasian gentleman presented to our hospital repeatedly with multiple episodes of presyncope and cognitive impairment. He also demonstrated bilateral deafness, tabes dorsalis, and left sixth cranial nerve palsy. His cerebrospinal fluid examination showed a nonreactive venereal disease research laboratory test, and magnetic resonance imaging of the brain revealed a gumma.ConclusionThe diagnosis of neurosyphilis in the elderly requires a combination of clinical vigilance and a high index of suspicion, along with multimodal investigations, including cerebrospinal fluid examination and brain imaging.

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

“We would be dead in the water without our social media!”: Women using entrepreneurial bricolage to mitigate drought impacts in rural Australia

ABSTRACT It is widely understood that climate change transforms rural communities’ economic activities that have historically relied on farming through off-farm income for economic stability and mitigation. Entrepreneurship has become a central feature of the diversification of rural labor, but there is still a need to document how rural women operationalize entrepreneurship in their communities. We use three narrative interviews to examine how settler farming women in the Murweh and Paroo Shires of outback Queensland in Australia have mitigated the devastating financial impact of the most recent drought through the lens of entrepreneurial bricolage for off-farm income. The findings, generated through grounded theory, highlight the complexity of entrepreneurial bricolage processes through women’s use of networking (digital and communal), learning digital technologies, repurposing of resources and places, and use of family labor. The paper contributes theoretically to place-based, gendered and context-specific understandings of drought mitigation, through identifying how entrepreneurial bricolage is employed.

Co-Designing Change

Co-Designing Change

Body Weather bodies in the outback – Lake Mungo

Body Weather is an experimental, investigative, dance-performance practice which fuses ancient as well as contemporary Japanese and Western practice and thought so as to question the body and the imagination. In this article I describe how Body Weather proposes bodies which, rather than being organised as human-centred subjects, are instead danced by the environment. Drawing on training processes I directed in the Australian outback at Lake Mungo from 1991–1994, I will explore how the practice asserts, responds to, and is determined by the significance of non-human forces, and inanimate objects and processes. The outback of Australia presents deeply physical and mental challenges, in cultural as well as environmental terms, probing our collective intention, and indeed our capacity, to stand in a country with an ancient – and continuing – tradition of the first peoples, and a more recent history of colonisation. As a site of training and practice, the outback opens possibilities which are far removed from the everyday normative of globalised city life. The paper will show how Body Weather practice, engaging an omni-focused and non-hierarchic understanding of the body as, and within, such an environment affords perspectives and, more importantly, concrete experiences which interrogate human being. I propose that in the encounter between exterior and interior environments, our conventional understanding of a human is unsettled, and reframed as a process of co-constitution and interdependence, earthed in a material physicality – animated and interrogated by space, place, history and future.