Journal articles on the topic 'Air Pollution Victoria Melbourne'

A comparative study and evaluation of boundary layer height (BLH) estimation was conducted during an experimental campaign conducted at the Cape Grim Air Pollution station, Australia, from 1 June to 13 July 2019. The temporal and spatial distributions of BLH were studied using data from a ceilometer, sodar, in situ meteorological measurements, and back-trajectory analyses. Generally, the BLH under continental sources is lower than that under marine sources. The BLH is featured with a shallow depth of 515 ± 340 m under the Melbourne/East Victoria continental source. Especially the mixed continental sources (Melbourne/East Victoria and Tasmania direction) lead to a rise in radon concentration and lower BLH. In comparison, the boundary layer reaches a higher averaged BLH value of 730 ± 305 m when marine air is prevalent. The BLH derived from ERA5 is positively biased compared to the ceilometer observations, except when the boundary layer is stable. The height at which wind profiles experience rapid changes corresponds to the BLH value. The wind flow within the boundary layer increased up to ∼200 m, where it then meandered up to ∼300 m. Furthermore, the statistic shows that BLH is positively associated with near-surface wind speed. This study firstly provides information on boundary layer structure in Cape Grim and the interaction with wind, which may aid in further evaluating their associated impacts on the climate and ecosystem.

Recent meteorological studies suggest a mixed pattern of climate change in Antarctica: a general cooling of the interior continent and warming in the Antarctic Peninsula over the past several decades (e.g. Comiso 2000, Doran et al. 2002, Vaughan et al. 2003). This note presents 10 years of continuous recording of air and permafrost temperature at Mount Melbourne (74°21′S, 164°42′E) in Northern Victoria Land. Mount Melbourne is a quiescent volcano belonging to a wide-spread volcanic belt which has developed since the Oligocene along the western margin of the Ross Sea, parallel to the Transantarctic Mountains (Fig. 1a). In 1988 a tilt network composed of five continuous recording sensors each equipped with four temperature sensors (Fig. 1b) was installed within the framework of Italian PRNA between the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989 (Bonaccorso et al. 1995).

Urban drainage systems historically were developed on principles of hydraulic capacity for the transport of storm water to reduce the risk of flooding. However, with urbanization the percent of impervious surfaces increases dramatically resulting in increased flood volumes, peak discharge rates, velocities and duration, and a significant increase in pollutant loads. Storm water and urban runoff are the leading causes of the impairment of receiving waters and their beneficial uses in Australia and the United States today. Strict environmental and technology controls on wastewater treatment facilities and industry for more than three decades have ensured that these sources are less significant today as the cause of impairment of receiving waters. This paper compares the approach undertaken by the Environmental Protection Authority Victoria for the Melbourne metropolitan area with the approach implemented by the California Environmental Protection Agency for the Los Angeles area to control storm water pollution. Both these communities are largely similar in population size and the extent of urbanization. The authors present an analysis of the different approaches contrasting Australia with the USA, comment on their comparative success, and discuss the relevance of the two experiences for developed and developing nations in the context of environmental policy making to control storm water and urban runoff pollution.

The relationship between maternal exposure to ambient air pollution and pregnancy complications is not well characterized. We aimed to explore the relationship between maternal exposure to ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and placental abruption. Using administrative data, we defined a state-wide cohort of singleton pregnancies born between 1 March 2012 and 31 December 2015 in Victoria, Australia. Annual average NO2 and PM2.5 was assigned to maternal residence at the time of birth. 285,594 singleton pregnancies were included. An IQR increase in NO2 (3.9 ppb) was associated with reduced likelihood of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (RR 0.89; 95%CI 0.86, 0.91), GDM (RR 0.92; 95%CI 0.90, 0.94) and placental abruption (RR 0.81; 95%CI 0.69, 0.95). Mixed observations and smaller effect sizes were observed for IQR increases in PM2.5 (1.3 µg/m3) and pregnancy complications; reduced likelihood of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (RR 0.95; 95%CI 0.93, 0.97), increased likelihood of GDM (RR 1.02; 95%CI 1.00, 1.03) and no relationship for placental abruption. In this exploratory study using an annual metric of exposure, findings were largely inconsistent with a priori expectations and further research involving temporally resolved exposure estimates are required.

Background Kolkata is one of the polluted metropolitan cities in India where health effects of air pollution are raising serious concern.Objectives Purpose of the present study was to analyze association between levels of air pollutants and pulmonary function of adult males living in two different air pollutant zones of Kolkata.Methods Air pollution data of two ambient air quality monitoring stations located at Rabindrabharati and Victoria Memorial was collected from West Bengal Pollution Control Board, Kolkata for the period from January to March 2012. Study was conducted on 200 males (17-22 yrs), subdivided into two groups from living within 3 km radius of that two monitoring stations. They were investigated for their spirometric lung functions following method and technique recommended by American Thoracic Society. Results were expressed as mean ± SD and independent samples T test was conducted to compare between groups.Results PM10, SO2 concentrations were significantly higher in Rabindrabharati zone, whereas no significant differences were noted in NO2 and CO concentrations though values were higher at Rabindrabharati than Victoria Memorial. FVC, FEV1 , FEF25-75%, MVV were significantly lower in males of Rabindrabharati zone.Conclusion Exposure to high air pollutant concentration might be associated with reduced pulmonary function in adult males.Kathmandu University Medical Journal Vol.13(1) 2015; 24-28

Abstract A 4-day photochemical smog event in the Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, region (6–9 March 2001) is examined to assess the performance of the Australian Air Quality Forecasting System (AAQFS). Although peak ozone concentrations measured during this period did not exceed the 1-h national air quality standard of 100 ppb, elevated maximum ozone concentrations in the range of 50–80 ppb were recorded at a number of monitoring stations on all four days. These maximum values were in general very well forecast by the AAQFS. On all but the third day the system predicted the advection of ozone precursors over Port Phillip (the adjacent bay) during the morning, where, later in the day, relatively high ozone concentrations developed. The ozone was advected back inland by bay and sea breezes. On the third day, a southerly component to the background wind direction prevented the precursor drainage over the bay, and the characteristic ozone cycle was disrupted. The success of the system's ability to predict peak ozone at individual monitoring stations was largely dependent on the direction and penetration of the sea and bay breezes, which in turn were dependent on the delicate balance between these winds and the opposing synoptic flow.

Cladophora glomerata and Stigeoclonium tenue dominate lowland urban creeks in the Yarra River basin of south-central Victoria. In Darebin and Merri Creeks, Cladophora produces extensive mats in summer and autumn, and is mostly replaced by Stigeoclonium in winter and spring. Although Stigeoclonium can grow all year round, it only outcompetes Cladophora in winter and spring, when air temperatures range between a maximum of < 15� C and a nightly minimum of < 10� C (water temperature < 15� C, usually about 10� C). The seasonal composition and abundance of these macroalgae depend on temperature and on the severity of, and time since, the last floods, and the effect that these factors have on interspecific competition. Features of the microhabitat (e.g. photon irradiance, substratum stability and composition, and mean flow rates) determine the range of these variations. The biomass of both macroalgae fluctuates widely; this is due mainly to floods, which can remove almost the entire standing crop. In off-seasons, both species are maintained by small resilient plants or protected populations (in culture, plants remain viable after up to 6 months in complete darkness). Filaments of Cladophora readily produce zoospores and new vegetative growth following dormancy. The prostrate thallus of Stigeoclonium initiates new erect filaments before zoospores are produced. An understanding of the large local and seasonal variations in macroalgal biomass is essential for biological monitoring programmes.

AbstractKnowledge of permafrost characteristics and distribution in Antarctica and their relationships with present and past climates is still poor. This paper reports investigations on permafrost in an area located between Nansen Ice Sheet to the south and Mount Melbourne (2732 m a.s.l.) to the north. Investigation methods included geomorphological surveys and geoelectrical soundings as well as crystallography, chemical and isotopic analyses of the ground ice. Geomorphological surveys helped to explain the relationships between periglacial landforms (e.g. rock glaciers and patterned ground) and the glacial history of the area. Geoelectrical soundings allowed us to define different ground-ice units in the ice-free areas. Each unit was characterised by a different type of permafrost (dry or ice-poor permafrost, marine or continental massive buried ice and sub-sea permafrost). To identify the nature of ground ice, trenches were dug and some shallow boreholes were drilled to a maximum depth of-3.6 m in massive buried ice. Samples of both ice-poor permafrost and massive ice were collected and analyzed. Chemical, isotopic δ18O and crystal analyses were also carried out. The relationships between climate and thermal regimes of the active layer and the upper part of permafrost were determined using a monitoring station for ground temperatures at Boulder Clay Glacier, near the Italian Antarctic station. During winter, there were several significant thermal-inversion events in the ground, which cannot be explained only by air-temperature changes, suggesting a possible influence of winter snowfall, even if these events are usually considered very rare.

COVID-19 is the latest of many pandemic affecting the world in the past few decades, and it has had a significant impact on the global environment. Some research has analysed the effects of the pandemic on air quality; however, very few studies have employed relationship analytics. In order to analyse the potential relationship between pandemic-related information and air quality data from a more holistic and detailed point of view, we propose a methodology based on pure data analysis. Three types of data were collected, namely air quality index, pandemic-related events, and number of COVID cases. Data were collected from five cities—Wuhan, New York, Seoul, Melbourne, and Singapore—to further analyse the response of air quality index to COVID events, thus revealing how human activity influences air quality from a pandemic perspective. The results show that a potential connection does exist in most cases and provide more evidence showing that air pollution declined during the pandemic. However, the strength of this relationship may also be related to other factors, such as geography, politics, population density, and measures imposed by local authorities, etc. This study provides another perspective to assist stakeholders in improving environmental decision making.

Smoke pollution from wildfires can adversely affect human health, and there is uncertainty about the amount of smoke pollution caused by prescribed v. wildfires, a problem demanding a landscape perspective given that air quality monitoring is sparse outside of urban airsheds. The primary objective was to assess differences in fire intensity and smoke plume area between prescribed fires and wildfires around Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. We matched thermal anomaly satellite data to databases of fires in forests surrounding both cities. For each matched fire we determined hotspot count and quantified their intensity using the fire radiative power (FRP) measurement. Smoke plumes were mapped using MODIS true colour images. Wildfires had more extreme fire intensity values than did prescribed burns and the mean size of wildfire plumes was six times greater than of prescribed fire plumes for both cities. Statistical modelling showed that the horizontal area covered by smoke plumes could be predicted by hotspot count and sum of FRP, with differences between cities and fire type. Smoke plumes from both fire types reached both urban areas, and particulate pollution was higher on days affected by smoke plumes. Our results suggested that prescribed fires produced smaller smoke plume areas than did wildfires in two different flammable landscapes. Smoke plume and FRP data, combined with air pollution data from static monitors, can be used to improve smoke management for human health.

Abstract ContextBird–aircraft collisions impose an economic cost and safety risk, yet ecological studies that inform bird hazard management are few, and to date no study has formally compared species’ strike profiles across airports. In response to strike risks, airports have implemented customised management on an airport-by-airport basis, based on the assumption that strike risk stems from prevailing local circumstances. We tested this assumption by comparing a decade of wildlife–aircraft strikes at three airports situated in the same bioregion (likely to have similar fauna) of Victoria, Australia. AimTo compare the assemblage of wildlife struck by aircraft at three major airports in the same bioregion. MethodStandardised wildlife strike data were analysed from three airports (Avalon, Melbourne and Essendon Airports), in the Victorian Volcanic Plains bioregion, central Victoria, Australia. Ten discrete 1-year sampling periods from each airport were compared, spanning the period 2009–19. Bird data were comparable, and data on mammals were considered less reliable, so emphasis was placed on birds in the present study. ResultsIn total, 580 bird strikes were analysed, with the most commonly struck species being Australian magpie (Cracticus tibicen; 16.7%), Eurasian skylark (Alauda arvensis; 12.2%), Australian pipit (Anthus australis; 12.1%), masked lapwing (Vanellus miles; 5.9%), nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroides; 5.0%), house sparrow (Passer domesticus; 4.8%), welcome swallow (Hirundo neoxena; 4.3%) and tree martin (Petrochelidon nigricans; 4.0%). The assemblage of birds struck by aircraft over the decade of study differed between airports. The most commonly struck species drove the assemblage differences between airports. Conclusions and implicationsIn the present study system, airports experienced discrete strike risk profiles, even though they are in the same bioregion. The airports examined differed in terms of air traffic movement rates, aircraft types, landscape context and bird hazard management effort. Given that strike risks profiles differ among airports, customised management at each airport, as is currently the case, is supported.

Abstract This study models the impact of the shift from a monocentric private-car-oriented city to polycentric public-transport-oriented city. Metropolitan areas have suffered traffic problems—in particular increase in travel time and travel distance. Urban expansion, population growth and road network development have led to urban sprawl in monocentric cities. In many monocentric cities, travel time and distance has steadily increased and is only expected to increase in the future. Excessive travel leads to several problems such as air pollution, noise, congestion, reduction in productive time, greenhouse emissions, and increased stress and accident rates. This study examines the interaction of land use and travel. A model was developed and calibrated to Melbourne and Riyadh conditions and used for scenario analysis. This model included two parts: a spatial model and a transport model. The scenario analysis included variations of residential and activity distribution, as well as conditions of public transport service.

Teratoma formation is commonly used as a model for examining the in vivo differentiation potential of embryonic stem cells. We wanted to investigate the teratoma-forming ability of bovine ES cells; however, there are no reports of teratoma-forming ability of bovine pluripotent cells including pre-implantation embryos. In vivo-produced bovine embryos at stages earlier than Day 14 failed to develop teratomas when transplanted into one of the kidneys of immuno-deficient mice (Anderson et al. 1996 Anim. Reprod. Sci. 45, 231–240), and this prompted questions about the ability of bovine embryos to form teratomas. Bovine oocytes were cultured for 20 to 22 h after aspiration at 39�C (5% CO2/95% air) in TCM-199-bicarbonate medium supplemented with GlutaMax6" (Invitrogen Australia Pty Ltd., Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia), penicillin/streptomycin, β-mercaptoethanol, 17β-estradiol, fetal calf serum, LH, follicle stimulating hormone, basic fibroblast growth factor, epidermal growth factor, glycine, and l-cysteine. Oocytes were fertilized with IVF media (Cook Australia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) and kept for 7 days at 39�C in 5% CO2/95% air to generate blastocysts. The zona pellucida of Day 7 blastocysts was enzymatically removed, and one or two zona-free embryos were injected into each testis of 5-week-old immunodeficient (SCID) mice (CB-17/ICR-Prkdcscid strain; Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne, Australia). Eight weeks post-injection, teratomas partially expelled from testes were identified. Histological analysis has confirmed the derivatives of all 3 germ layers in teratomas. In conclusion, we report that Day 7 in vitro-produced embryos can form teratomas when injected into testes of SCID mice.

Environmental context. The re-use of biosolids (sewage sludge) is becoming increasingly popular especially for land applications as soil improvers, fertilisers and composts. However, some biosolids are contaminated with toxic heavy metals and mercury is arguably of the highest environmental and public health concern. Studies on mobility, availability and emissions of mercury from biosolids were carried out to assess the biosolids potential for contamination of the environment and to evaluate applicable techniques for a future remediation. Abstract. Biosolids from Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant (WTP) in Australia contain elevated levels of mercury. Consequently, monitoring programs are crucial in order to assess localised impacts to the environment and on humans immediately surrounding the boundaries of the WTP. Dry biosolids were surveyed for Hg, other heavy metals, cations, soluble anions, sulfur and phosphorus. Mercury concentrations were found to vary between 3.5 and 8.4 mg kg–1 Hg, indicating that biosolids from some locations were above the safety level (5 mg kg–1 Hg) for land applications. High concentrations of soluble anions and cations revealed elevated salinity levels. The biosolids with the highest Hg concentration were further studied to assess their potential for Hg remediation. The results obtained by a sequential extraction procedure showed that 59.01% of the total mercury was complexed with organic ligands. In addition, the influence of air temperature, water content and irradiation on the emission of gaseous elemental mercury from biosolids was studied. Light exposure and water addition were the main factors affecting this emission with flux values up to 132 ng m–2 h–1.

Among air and soil, water pollution is considered as an important one. Deterioration of water resources by the addition of various pollutants leads to the major threat to water quality and use of water for domestic purpose which leads to unaesthetic. For the plants, animals and human beings dyes are considered as most hazardous among various water pollutants. The present paper describes the adsorption behaviour of adsorbent almond husk with respect to dyes of Crystal violet, Bromocresol green, Pararosaniline and Victoria blue was investigated. The batch method was used and parameters like pH, adsorbent dosage, contact time and initial and final concentration of dyes were studied. Adsorbent used to be effective, with total removal of all dyes of 90%, with higher percentage removal from bromocresol green 97.5%, Crystal violet 96.9%, Pararosaniline 95.6% and Victoria blue 95%. Almond husk was an effective adsorbent with maximum percentage removal of 97.5% bromocresol green. Adsorbent was analysed by the instrument of scanning electron microscopy and Fourier infrared spectroscopy. In the present study almond husk almond husk was studied as a very good adsorbent for the removal of dyes from the aqueous media. Isotherm model of Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich were considered to be favourable.

IntroductionNumerous studies have found associations between characteristics of urban environments and risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline, such as physical inactivity and obesity. However, the contribution of urban environments to brain and cognitive health has been seldom examined directly. This cohort study investigates the extent to which and how a wide range of characteristics of urban environments influence brain and cognitive health via lifestyle behaviours in mid-aged and older adults in three cities across three continents.Methods and analysisParticipants aged 50–79 years and living in preselected areas stratified by walkability, air pollution and socioeconomic status are being recruited in Melbourne (Australia), Barcelona (Spain) and Hong Kong (China) (n=1800 total; 600 per site). Two assessments taken 24 months apart will capture changes in brain and cognitive health. Cognitive function is gauged with a battery of eight standardised tests. Brain health is assessed using MRI scans in a subset of participants. Information on participants’ visited locations is collected via an interactive web-based mapping application and smartphone geolocation data. Environmental characteristics of visited locations, including the built and natural environments and their by-products (e.g., air pollution), are assessed using geographical information systems, online environmental audits and self-reports. Data on travel and lifestyle behaviours (e.g., physical and social activities) and participants’ characteristics (e.g., sociodemographics) are collected using objective and/or self-report measures.Ethics and disseminationThe study has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Australian Catholic University, the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong and the Parc de Salut Mar Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Government of Catalonia. Results will be communicated through standard scientific channels. Methods will be made freely available via a study-dedicated website.Trial registration numberACTRN12619000817145.

Biomass burning smoke is often a significant source of airborne fine particles in regional areas where air quality monitoring is scarce. Emerging sensor technology provides opportunities to monitor air quality on a much larger geographical scale with much finer spatial resolution. It can also engage communities in the conversation around local pollution sources. The SMoke Observation Gadget (SMOG), a unit with a Plantower dust sensor PMS3003, was designed as part of a school-based Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) project looking at smoke impacts in regional areas of Victoria, Australia. A smoke-specific calibration curve between the SMOG units and a standard regulatory instrument was developed using an hourly data set collected during a peat fire. The calibration curve was applied to the SMOG units during all field-based validation measurements at several locations and during different seasons. The results showed strong associations between individual SMOG units for PM2.5 concentrations (r2 = 0.93–0.99) and good accuracy (mean absolute error (MAE) < 2 μg m−3). Correlations of the SMOG units to reference instruments also demonstrated strong associations (r2 = 0.87–95) and good accuracy (MAE of 2.5–3.0 μg m−3). The PM2.5 concentrations tracked by the SMOG units had a similar response time as those measured by collocated reference instruments. Overall, the study has shown that the SMOG units provide relevant information about ambient PM2.5 concentrations in an airshed impacted predominantly by biomass burning, provided that an adequate adjustment factor is applied.

AbstractEcandrewsite, the zinc analogue of ilmenite, is a new mineral which was first described from the Broken Hill lode in 1970 and discovered subsequently in ores from Little Broken Hill (New South Wales) and the San Valentin Mine, Spain. The name ‘ecandrewsite’ was used in a partial description of the mineral in ‘Minerals of Broken Hill’ (1982), thereby establishing the Little Broken Hill locality, specifically the Melbourne Rockwell Mine, as the type locality. Microprobe analysis of ecandrewsite from the type locality gave ZnO 30.42 (wt.%), FeO (total Fe) 11.37, MnO 7.64, TiO2 50.12, total 99.6%, yielding an empirical formula of (Zn0.59Fe0.24Mn0.17)1.00Ti0.99O3 based on 3 oxygen atoms. All compositions from Little Broken Hill and the San Valentin Mine are ferroan manganoan ecandrewsite. The strongest lines in the X-ray powder diffraction data are (d in Å, (hkil), I/Io):2.746, (104), 100; 2.545, (110), 80; 1.867, (024), 40; 3.734, (012), 30; 1.470, (3030), 30; 1.723, (116), 25. Ecandrewsite is hexagonal, space group RR3¯ assigned from a structural study, with a = 5.090(1), c = 14.036(2)Å, V = 314.6(3)Å3, Z = 6, D(calc.) = 4.99. The mineral is opaque, dark brown to black with a similar streak, and a submetallic lustre. In plane polarized light the reflection colour is greyish white with a pinkish tinge. Reflection pleochroism is weak, but anisotropism is strong with colours from greenish grey to dark brownish grey. Reflectance data in air between 470 and 650 nm are given. At the type locality, ecandrewsite forms disseminated tabular euhedral grains up to 250 × 50 µm, in quartz-rich metasediments. Associated minerals include almandine-spessartine, ferroan gahnite and rutile. The name is for E. C. Andrews, pioneering geologist in the Broken Hill region of New South Wales. Type material consisting of one grain is preserved in the Museum of Victoria (M35700). The mineral and name were approved by the IMA Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names in 1979.

The carbon emission of fuel vehicles is a major consideration that affects the dual carbon goal in urban traffic. The problem of “difficult parking and disorderly parking” in static traffic can easily lead to traffic congestion, an increase in vehicle exhaust emissions, and air pollution. In particulate, when vehicles make an invalid detour and wait for parking with long hours, it often causes extra energy consumption and carbon emission. In this paper, adding a weather influence feature, a short-term parking occupancy rate prediction algorithm based on the long short-term model (LSTM) is proposed. The data used in this model is from Melbourne public data sets, and parking occupancy rates are predicted through historical parking data, weather information, and location information. At the same time, three commonly prediction models, i.e., simple LSTM model, multiple linear regression model (MLR), and support vector regression (SVR), are also used as comparison models. Taking MAE and RMSE as evaluation indexes, the parking occupancy rate during 10 min, 20 min, and 30 min are predicted. The experimental results show that the improved LSTM method achieves better accuracy and stability in the prediction of parking lots. The average MAE and RMSE of the proposed LSTM prediction during intervals of 10 min, 20 min, and 30 min with the weather influence feature algorithm is lower than that of simple LSTM, MLR and that of SVR.

Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Surya (PLTS) merupakan sumber energi terbarukan yang ramah lingkungan. Dalam penyerapan panel surya akan menghasilkan energi maksimal pada posisi tegak lurus terhadap matahari. Untuk medapatkan energi yang maksimal maka diperlukan perancangan dan pemasangan solar tracker pada Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Surya skala kecil, kemudian menganalisa cara kerja solar tracker dengan kontroler proporsional-integral (PI) dan menganalisa kinerja efisiensi solar tracker statis dan dinamis dengan charge controller type PWM . Metode yang digunakan yaitu merancang dan memasang solar tracker dan pengambilan data secara manual dengan menggunakan alat ukur, parameter data yang diambil meliputi nilai error kontroler, arus, tegangan, daya, dan radiasi, kemudian dipresentasikan dalam bentuk grafik. Setelah dilakukan pengujian dan analisis dalam perancangan solar tracker dapat menggunakan sensor LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) sebagai sensor utama, tetapi sensor tersebut tidak dapat membaca nilai radiasi matahari, dengan menggunakan kontrol PI didapatkan hasil pengontrolan yang cepat yaitu dengan menggunakan konstanta Kp 30 dan konstanta Ki 0. Dengan membadingkan solar tracker statis dan dinamis dengan charge controller type PWM, solar tracker statis menghasilkan nilai yang lebih besar dikarenakan pada solar tracker dinamis terdapat beban motor DC.

In both rural and urban areas, two-wheeler vehicles are the most common means of transportation, contributing to local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Transitioning to electric two-wheeler vehicles can help reduce GHG emissions while also increasing the socioeconomic status of people in rural Kenya. Renewable energy systems can play a significant role in charging electric two-wheeled vehicles, resulting in lower carbon emissions and increased renewable energy penetration in rural Kenya. As a result, using the Conventional and Renewable Energy Optimization (CARNOT) Toolbox in the MATLAB/Simulink environment, this paper focuses on integrating and modeling electric two-wheeled vehicles (e-bikes) into an off-grid photovoltaic Water-Energy Hub located in the Lake Victoria Region of Western Kenya. Electricity demand data obtained from the Water-Energy Hub was investigated and analyzed. Potential solar energy surplus was identified and the surplus was used to incorporate the electric two-wheeler vehicles. The energy consumption of the electric two-wheeler vehicles was also measured in the field based on the rider’s driving behavior. The modeling results revealed an annual power consumption of 27,267 kWh, a photovoltaic (PV) electricity production of 37,785 kWh, and an electricity deficit of 370 kWh. The annual results show that PV generation exceeds power consumption, implying that there should be no electricity deficit. The results, however, do not represent the results in hourly resolution, ignoring the impact of weather fluctuation on PV production. As a result, in order to comprehend the electricity deficit, hourly resolution results are shown. A load optimization method was designed to efficiently integrate the electric 2-wheeler vehicle into the Water-Energy Hub in order to alleviate the electricity deficit. The yearly electricity deficit was decreased to 1 kWh and the annual electricity consumption was raised by 11% (i.e., 30,767 kWh), which is enough to charge four more electric two-wheeler batteries daily using the load optimization technique.

Branched broomrape (Orobanche ramosa L.) is a chlorophyll-lacking, root parasitic plant that infects many crops and wild species (2). Plants are densely hairy with minute, glandular hairs, particularly on flowers and upper stems. Stems are erect, often branched just above the ground, and brown to straw yellow. Leaves are sparse, triangular, dark brown or purple, and arranged alternately mainly near the base of the stem. Flowers are numerous, arranged along an upright spike with a lance-shaped bract beneath the flower (about a third of the length of the flower). Petals are pale blue to purple and united into a slender tube approximately 15 mm long with two lips, the upper divided into two lobes and the lower into three lobes. The flowers have two short and two long stamens. During 2010 and 2011, a severe broomrape infection was found in an oilseed rape (Brassica napus L., cvs. Nelson and W31) crop on light-textured soil in northern Greece (Paralimnio-Serres, 41°01′N, 23°32′E, 40 m above sea level), where oriental tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.), a susceptible host of branched broomrape, was grown 20 years ago. The field had been cultivated with oilseed rape for three consecutive seasons in rotation with sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). The infestation of the oilseed rape crop was confirmed in April by digging in the soil (25 to 30 cm deep) to verify attachment of the broomrape to roots of the crop plants. Density of the broomrape ranged from 20 to 120 stems per m2 and broomrape stems were 15 to 30 cm tall. Yield losses were estimated at 30 to 60%. In 2011, branched broomrape was found parasitizing wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis L.) growing as a weed in the oilseed rape field. Attachment of the broomrape was verified on a lateral root of the wild mustard plant near the soil surface, 0.95 m from the main root of the weed. Additionally, branched broomrape was found in April 2010 and 2011 parasitizing wild vetch (Vicia spp.) growing in field margins at the Cotton and Industrial Plants Institute-National Agricultural Research Foundation (Sindos, 40°41′N, 22°48′E, 17 m above sea level). The parasitized vetch plants were growing on light-textured soil. Attachment of the broomrape to roots of the host plants was verified at a 5-cm soil depth. Stems of the parasite were short (7 to 10 cm). The monthly mean air temperature for February (7.3°C), March (9.6°C), and April (14.1°C) and mean soil temperature at a 10-cm depth for February (7.0°C), March (9.5°C), and April (13.4°C), before verification of the broomrape infestation at Sindos, were much lower than the temperature range reported (18 to 23°C) for branched broomrape infestations (1). To our knowledge, this is the first report of O. ramosa on oilseed rape, wild mustard, and wild vetch in northern Greece. Since branched broomrape could be a significant parasite for oilseed rape, which was introduced to Greece as a commercial crop 5 years ago, measures should be taken to avoid significant yield losses from this parasitic plant. References: (1) I. Faithfull and D. McLaren. Landcare Note LC0272. Department of Sustainability and Environment, State of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 2004. (2) C. Parker. Pest Manag. Sci. 65:453, 2009.

Gaseous elemental mercury observations were conducted at Churchill, Victoria, in Australia from April to July, 2013, using a Tekran 2537 analyzer. A strong diurnal variation with daytime average values of 1.2–1.3 ng m–3 and nighttime average values of 1.6–1.8 ng m–3 was observed. These values are significantly higher than the Southern Hemisphere average of 0.85–1.05 ng m–3. Churchill is in the Latrobe Valley, approximately 150 km East of Melbourne, where approximately 80% of Victoria’s electricity is generated from low-rank brown coal from four major power stations: Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B, Hazelwood, and Yallourn. These aging generators do not have any sulfur, nitrogen oxide, or mercury air pollution controls. Mercury emitted in the 2015–2016 year in the Latrobe Valley is estimated to have had an externalized health cost of $AUD88 million. Air pollution mercury simulations were conducted using the Weather Research and Forecast model with Chemistry at 3 × 3 km resolution. Electrical power generation emissions were added using mercury emissions created from the National Energy Market’s 5-min energy distribution data. The strong diurnal cycle in the observed mercury was well simulated (R2 = .49 and P value = 0.00) when soil mercury emissions arising from several years of wet and dry deposition in a radius around the power generators was included in the model, as has been observed around aging lignite coal power generators elsewhere. These results indicate that long-term air and soil sampling in power generation regions, even after the closure of coal fired power stations, will have important implications to understanding the airborne mercury emissions sources.

Abstract Background Gaps exist concerning the relationship between maternal exposure to air pollution and birth outcomes, including the importance of low-level exposure. We aimed to explore the association between maternal exposure to ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and selected birth outcomes in Victoria, Australia. Methods We included all births occurring in Victoria, Australia from 1st March 2012 to 31st December 2015 using routinely collected government data. Outcomes included birthweight, small for gestational age (SGA), term low birth weight (tLBW), large for gestational age, and spontaneous preterm birth. Annual ambient NO2 and PM2.5 was assigned to maternal residence at birth. Maternal, meteorological and temporal variables were included in final log-binomial models. Results There were 285,594 births. Average annual ambient NO2 exposure was 6.0 parts per billion (ppb, IQR 3.9 ppb) and PM2.5 was 6.9 µg/m3 (IQR 1.3). IQR increases in ambient NO2 and PM2.5 were associated with fetal growth restriction, including decrements in birth weight, increased risk of SGA and tLBW. Women with gestational diabetes and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy had greater decrements in birth weight associated with exposure. Conclusions Maternal exposure to low-level ambient air pollution at levels below national and international air quality guidelines was associated with fetal growth restriction. Key messages Exposure to low-level ambient air pollution was associated with fetal growth restriction and women with obstetric complications were more susceptible. These findings may inform iterative revisions of air quality guidelines.

Abstract Background The association of air pollution with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality has been attributed to acute events (atherothrombosis). It is unclear whether air pollution may influence the subclinical stage of coronary artery disease (CAD). This study investigated the relationship between particulate matter &lt;2.5μm (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) with coronary calcium score (CCS). Methods This study included 606 asymptomatic adults (49% men, aged 56±7 years) recruited from the community in two States of Australia (Victoria and Tasmania). Annual PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations were matched with residential address. CCS was measured using coronary CT scan. Medical history, physical measurements, biochemistry, and socioeconomic status were recorded for assessment of confounders. Results Average exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 were 6.7±1.5 (ppm) and 3.6±2.1 (μg/m3), respectively. Of the 606 participants, 17% had high CCS (≥100) and 4% had very high CCS (≥400). Exposure to higher annual PM2.5 was associated with greater odds of high CCS (OR=1.20 [95% CI: 1.02, 1.42]) and very high CCS (OR=1.47 [95% CI: 1.03, 2.11]). Similar adverse associations were also present for NO2 and high CCS (OR=1.13 [95% CI: 1.02, 1.25]) and very high CCS (OR=1.25 [95% CI: 1.06, 1.47]). These findings were independent of age, sex, body size, smoking, comorbidities and socio-economic status. Conclusions Ambient air pollution was associated with degree of coronary calcification, independent of standard risk factors. The link between air pollution and CAD is not limited to acute events but appears to include atherogenesis. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None

At the start of the twentieth century, many young Australian artists travelled abroad to expand their art education and to gain exposure to the modern art movements of Europe. Most of these artists were active members of artist associations such as the Victorian Artists Society or the New South Wales Society of Artists. Male artists from Victoria were generally also members of the Melbourne Savage Club, a club with a strong association with the arts.This paper investigates the dual function of the club, as a space where the artists felt “at home” in the familiar environment that the club offered whilst they were abroad and, at the same time, a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London would have a significant impact on male Australian artists, as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world, which enhanced their experience whilst abroad.Artists were seldom members of Australia’s early gentlemen’s clubs, however, in the late nineteenth century Melbourne, artists formed less formal social groupings with exotic names such as the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, the Buonarotti Club, and the Ishmael Club (Mead). Melbourne artists congregated in these clubs until the Melbourne Savage Club, modelled on the London Savage Club (1857)—a club whose membership was restricted to practitioners in the performing and visual arts—opened its doors in 1894.The Melbourne Savage Club had its origins in the Metropolitan Music Club, established in the late 1880s by a group of professional and amateur musicians and music lovers. The club initially admitted musicians and people from the dramatic professions free-of-charge, however, author Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) and artist Alf Vincent (1874–1915) were not content to be treated on a different basis to the musicians and actors, and two months after Vincent joined the club, at a Special General Meeting, the club resolved to vary Rule 6, “to admit landscape or portrait painters and sculptors without entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club). At another Special General Meeting, a year later, the rule was altered to admit “recognised members of the musical, dramatic and artistic professions and sculptors without payment of entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club).This resulted in an immediate influx of prominent Victorian male artists (Williams) and the Melbourne Savage Club became their place of choice to gather and enjoy the fellowship the club offered and to share ideas in a convivial atmosphere. When the opportunity arose for them to travel to London in the early twentieth century, they met in London’s famous art clubs. Membership of the Melbourne Savage Club not only conferred rights to visit reciprocal clubs whilst in London, but also facilitated introductions to potential patrons. The London clubs were the venue of choice for visiting artists to meet their fellow artist expatriates and to share experiences and, importantly, to meet with their British counterparts, exhibit their works, and establish valuable contacts.The London Savage Club attracted many Australian expatriates. Not only is it the grandfather of London’s bohemian clubs but also it was the model for arts clubs the world over. Founded in 1857, the qualification for admission was (and still is) to be, “a working man in literature or art, and a good fellow” (Halliday vii). If a candidate met these requirements, he would be cordially received “come whence he may.” This was embodied in the club’s first rules which required applicants for membership to be from a restricted range of pursuits relating to the arts thought to be commensurate with its bohemian ideals, namely art, literature, drama, or music.The second London arts club that attracted expatriate Australian artists was the New English Arts Club, founded in 1886 by young English artists returning from studying art in Paris. Members of The New English Arts Club were influenced by the Impressionist style as opposed to the academic art shown at the Royal Academy. As a meeting place for Australia’s expatriate artists, the New English Arts Club had a particular influence, as it exposed them to significant early Modern artist members such as John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Walter Sickert (1860–1942), William Orpen (1878–1931) and Augustus John (1878–1961) (Corbett and Perry; Thornton; Melbourne Savage Club).The third, and arguably the most popular with the expatriate Australian artists’ club, was the Chelsea Arts Club, a bohemian club formed in 1891 by local working artists looking for a place to go to “meet, talk, eat and drink” (Cross).Apart from the American-born founding member, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), amongst the biggest Chelsea names at the time of the influx of travelling young Australian artists were modernists Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, and John Sargent. The opportunity to mix with these leading British contemporary artists was irresistible to these antipodean artists (55).When Melbourne artist, Miles Evergood (1871–1939) arrived in London from America in 1910, he had been an active exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club, a New York artists’ club. Almost immediately he joined the New English Arts Club and the Chelsea Arts Club. Hammer tells of him associating with “writer Israel Zangwill, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and anti-academic artists including Walter Sickert, Augustus John, John Lavery, John Singer Sargent and C.R.W. Nevison, who challenged art values in Britain at the beginning of the century” (Hammer 41).Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the Chelsea Arts Club as his postal address, as did many expatriate artists. The Melbourne Savage Club archives contain letters and greetings, with news from abroad, written from artist members back to their “Brother Savages” (Various).In late 1902, Streeton wrote to fellow artist and Savage Club member Tom Roberts (1856–1931) from London:I belong to the Chelsea Arts Club now, & meet the artists – MacKennel says it’s about the most artistic club (speaking in the real sense) in England. … They all seem to be here – McKennal, Longstaff, Mahony, Fullwood, Norman, Minns, Fox, Plataganet Tudor St. George Tucker, Quinn, Coates, Bunny, Alston, K, Sonny Pole, other minor lights and your old friend and admirer Smike – within 100 yards of here – there must be 30 different studios. (Streeton 94)Whilst some of the artists whom Streeton mentioned were studying at either the Royal Academy or the Slade School, it was the clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club where they were most likely to encounter fellow Australian artists. Tom Roberts was obviously attentive to Streeton’s enthusiastic account and, when he returned to London the following year to work on his commission for The Big Picture of the 1901 opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, he soon joined. Roberts, through his expansive personality, became particularly active in London’s Australian expatriate artistic community and later became Vice-President of the Chelsea Arts Club. Along with Streeton and Roberts, other visiting Melbourne Savage Club artists joined the Chelsea Arts Club. They included, John Longstaff (1861–1941), James Quinn (1869–1951), George Coates (1869–1930), and Will Dyson (1880–1938), along with Sydney artists Henry Fullwood (1863–1930), George Lambert (1873–1930), and Will Ashton (1881–1963) (Croll 95). Smith describes the exodus to London and Paris: “It was the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp” (Smith, Smith and Heathcote 152).Streeton, who retained his Chelsea Arts Club membership when he returned for a while to Australia, wrote to Roberts in 1907, “I miss Chelsea & the Club-boys” (Streeton 107). In relation to Frederick McCubbin’s pending visit he wrote: “Prof McCubbin left here a week ago by German ‘Prinz Heinrich.’ … You’ll introduce him at the Chelsea Club and I hope they make him an Hon. Member, etc” (Streeton et al. 85). McCubbin wrote, after an evening at the Chelsea Arts Club, following a visit to the Royal Academy: “Tonight, I am dining with Australian artists in Soho, and shall be there to greet my old friends. How glad I am! Longstaff will be there, and Frank Stuart, Roberts, Fullwood, Pontin, Coates, Quinn, and Tucker’s brother, and many others from all around” (MacDonald, McCubbin and McCubbin 75). Impressed by the work of Turner he wrote to his wife Annie, following avisit to the Tate Gallery:I went yesterday with Fullwood and G. Coates and Tom Roberts for a ramble … to the Tate Gallery – a beautiful freestone building facing the river through a portico into the gallery where the lately found turners are exhibited – these are not like the greater number of pictures in the National Gallery – they represent his different periods, but are mostly in his latest style, when he had realised the quality of light (McCubbin).Clearly Turner’s paintings had a profound impression on him. In the same letter he wrote:they are mostly unfinished but they are divine – such dreams of colour – a dozen of them are like pearls … mist and cloud and sea and land, drenched in light … They glow with tender brilliancy that radiates from these canvases – how he loved the dazzling brilliancy of morning or evening – these gems with their opal colour – you feel how he gloried in these tender visions of light and air. He worked from darkness into light.The Chelsea Arts Club also served as a venue for artists to entertain and host distinguished visitors from home. These guests included; Melbourne Savage Club artist member Alf Vincent (Joske 112), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Trustee and popular patron of the arts, Professor Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Professor Frederick S. Delmer (1864–1931) and conductor George Marshall-Hall (1862–1915) (Mulvaney and Calaby 329; Streeton 111).Artist Miles Evergood arrived in London in 1910, and visited the Chelsea Arts Club. He mentions expatriate Australian artists gathering at the Club, including Will Dyson, Fred Leist (1873–1945), David Davies (1864–1939), Will Ashton (1881–1963), and Henry Fullwood (Hammer 41).Most of the Melbourne Savage Club artist members were active in the London Savage Club. On one occasion, in November 1908, Roberts, with fellow artist MacKennal in the Chair, attended the Australian Artists’ Dinner held there. This event attracted twenty-five expatriate Australian artists, all residing in London at the time (McQueen 532).These London arts clubs had a significant influence on the expatriate Australian artists for they became the “glue” that held them together whilst abroad. Although some artists travelled abroad specifically to take up places at the Royal Academy School or the Slade School, only a minority of artists arriving in London from Australia and other British colonies were offered positions at these prestigious schools. Many artists travelled to “try their luck.” The arts clubs of London, whilst similarly discerning in their membership criteria, generally offered a visiting “brother-of-the-brush” a warm welcome as a professional courtesy. They featured the familiar rollicking all-male “Smoke Nights” a feature of the Melbourne Savage Club. With a greater “artist” membership than the clubs in Australia, expatriate artists were not only able to catch up with their friends from Australia, but also they could associate with England’s finest and most progressive artists in a familiar congenial environment. The clubs were a “home away from home” and described by Underhill as, “an artistic Earl’s Court” (Underhill 99). Most importantly, the clubs were a centre for discourse, arguably even more so than were the teaching academies. Britain’s leading modernist artists were members of the Chelsea Arts Club and the New English Arts Club and mixed freely with the visiting Australian artists.Many Australian artists, such as Miles Evergood and George Bell (1878–1966), held anti-academic views similar to English club members and embraced the new artistic trends, which they would bring back to Australia. Streeton had no illusions about the relative worth of the famed institutions and the exhibitions held by clubs such as the New English. Writing to Roberts before he joins him in London, he describes the Royal Academy as having, “an inartistic atmosphere” and claims he “hasn’t the least desire to go again” (Streeton 77). His preference lay with a concurrent “International Exhibition”, which featured works by Rodin, Whistler, Condor, Degas, and others who were setting the pace rather than merely continuing the academic traditions.Architect Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) served as secretary of The Chelsea Arts Club. When he returned to Australia he brought back with him a number of British works by Streeton and Lambert for an exhibition at the Guild Hall Melbourne (Underhill 92). Artists and Bohemians, a history of the Chelsea Arts Club, makes special reference of its world-wide contacts and singles out many of its prominent Australian members for specific mention including; Sir John William (Will) Ashton OBE, later Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Will Dyson, whose illustrious career as an Australian war artist was described in some detail. Dyson’s popularity led to his later appointment as Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club where he initiated an ambitious rebuilding program, improving staff accommodation, refurbishing the members’ areas, and adding five bedrooms for visiting members (Bross 87-90).Whilst the influence of travel abroad on Australian artists has been noted, the importance of the London Clubs has not been fully explored. These clubs offered artists a space where they felt “at home” and a familiar environment whilst they were abroad. The clubs functioned as a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London had a significant impact on male Australian artists as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world which enhanced their experience whilst abroad and influenced the direction of their art.ReferencesCorbett, David Peters, and Lara Perry, eds. English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Croll, Robert Henderson. Tom Roberts: Father of Australian Landscape Painting. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1935.Cross, Tom. Artists and Bohemians: 100 Years with the Chelsea Arts Club. 1992. 1st ed. London: Quiller Press, 1992.Gray, Anne, and National Gallery of Australia. McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17. 1st ed. Parkes, A.C.T.: National Gallery of Australia, 2009.Halliday, Andrew, ed. The Savage Papers. 1867. 1st ed. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.Hammer, Gael. Miles Evergood: No End of Passion. Willoughby, NSW: Phillip Mathews, 2013.Joske, Prue. Debonair Jack: A Biography of Sir John Longstaff. 1st ed. Melbourne: Claremont Publishing, 1994.MacDonald, James S., Frederick McCubbin, and Alexander McCubbin. The Art of F. McCubbin. Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing, 1916.McCaughy, Patrick. Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters. Ed. Paige Amor. The Miegunyah Press, 2014.McCubbin, Frederick. Papers, Ca. 1900–Ca. 1915. Melbourne.McQueen, Humphrey. Tom Roberts. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996.Mead, Stephen. "Bohemia in Melbourne: An Investigation of the Writer Marcus Clarke and Four Artistic Clubs during the Late 1860s – 1901.” PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009.Melbourne Savage Club. Secretary. Minute Book: Melbourne Savage Club. Club Minutes (General Committee). Melbourne: Savage Archives.Mulvaney, Derek John, and J.H. Calaby. So Much That Is New: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929, a Biography. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1985.Smith, Bernard, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote. Australian Painting, 1788–2000. 4th ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2001.Streeton, Arthur, et al. Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1946.Streeton, Arthur, ed. Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton, 1890–1943. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989.Thornton, Alfred, and New English Art Club. Fifty Years of the New English Art Club, 1886–1935. London: New English Art Club, Curwen Press 1935.Underhill, Nancy D.H. Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991.Various. Melbourne Savage Club Correspondence Book: 1902–1916. Melbourne: Melbourne Savage Club.Williams, Graeme Henry. "A Socio-Cultural Reading: The Melbourne Savage Club through Its Collections." Masters of Arts thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013.

Sticky, messy and nauseatingly saccharine, the sensory properties of jam may be a long way from the stylized corporate polish of Australia’s multi-billion dollar film exhibition industry, yet the history of Australian cinema space will be forever indebted to the Victoria Preserving Company; one-time producer of the humblest of sweet treats. Through an analysis of Melbourne’s Jam Factory cinema complex, this article explores the unusual intersection of jam, sensory gratification and contemporary Australian cinema-going at the dawn of the 21st century. Encompassing the historic architecture of the former Victoria Preserving Company, South Yarra’s Jam Factory complex provides a gentrified gloss to an inner suburban precinct historically renowned for the manufacturing of jam and preserves. Nestled in the heart of Chapel Street, less than two blocks down from Toorak road and a stone’s throw from the nightclub precinct of Commercial road, the Jam Factory occupies an important part of Melbourne’s cultural heritage; functioning as a quintessential signifier of the city’s traversal from wholesale manufacturing during the early 1900s into the service vectors of digital media technologies and mixed-use retail entertainment destinations at the start of the new millennium. Established in 1876, the Victoria Preserving Company, AKA the ‘Jam Factory’, hosts an array of diverse retail and leisure outlets. Included amongst its tenants are Borders Books, Villa & Hut, TGI Fridays, The Pancake Parlour, a Virgin Music Mega-store, an elaborate Village Cinema megaplex, and a range of ancillary restaurants, fashion stores and cafes. According to the venue’s promotional material, “The Jam Factory of today is, in short, ‘jam packed’ with entertainment” (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). With the original building’s façade and cooling store still intact, the architectural remnants of the Victoria Preserving Factory provide a culturally significant backdrop for what is ostensibly Australia’s most noteworthy cinema venture; Village Roadshow’s megaplex cinema flagship. Replete with fifteen large format screens, including two Gold Class cinemas, a Cinema Europa enclave and an interactive games alcove, The Village Jam Factory signifies Australia’s first foray into cinema-based retail entertainment destinations. In commenting on the opening of the Jam Factory megaplex in 1998, Village Roadshow’s general manager Mr. David Herman said, “The objective was to create Australia’s first non-gambling cinema and lifestyle complex” (Catalano 6). More than any other cinema venue, the Village Jam Factory played a key role in pushing Australian film exhibition standards into the new millennium. In an era marked by competing home theatre technologies and diversified sites of media consumption, the Jam Factory’s shift from suburban cinema to lifestyle complex dramatically altered both the business and social practice of movie-going in Australia. Central to this shift was a tripartite marketing strategy which sought to capitalize on: protracted movie-going experiences; sensory stimulation; and, venue promotion. Experiential Jam The promotion of a protracted movie-going experience has been essential to the continued success of the Village Jam Factory. As I have argued elsewhere, the Australian cinema industry of the mid 1990s faced a number of significant incentives for extending the movie going experience beyond the auditorium; not the least being the steady decline of box office takings that occurred during the late 1980s (Downing). In the face of new media technologies such as the internet, DVD and Pay TV, many cinema operators were forced to look beyond the box office as a primary source of profits. To this end Village Roadshow effectively used the Jam Factory as a testing ground for the generation of ancillary leisure and retail income streams. During the mid 1990s Village actively promoted the Jam Factory as a space in which audiences could not only see a film, but also engage in a series of expanded retail activities such as shopping, dining and video-game playing. Discussing the development of multi-use cinema venues during the 1990s, Charles Acland has commented that such spaces “…do not situate conditions of spectatorship alone; they also construct relations between public and cinematic practices” (Acland 119). Sensory Jam Far from being a traditional site of film consumption, the Jam Factory set an industry precedent by becoming the nation’s first cinema venue in which audiences were encouraged to engage in an entertainment experience that was, above all, aimed at stimulating the senses. In keeping with the ‘lifestyle destination’ mantra, the Village Jam Factory provided a new generation of Australians with a multi-sensory entertainment experience that could not be emulated by home theatre technologies. Wide sweeping foyers and elaborate ticket and merchandising counters greet the eye; ‘luxury’ stadium seating with wide aisles and broad armrests offer the ‘ultimate’ in tactile comfort; digital surround sound facilities pleasure the ears and a plethora of food and beverage novelties work to gratify the senses of taste and smell. More than any other Village cinema outlet, the Jam Factory venue smacks of sugar-coated commerce. With a revenue contribution of over 18%, the Village Roadshow candy bar is the undisputed cash-cow of the enterprise (Australian Film Commission 143). Colloquially known as ‘Lollywood’, the Village confectionary counter is an over-priced explosion of colour and candy that sustains industry revenue through a deliberate appeal to the audience’s sense of taste. This sugar dependency synchronistically mirrors the former success of Henry Jones, the entrepreneur behind Australia’s IXL jam brand, who operated his famous preserving company on the site between 1895 and 1926 (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). Venue Jam Village Roadshow’s promotion of the Jam Factory venue over the actual films being screened is indicative of Australia’s primary shift towards retail entertainment based cinema complexes. Unlike the homogenous multiplex venues of the 1970s and 1980s, the Village Jam Factory Complex has been aggressively marketed as a Melbourne icon, capable of offering a unique entertainment experience. This agenda is clearly documented in the 1999 Village Roadshow annual report which, pointing towards a perceived threat of home theatre technologies, proclaimed: [In] broadening the cinema going experience … [Village] aims to create an environment of quality entertainment theming and ancillary lifestyle retailing, thus providing a consistently high level of incentive for people to leave their homes for cinema anchored destinations. (Village Roadshow 19) To this end, the Jam Factory became the physical embodiment of Village Cinemas’ corporate tagline “Where Movies Live” (Village Cinemas, n.pag.). Throughout the late 1990s, a number of similar sites proliferated across Europe, the United States and Canada. Two noteworthy examples of this trend are the Manchester Times building in the UK (initially managed by a short lived Village-Warner synergy) and the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin; previous home to the Third Reich and later, the Berlin Wall. In both of these examples a similar venue-promotion agenda is clearly at work. In reflecting the cultural specificities of their host cities, each of these venues pays a semiotic homage to the previous occupants of their space. The Manchester Times building, for example, retains much of its former architecture and reflects the nocturnal vibrancy of 19th century printing plant. Similarly, the Sony Centre offers an architectural reflection on the complexities of Berlin history and German cinema. In Melbourne, the Jam Factory’s history of jam and jam making are equally preserved. Drawing heavily on postmodern architectural styles, the Jam Factory’s interior uses South Yarra’s local history as a backdrop for a schizophrenic collage of seemingly incommensurate time/place references. From the distinctive red-brick cooling tower (located in the centre of the building) one encounters a hybrid fusion of Mediterranean pasta courts, European coffee lounges, Romanesque artwork and columns (complete with weathered-look paint and ‘crumbling’ tops), statues of Hollywood stars, as well as a dazzling gaming alcove and a series of subdued ‘luxury’ (Gold Class) cinemas. Such eclectic displays of visual hyperbole have been prefigured by Umberto Eco, whose discussion on hyperreality addresses an imagination which “… demands the real thing, and in order to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake” (Eco 8). As a relatively recent contributor to Australian cinema history, the Village Jam Factory has achieved little sustained academic attention, yet its significance must not be undervalued. As Australia’s first cinema-oriented retail entertainment destination, the Village Jam Factory has been crucial in placing Australia into the global film exhibition arena. While the pungent aromas of ripened fruit, vinegar and boiling sugar have long since been replaced by the scent of popcorn and recycled air, the legacy and architecture of jam-making has played a key role in propelling Australian film exhibition into the new millennium. References Acland, Charles. Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 2001. Catalano, Anthony. “Village to Extend Jam Factory to 14 Cinemas.” The Age 5 Aug. 1998. Chapel St Precinct. General History of Chapel Street & Surrounds. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006 http://www.chapelstreet.com.au/default.asp?mode=history>. Downing, Leanne. “More than Meets the Eye: The Suburban Cinema Megaplex as Sensory Heterotopia.” Refractory: Journal of Media and Culture 8 (2005). http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol8/downing.html>. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyper Reality. Orlando Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Village Cinemas. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006. http://www.villagecinemas.com.au/>. Village Roadshow. Annual Report. Melbourne: Village Roadshow, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Downing, Leanne. "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>. APA Style Downing, L. (Dec. 2006) "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>.

Abstract Organisation(s): The Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, Healthy Cities at the University of Adelaide, The Australian Institute of Machine Learning. Key contact person: Doctor Ankur Singh Focus and outcomes for participants The symposium will focus on four emerging methods which, because of the complexity and pervasiveness of the concepts housing and health, are highly relevant to progressing new knowledge in the field: New methods will be presented in the context of past and current international research in the field. Presentations will be interactive; embedded within each presentation will be discussion points to engage participants and extend discussion. Rationale for the symposium, including for its inclusion in the Congress A good housing system has the potential to play a key role in preventing poor health, and maximising good health. Much of the epidemiological research on which evidence for action rests however, describes generalised associations and correlations rather than intervention-oriented causal pathways or context appropriate predictions. Why? Housing and health are both complex concepts to measure and understand and the stark differences in the composition of people in less stable and unaffordable types of housing compared to the people considered to be well-housed makes it difficult to measure, let alone compare, health outcomes. Recent advances in methods and conceptual thinking have enabled us to do better at identifying underlying causal pathways generating a body of research that has utilised longitudinal data, fixed effects and hybrid regression analyses and marginal structural models to examine pathways between housing affordability and tenure (including social housing) and mental health. There is more to do however, with developments in methods rapidly occurring alongside greater data availability increasing the scope for causally focussed or more accurately predictive research on housing and health. The main theme of the congress is ‘Methodological Innovation in Epidemiology’ and a subtheme is ‘Translation from research to policy and practice’. Our symposium addresses both these themes. It will present the application of causal inference, machine learning, natural experiments and use of multistate simulation models to generate policy-relevant research for transforming housing policies. Presentation program Introduction and overview of the field, Peter Phibbs (Not confirmed) Peter Phibbs is a geographer, planner and social economist who been undertaking housing research for more than 25 years. He is Head of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Sydney and Director of the Henry Halloran Trust. His recent research has been on the development of the affordable housing sector in Australia, the role of planning in affordable housing delivery, tenancy issues in remote Indigenous communities as well as the use of shared ownership models to improve affordability outcomes Natural experiments for housing and health, Rebecca Bentley Professor Rebecca Bentley is a Principal Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology in the Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Over the past ten years, Rebecca has developed a research program exploring the role of housing and residential location in shaping health and wellbeing in Australia. Machine learning for prediction & precision, Emma Baker Emma Baker is Professor of Housing Research and an ARC Future Fellow. Her work examines the impact of housing and location in urban and regional environments, producing academic, as well as policy-relevant research. Dr Baker's recent publications include analyses of the housing implications of economic, social, and spatial change in Australia, work quantifying health effects of housing tenure and affordability, research on the effects of precarious and vulnerable housing. Opportunities and challenges in using multistate lifetable models for housing interventions, Ankur Singh Ankur is a Lecturer (Epidemiology) and a Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. In his current role, Ankur applies advanced quantitative as well as evidence synthesis methods such as multilevel modelling, causal mediation techniques, simulation modelling based on multistate lifetables, and systematic and scoping reviews. Within the Centre for Health Equity, Ankur works collaboratively with a team of researchers interested in quantitative research on Social and Spatial Epidemiology. Key focus areas of the research group include housing related health inequalities, intergenerational health inequalities and urban environments and health. Maximising the research power of longitudinal data, Zoe Aitken (Not confirmed) Zoe Aitken is a research fellow at the Gender and Women's Health Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. She has been working at the University of Melbourne since 2011 to pursue her interest in social epidemiology and was awarded an NHMRC postdoctoral scholarship in April 2015. She has a particular interest in the analysis of longitudinal studies to answer causal questions about the complex interplay between socio-economic disadvantage and health. Flexible modelling and effective visualisation, Koen Simons Dr Koen Simons obtained a Masters degree in Physics form the University of Gent and a Masters degree in Statistics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, focussing on sparsity and shrinkage estimators. He completed his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, performing simulation studies of ensemble methods with applications for short-term health effects of air pollution. He is currently providing biostatistical advise for both clinical trials and epidemiological studies at Western Health and RMIT, and applying causal inference models to problems in health equity. Conclusions and final comments Names of facilitator or chair Rebecca Bentley

Introduction: The Creative Arts and Regional Well-BeingThe relationship between regionalism, well-being, and the creative arts has enjoined significant attention from community activists, commercial entrepreneurs, policy analysts, artists, and researchers over recent years (Australia Council for the Arts, “Living Culture”; Australia Council for the Arts, “The Arts in Regional Australia;” Drummond, Keane, and West; Elg; Warren, and West; Woodward, Bremner, and Cahalan). Underpinning most of the activity and research in this area is the understanding (occasionally bordering on an un-critical presumption) that the creative arts make a positive contribution to regional well-being. Commenting on the Live. Love. Life. creative-arts wellness festival in Daylesford, Victoria, Mary-Anne Thomas (Member of Parliament for the state seat of Macedon) stated that the festival will “reinforce Daylesford and the Macedon Ranges’ status as one of the nation’s leading wellness destinations” (Elg). For Thomas, it would appear that the linkage of the creative arts to regional well-being is never in doubt; which is to say, always already available for reinforcement. According to university-based researchers Margaret Woodward, Craig Bremner, and Anthony Cahalan, writing in a more scholarly and critical register, “there is a growing body of research which shows that thriving creative industries and cultural activities are crucial for the health and vitality of a region and its communities” (3). Qualifying this, they add that: “Achieving high levels of community well being through thriving creative activity is not however without its challenges in regional Australia” (3). Similarly, Rozaline Drummond, Jondi Keane, and Patrick West present their work as a test of the efficacy of the creative arts in aiding regional well-being: The opportunity to work collaboratively with a community like the one at Lake Bolac [Victoria] provided an occasion to gauge our discerning and initiating skills within creative-arts research and to test the argument that the combination of our different approaches adds to community and individual well-being. Our approach is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s ethical proposition that the health of a community is directly influenced by the richness of the composition of its parts. (n.p.)Deleuzean philosophy aside, quantitative data indicates that people in regional Australia are increasingly optimistic about the positive impact of the creative arts on their well-being. In 2016, 57% believed the arts impacted their sense of well-being and happiness, up from 52% in 2013 (Australia Council for the Arts, “The Arts in Regional Australia”). Given this article’s emphasis on place and well-being in relation to located creative-arts production, it is worth citing another dataset from the same Australia Council for the Arts publication, which details the “Location of Professional Artists”:There continues to be a concentration of artists in urban areas. Three quarters (74%) live in cities, compared to two thirds of the Australian population. This urban concentration […] may in part be related to concentration of cultural infrastructure in cities.1 in 6 Australian artists live in regional cities or towns (16%) and around 1 in 10 live in rural, remote or very remote areas (11%). (n.p.)Regional artists are a minority voice in the Australian creative arts. But the ways in which a minority voice is constructed, and the (potential) impact a minoritarian position has within the wider debate about regional well-being and the creative arts, requires careful unpacking. Ironically, creative artists themselves have been relatively neglected actors in this space. Working with Tony Birch’s short story, “The Red House”, as a neglected text of regionalism, this article exposes oversights in current understandings of the connection between well-being and regionalism. The Voice of the Regional Artist and “Resistant Speech” It is important to recognise that the “concentration of artists in urban areas” may sometimes lead to situations where non-regional artists, in the undoubtedly well-meaning pursuit of regional well-being, drown out the voices of regional artists in regional places (Australia Council for the Arts, “The Arts in Regional Australia”). Drummond, Keane, and West, all city-based artists, show sensitivity to this problem in their observation that: “It is not for the artists to presume that they can empower a [regional] community.” Certainly, regional artists and communities should take the lead in the development of regional well-being through the creative arts. The problem of (not) speaking for the other is, however, not so easily dealt with (Spivak). While urban artists might adopt the strategy of consciously allowing regional artists a voice, making such allowance could itself be viewed as a play of privilege and power by the city-based practitioner, resourced by their greater “concentration of cultural infrastructure” (Australia Council for the Arts, “The Arts in Regional Australia”). It is notoriously difficult to give the slip to the relatively invisible operations of entitlement. Furthermore, even if the regional artist is given a voice, there are many different ways of being heard or not heard. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s distinction between “speaking” and “talking” is useful here. Discussing “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in an interview with Bulan Lahiri, Spivak notes that: “It was not about talking. It was about: when the subaltern speaks there is not enough infrastructure for people to recognise it as resistant speech. That’s what it means.” In this crucial move, Spivak refines understanding of the issues at stake around the minoritarian position of regional artists. It is not enough for regional artists merely to “talk”; rather, they must be heard with the full impact of “resistant speech” (Lahiri). Obviously, what Spivak means by the “infrastructure” of “resistant speech” differs from the meaning the word “infrastructure” has in the Australia Council for the Arts publication referred to above, which employs the term as part of a governmental and technocratic discourse (“The Arts in Regional Australia”). The distance separating these two usages of “infrastructure” indicates the difference between the quantitative and the qualitative. Working with Spivak, this article’s focus is on the gap or failing in the infrastructure of qualitative research that has led to the relative neglect of Tony Birch’s short story “The Red House” as a significant text of regionalism. The Australia Council for the Arts, with its quantitative and empirical methodology, would not count Birch as a regional writer (to the best of the author’s knowledge, Birch lives and works in Melbourne). Its definition of a regional artist undermines the possibilities of a qualitative research infrastructure. However, recognizing the powerful regional concerns within a text by a primarily city-based writer like Birch is a key move, not only in expanding the definition of who counts as a minoritarian regional writer, but in giving voice to the “resistant speech” of women and children, subalterns on Spivak’s terms, within the regional-urban flux (Lahiri). The aim of this article is to give voice to Tony Birch as a regional writer, at least insofar as he is the author of “The Red House”, while also addressing the issue of well-being (as linked to the curse of domestic violence), through attention to Birch’s artistic re-creation of regionalism. In this way, working with Spivak’s reference to “infrastructure,” the aim is to nurture the growth of a research infrastructure open to a more productive engagement with regionalism, which begins by nuancing the definition of regional. It is not that regional artists, defined either by their demography or (as with Birch) by their creative concerns, are not “talking” rather, what they are saying is not being recognised in Spivak’s strong sense of “speaking”. Indeed, the very fact that Birch is not a regional writer in an empirical sense, and that, as will be explored later in this article, “The Red House” is not even primarily set in a regional location, has at least one important consequence. Potentially, it increases the value of Birch’s short story to an engagement with regionalism, given that “The Red House” unfolds regionalism as a concept always already in productive dialogue with other frameworks of place (such as the urban and the international). To the extent that Birch is a city-based writer of regionalism, and thus on the (urban) margin of the (regional) margin, he enlivens an exquisite position of minoritarian power. Furthermore, “The Red House” contains a diversity of acute insights into the nexus of regionalism and well-being that, to date, critics have overlooked. “The Red House” and the Well-Being of Places Comparatively little scholarly attention has been paid to creative work that itself dramatises and interrogates the issue of regional well-being. Tony Birch’s short story “The Red House” (2006), from his collection of linked stories (which is sometimes referred to as a novel) Shadowboxing, is a particularly interesting candidate to fill this gap in the literature, given how delicately it ranges across, and problematises, the division between the urban and the regional.“The Red House” is the opening story of Shadowboxing. Covering a period of close to a decade, loosely overlapping with the 1960s, and set in different parts of Victoria and Melbourne, it is told in the voice of Michael, who recounts the story of a peripatetic family under stress and struggling to survive. The first sentence reads: “We moved to the red house in the winter after my younger sister, May, died of meningitis” (1). The first page also establishes the place-based coordinates of the story: “In the weeks following our move from Clunes back to Fitzroy, our new house was almost submerged by a rising flood” (1). Birch’s interrogation of regionalism will henceforth operate largely along the Clunes-Fitzroy axis. Fitzroy is an inner-city suburb of Melbourne while Clunes is a small regional town (present population: approximately 2000) about 140 kilometres north-west of Melbourne (Clunes). A flashback section of three pages or so, early on in the story, fills in the events leading up to the return to Melbourne after May’s death in Clunes. Apart from this, the story has a linear structure. The various spatial shifts of “The Red House”, both within Melbourne and between Clunes and Melbourne, are all triggered by threats against, or the pursuit of, multiple modes of well-being. The first move reflects the promise of a fresh romantic union: “It was only after he [Michael’s father] had met my mother and moved with her to my [maternal] grandmother’s house over in Carlton that he had left Fitzroy for the first time in his life” (4–5). This move from Fitzroy to Carlton is followed by a much bigger one: Carlton to Clunes. Implicated in this move are at least two modes of well-being: “The eventual move to the bush had come on the advice of a doctor at the public hospital. He said that the fresh air would help my dad recover from [his] asthma” (5); however, “My grandmother told me years later that the move did not really have all that much to do with his asthma. It was the drink” (5). The context is the husband’s assault of “his six months’ pregnant wife” with “a straight right on the end of her nose” (5). The decision to move to Clunes is made by Michael’s mother: “He fought with her so much that my mother eventually decided that she would have to move away from her mother’s house, for both their sakes. Clunes was a drastic move. But it worked, for a time […]. They appeared happy” (6). This part of “The Red House” unpacks the complexities of how well-being and (physical and mental) health are linked in a social matrix; a physical ailment (asthma) elides an addiction to alcohol, until a doctor’s discourse (validated by the authority of a medical establishment) is subverted by the subalternate voice of Michael’s grandmother. This passage also dramatises the abject scenario of a victim (Michael’s mother) attending to the well-being of her persecutor (Michael’s father) by moving to Clunes “for both their sakes” (6).Subsequently, May is born in Clunes, “a ‘special baby’. She was magical even…” (6). Indeed, “My father’s habit of explosive anger melted before May. He was truly besotted with her” (6). Just before what would have been her second birthday, May dies. “My father wanted to bring May back to Melbourne for burial, but my mother stood up to him and demanded that she be buried in the town where she was born” (6). This is the most powerful enduring connection of Michael’s family to regional Clunes. Significantly, well-being (in the sense of survival and the rebuilding of happiness after the tragic death of a daughter) is dispersed differently, through place, by mother and father, along gendered lines. While the mother wants her daughter’s birthplace and place of death to coincide, the father wants to possess his daughter, almost as if she were an object, by returning her to the city for burial. (Space restrictions preclude further exploration here of the many issues raised by May’s death, including those around the gendered nexus between well-being [happiness] and the proximity or otherwise to a child’s burial place.) After May’s death, Michael’s father’s behaviour deteriorates once more. The domestic violence continues: “It was difficult for my mother to find anything safe to say to him […]. She tried to talk about May with him several times, but he either responded with silence, or swore and yelled at her uncontrollably. He also found his way back to the pubs” (7). The decision to return to Melbourne is made by Michael’s father, against his wife’s wishes: And then one night after he had walked in from the pub he sat down at the table and just said to her, ‘Fuck all this fresh-air bullshit, we’re going back to Melbourne.’ She tried persuading him to stay, talked about his job and my school, but he would not listen. He got sick of her talking and slammed a fist into his heavy palm. ‘We’re fucken going. That’s it. We’re going.’ And that was it.She looked across the table that night and saw once again the man she had married six years earlier, the man who she had deceived herself had faded and eventually disappeared with the move away from the city. (7)In this passage, well-being (even if only imagined rather than real) is explicitly linked to place. Shortly afterwards, the family moves into the red house, where they will remain. The flashback section of the text has already sketched out the chain of events that leads to the return to the city, while also commenting on the agency Michael’s mother exercises in dealing with what, to her, is an unwelcome situation: “Mum […] had argued against coming back to the city. She sensed the looming danger in my father moving back both to his old streets and his old habits. But on realising that she had no real say in the matter, she was determined to ensure that she at least have some say in the house she was moving into” (4). Specifically, Michael’s mother turns her Fitzroy house into the regional house left behind in Clunes. Under her influence, “It wasn’t long before the inside of the house came to life and began to resemble the old place at Clunes” (11). Again: she brings a portrait of May, along with assorted baby belongings, into the Fitzroy house, keeping this secret from her husband. Thus, Michael’s mother infiltrates regional place into urban place as a strategy of (subalternate) well-being. In summary, “The Red House” unpacks well-being as an expansive category shaped by domestic violence, in a negative sense, but also more positively by the actuality or promise of happiness. It also interrogates the fine-grained links between well-being in its incarnations as medical and emotional health. At the same time, it maps the rise and fall of well-being against a human geography of regional and urban places, refusing any simplistic connection of place to well-being (more faintly, there is even the problematising presence of international place, in the character of the Italian landlord, Mr Carboni, and the reference to “the local Italian community [2]). Thus, the text’s regionalism suggests a strategic model, reliant on human intervention in the (re-)creation of place; this is most evident in Michael’s mother’s actions. “The Red House” rewards interpretation as a text of how regional place (Clunes) is re-made in urban place (Fitzroy) through the rehabilitation of a house in the interests of well-being. Well-Being and Domestic Violence across Places It is hard to imagine a greater threat to the well-being of women and children than domestic violence. This makes it all the more surprising that “The Red House” is one of relatively few texts (to the author’s knowledge) to offer a detailed outline of the territory of well-being, in its many forms stretching from the health-based to the emotional, while also including a direct and unflinching consideration of domestic violence. (One cognate text is Kathryn Heyman’s novel The Breaking, which merges medical disability and domestic violence within a broader consideration of regional well-being.) Even more unusual is the way Birch’s story of well-being and domestic violence is mapped in relation to regional and non-regional places. “The Red House” is rare and valuable for its triangulation of well-being, domestic violence, and place; above all, in its refusal to resort to any comforting notion that regional places have essential qualities that make them necessarily better for well-being than the experience of cities. This is perhaps the meaning of the colour of the red house, a colour Michael’s father hates. According to a local know-all, Emu Bailey, the red was originally a form of protest by Ettie Rogers, “‘some sort of communist’” (10). “‘Most everyone around here back then was DLP [Democratic Labour Party]. Still is, some of them. Ettie wasn’t in agreement with the others in the street, so she let them know all about it. Redone it every summer too, the same colour, red’” (10). When Michael’s mother responds to her husband’s injunction to re-paint the house “‘any colour but that fucken red’” (13) by preparing to re-paint it, subversively, “a deep red splash of colour” (19) it is not difficult to discern a silent protest, passed down from woman to woman, against the domestic violence suffered by Michael and his mother. Indeed, Birch comes very close to describing the red of the house as blood-like, labelling it “a rich congealed red” (2). “Congealed” is often used to describe blood. In this way, through a colour that evokes the body, a house becomes a visible and metaphorical protest against the bodily violence (but also emotional and mental torment) that is domestic violence. As Meg Mundell argues, “the body is integral to how literary sense of place is produced” (8). This bodily, coloured protest folds back into the special sort of place the Fitzroy home becomes. If Michael’s mother cannot keep living in Clunes, she can at least paint her city house red. Perhaps attesting to the success of this female protest, there is, towards the end of “The Red House”, a fascinating moment when, as if influenced by the domestic circumstances of transplanted place (from regional Clunes) created by Michael’s mother, domestic violence threatens, but is thwarted. Michael’s mother has just told her husband that she is going to have another baby: “He spun around and moved towards her. I thought that maybe he was going to hit her. But he didn’t. He stopped in front of her. They were toe to toe” (17). Place and (pregnant) body, in an intensified combination (or even, to riff on Spivak’s terminology, as an “infrastructure”), allow the subaltern to “speak” against her oppression. Conclusion: Re-Defining Regionalism through the Literary Creative Arts Tony Birch’s “The Red House” re-creates the regional as something other than a pre-determined place. Regionalism is “activated,” in a strategic mode, within the flux of the urban and the regional. This is particularly evident in the actions of Michael’s mother. She preserves her well-being (located in Clunes, as it were, where her daughter is buried) even after she is forced by her husband to return to Melbourne (the place she left to escape from his domestic violence). The picture of May acts as a talisman of well-being (aptly, given Clunes is described by Michael as “a town where old superstitions held sway over logic” [6]), which Michael’s mother smuggles from regional Clunes into her Melbourne house. “The Red House” is thus a vital literary rejoinder to the conceptualisation of well-being, and regional areas employed by government bodies and commercial entities, which instrumentalizes a binary opposition of the regional/non-regional. By extension, it contests the naïve linkage of regional place to well-being through a nuanced investigation into the complex links between place (regional, urban, even international) and multi-faceted well-being. Birch’s story is a valuable, fine-grained creative analysis of well-being (extending from happiness, comfort and security through to what might be called the “ill-being” of domestic violence), which is matched to an equally fine-grained engagement with multiple modalities of place. It challenges the reader to creatively re-think how regionalism and well-being might align. References Australia Council for the Arts. “Living Culture: First Nations Arts Participation and Wellbeing.” Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts, 2017. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/living-culture/>.———. “The Arts in Regional Australia: A Research Summary.” Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts, 2017. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/regional-arts-summary/>.Birch, Tony. “The Red House.” Shadowboxing. Melbourne: Scribe, 2006. 1–19. Clunes, Victoria. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clunes,_Victoria>.Drummond, Rozalind, Jondi Keane, and Patrick West. “Zones of Practice: Embodiment and Creative Arts Research.” M/C Journal 15.4 (2012). 1 Mar. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/528>.Elg, Hayley. “New Wellness Festival for Daylesford.” The Advocate 22 Jan. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.hepburnadvocate.com.au/story/5182322/the-live-love-life-festival-is-coming-to-daylesford-this-november/>.Heyman, Kathryn. “When I First Wrote about Domestic Violence, No One Talked about It. Now the Shame has Lifted.” The Guardian. 21 May 2017. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/21/when-i-first-wrote-about-domestic-violence-no-one-talked-about-it-now-the-shame-has-lifted>.Lahiri, Bulan. “In Conversation: Speaking to Spivak.” The Hindu 5 Feb. 2011. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.thehindu.com/books/In-Conversation-Speaking-to-Spivak/article15130635.ece>.Mundell, Meg. “Crafting ‘Literary Sense of Place’: The Generative Work of Literary Place-Making.” JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 18.1 (2018): 1–17. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/12375>.Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993: 66–111. Warren, Brad, and Patrick West. “From Ecological Creativity to an Ecology of Well-Being: ‘Flows & Catchments’ as a Case Study of NVivo.” Landscapes: The Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language 5.2 (2013): 1–15. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://ro.ecu.edu.au/landscapes/vol5/iss2/21/>.Woodward, Margaret, Craig Bremner, and Anthony Cahalan. “Defining the Geography of Creativity in a Regional Australian University.” Proceedings of the 2012 Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) Conference: Region and Isolation: The Changing Function of Art & Design Education within Diasporic Cultures and Borderless Communities. Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) Conference 2012. Perth: Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS), 2012: 1–13. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://acuads.com.au/conference/article/defining-the-geography-of-creativity-in-a-regional-australian-university/>.

On 19 January 1975, Australia’s first youth station 2JJ (Double Jay) launched itself onto the nation’s airwaves with a NASA-style countdown and You Only Like Me ‘Cause I’m Good in Bed by Australian band Skyhooks. Refused airtime by the commercial stations because of its explicit sexual content, this song was a clear signifier of the new station’s intent—to occupy a more radical territory on Australian radio. Indeed, Double Jay’s musical entrée into the highly restrictive local broadcasting environment of the time has gone on to symbolise both the station’s role in its early days as an enfant terrible of radio (Inglis 376), and its near 40 years as a voice for youth culture in Australia (Milesago, Double Jay). In this paper we explore the proposition that Double Jay functioned as an outlet for youth counterculture in Australia, and that it achieved this even with (and arguably because of) its credentials as a state-generated entity. This proposition is considered via brief analysis of the political and musical context leading to the establishment of Double Jay. We intend to demonstrate that although the station was deeply embedded in “the system” in material and cultural terms, it simultaneously existed in an “uneasy symbiosis” (Martin and Siehl 54) with this system because it consciously railed against the mainstream cultures from which it drew, providing a public and active vehicle for youth counterculture in Australia. The origins of Double Jay thus provide one example of the complicated relationship between culture and counterculture, and the multiple ways in which the two are inextricably linked. As a publicly-funded broadcasting station Double Jay was liberated from the industrial imperatives of Australia’s commercial stations which arguably drove their predisposition for formula. The absence of profit motive gave Double Jay’s organisers greater room to experiment with format and content, and thus the potential to create a genuine alternative in Australia broadcasting. As a youth station Double Jay was created to provide a minority with its own outlet. The Labor government committed to wrenching airspace from the very restrictive Australian broadcasting “system” (Wiltshire and Stokes 2) to provide minority voices with room to speak and to be heard. Youth was identified by the government as one such minority. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) contributed to this process by enabling young staffers to establish the semi-independent Contemporary Radio Unit (CRU) (Webb) and within this a youth station. Not only did this provide a focal point around which a youth collective could coalesce, but the distinct place and identity of Double Jay within the ABC offered its organisers the opportunity to ignore or indeed subvert some of the perceived strictures of the “mothership” that was the ABC, whether in organisational, content and/or stylistic terms. For these and other reasons Double Jay was arguably well positioned to counter the broadcasting cultures that existed alongside this station. It did so stylistically, and also in more fundamental ways, At the same time, however, it “pillaged the host body at random” (Webb) co-opting certain aspects of these cultures (people, scheduling, content, administration) which in turn implicated Double Jay in the material and cultural practices of those mainstream cultures against which it railed. Counterculture on the Airwaves: Space for Youth to Play? Before exploring these themes further, we should make clear that Double Jay’s legitimacy as a “counterculture” organisation is observably tenuous against the more extreme renderings of the concept. Theodore Roszak, for example, requires of counterculture something “so radically disaffiliated from the mainstream assumptions of our society that it scarcely looks to many as a culture at all” (5). Double Jay was a brainchild of the state: an outcome of the Whitlam Government’s efforts to open up the nation’s airwaves (Davis, Government; McClelland). Further, the supervision of this station was given to the publicly funded Australian national broadcaster, the ABC (Inglis). Any claim Double Jay has to counterculture status then is arguably located in less radical invocations of the term. Some definitions, for example, hold that counterculture contains value systems that run counter to culture, but these values are relational rather than divorced from each other. Kenneth Leech, for example, states that counterculture is "a way of life and philosophy which at central points is in conflict with the mainstream society” (Desmond et al. 245, our emphasis); E.D. Batzell defines counterculture as "a minority culture marked by a set of values, norms and behaviour patterns which contradict those of the dominant society" (116, our emphasis). Both definitions imply that counterculture requires the mainstream to make sense of what it is doing and why. In simple terms then, counterculture as the ‘other’ does not exist without its mainstream counterpoint. The particular values with which counterculture is in conflict are generated by “the system” (Heath and Potter 6)—a system that imbues “manufactured needs and mass-produced desires” (Frank 15) in the masses to encourage order, conformity and consumption. Counterculture seeks to challenge this “system” via individualist, expression-oriented values such as difference, diversity, change, egalitarianism, and spontaneity (Davis On Youth; Leary; Thompson and Coskuner‐Balli). It is these kinds of counterculture values that we demonstrate were embedded in the content, style and management practices within Double Jay. The Whitlam Years and the Birth of Double Jay Double Jay was borne of the Whitlam government’s brief but impactful period in office from 1972 to 1975, after 23 years of conservative government in Australia. Key to the Labor Party’s election platform was the principle of participatory democracy, the purpose of which was “breaking down apathy and maximising active citizen engagement” (Cunningham 123). Within this framework, the Labor Party committed to opening the airwaves, and reconfiguring the rhetoric of communication and media as a space of and for the people (Department of the Media 3). Labor planned to honour this commitment via sweeping reforms that would counter the heavily concentrated Australian media landscape through “the encouragement of diversification of ownership of commercial radio and television”—and in doing so enable “the expression of a plurality of viewpoints and cultures throughout the media” (Department of the Media 3). Minority groups in particular were to be privileged, while some in the Party even argued for voices that would actively agitate. Senator Jim McClelland, for one, declared, “We say that somewhere in the system there must be broadcasting which not only must not be afraid to be controversial but has a duty to be controversial” (Senate Standing Committee 4). One clear voice of controversy to emerge in the 1960s and resonate throughout the 1970s was the voice of youth (Gerster and Bassett; Langley). Indeed, counterculture is considered by some as synonymous with a particular strain of youth culture during this time (Roszak; Leech). The Labor Government acknowledged this hitherto unrecognised voice in its 1972 platform, with Minister for the Media Senator Doug McClelland claiming that his party would encourage the “whetting of the appetite” for “life and experimentation” of Australia’s youth – in particular through support for the arts (160). McClelland secured licenses for two “experimental-type” stations under the auspices of the ABC, with the youth station destined for Sydney via the ABC’s standby transmitter in Gore Hill (ABCB, 2). Just as the political context in early 1970s Australia provided the necessary conditions for the appearance of Double Jay, so too did the cultural context. Counterculture emerged in the UK, USA and Europe as a clear and potent force in the late 1960s (Roszak; Leech; Frank; Braunstein and Doyle). In Australia this manifested in the 1960s and 1970s in various ways, including political protest (Langley; Horne); battles for the liberalisation of censorship (Hope and Dickerson, Liberalisation; Chipp and Larkin); sex and drugs (Dawson); and the art film scene (Hope and Dickerson, Happiness; Thoms). Of particular interest here is the “lifestyle” aspect of counterculture, within which the value-expressions against the dominant culture manifest in cultural products and practices (Bloodworth 304; Leary ix), and more specifically, music. Many authors have suggested that music was pivotal to counterculture (Bloodworth 309; Leech 8), a key “social force” through which the values of counterculture were articulated (Whiteley 1). The youth music broadcasting scene in Australia was extremely narrow prior to Double Jay, monopolised by a handful of media proprietors who maintained a stranglehold over the youth music scene from the mid-50s. This dominance was in part fuelled by the rising profitability of pop music, driven by “the dreamy teenage market”, whose spending was purely discretionary (Doherty 52) and whose underdeveloped tastes made them “immune to any sophisticated disdain of run-of-the-mill” cultural products (Doherty 230-231). Over the course of the 1950s the commercial stations pursued this market by “skewing” their programs toward the youth demographic (Griffen-Foley 264). The growing popularity of pop music saw radio shift from a “multidimensional” to “mono-dimensional” medium according to rock journalist Bruce Elder, in which the “lowest-common-denominator formula of pop song-chat-commercial-pop-song” dominated the commercial music stations (12). Emblematic of this mono-dimensionalism was the appearance of the Top 40 Playlist in 1958 (Griffin-Foley 265), which might see as few as 10–15 songs in rotation in peak shifts. Elder claims that this trend became more pronounced over the course of the 1960s and peaked in 1970, with playlists that were controlled with almost mechanical precision [and] compiled according to American-devised market research methods which tended to reinforce repetition and familiarity at the expense of novelty and diversity. (12) Colin Vercoe, whose job was to sell the music catalogues of Festival Records to stations like 2UE, 2SER and SUW, says it was “an incredibly frustrating affair” to market new releases because of the rigid attachment by commercials to the “Top 40 of endless repeats” (Vercoe). While some air time was given to youth music beyond the Top 40, this happened mostly in non-peak shifts and on weekends. Bill Drake at 2SM (who was poached by Double Jay and allowed to reclaim his real name, Holger Brockmann) played non-Top 40 music in his Sunday afternoon programme The Album Show (Brockmann). A more notable exception was Chris Winter’s Room to Move on the ABC, considered by many as the predecessor of Double Jay. Introduced in 1971, Room to Move played all forms of contemporary music not represented by the commercial broadcasters, including whole albums and B sides. Rock music’s isolation to the fringes was exacerbated by the lack of musical sales outlets for rock and other forms of non-pop music, with much music sourced through catalogues, music magazines and word of mouth (Winter; Walker). In this context a small number of independent record stores, like Anthem Records in Sydney and Archie and Jugheads in Melbourne, appear in the early 1970s. Vercoe claims that the commercial record companies relentlessly pursued the closure of these independents on the grounds they were illegal entities: The record companies hated them and they did everything they could do close them down. When (the companies) bought the catalogue to overseas music, they bought the rights. And they thought these record stores were impinging on their rights. It was clear that a niche market existed for rock and alternative forms of music. Keith Glass and David Pepperell from Archie and Jugheads realised this when stock sold out in the first week of trade. Pepperell notes, “We had some feeling we were doing something new relating to people our own age but little idea of the forces we were about to unleash”. Challenging the “System” from the Inside At the same time as interested individuals clamoured to buy from independent record stores, the nation’s first youth radio station was being instituted within the ABC. In October 1974, three young staffers—Marius Webb, Ron Moss and Chris Winter— with the requisite youth credentials were briefed by ABC executives to build a youth-style station for launch in January 1975. According to Winter “All they said was 'We want you to set up a station for young people' and that was it!”, leaving the three with a conceptual carte blanche–although assumedly within the working parameters of the ABC (Webb). A Contemporary Radio Unit (CRU) was formed in order to meet the requirements of the ABC while also creating a clear distinction between the youth station and the ABC. According to Webb “the CRU gave us a lot of latitude […] we didn’t have to go to other ABC Departments to do things”. The CRU was conscious from the outset of positioning itself against the mainstream practices of both the commercial stations and the ABC. The publicly funded status of Double Jay freed it from the shackles of profit motive that enslaved the commercial stations, in turn liberating its turntables from baser capitalist imperatives. The two coordinators Ron Moss and Marius Webb also bypassed the conventions of typecasting the announcer line-up (as was practice in both commercial and ABC radio), seeking instead people with charisma, individual style and youth appeal. Webb told the Sydney Morning Herald that Double Jay’s announcers were “not required to have a frontal lobotomy before they go on air.” In line with the individual- and expression-oriented character of the counterculture lifestyle, it was made clear that “real people” with “individuality and personality” would fill the airwaves of Double Jay (Nicklin 9). The only formula to which the station held was to avoid (almost) all formula – a mantra enhanced by the purchase in the station’s early days of thousands of albums and singles from 10 or so years of back catalogues (Robinson). This library provided presenters with the capacity to circumvent any need for repetition. According to Winter the DJs “just played whatever we wanted”, from B sides to whole albums of music, most of which had never made it onto Australian radio. The station also adapted the ABC tradition of recording live classical music, but instead recorded open-air rock concerts and pub gigs. A recording van built from second-hand ABC equipment captured the grit of Sydney’s live music scene for Double Jay, and in so doing undercut the polished sounds of its commercial counterparts (Walker). Double Jay’s counterculture tendencies further extended to its management style. The station’s more political agitators, led by Webb, sought to subvert the traditional top-down organisational model in favour of a more egalitarian one, including a battle with the ABC to remove the bureaucratic distinction between technical staff and presenters and replace this with the single category “producer/presenter” (Cheney, Webb, Davis 41). The coordinators also actively subverted their own positions as coordinators by holding leaderless meetings open to all Double Jay employees – meetings that were infamously long and fraught, but also remembered as symbolic of the station’s vibe at that time (Frolows, Matchett). While Double Jay assumed the ABC’s focus on music, news and comedy, at times it politicised the content contra to the ABC’s non-partisan policy, ignored ABC policy and practice, and more frequently pushed its contents over the edges of what was considered propriety and taste. These trends were already present in pockets of the ABC prior to Double Jay: in current affairs programmes like This Day Tonight and Four Corners (Harding 49); and in overtly leftist figures like Alan Ashbolt (Bowman), who it should be noted had a profound influence over Webb and other Double Jay staff (Webb). However, such an approach to radio still remained on the edges of the ABC. As one example of Double Jay’s singularity, Webb made clear that the ABC’s “gentleman’s agreement” with the Federation of Australian Commercial Broadcasters to ban certain content from airplay would not apply to Double Jay because the station would not “impose any censorship on our people” – a fact demonstrated by the station’s launch song (Nicklin 9). The station’s “people” in turn made the most of this freedom with the production of programmes like Gayle Austin’s Horny Radio Porn Show, the Naked Vicar Show, the adventures of Colonel Chuck Chunder of the Space Patrol, and the Sunday afternoon comic improvisations of Nude Radio from the team that made Aunty Jack. This openness also made its way into the news team, most famously in its second month on air with the production of The Ins and Outs of Love, a candid documentary of the sexual proclivities and encounters of Sydney’s youth. Conservative ABC staffer Clement Semmler described the programme as containing such “disgustingly explicit accounts of the sexual behaviour of young teenagers” that it “aroused almost universal obloquy from listeners and the press” (35). The playlist, announcers, comedy sketches, news reporting and management style of Double Jay represented direct challenges to the entrenched media culture of Australia in the mid 1970s. The Australian National Commission for UNESCO noted at the time that Double Jay was “variously described as political, subversive, offensive, pornographic, radical, revolutionary and obscene” (7). While these terms were understandable given the station’s commitment to experiment and innovation, the “vital point” about Double Jay was that it “transmitted an electronic reflection of change”: What the station did was to zero in on the kind of questioning of traditional values now inherent in a significant section of the under 30s population. It played their music, talked in their jargon, pandered to their whims, tastes, prejudices and societal conflicts both intrinsic and extrinsic. (48) Conclusion From the outset, Double Jay was locked in an “uneasy symbiosis” with mainstream culture. On the one hand, the station was established by federal government and its infrastructure was provided by state funds. It also drew on elements of mainstream broadcasting in multiple ways. However, at the same time, it was a voice for and active agent of counterculture, representing through its content, form and style those values that were considered to challenge the ‘system,’ in turn creating an outlet for the expression of hitherto un-broadcast “ways of thinking and being” (Leary). As Henry Rosenbloom, press secretary to then Labor Minister Dr Moss Cass wrote, Double Jay had the potential to free its audience “from an automatic acceptance of the artificial rhythms of urban and suburban life. In a very real sense, JJ [was] a deconditioning agent” (Inglis 375-6). While Double Jay drew deeply from mainstream culture, its skilful and playful manipulation of this culture enabled it to both reflect and incite youth-based counterculture in Australia in the 1970s. References Australian Broadcasting Control Board. Development of National Broadcasting and Television Services. ABCB: Sydney, 1976. Batzell, E.D. “Counter-Culture.” Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought. Eds. Williams Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 116-119. Bloodworth, John David. “Communication in the Youth Counterculture: Music as Expression.” Central States Speech Journal 26.4 (1975): 304-309. Bowman, David. “Radical Giant of Australian Broadcasting: Allan Ashbolt, Lion of the ABC, 1921-2005.” Sydney Morning Herald 15 June 2005. 15 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/news/Obituaries/Radical-giant-of-Australian-broadcasting/2005/06/14/1118645805607.html›. 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Milesago. “Part 5: 1971-72 - Sundown and 'Archie & Jughead's”. n.d. Keith Glass – A Life in Music. 12 Oct. 2012 ‹http://www.milesago.com/Features/keithglass5.htm›. Nicklin, Lenore. “Rock (without the Roll) around the Clock.” Sydney Morning Herald 18 Jan. 1975: 9. Robinson, Ted. Personal interview. 11 December 2013. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture. New York: Anchor, 1969. Semmler, Clement. The ABC - Aunt Sally and Sacred Cow. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1981. Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science and the Arts and Jim McClelland. Second Progress Report on the Reference, All Aspects of Television and Broadcasting, Including Australian Content of Television Programmes. Canberra: Australian Senate, 1973. Thompson, Craig J., and Gokcen Coskuner‐Balli. "Countervailing Market Responses to Corporate Co‐optation and the Ideological Recruitment of Consumption Communities." Journal of Consumer Research 34.2 (2007): 135-152. Thoms, Albie. “The Australian Avant-garde.” An Australian Film Reader. Eds. Albert Moran and Tom O’Regan. Sydney: Currency Press, 1985. 279–280. Vercoe, Colin. Personal interview. 11 Feb. 2014. Walker, Keith. Personal interview. 11 July 2013. Webb, Marius. Personal interview. 5 Feb. 2013. Whiteley, Sheila. The Space between the Notes: Rock and the Counter-Culture. London: Routledge, 1992. Wiltshire, Kenneth, and Charles Stokes. Government Regulation and the Electronic Commercial Media. Monograph M43. Melbourne: Committee for Economic Development of Australia, 1976. Winter, Chris. Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2013.

At a time when a trip abroad was out of the reach of most women, even if they could not make the journey, Australian women could imagine “abroad” just by reading popular women’s magazines such as Woman (later Woman’s Day and Home then Woman’s Day) and The Australian Women’s Weekly, and journals, such as The Progressive Woman and The Housewife. Increasingly in the post-war period, these magazines and journals contained advertisements for holidaying abroad, recipes for international foods and articles on overseas fashions. It was not unusual for local manufacturers, to use the lure of travel and exotic places as a way of marketing their goods. Healing Bicycles, for example, used the slogan “In Venice men go to work on Gondolas: In Australia it’s a Healing” (“Healing Cycles” 40), and Exotiq cosmetics featured landscapes of countries where Exotiq products had “captured the hearts of women who treasured their loveliness: Cincinnati, Milan, New York, Paris, Geneva and Budapest” (“Exotiq Cosmetics” 36).Unlike Homer’s Penelope, who stayed at home for twenty years waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan wars, women have always been on the move to the same extent as men. Their rich travel stories (Riggal, Haysom, Lancaster)—mostly written as letters and diaries—remain largely unpublished and their experiences are not part of the public record to the same extent as the travel stories of men. Ros Pesman argues that the women traveller’s voice was one of privilege and authority full of excitement and disbelief (Pesman 26). She notes that until well into the second part of the twentieth century, “the journey for Australian women to Europe was much more than a return to the sources of family identity and history” (19). It was also:a pilgrimage to the centres and sites of culture, literature and history and an encounter with “the real world.”Europe, and particularly London,was also the place of authority and reference for all those seeking accreditation and recognition, whether as real writers, real ladies or real politicians and statesmen. (19)This article is about two Australian writers; Helen Seager, a journalist employed by The Argus, a daily newspaper in Melbourne Australia, and Gwen Hughes, a graduate of Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy in Melbourne, working in England as a lecturer, demonstrator and cookbook writer for Parkinsons’ Stove Company. Helen Seager travelled to England on an assignment for The Argus in 1950 and sent articles each day for publication in the women’s section of the newspaper. Gwen Hughes travelled extensively in the Balkans in the 1930s recording her impressions, observations, and recipes for traditional foods whilst working for Parkinsons in England. These women were neither returning to the homeland for an encounter with the real world, nor were they there as cultural tourists in the Cook’s Tour sense of the word. They were professional writers and their observations about the places they visited offer fresh and lively versions of England and Europe, its people, places, and customs.Helen SeagerAustralian Journalist Helen Seager (1901–1981) wrote a daily column, Good Morning Ma’am in the women’s pages of The Argus, from 1947 until shortly after her return from abroad in 1950. Seager wrote human interest stories, often about people of note (Golding), but with a twist; a Baroness who finds knitting exciting (Seager, “Baroness” 9) and ballet dancers backstage (Seager, “Ballet” 10). Much-loved by her mainly female readership, in May 1950 The Argus sent her to England where she would file a daily report of her travels. Whilst now we take travel for granted, Seager was sent abroad with letters of introduction from The Argus, stating that she was travelling on a special editorial assignment which included: a certificate signed by the Lord Mayor of The City of Melbourne, seeking that any courtesies be extended on her trip to England, the Continent, and America; a recommendation from the Consul General of France in Australia; and introductions from the Premier’s Department, the Premier of Victoria, and Austria’s representative in Australia. All noted the nature of her trip, her status as an esteemed reporter for a Melbourne newspaper, and requested that any courtesy possible to be made to her.This assignment was an indication that The Argus valued its women readers. Her expenses, and those of her ten-year-old daughter Harriet, who accompanied her, were covered by the newspaper. Her popularity with her readership is apparent by the enthusiastic tone of the editorial article covering her departure. Accompanied with a photograph of Seager and Harriet boarding the aeroplane, her many women readers were treated to their first ever picture of what she looked like:THOUSANDS of "Argus" readers, particularly those in the country, have wanted to know what Helen Seager looks like. Here she is, waving good-bye as she left on the first stage of a trip to England yesterday. She will be writing her bright “Good Morning, Ma'am” feature as she travels—giving her commentary on life abroad. (The Argus, “Goodbye” 1)Figure 1. Helen Seager and her daughter Harriet board their flight for EnglandThe first article “From Helen in London” read,our Helen Seager, after busy days spent exploring England with her 10-year-old daughter, Harriet, today cabled her first “Good Morning, Ma’am” column from abroad. Each day from now on she will report from London her lively impressions in an old land, which is delightfully new to her. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Whilst some of her dispatches contain the impressions of the awestruck traveller, for the most they are exquisitely observed stories of the everyday and the ordinary, often about the seemingly most trivial of things, and give a colourful, colonial and egalitarian impression of the places that she visits. A West End hair-do is described, “as I walked into that posh looking establishment, full of Louis XV, gold ornateness to be received with bows from the waist by numerous satellites, my first reaction was to turn and bolt” (Seager, “West End” 3).When she visits Oxford’s literary establishments, she is, for this particular article, the awestruck Australian:In Oxford, you go around saying, soto voce and aloud, “Oh, ye dreaming spires of Oxford.” And Matthew Arnold comes alive again as a close personal friend.In a weekend, Ma’am, I have seen more of Oxford than lots of native Oxonians. I have stood and brooded over the spit in Christ Church College’s underground kitchens on which the oxen for Henry the Eighth were roasted.I have seen the Merton Library, oldest in Oxford, in which the chains that imprisoned the books are still to be seen, and have added by shoe scrape to the stone steps worn down by 500 years of walkers. I have walked the old churches, and I have been lost in wonder at the goodly virtues of the dead. And then, those names of Oxford! Holywell, Tom’s Quad, Friars’ Entry, and Long Wall. The gargoyles at Magdalen and the stones untouched by bombs or war’s destruction. It adds a new importance to human beings to know that once, if only, they too have walked and stood and stared. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Her sense of wonder whilst in Oxford is, however, moderated by the practicalities of travel incorporated into the article. She continues to describe the warnings she was given, before her departure, of foreign travel that had her alarmed about loss and theft, and the care she took to avoid both. “It would have made you laugh, Ma’am, could you have seen the antics to protect personal property in the countries in transit” (Seager, “From Helen” 3).Her description of a trip to Blenheim Palace shows her sense of fun. She does not attempt to describe the palace or its contents, “Blenheim Palace is too vast and too like a great Government building to arouse much envy,” settling instead on a curiosity should there be a turn of events, “as I surged through its great halls with a good-tempered, jostling mob I couldn’t help wondering what those tired pale-faced guides would do if the mob mood changed and it started on an old-fashioned ransack.” Blenheim palace did not impress her as much as did the Sunday crowd at the palace:The only thing I really took a fancy to were the Venetian cradle, which was used during the infancy of the present Duke and a fine Savvonerie carpet in the same room. What I never wanted to see again was the rubbed-fur collar of the lady in front.Sunday’s crowd was typically English, Good tempered, and full of Cockney wit, and, if you choose to take your pleasures in the mass, it is as good a company as any to be in. (Seager, “We Look” 3)In a description of Dublin and the Dubliners, Seager describes the food-laden shops: “Butchers’ shops leave little room for customers with their great meat carcasses hanging from every hook. … English visitors—and Dublin is awash with them—make an orgy of the cakes that ooze real cream, the pink and juicy hams, and the sweets that demand no points” (Seager, “English” 6). She reports on the humanity of Dublin and Dubliners, “Dublin has a charm that is deep-laid. It springs from the people themselves. Their courtesy is overlaid with a real interest in humanity. They walk and talk, these Dubliners, like Kings” (ibid.).In Paris she melds the ordinary with the noteworthy:I had always imagined that the outside of the Louvre was like and big art gallery. Now that I know it as a series of palaces with courtyards and gardens beyond description in the daytime, and last night, with its cleverly lighted fountains all aplay, its flags and coloured lights, I will never forget it.Just now, down in the street below, somebody is packing the boot of a car to go for, presumably, on a few days’ jaunt. There is one suitcase, maybe with clothes, and on the footpath 47 bottles of the most beautiful wines in the world. (Seager, “When” 3)She writes with a mix of awe and ordinary:My first glimpse of that exciting vista of the Arc de Triomphe in the distance, and the little bistros that I’ve always wanted to see, and all the delights of a new city, […] My first day in Paris, Ma’am, has not taken one whit from the glory that was London. (ibid.) Figure 2: Helen Seager in ParisIt is my belief that Helen Seager intended to do something with her writings abroad. The articles have been cut from The Argus and pasted onto sheets of paper. She has kept copies of the original reports filed whist she was away. The collection shows her insightful egalitarian eye and a sharp humour, a mix of awesome and commonplace.On Bastille Day in 1950, Seager wrote about the celebrations in Paris. Her article is one of exuberant enthusiasm. She writes joyfully about sirens screaming overhead, and people in the street, and looking from windows. Her article, published on 19 July, starts:Paris Ma’am is a magical city. I will never cease to be grateful that I arrived on a day when every thing went wrong, and watched it blossom before my eyes into a gayness that makes our Melbourne Cup gala seem funeral in comparison.Today is July 14.All places of business are closed for five days and only the places of amusement await the world.Parisians are tireless in their celebrations.I went to sleep to the music of bands, dancing feet and singing voices, with the raucous but cheerful toots from motors splitting the night air onto atoms. (Seager, “When” 3)This article resonates uneasiness. How easily could those scenes of celebration on Bastille Day in 1950 be changed into the scenes of carnage on Bastille Day 2016, the cheerful toots of the motors transformed into cries of fear, the sirens in the sky from aeroplanes overhead into the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles, as a Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, as part of a terror attack drives a truck through crowds of people celebrating in Nice.Gwen HughesGwen Hughes graduated from Emily Macpherson College of Domestic Economy with a Diploma of Domestic Science, before she travelled to England to take up employment as senior lecturer and demonstrator of Parkinson’s England, a company that manufactured electric and gas stoves. Hughes wrote in her unpublished manuscript, Balkan Fever, that it was her idea of making ordinary cooking demonstration lessons dramatic and homelike that landed her the job in England (Hughes, Balkan 25-26).Her cookbook, Perfect Cooking, was produced to encourage housewives to enjoy cooking with their Parkinson’s modern cookers with the new Adjusto temperature control. The message she had to convey for Parkinsons was: “Cooking is a matter of putting the right ingredients together and cooking them at the right temperature to achieve a given result” (Hughes, Perfect 3). In reality, Hughes used this cookbook as a vehicle to share her interest in and love of Continental food, especially food from the Balkans where she travelled extensively in the 1930s.Recipes of Continental foods published in Perfect Cooking sit seamlessly alongside traditional British foods. The section on soup, for example, contains recipes for Borscht, a very good soup cooked by the peasants of Russia; Minestrone, an everyday Italian soup; Escudella, from Spain; and Cream of Spinach Soup from France (Perfect 22-23). Hughes devoted a whole chapter to recipes and descriptions of Continental foods labelled “Fascinating Foods From Far Countries,” showing her love and fascination with food and travel. She started this chapter with the observation:There is nearly as much excitement and romance, and, perhaps fear, about sampling a “foreign dish” for the “home stayer” as there is in actually being there for the more adventurous “home leaver”. Let us have a little have a little cruise safe within the comfort of our British homes. Let us try and taste the good things each country is famed for, all the while picturing the romantic setting of these dishes. (Hughes, Perfect 255)Through her recipes and descriptive passages, Hughes took housewives in England and Australia into the strange and wonderful kitchens of exotic women: Madame Darinka Jocanovic in Belgrade, Miss Anicka Zmelova in Prague, Madame Mrskosova at Benesova. These women taught her to make wonderful-sounding foods such as Apfel Strudel, Knedlikcy, Vanilla Kipfel and Christmas Stars. “Who would not enjoy the famous ‘Goose with Dumplings,’” she declares, “in the company of these gay, brave, thoughtful people with their romantic history, their gorgeously appareled peasants set in their richly picturesque scenery” (Perfect 255).It is Hughes’ unpublished manuscript Balkan Fever, written in Melbourne in 1943, to which I now turn. It is part of the Latrobe Heritage collection at the State Library of Victoria. Her manuscript was based on her extensive travels in the Balkans in the 1930s whilst she lived and worked in England, and it was, I suspect, her intention to seek publication.In her twenties, Hughes describes how she set off to the Balkans after meeting a fellow member of the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) at the Royal Yugoslav Legation. He was an expert on village life in the Balkans and advised her, that as a writer she would get more information from the local villagers than she would as a tourist. Hughes, who, before television gave cooking demonstrations on the radio, wrote, “I had been writing down recipes and putting them in books for years and of course the things one talks about over the air have to be written down first—that seemed fair enough” (Hughes, Balkan 25-26). There is nothing of the awestruck traveller in Hughes’ richly detailed observations of the people and the places that she visited. “Travelling in the Balkans is a very different affair from travelling in tourist-conscious countries where you just leave it to Cooks. You must either have unlimited time at your disposal, know the language or else have introductions that will enable the right arrangements to be made for you” (Balkan 2), she wrote. She was the experiential tourist, deeply immersed in her surroundings and recording food culture and society as it was.Hughes acknowledged that she was always drawn away from the cities to seek the real life of the people. “It’s to the country district you must go to find the real flavour of a country and the heart of its people—especially in the Balkans where such a large percentage of the population is agricultural” (Balkan 59). Her descriptions in Balkan Fever are a blend of geography, history, culture, national songs, folklore, national costumes, food, embroidery, and vivid observation of the everyday city life. She made little mention of stately homes or buildings. Her attitude to travel can be summed up in her own words:there are so many things to see and learn in the countries of the old world that, walking with eyes and mind wide open can be an immensely delightful pastime, even with no companion and nowhere to go. An hour or two spent in some unpretentious coffee house can be worth all the dinners at Quaglino’s or at The Ritz, if your companion is a good talker, a specialist in your subject, or knows something of the politics and the inner life of the country you are in. (Balkan 28)Rather than touring the grand cities, she was seduced by the market places with their abundance of food, colour, and action. Describing Sarajevo she wrote:On market day the main square is a blaze of colour and movement, the buyers no less colourful than the peasants who have come in from the farms around with their produce—cream cheese, eggs, chickens, fruit and vegetables. Handmade carpets hung up for sale against walls or from trees add their barbaric colour to the splendor of the scene. (Balkan 75)Markets she visited come to life through her vivid descriptions:Oh those markets, with the gorgeous colours, and heaped untidiness of the fruits and vegetables—paprika, those red and green peppers! Every kind of melon, grape and tomato contributing to the riot of colour. Then there were the fascinating peasant embroideries, laces and rich parts of old costumes brought in from the villages for sale. The lovely gay old embroideries were just laid out on a narrow carpet spread along the pavement or hung from a tree if one happened to be there. (Balkan 11)Perhaps it was her radio cooking shows that gave her the ability to make her descriptions sensorial and pictorial:We tasted luxurious foods, fish, chickens, fruits, wines, and liqueurs. All products of the country. Perfect ambrosial nectar of the gods. I was entirely seduced by the rose petal syrup, fragrant and aromatic, a red drink made from the petals of the darkest red roses. (Balkan 151)Ordinary places and everyday events are beautifully realised:We visited the cheese factory amongst other things. … It was curious to see in that far away spot such a quantity of neatly arranged cheeses in the curing chamber, being prepared for export, and in another room the primitive looking round balls of creamed cheese suspended from rafters. Later we saw trains of pack horses going over the mountains, and these were probably the bearers of these cheeses to Bitolj or Skoplje, whence they would be consigned further for export. (Balkan 182)ConclusionReading Seager and Hughes, one cannot help but be swept along on their travels and take part in their journeys. What is clear, is that they were inspired by their work, which is reflected in the way they wrote about the places they visited. Both sought out people and places that were, as Hughes so vividly puts it, not part of the Cook’s Tour. They travelled with their eyes wide open for experiences that were both new and normal, making their writing relevant even today. Written in Paris on Bastille Day 1950, Seager’s Bastille Day article is poignant when compared to Bastille Day in France in 2016. Hughes’s descriptions of Sarajevo are a far cry from the scenes of destruction in that city between 1992 and 1995. The travel writing of these two women offers us vivid impressions and images of the often unreported events, places, daily lives, and industry of the ordinary and the then every day, and remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.Pesman writes, “women have always been on the move and Australian women have been as numerous as passengers on the outbound ships as have men” (20), but the records of their travels seldom appear on the public record. Whilst their work-related writings are part of the public record (see Haysom; Lancaster; Riggal), this body of women’s travel writing has not received the attention it deserves. Hughes’ cookbooks, with their traditional Eastern European recipes and evocative descriptions of people and kitchens, are only there for the researcher who knows that cookbooks are a trove of valuable social and cultural material. Digital copies of Seager’s writing can be accessed on Trove (a digital repository), but there is little else about her or her body of writing on the public record.ReferencesThe Argus. “Goodbye Ma’am.” 26 May 1950: 1. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22831285?searchTerm=Goodbye%20Ma%E2%80%99am%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.“Exotiq Cosmetics.” Advertisement. Woman 20 Aug. 1945: 36.Golding, Peter. “Just a Chattel of the Sale: A Mostly Light-Hearted Retrospective of a Diverse Life.” In Jim Usher, ed., The Argus: Life & Death of Newspaper. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2007.Haysom, Ida. Diaries and Photographs of Ida Haysom. <http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1637361>.“Healing Cycles.” Advertisement. Woman 27 Aug. 1945: 40. Hughes, Gwen. Balkan Fever. Unpublished Manuscript. State Library of Victoria, MS 12985 Box 3846/4. 1943.———. Perfect Cooking London: Parkinsons, c1940.Lancaster, Rosemary. Je Suis Australienne: Remarkable Women in France 1880-1945. Crawley WA: UWA Press, 2008.Pesman, Ros. “Overseas Travel of Australian Women: Sources in the Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library of Victoria.” The Latrobe Journal 58 (Spring 1996): 19-26.Riggal, Louie. (Louise Blanche.) Diary of Italian Tour 1905 February 21 - May 1. <http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1635602>.Seager, Helen. “Ballet Dancers Backstage.” The Argus 10 Aug. 1944: 10. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11356057?searchTerm=Ballet%20Dancers%20Backstage&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194>.———. “The Baroness Who Finds Knitting Exciting.” The Argus 1 Aug. 1944: 9. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11354557?searchTerm=Helen%20seager%20Baroness&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194>.———. “English Visitors Have a Food Spree in Eire.” The Argus 29 Sep. 1950: 6. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22912011?searchTerm=English%20visitors%20have%20a%20spree%20in%20Eire&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “From Helen in London.” The Argus 20 June 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22836738?searchTerm=From%20Helen%20in%20London&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “Helen Seager Storms Paris—Paris Falls.” The Argus 15 July 1950: 7.<http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906913?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Storms%20Paris%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “We Look over Blenheim Palace.” The Argus 28 Sep. 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22902040?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Its%20as%20a%20good%20a%20place%20as%20you%20would%20want%20to%20be&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “West End Hair-Do Was Fun.” The Argus 3 July 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22913940?searchTerm=West%20End%20hair-do%20was%20fun%E2%80%99&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.———. “When You Are in Paris on July 14.” The Argus 19 July 1950: 3. <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906244?searchTerm=When%20you%20are%20in%20Paris%20on%20July%2014&searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195>.

This paper investigates linkages between two apparently disparate government initiatives. Together they function symbolically to maintain Australia’s moral order by excluding filth, keeping personal and national boundaries tight and borders secure. The Commonwealth government recently set aside over five million dollars to improve continence in the Australian population (incontinence is the inability to control movements of the bowel or bladder, producing leakage of filth in the form of urine and faeces). The Strategy funded research into prevalence rates, treatment strategies, doctor education, a public toilet mapping exercise, and public awareness through a telephone helpline and patient information pamphlets. Almost simultaneously with the continence initiative, concerns over the influx of asylum seekers to Australia lead the federal government to focus more resources on strengthening Australia’s border protection. This paper explores the two phenomena of personal and national boundary maintenance as aspects of classification dilemmas based in conceptions of filth, pollution and cleaning rituals. Continence and Boundary Maintenance Elias has pointed out that the development of rules of decorum around bodily control was the very essence of ‘the civilizing process’ in Western cultures. Currently, we see bodily control as a prerequisite for becoming an adult, and the loss of control is a sign of a loss of responsible adulthood, a ‘spoiled identity’ (Goffman; Murcott; Hepworth). However, Foucault pointed out that the body, through the imposition of the State and the medical profession, has become a target for self-work, resulting not in self-empowerment but in subjection. Through the ‘new micro-physics of power’ (Foucault 139), the bladder and pelvic floor have become sites in need of control. Analysis of discourses around incontinence, both in the public and private spheres, indicate a concern with issues of control and agency, particularly the moral imperative to be in control of one’s body and the feelings of incompetence produced by the loss of control. Incompetence, self blame and guilt are evident in sufferers’ talk about their condition (Tilbury et al.; Murcott). The negativity surrounding incontinence is connected with the construction of urine and faeces as filth – but is this construction of dirtiness ‘natural? Mary Douglas argued that cultural classification creates the order of social life and has an inherently moral dimension. A consequence is that things which cross categorical boundaries are impure and therefore dangerous, because they threaten the rules of classification. Douglas suggested that there is nothing inherent in ‘unclean’ things which make them dirty. Soil in the garden is ‘clean’ whereas on the carpet it is ‘dirty’, spaghetti on a plate is clean, but on your trousers it is dirty. Douglas concluded that dirtiness is not about the stuff itself, but about it being in the wrong location. We are left with the very old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. … Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements (Douglas 48). Like the fear of deviance generally, fear of pollution by ‘dirty’ things is strongly emotive because of its threat to the larger moral order. In the same way that moral panics, scapegoating, and witch hunts occur where there is a threat to the collectivity’s boundaries, clean-ups are in order where there is a perceived social crisis which threatens social classification and order. They serve as purges, drawing attention to the violated moral order, and to the State’s ability to secure it. Cleaning rituals function symbolically to reaffirm the social order. Thus, an insistence on continence is symbolic of something deeper than a fear of infection from leaking urine and faeces. Douglas suggests that issues of dirt and cleanliness in relation to the human body are actually about wider social concerns. The body is a tabula rasa on which the concerns of society are writ small. The biological body is a symbol of the social body. Elias argued bodily control and social control are linked – for example we are careful to control publicly bodily functions such as farting, belching and yawning. Now if bodies serve as symbols of society, then concern over group boundaries will be expressed symbolically as concerns over bodily boundaries. Bodily orifices, those entrances and exits which define the boundaries of the body most obviously, become sites of some significance, and those dirty things which traverse these openings/closings challenge and destabilize the system of categorization which society holds sacrosanct. But why, one might ask, the recent concern over bodily boundaries? Continents and Border Protection On the ABC’s 7.30 Report (20 June 2002) anchor Kerry O’Brien introduced a story about ‘the migrant problem’ in the Netherlands with a comment about the Dutch desire to control the ‘flooding’ in of refugees through their ‘weakening borders’ and noted the growing public concern to ‘seal their leaking border’. While such imagery obviously references the story of ‘the little Dutch boy and the dike’, it was directly relevant to Australian audiences because Australia was in the midst of its own ‘refugee crisis’ (see Saxton; Manne; Pickering; Gelber). The ‘Tampa crisis’, in September 2001, saw a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, rescue 433 asylum seekers from their sinking boat which was headed for Australia. Australia denied the Tampa permission to enter its waters and ports, so it was left out to sea for days, while the Australian government negotiated a face saving solution to the problem. This was the ‘Pacific solution’ – whereby asylum seekers are moved to nearby Pacific nations to be ‘processed’ off shore, in exchange for monetary incentive to these struggling economies. Asylum seekers were demonized by the press and by politicians for threatening to throw themselves and their children overboard. Prime Minister John Howard suggested some were likely to be terrorists, and the then Minister of Immigration Philip Ruddock asked the rhetorical question: ‘Are these the sort of people we want as Australians?’ Discursive analyses of media coverage (news reports, opinion columns and letters to the editor) of the arrival of asylum seekers indicate that they were represented as illegal, illegitimate and threatening (Saxton), and constructed as deviant in a variety of ways, including being diseased (Pickering). The language used to describe the ‘threat’ is revealing: terms such as ‘swamped’, ‘awash’, ‘latest waves’, ‘more waves’, ‘tides’, ‘floods’ and ‘migratory flood’ (Pickering 172). Most importantly, a ‘national rights’ discourse emerged, asserting Australia’s authority over its physical and cultural space, and its right to ‘protect its territory and character’ (Saxton 111) from potentially polluting pariahs, the excrement of other nations, refugees. The net result of these activities was the putting in place of a series of emergency measures to ensure Australia’s borders were ‘protected’, including moving the legal definition of borders, rigorous enforcement of imprisonment in detention centres, providing a two thousand dollar incentive to return to their countries of origin, and increased sea and air surveillance. Recent moves by the government to make seeking asylum more difficult have continued this trend. Continents and Continence Now what do incontinence and the Tampa crisis have in common? Obviously both are attempts to contain filth, ensuring boundary maintenance of the individual and the national body. The desire of the Australian government to clarify Australia’s boundaries by reducing them to its mainland is indicative of a concern with keeping national boundaries precise and clear. The threat of breaches from outside spurs this attempt to ensure closure, but it is simultaneously evidence of the fear of violation. Australia’s attempts at boundary maintenance are forms of ‘pollution rituals’ designed to maintain the definition of Australia as the domain of white Anglo-Saxon Christians (Hage; Saxton; Pickering). Being racially, ethnically and religiously different, asylum seekers challenge cherished notions of what ‘we’ Australians are – they are matter-out-of-place, challenging the integrity of the nation. As Pickering notes: ‘Asylum seekers transgress many boundaries: physical, geographic, language, legal, national, social and political. In so doing they routinely disrupt established, although precarious, orders’ (Pickering 170). The ‘breach’ panic, and consequent attempts to fortify ‘fortress Australia’, function symbolically to reaffirm the social order and maintain the classification of in-group and out-group. Conclusion The parallels drawn between these two initiatives are not meant to assert a causal relationship, but rather a form of ‘elective affinity’ (Weber). Thus, my argument is rather more than a recognition of the ways in which body metaphors are used as ‘convenient way[s] for talking or thinking about the moral and political problems of society’ (Turner 1), but less than a suggestion that one is in a direct causal relationship to the other. If pollution behaviour is that which condemns objects or ideas which might confuse cherished classifications, then government attempts to keep national boundaries contained and bodies secure are both examples of pollution behaviours. The National Continence Management Strategy and the concerns about Australia’s border protection are both symbolic manifestations of the same concern over unsealed boundaries and boundary crossings. Both result from a barely contained hysteria manifest in a fear of things coming in, and things going out, and a frustrated recognition of the impossibility of keeping entries and exits secure. The National Continence Management strategy mirrors the macro concerns over boundary maintenance and security. The tightening up of movements of matter across bodies, and movements of people across nations, are signs of attempts to control identity. But from whence has this concern arisen? One possibility is the general destabilising of national identities resulting from the broad postmodern recognition of hybridity and fluidity in the construction and maintenance of identity. A specific example of this is the fact that while Australia has long been proud of its identity as a white nation of the Antipodes, at the same time it is developing an identity as multicultural. The traditional values of white society are being challenged and the resulting destabilization is threatening (Hage; Ang; Phillips). Postmodern constructions of identity as contextual, fuzzy, and open ended, destabilize identity as singular and unproblematic. Hall and du Gay, Bhabha, and others have noted the discomfort attendant on a version of identity which is hybrid and liminal, which challenges the notion that categories are clear cut and people are either ‘in’ or ‘out’. This discomfort results in the need to shore up individual and national identities through efforts to define and maintain boundaries and to contain them – in essence to re-establish and defend ‘fortress Australia’ by containing matter in its proper place, and excluding filth. References Bhabha, Homi, ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. Trans. E. Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans A. Sheridan. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Gelber, Katherine. “A Fair Queue? Australian Public Discourse on Refugees and Immigration.” Journal of Australian Studies 1 March 2003: 23-30. Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Annendale NSW: Pluto Press, 1998. Hall, Stuart, and Paul du Gay, eds. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, 1996. Hepworth, Mike. Stories of Ageing. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000. Manne, Robert, with David Corlett. “Sending them Home: Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference.” Quarterly Essay 13. Melbourne: Black, 2004. Murcott, Anne. “Purity and Pollution: Body Management and the Social Place of Infancy.” In Sue Scott and David Morgan, eds. Body Matters. London: The Falmer Press, 1993. Pickering, Sharon. “Common Sense and Original Deviancy: News Discourses and Asylum Seekers in Australia.” Journal of Refugee Studies 14.2 (2001):169-86. Saxton, Alison. “‘I Certainly Don’t Want People like That Here’: The Discursive Construction of Asylum Seekers.” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 109 (Nov. 2003): 109-20. Tilbury, Farida, Pradeep Jayasuriya, Jan Taylor, and Liz Williams. Continence Care in the Community. Report to Department of Health and Aged Care, 2001. Turner, Bryan. “Social Fluids: Metaphors and Meanings in Society.” Body and Society 9.1 (2003): 1-10. Turner, Bryan, with Colin Samson. Medical Power and Social Knowledge. London: Sage, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Tilbury, Farida. "Filth, Incontinence and Border Protection." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/06-tilbury.php>. APA Style Tilbury, F. (Nov. 2006) "Filth, Incontinence and Border Protection," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/06-tilbury.php>.

IntroductionMusicians and critics regard Australian jazz as vibrant and creative (Shand; Chessher; Rechniewski). From its tentative beginnings in the early twentieth century (Whiteoak), jazz has become a major aspect of Australia’s music and performance. Due to the large distances separating cities and towns, its development has been influenced by geographical isolation (Nikolsky; Chessher; Clare; Johnson; Stevens; McGuiness). While major cities have been the central hubs, it is increasingly acknowledged that regional centres also provide avenues for jazz performance (Curtis).This article discusses findings relating to transient musical populations shaped by geographical conditions, venue issues that are peculiar to the Northern region, and finally the challenges of cultural and parochial mindsets that North Queensland jazz musicians encounter in performance.Cairns and MackayCairns and Mackay are regional centres on the coast of Queensland, Australia. Cairns – population 156,901 in 2016 (ABS) – is a world famous tourist destination situated on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef (Thorp). Mackay – population 114,969 in 2016 (ABS) – is a lesser-known community with an economy largely underpinned by the sugar cane and coal mining industries (Rolfe et al. 138). Both communities lie North of the capital city Brisbane – Mackay in the heart of Central Queensland, and Cairns as the unofficial capital of Far North Queensland. Mackay and Cairns were selected for this study, not on representational grounds, but because they provide an opportunity to learn through case studies. Stake notes that “potential for learning is a different and sometimes superior criterion to representativeness,” adding, “that may mean taking the one most accessible or the one we can spend the most time with (451).”Musically, both regional centres have a number of venues that promote live music, however, only Cairns has a dedicated jazz club, the Cairns Jazz Club (CJC). Each has a community convention centre that brings high-calibre touring musicians to the region, including jazz musicians.Mackay is home to the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music (CQCM) a part of the Central Queensland University that has offered conservatoire-style degree programs in jazz, contemporary music and theatre for over twenty-five years. Cairns does not have any providers of tertiary jazz qualifications.MethodologySemi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two significant individuals associated with the jazz communities in Mackay and Cairns over a twelve-month period from 2015 to 2016. Twelve of the interviewees were living in Cairns at the time, and ten were living in Mackay. The selection of interviewees was influenced by personal knowledge of key individuals, historical records located at the CQCM, and from a study by (Mitchell), who identified important figures in the Cairns jazz scene. The study participants included members of professional jazz ensembles, dedicated jazz audience members and jazz educators. None of the participants who were interviewed relied solely on the performance of jazz as their main occupation. All of the musicians combined teaching duties with music-making in several genres including rock, jazz, Latin and funk, as well as work in the recording and producing of recorded music. Combining the performance of jazz and commercial musical styles is a common and often crucial part of being a musician in a regional centre due to the low demand for any one specific genre (Luckman et al. 630). The interview data that was gathered during the study’s data collection phase was analysed for themes using the grounded theory research method (Charmaz). The following sections will discuss three areas of findings relating to some of the unique North Queensland influences that have impacted the development and sustainability of the two regional jazz communities.Transient Musical PopulationsThe prospect of living in North Queensland is an alluring proposition for many people. According to the participants in this study, the combination of work and a tropical lifestyle attracts people from all over the country to Cairns and Mackay, but this influx is matched by a high population turnover. Many musicians who move into the region soon move away again. High population turnover is a characteristic of several Northern regional centres such as the city of Darwin (Luckman, Gibson and Lea 12). The high growth and high population turnover in Cairns, in particular, was one of the highest in the country between 2006 and 2011 (ABS). The study participants in both regions believed that the transient nature of the local population is detrimental to the development and sustainability of the jazz communities. One participant described the situation in Cairns this way: “The tropics sort of lure them up there, tease them with all of the beauty and nature, and then spit them out when they realise it’s not what they imagined (interviewee 1, 24 Aug. 2016).” Looking more broadly to other coastal regional areas of Australia, there is evidence of the counter-urban flow of professionals and artists seeking out a region’s “natural and cultural environment” (Gibson 339). On the far North coast of New South Wales, Gibson examined how the climate, natural surroundings and cultural charms attracted city dwellers to that region (337). Similarly, most of the participants in this study mentioned lifestyle choices such as raising a family and living in the tropics as reasons to move to Cairns or Mackay. The prospect of working in the tourism and hospitality industry was found to be another common reason for musicians to move to Cairns in particular. In contrast to some studies (Salazar; Conradson and Latham) where it was found that the middle- to upper-classes formed the majority of lifestyle migrants, the migrating musicians identified by this study were mostly low-income earners seeking a combination of music work and other types of employment outside the music industry. There have been studies that have explored and critically reviewed the theoretical frameworks behind lifestyle migration (Benson and Osbaldiston) including the examination of issues and the motivation to ‘lifestyle migrate’. What is interesting in this current study is the focus of discussion on the post-migration effects. Study participants believe that most of the musicians who move into their region leave soon afterwards because of their disillusionment with the local music industry. Despite the lure of musical jobs through the tourism and hospitality industry, local musicians in Cairns tend to believe there is less work than imagined. Pub rock duos and DJs have taken most of the performance opportunities, which makes it hard for new musicians to compete.The study also reveals that Cairns jazz musicians consider it more difficult to find and collaborate with quality newcomers. This may be attributed to the smaller jazz communities’ demand for players of specific instruments. One participant explained, “There’s another bass player that just moved here, but he only plays by ear, so when people want to play charts and new songs, he can’t do it so it's hard finding the right guys up here at times (interviewee 2, 23 Aug. 2016).” Cairns and Mackay participants agreed that the difficulty of finding and retaining quality musicians in the region impacted on the ability of certain groups to be sustainable. One participant added, “It’s such a small pool of musicians, at the moment, I've got a new project ready to go and I've got two percussionists, but I need a bass player, but there is no bass player that I'm willing to work with (interviewee 3, 24 Aug. 2016).” The same participant has been fortunate over the years, performing with a different local group whose members have permanently stayed in the Cairns region, however, forging new musical pathways and new groups seemed challenging due to the lack of musical skills in some of the potential musicians.In Mackay, the study revealed a smaller influx of new musicians to the region, and study participants experienced the same difficulties forming groups and retaining members as their Cairns counterparts. One participant, who found it difficult to run a Big Band as well as a smaller jazz ensemble because of the transient population, claimed that many local musicians were lured to metropolitan centres for university or work.Study participants in both Northern centres appeared to have developed a tolerance and adaptability for their regional challenges. While this article does not aim to suggest a solution to the issues they described, one interesting finding that emerged in both Cairns and Mackay was the musicians’ ability to minimise some of the effects of the transient population. Some musicians found that it was more manageable to sustain a band by forming smaller groups such as duos, trios and quartets. An example was observed in Mackay, where one participant’s Big Band was a standard seventeen-piece group. The loss of players was a constant source of anxiety for the performers. Changing to a smaller ensemble produced a sense of sustainability that satisfied the group. In Cairns, one participant found that if the core musicians in the group (bass, drums and vocals) were permanent local residents, they could manage to use musicians passing through the region, which had minimal impact on the running of the group. For example, the Latin band will have different horn players sit in from time to time. When those performers leave, the impact on the group is minimal because the rhythm section is comprised of long-term Cairns residents.Venue Conditions Heat UpAt the Cape York Hotel in Cairns, musicians and audience members claimed that it was uncomfortable to perform or attend Sunday afternoon jazz gigs during the Cairns summer due to the high temperatures and non air-conditioned venues. This impact of the physical environment on the service process in a venue was first modelled and coined the ‘Servicescape’ by Bitner (57). The framework, which includes physical dimensions like temperature, noise, space/function and signage, has also been further investigated in other literature (Minor et al.; Kubacki; Turley and Fugate). This model is relevant to this study because it clearly affects the musician’s ability to perform music in the Northern climate and attract audiences. One of the regular musicians at the Cape York Hotel commented: So you’re thinking, ‘Well, I’m starting to create something here, people are starting to show up’, but then you see it just dwindling away and then you get two or three weeks of hideously hot weather, and then like last Sunday, by the time I went on in the first set, my shirt was sticking to me like tissue paper… I set up a gig, a three-hour gig with my trio, and if it’s air conditioned you’re likely to get people but if it’s like the Cape York, which is not air conditioned, and you’re out in the beer garden with a tin roof over the top with big fans, it’s hideous‘. (Interviewee 4, 24 Aug. 2016)The availability of venues that offer live jazz is limited in both regions. The issue was twofold: firstly, the limited availability of a larger venue to cater for the ensembles was deemed problematic; and secondly, the venue manager needed to pay for the services of the club, which contributed to its running costs. In Cairns, the Cape York Hotel has provided the local CJC with an outdoor beer garden as a venue for their regular Sunday performances since 2015. The president of the CJC commented on the struggle for the club to find a suitable venue for their musicians and patrons. The club has had residencies in multiple venues over the last thirty years with varying success. It appears that the club has had to endure these conditions in order to provide their musicians and audiences an outlet for jazz performance. This dedication to their art form and sense of resilience appears to be a regular theme for these Northern jazz musicians.Minor et al. (7) recommended that live music organisers needed to consider offering different physical environments for different events (7). For example, a venue that caters for a swing band might include a dance floor for potential dancers or if a venue catered for a sit down jazz show, the venue might like to choose the best acoustic environment to best support the sound of the ensemble. The research showed that customers have different reasons for attending events, and in relation to the Cape York Hotel, the majority of the customers were the CJC members who simply wanted to enjoy their jazz club performances in an air conditioned environment with optimal acoustics as the priority. Although not ideal, the majority of the CJC members still attended during the summer months and endured the high temperatures due to a lack of venue suitability.Parochial MindsetsOne of the challenging issues faced by many of the participants in both regions was the perceived cultural divide between jazz aficionados and general patrons at many venues. While larger centres in Australia have enjoyed an international reputation as creative hubs for jazz such as Melbourne and Sydney (Shand), the majority of participants in this study believed that a significant portion of the general public is quite parochial in their views on various musical styles including jazz. Coined the ‘bogan factor’, one participant explained, “I call it the bogan factor. Do you think that's an academic term? It is now” (interviewee 5, 17 Feb. 2016). They also commented on dominant cultural choices of residents in these regions: “It's North Queensland, it's a sport orientated, 4WD dominated place. Culturally they are the main things that people are attracted to” (interviewee 5, 17 Feb. 2016). These cultural preferences appear to affect the performance opportunities for the participants in Cairns and Mackay.Waitt and Gibson explored how the Wollongong region was chosen as an area for investigation to see if city size mattered for creativity and creativity-led regeneration (1224). With the ‘Creative Class’ framework in mind (Florida), the researchers found that Wollongong’s primarily blue-collar industrial identity was a complex mixture of cultural pursuits including the arts, sport and working class ideals (Waitt and Gibson 1241). This finding is consistent with the comments of study participants from Cairns and Mackay who believed that the identities of their regions were strongly influenced by sport and industries like mining and farming. One Mackay participant added, “I think our culture, in itself, would need to change to turn more people to jazz. I can’t see that happening. That’s Australia. You’re fighting against 200 years of sport” (interviewee 6, 12 Feb. 2016). Performing in Mackay or Cairns in venues that attract various demographics can make it difficult for musicians playing jazz. A Cairns participant added, “As Ingrid James once told me, ‘It's North Queensland, you’ve got an audience of tradesman, they don't get it’. It's silly to think it's going to ever change” (interviewee 7, 26 Aug. 2016). One Mackay participant believed that the lack of appreciation for jazz in regional areas was largely due to a lack of exposure to the art form. Most people grow up listening to other styles of music in their households.Another participant made the point that regardless of the region’s cultural and leisure-time preferences, if a jazz band is playing in a football club, you must expect it to be unpopular. Many of the research participants emphasised that playing in a suitable venue is paramount for developing a consistent and attentive audience. Choosing a venue that values and promotes the style of jazz music that the musicians are performing could help to attract more jazz fans and therefore build a sustainable jazz community.Refreshingly, this study revealed that musicians in both regions showed considerable resilience in dealing with the issue of parochial mindsets, and they have implemented methods to help educate their audiences. The audience plays a significant part in the development and future of a jazz community (Becker; Martin). For the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Mackay, part of the ethos of the institution is to provide music performance and educational opportunities to the region. One of the lecturers who made a significant contribution to the design of the ensemble program had a clear vision to combine jazz and popular music styles in order to connect with a regional audience. He explained, “The popular music strand of the jazz program and what we called the commercial ensembles was very much birthed out of that concept of creating a connection with the community and making us more accessible in the shortest amount of time, which then enabled us to expose people to jazz” (interviewee 8, 20 Mar. 2016).In a similar vein, several Cairns musicians commented on how they engaged with their audiences through education. Some musicians attempted to converse with the patrons on the comparative elements of jazz and non-jazz styles, which helped to instil some appreciation in patrons with little jazz knowledge. One participant cited that although not all patrons were interested in an education at a pub, some became regular attendees and showed greater appreciation for the different jazz styles. These findings align with other studies (Radbourne and Arthurs; Kubacki; Kubacki et al.), who found that audiences tend to return to arts organizations or events more regularly if they feel connected to the experience (Kubacki et al. 409).ConclusionThe Cairns and Mackay jazz musicians who were interviewed in this study revealed some innovative approaches for sustaining their art form in North Queensland. The participants discussed creative solutions for minimising the influence of a transient musician population as well as overcoming some of the parochial mindsets in the community through education. The North Queensland summer months proved to be a struggle for musicians and audience members alike in Cairns in particular, but resilience and commitment to the music and the social network of jazz performers seemed to override this obstacle. Although this article presents just a subset of the findings from a study of the development and sustainability of the jazz communities in Mackay and Cairns, it opens the way for further investigation into the unique issues faced. Deeper understanding of these issues could contribute to the ongoing development and sustainability of jazz communities in regional Australia.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. "Mackay (Statistical Area 2), Cairns (R) (Statistical Local Area), Census 2016." Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.———. "Perspectives on Regional Australia: Population Growth and Turnover in Local Government Areas (Lgas), 2006-2011." Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.Becker, H. Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.Benson, Michaela, and Nick Osbaldiston. "Toward a Critical Sociology of Lifestyle Migration: Reconceptualizing Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life." The Sociological Review 64.3 (2016): 407-23.Bitner, Mary Jo. "Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees." The Journal of Marketing (1992): 57-71. Charmaz, K. Constructing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2014. Chessher, A. "Australian Jazz Musician-Educators: An Exploration of Experts' Approaches to Teaching Jazz." Sydney: University of Sydney, 2009. Clare, J. Bodgie Dada and the Cult of Cool: Jazz in Australia since the 1940s. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995. Conradson, David, and Alan Latham. "Transnational Urbanism: Attending to Everyday Practices and Mobilities." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31.2 (2005): 227-33. Curtis, Rebecca Anne. "Australia's Capital of Jazz? The (Re)creation of Place, Music and Community at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival." Australian Geographer 41.1 (2010): 101-16. Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Melbourne, Victoria: Pluto Press Australia, 2003. Gibson, Chris. "Migration, Music and Social Relations on the NSW Far North Coast." Transformations 2 (2002): 1-15. ———. "Rural Transformation and Cultural Industries: Popular Music on the New South Wales Far North Coast." Australian Geographical Studies 40.3 (2002): 337-56. Johnson, Bruce. The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2000. Kubacki, Krzysztof. "Jazz Musicians: Creating Service Experience in Live Performance." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20.4 (2008): 401- 13. ———, et al. "Comparing Nightclub Customers’ Preferences in Existing and Emerging Markets." International Journal of Hospitality Management 26.4 (2007): 957-73. Luckman, S., et al. "Life in a Northern (Australian) Town: Darwin's Mercurial Music Scene." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22.5 (2008): 623-37. ———, Chris Gibson, and Tess Lea. "Mosquitoes in the Mix: How Transferable Is Creative City Thinking?" Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30.1 (2009): 70-85. Martin, Peter J. "The Jazz Community as an Art World: A Sociological Perspective." Jazz Research Journal 2.1 (2005): 5-13. McGuiness, Lucian. "A Case for Ethnographic Enquiry in Australian Jazz." Sydney: University of Sydney, 2010.Minor, Michael S., et al. "Rock On! An Elementary Model of Customer Satisfaction with Musical Performances." Journal of Services Marketing 18.1 (2004): 7-18. Mitchell, A. "Jazz on the Far North Queensland Resort Circuit: A Musician's Perspective." Proceedings of the History & Future of Jazz in the Asia-Pacific Region. Eds. P. Hayward and G. Hodges. Vol. 1. Hamilton Island, Australia: Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, 2004. Nikolsky, T. "The Development of the Australian Jazz Real Book." Melbourne: RMIT University, 2012. Radbourne, Jennifer, and Andy Arthurs. "Adapting Musicology for Commercial Outcomes." 9th International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management (AIMAC 2007), 2007.Rechniewski, Peter. The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium. Platform Papers 16. Redfern, NSW: Currency House, 2008. Rolfe, John, et al. "Lessons from the Social and Economic Impacts of the Mining Boom in the Bowen Basin 2004-2006." Australasian Journal of Regional Studies 13.2 (2007): 134-53. Salazar, Noel B. "Migrating Imaginaries of a Better Life … until Paradise Finds You." Understanding Lifestyle Migration. Springer, 2014. 119-38. Shand, J. Jazz: The Australian Accent. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009.Stake, Robert E. "Qualitative Case Studies." The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. 443-66. Stevens, Timothy. "The Red Onion Jazz Band at the 1963 Australian Jazz Convention." Musicology Australia 24.1 (2001): 35-61. Thorp, Justine. "Tourism in Cairns: Image and Product." Journal of Australian Studies 31.91 (2007): 107-13. Turley, L., and D. Fugate. "The Multidimensional Nature of Service Facilities." Journal of Services Marketing 6.3 (1992): 37-45. Waitt, G., and C. Gibson. "Creative Small Cities: Rethinking the Creative Economy in Place." Urban Studies 46.5-6 (2009): 1223-46. Whiteoak, J. "'Jazzing’ and Australia's First Jazz Band." Popular Music 13.3 (1994): 279-95.

Introduction This article presents the trans-disciplinary encounters with and perspectives on embodiment of three creative-arts practitioners within the Deakin University research project Flows & Catchments. The project explores how creative arts participate in community and the possibility of well-being. We discuss our preparations for creative work exhibited at the 2012 Lake Bolac Eel Festival in regional Western Victoria, Australia. This festival provided a fertile time-place-space context through which to meet with one regional community and engage with scales of geological and historical time (volcanoes, water flows, first contact), human and animal roots and routes (settlement, eel migrations, hunting and gathering), and cultural heritage (the eel stone traps used by indigenous people, settler stonewalling, indigenous language recovery). It also allowed us to learn from how a festival brings to the surface these scales of time, place and space. All these scales also require an embodied response—a physical relation to the land and to the people of a community—which involves how specific interests and ways of engaging coordinate experience and accentuate particular connections of material to cultural patterns of activity. The focus of our interest in “embody” and embodiment relates to the way in which the term constantly slides from metaphor (figural connection) to description (literal process). Our research question, therefore, addresses the specific interaction of these two tendencies. Rather than eliminate one in preference to the other, it is the interaction and movement from one to the other that an approach through creative-arts practices makes visible. The visibility of these tendencies and the mechanisms to which they are linked (media, organising principle or relational aesthetic) are highlighted by the particular time-place-space modalities that each of the creative arts deploys. When looking across different creative practices, the attachments and elisions become more fine-grained and clearer. A key aim of practice-led research is to observe, study and learn, but also to transform the production of meaning and its relationship to the community of users (Barrett and Bolt). The opportunity to work collaboratively with a community like the one at Lake Bolac provided an occasion to gauge our discerning and initiating skills within creative-arts research and to test the argument that the combination of our different approaches adds to community and individual well-being. Our approach is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s ethical proposition that the health of a community is directly influenced by the richness of the composition of its parts. With this in mind, each creative-arts practitioner will emphasize their encounter with an element of community. Zones of Practice–Drawing Together (Jondi Keane) Galleries are strange in-between places, both destinations and non-sites momentarily outside of history and place. The Lake Bolac Memorial Hall, however, retains its character of place, participating in the history of memorial halls through events such as the Eel Festival. The drawing project “Stone Soup” emphasizes the idea of encounter (O’Sullivan), particularly the interactions of sensibilities shaped by a land, a history and an orientation that comprise an affective field. The artist’s brief in this situation—the encounter as the rupture of habitual modes of being (O’Sullivan 1)—provides a platform of relations to be filled with embodied experience that connects the interests, actions and observations produced outside the gallery to the amplified and dilated experience presented within the gallery. My work suggests that person-to person in-situ encounters intensify the movement across embodied ways of knowing. “Stone Soup”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Arts practice and practice-led research makes available the spectrum of embodied engagements that are mixed to varying degrees with the conceptual positioning of material, both social and cultural. The exhibition and workshop I engaged with at the Eel Festival focused on three level of attention: memory (highly personal), affection (intra-personal) and exchange (communal, non-individual). Attention, the cognitive activity of directing and guiding perception, observation and interpretation, is the thread that binds body to environment, body to history, and body to the constructs of person, family and community. Jean-Jacques Lecercle observes that, for Deleuze, “not only is the philosopher in possession of a specific techne, essential to the well-being of the community, a techne the practice of which demands the use of specialized tools, but he makes his own tools: a system of concepts is a box of tools” (Lecercle 100). This notion is further enhanced when informed by enactive theories of cognition in which, “bodily practices including gesture are part of the activity in which concepts are formed” (Hutchins 429) Creative practices highlight the role of the body in the delicate interaction between a conceptually shaped gallery “space” and the communally constructed meeting “place.” My part of the exhibition consisted of a series of drawings/diagrams characterized under the umbrella of “making stone soup.” The notion of making stone soup is taken from folk tales about travelers in search of food who invent the idea of a magical stone soup to induce cooperation by asking local residents to garnish the “magical” stone soup with local produce. Other forms of the folk tale from around the world include nail soup, button soup and axe soup. Participants were able to choose from three different types of soup (communal drawing) that they would like to help produce. When a drawing was completed another one could be started. The mix of ideas and images constituted the soup. Three types of soup were on offer and required assistance to make: Stone soup–communal drawing of what people like to eat, particularly earth-grown produce; what they would bring to a community event and how they associate these foods with the local identity. Axe soup–communal drawing of places and spaces important to the participants because of connection to the land, to events and/or people. These might include floor plans, scenes of rooms or views, or memories of places that mix with the felt importance of spaces.Heirloom soup–communal drawing of important objects associated with particular persons. The drawings were given to the festival organizer to exhibit at the following year’s festival. "Story Telling”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Drawing in: Like taking a breath, the act of drawing and putting one’s thought and affections into words or pictures is focused through the sensation of the drawing materials, the size of the paper, and the way one orients oneself to the paper and the activity. These pre-drawing dispositions set up the way a conversation might occur and what the tenor of that exchange may bring. By asking participants to focus on three types of attachments or attentions and contributing to a collective drawing, the onus on art skills or poignancy is diminished, and the feeling of turning inward to access feeling and memory turns outward towards inscription and cooperation. Drawing out: Like exhaling around vowels and consonants, the movement of the hand with brush and ink or pen and ink across a piece of paper follows our patterns of engagement, the embodied experience consistent with all our other daily activities. We each have a way of orchestrating the sequence of movements that constitute an image-story. The maker of stone soup must provide a new encounter, a platform for cooperation. I found that drawing alongside the participants, talking to them, inscribing and witnessing their stories in this way, heightened the collective activity and produced a new affective field of common experience. In this instance the stone soup became the medium for an emergent composition of relations. Zones of Practice–Embodying Photographic Space (Rozalind Drummond) Photography inevitably entails a certain characterization of reality. From being “out there” the world comes to be “inside” photographs—a visual sliver, a grab, and an upload, a perpetual tumble cycle of extruded images existing everywhere yet nowhere. While the outside, the “out there” is brought within the frame of the photograph, I am interested rather in looking, through the viewfinder, to spaces that work the other way, which suggest the potential to locate a “non-space”—where the inside suggests an outside or empty space. Thus, the photograph becomes disembodied to reveal space. I consider embodiment as the trace of other embodiments that frame the subject. Mark Auge’s conception of “non-places” seems apt here. He writes about non-places as those that are lived or passed through on the way to some place else, an accumulation of spaces that can be understood and named (94). These are spaces that can be defined in everyday terms as places with which we are familiar, places in which the real erupts: a borderline separating the outside from the inside, temporary spaces that can exist for the camera. The viewer may well peer in and look for everything that appears to have been left out. Thus, the photograph becomes a recollection of what Roland Barthes calls “a disruption in the topography”—we imagine a “beyond” that evokes a sense of melancholy or of irrevocably sliding toward it (238). How then could the individual embody such a space? The groups of photographs of Lake Bolac are spread out on a table. I play some music awhile, Glenn Gould, whose performing embodies what, to me, represents such humanity. Hear him breathing? It is Prelude and Fugue No. 16 in G Minor by Bach, on vinyl; music becomes a tangible and physical presence. When we close our eyes, our ears determine a sound’s location in a room; we map out a space, by listening, and can create a measureable dimension to sound. Walking about the territory of a living room, in suburban Melbourne, I consider too a small but vital clue: that while scrutinizing these details of a photographic image on paper, simultaneously I am returning to a small town in the Western District of Victoria. In the fluid act of looking at images in a house in Melbourne, I am now also walking down a road to Lake Bolac and can hear the incidental sounds of the environment—birdcalls and human voices—elements that inhabit and embody space: a borderline, alongside the photographs. What is imprinted in actual time, what is fundamental, is that the space of a photograph is actually devoid of sound and that I am still standing in a living room in Melbourne. In Against Architecture, Denis Hollier states of Bataille, “he wrote of the psychological power of space as a fluid, boundary effacing, always displaced and displacing medium. The non-spaces of cities and towns are locations where it is possible to be lost in a collective space, a progression of thoroughfares that are transitional, delivering the individual from one point and place to another—stairwells, laneways and roadsides—a constellation of streets….” (Hollier 79). Though photographs are sound-less, sound gives access to the outside of the image. “Untitled”. Photograph by Rozalind Drummond from “Stay with me here.” 2012 Type C Digital Print. Is there an outline of an image here? The enlargement of a snapshot of a photograph does not simply render what in any case was visible, though unclear. What is the viewer to look for in this photograph? Upon closer inspection a young woman stands to the right within the frame—she wears a school uniform; the pattern of the garment can be seen and read distinctly. In the detail it is finely striped, with a dark hue of blue, on a paler background, and the wearer’s body is imprinted upon the clothing, which receives the body’s details and impressions. The dress has a fold or pleat at the back; the distinct lines and patterns are reminiscent of a map, or an incidental grid. Here, the leitmotif of worn clothing is a poetic one. The young woman wears her hair piled, vertiginous, in a loosely constructed yet considered fashion; she stands assured, looking away and looking forward, within the compositional frame. The camera offers a momentary pause. This is our view. Our eye is directed to look further away past the figure, and the map of her clothing, to a long hallway in the school, before drifting to the left and right of the frame, where the outside world of Lake Bolac is clear and visible through the interior space of the hallway—the natural environment of daylight, luminescent and vivid. The time frame is late summer, the light reflecting and reverberating through glass doors, and gleaming painted surfaces, in a continuous rectangular pattern of grid lines. In the near distance, the viewer can see an open door, a pictorial breathing space, beyond the spatial line and coolness of the photograph, beyond the frame of the photograph and our knowing. The photograph becomes a signpost. What is outside, beyond the school corridors, recalled through the medium of photography, are other scenes, yet to be constructed from the spaces, streets and roads of Lake Bolac. Zones of Practice–Time as the “Skin” of Writing, Embodiment and Place (Patrick West) There is no writing without a body to write. Yet sometimes it feels that my creative writing, resisting its necessary embodiment, has by some trick of metaphor retreated into what Jondi Keane refers to as a purely conceptual mode of thought. This slippage between figural connection and literal process alerted me, in the process of my attempt to foster place-based well-being at Lake Bolac, to the importance of time to writerly embodiment. My contribution to the Lake Bolac Eel Festival art exhibition was a written text, “Stay with me here”, conceived as my response to the themes of Rozalind Drummond’s photographs. To prepare this joint production, we mixed with staff and students at the Lake Bolac Secondary College. But this mode of embodiment made me feel curiously dis-embodied as a place-based writer. My embodiment was apparently superficial, only skin deep. Still this experience started me thinking about how the skin is actually thickly embodied as both body and where the body encounters, not only other bodies, but place itself—conceivably across many times. Skin is also the embodiment of writing to the degree that writing suggests an uncertain and queered form of embodiment. Skin, where the body reaches its limit, expires, touches other bodies or not, is inevitably implicated with writing as a fragile and always provisional, indexical embodiment. Nothing can be more easily either here or somewhere else than writing. Writing is an exhibition or gallery of anywhere, like skin in that both are un-placed in place. The one-pager “Stay with me here” explores how the instantaneous time and present-ness of Drummond’s photographs relate to the profusion of times and relations to other places immanent in Lake Bolac’s landscape and community (as evidenced, for example, in the image of a prep student yawning at the end of a long day in the midst of an ancient volcanic landscape, dreaming, perhaps, of somewhere else). To get to such issues of time and relationality of place, however, involves detouring via the notion of skin as suggested to me by my initial sense of dis-embodiment in Lake Bolac. “Stay with me here” works with an idea of skin as answer to the implied question, Where is here? It creates the (symbolic) embodiment of place precisely as a matter of skin, making skin-like writing an issue of transitory topography. The only permanent “here” is the skin. Emphasizing something valid for all writing, “here” (grammatically a context-dependent deictic) is the skin, where embodiment is defined by the constant possibility of re-embodiment, somewhere else, some time else. Reminding us that it is eminently possible to be elsewhere (from this place, from here), skin also suggests that you cannot be in two places at the one time (at least, not with the same embodiment). My skin is a sign that, because my embodiment in any particular place (any “here”) is only ever temporary, it is time that necessarily sustains my embodiment in any place whatsoever into the future. According to Henri Bergson, time must be creative, as the future hasn’t happened yet! “Time is invention or it is nothing at all” (341). The future of place, as much as of writing and of embodiment itself, is thus creatively sheathed in time as if within a skin. On Bergson’s view, time might be said to be least and greatest embodiment, for it is (dis-embodied) time that enables all future and currently un-created modes of embodiment. All of these time-inspired modes will involve a relationship to place (time can only “happen” in some version of place). And all of them will involve writing too, because time is the ultimate (dis-)embodiment of writing. As writing is like a skin, a minimal embodiment shared actually or potentially with more than one body, so time is the very possibility of writing (embodiment) into the future. “Stay with me here” explores how place is always already embodied in a relationship to other places, through the skin, and to the future of (a) place through the creativity of time as the skin of embodiment. By enriching descriptive and metaphoric practices of time, instability of place and awarenesses of the (dis-)embodied nature of writing—as a practice of skin—my text is useful to well-being as an analogue to the lived experience, in time and place, of the people of Lake Bolac. Theoretically, it weaves Bergson’s philosophy of time (time richly composed) into the fabric of Deleuze’s proposition that the health of a community is linked to the richness of the composition of its parts. Creatively, it celebrates the identity that the notion of “here” might enable, especially when read alongside and in dialogue with Drummond’s photographs in exhibition. Here is an abridged text of “Stay with me here:” “Stay with me here” There is salt in these lakes, anciently—rectilinear lakes never to be without ripple or stir. Pooling waters the islands of otherwise oceans, which people make out from hereabouts, make for, dream of. Stay with me here. Trusting to lessons delivered at the shore of a lake moves one closer to a deepness of instruction, where the water also learns. From our not being where we are, there. Stay with me here. What is perfection to water if not water? A time when photographs were born out of its swill and slosh. The image swimming knowingly to the surface—its first breaths of the perceiving air, its glimpsing itself once. The portraits of ourselves we do not dare. Such magical chemical reactions, as in, I react badly to you. Such salts! Stay with me here, elsewhere. As if one had simply washed up by chance, onto this desert island or any other place of sand and water trickling. Daring to imagine we’ll be there together. This is what I mean by… stay with me here. Notice these things—how music sounds different as one walks away; the emotional gymnastics with which you plan to impress; the skin of the eye that watches over you. Stay with me here—in your spectacular, careless brilliance. The edge of whatever it is one wants to say. The moment never to be photographed. Conclusion It is not for the artists to presume that they can empower a community. As Tasmin Lorraine notes, community is not a single person’s empowerment but “the empowerment of many assemblages of which one is part” (128). All communities, regional communities on the scale of Lake Bolac or communities of interest, are held in place by enthusiasm and common histories. We have focused on the embodiment of these common histories, which vary in an infinite number of degrees from the most literal to the most figurative, pulling from the filigree of experiences a web of interpersonal connections. Oscillating between metaphor and description, embodiment as variously presented in this article helps promote community and, by extension, individual well-being. The drawing out of sensations into forms that produce new experiences—like the drawing of breath, the drawing of a hot bath, or the drawing out of a story—enhances the permeability of boundaries opened to what touches upon them. It is not just that we can embody our values, but that we are able to craft, manifest, enact, sense and evoke the connections that take shape as our richly composed world, in which, as Deleuze notes, “it is no longer a matter of utilizations or captures, but of sociabilities and communities” (126). ReferencesAuge, Mark. Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Barrett, Estelle, and Barbara Bolt. Eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1998. Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. Hollier, Denis. Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Hutchins, Edwin. “Enaction, Imagination and Insight.” Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Eds. J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, and E.A. Di Paolo. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. 425–450.Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. Deleuze and Language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.Lorraine, Tamsin. Deleuze and Guattari’s Immanent Ethics: Theory, Subjectivity and Duration. Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 2011.O’Sullivan, Simon. Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari—Thought beyond Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

IntroductionFilmed during a 1955 family trip from Perth to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Keith Adams’s Northern Safari showed to packed houses across Australia, and in some overseas locations, across three decades. Essentially a home movie, initially accompanied by live commentary and subsequently by a homemade sound track, it tapped into audiences’ sense of Australia’s north as a place of adventure. In the film Adams interacts with the animals of northern Australia (often by killing them), and while by 1971 the violence apparent in the film was attracting criticism in letters to newspapers, the film remained popular through to the mid-1980s, and was later shown on television in Australia and the United States (Cowan 2; Adams, Crocodile Safari Man 261). A DVD is at present available for purchase from the website of the same name (Northern Safari). Adams and his supporters credited the film’s success to the rugged and adventurous landscape of northern Australia (Northeast vii), characterised by dangerous animals, including venomous spiders, sharks and crocodiles (see Adams, “Aussie”; “Crocodile”). The notion of Australia’s north as a place of rugged adventure was not born with Adams’s film, and that film was certainly not the last production to exploit the region and its wildlife as a source of excitement. Rather, Northern Safari belongs to a long list of adventure narratives whose hunting exploits have helped define the north of Australian as a distinct region and contrast it with the temperate south where most Australians make their lives.This article explores the connection between adventure in Australia’s north and the large animals of the region. Adams’s film capitalised on popular interest in natural history, but his film is only one link in a chain of representations of the Australian north as a place of dangerous and charismatic megafauna. While over time interest shifted from being largely concentrated on the presence of buffalo in the Northern Territory to a fascination with the saltwater crocodiles found more widely in northern Australia that interest in dangerous prey animals is significant to Australia’s northern imaginary.The Northern Safari before AdamsNorthern Australia gained a reputation for rugged, masculine adventure long before the arrival there of Adams and his cameras. That reputation was closely associated with the animals of the north, and it is generally the dangerous species that have inspired popular accounts of the region. Linda Thompson has recognised that before the release of the film Crocodile Dundee in 1986 crocodiles “received significant and sensational (although sporadic) media attention across Australia—attention that created associations of danger, mystery, and abnormality” (118). While Thompson went on to argue that in the wake of Crocodile Dundee the saltwater crocodile became a widely recognised symbol of Australia (for both Australians and non-Australians) it is perhaps more pertinent to consider the place of animals in creating a notion of the Australian north.Adams’s extended and international success (he showed his film profitably in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand as well as throughout Australia) suggests that the landscape and wildlife of northern Australia holds a fascination for a wide audience (Adams, Crocodile Safari Man 169-261). Certainly northern Australia, and its wild beasts, had established a reputation for adventure earlier, particularly in the periods following the world wars. Perhaps crocodiles were not the most significant of the north’s charismatic megafauna in the first half of the twentieth century, but their presence was a source of excitement well before the 1980s, and they were not the only animals in the north to attract attention: the Northern Territory’s buffalo had long acted as a drawcard for adventure seekers.Carl Warburton’s popular book Buffaloes was typical in linking Australians’ experiences of war with the Australian north and the pursuit of adventure, generally in the form of dangerous big game. War and hunting have long been linked as both are expressions of masculine valour in physically dangerous circumstances (Brennan “Imperial” 44-46). That link is made very clear in Warbuton’s account when he begins it on the beach at Gallipoli as he and his comrades discuss their plans for the future. After Warburton announces his determination not to return from war to work in a bank, he and a friend determine that they will go to either Brazil or the Northern Territory to seek adventure (2). Back in Sydney, a coin flip determines their “compass was set for the unknown north” (5).As the title of his book suggests, the game pursued by Warburton and his mate were buffaloes, as buffalo hides were fetching high prices when he set out for the north. In his writing Warburton was keen to establish his reputation as an adventurer and his descriptions of the dangers of buffalo hunting used the animals to establish the adventurous credentials of northern Australia. Warburton noted of the buffalo that: “Alone of all wild animals he will attack unprovoked, and in single combat is more than a match for a tiger. It is the pleasant pastime of some Indian princes to stage such combats for the entertainment of their guests” (62-63). Thereby, he linked Arnhem Land to India, a place that had long held a reputation as a site of adventurous hunting for the rulers of the British Empire (Brennan “Africa” 399). Later Warburton reinforced those credentials by noting: “there is no more dangerous animal in the world than a wounded buffalo bull” (126). While buffalo might have provided the headline act, crocodiles also featured in the interwar northern imaginary. Warburton recorded: “I had always determined to have a crack at the crocodiles for the sport of it.” He duly set about sating this desire (222-3).Buffalo had been hunted commercially in the Northern Territory since 1886 and Warburton was not the first to publicise the adventurous hunting available in northern Australia (Clinch 21-23). He had been drawn north after reading “of the exploits of two crack buffalo shooters, Fred Smith and Paddy Cahill” (Warburton 6). Such accounts of buffalo, and also of crocodiles, were common newspaper fodder in the first half of the twentieth century. Even earlier, explorers’ accounts had drawn attention to the animal excitement of northern Australia. For example, John Lort Stokes had noted ‘alligators’ as one of the many interesting animals inhabiting the region (418). Thus, from the nineteenth century Australia’s north had popularly linked together remoteness, adventure, and large animals; it was unsurprising that Warburton in turn acted as inspiration to later adventure-hunters in northern Australia. In 1954 he was mentioned in a newspaper story about two English migrants who had come to Australia to shoot crocodiles on Cape York with “their ambitions fed by the books of men such as Ion Idriess, Carl Warburton, Frank Clune and others” (Gay 15).The Development of Northern ‘Adventure’ TourismNot all who sought adventure in northern Australia were as independent as Adams. Cynthia Nolan’s account of travel through outback Australia in the late 1940s noted the increasing tourist infrastructure available, particularly in her account of Alice Springs (27-28, 45). She also recorded the significance of big game in the lure of the north. At the start of her journey she met a man seeking his fortune crocodile shooting (16), later encountered buffalo shooters (82), and recorded the locals’ hilarity while recounting a visit by a city-based big game hunter who arrived with an elephant gun. According to her informants: “No, he didn’t shoot any buffaloes, but he had his picture taken posing behind every animal that dropped. He’d arrange himself in a crouch, gun at the ready, and take self-exposure shots of himself and trophy” (85-86). Earlier, organised tours of the Northern Territory included buffalo shooter camps in their itineraries (when access was available), making clear the continuing significance of dangerous game to the northern imaginary (Cole, Hell 207). Even as Adams was pursuing his independent path north, tourist infrastructure was bringing the northern Australian safari experience within reach for those with little experience but sufficient funds to secure the provision of equipment, vehicles and expert advice. The Australian Crocodile Shooters’ Club, founded in 1950, predated Northern Safari, but it tapped into the same interest in the potential of northern Australia to offer adventure. It clearly associated that adventure with big game hunting and the club’s success depended on its marketing of the adventurous north to Australia’s urban population (Brennan “Africa” 403-06). Similarly, the safari camps which developed in the Northern Territory, starting with Nourlangie in 1959, promoted the adventure available in Australia’s north to those who sought to visit without necessarily roughing it. The degree of luxury that was on offer initially is questionable, but the notion of Australia’s north as a big game hunting destination supported the development of an Australian safari industry (Berzins 177-80, Brennan “Africa” 407-09). Safari entrepreneur Allan Stewart has eagerly testified to the broad appeal of the safari experience in 1960s Australia, claiming his clientele included accountants, barristers, barmaids, brokers, bankers, salesmen, journalists, actors, students, nursing sisters, doctors, clergymen, soldiers, pilots, yachtsmen, racing drivers, company directors, housewives, precocious children, air hostesses, policemen and jockeys (18).Later Additions to the Imaginary of the Northern SafariAdams’s film was made in 1955, and its subject of adventurous travel and hunting in northern Australia was taken up by a number of books during the 1960s as publishers kept the link between large game and the adventurous north alive. New Zealand author Barry Crump contributed a fictionalised account of his time hunting crocodiles in northern Australia in Gulf, first published in 1964. Crump displayed his trademark humour throughout his book, and made a running joke of the ‘best professional crocodile-shooters’ that he encountered in pubs throughout northern Australia (28-29). Certainly, the possibility of adventure and the chance to make a living as a professional hunter lured men to the north. Among those who came was Australian journalist Keith Willey who in 1966 published an account of his time crocodile hunting. Willey promoted the north as a site of adventure and rugged masculinity. On the very first page of his book he established his credentials by advising that “Hunting crocodiles is a hard trade; hard, dirty and dangerous; but mostly hard” (1). Although Willey’s book reveals that he did not make his fortune crocodile hunting he evidently revelled in its adventurous mystique and his book was sufficiently successful to be republished by Rigby in 1977. The association between the Australian north, the hunting of large animals, and adventure continued to thrive.These 1960s crocodile publications represent a period when crocodile hunting replaced buffalo hunting as a commercial enterprise in northern Australia. In the immediate post-war period crocodile skins increased in value as traditional sources became unreliable, and interest in professional hunting increased. As had been the case with Warburton, the north promised adventure to men unwilling to return to domesticity after their experiences of war (Brennan, “Crocodile” 1). This part of the northern imaginary was directly discussed by another crocodile hunting author. Gunther Bahnemann spent some time crocodile hunting in Australia before moving his operation north to poach crocodiles in Dutch New Guinea. Bahnemann had participated in the Second World War and in his book he was clear about his unwillingness to settle for a humdrum life, instead choosing crocodile hunting for his profession. As he described it: “We risked our lives to make quick money, but not easy money; yet I believe that the allure of adventure was the main motive of our expedition. It seems so now, when I think back to it” (8).In the tradition of Adams, Malcolm Douglas released his documentary film Across the Top in 1968, which was subsequently serialised for television. From around this time, television was becoming an increasingly popular medium and means of reinforcing the connection between the Australian outback and adventure. The animals of northern Australia played a role in setting the region apart from the rest of the continent. The 1970s and 1980s saw a boom in programs that presented the outback, including the north, as a source of interest and national pride. In this period Harry Butler presented In the Wild, while the Leyland brothers (Mike and Mal) created their iconic and highly popular Ask the Leyland Brothers (and similar productions) which ran to over 150 episodes between 1976 and 1980. In the cinema, Alby Mangels’s series of World Safari movies included Australia in his wide-ranging adventures. While these documentaries of outback Australia traded on the same sense of adventure and fascination with Australia’s wildlife that had promoted Northern Safari, the element of big game hunting was muted.That link was reforged in the 1980s and 1990s. Crocodile Dundee was an extremely successful movie and it again placed interactions with charismatic megafauna at the heart of the northern Australian experience (Thompson 124). The success of the film reinvigorated depictions of northern Australia as a place to encounter dangerous beasts. Capitalising on the film’s success Crump’s book was republished as Crocodile Country in 1990, and Tom Cole’s memoirs of his time in northern Australia, including his work buffalo shooting and crocodile hunting, were first published in 1986, 1988, and 1992 (and reprinted multiple times). However, Steve Irwin is probably the best known of northern Australia’s ‘crocodile hunters’, despite his Australia Zoo lying outside the crocodile’s natural range, and despite being a conservationist opposed to killing crocodiles. Irwin’s chosen moniker is ironic, given his often-stated love for the species and his commitment to preserving crocodile lives through relocating (when necessary, to captivity) rather than killing problem animals. He first appeared on Australian television in 1996, and continued to appear regularly until his death in 2006.Tourism Australia used both Hogan and Irwin for promotional purposes. While Thompson argues that at this time the significance of the crocodile was broadened to encompass Australia more generally, the examples of crocodile marketing that she lists relate to the Northern Territory, with a brief mention of Far North Queensland and the crocodile remained a signifier of northern adventure (Thompson 125-27). The depiction of Irwin as a ‘crocodile hunter’ despite his commitment to saving crocodile lives marked a larger shift that had already begun within the safari. While the title ‘safari’ retained its popularity in the late twentieth century it had come to be applied generally to organised adventurous travel with a view to seeing and capturing images of animals, rather than exclusively identifying hunting expeditions.ConclusionThe extraordinary success of Adams’s film was based on a widespread understanding of northern Australia as a type of adventure playground, populated by fascinating dangerous beasts. That imaginary was exploited but not created by Adams. It had been in existence since the nineteenth century, was particularly evident during the buffalo and crocodile hunting bubbles after the world wars, and boomed again with the popularity of the fictional Mick Dundee and the real Steve Irwin, for both of whom interacting with the charismatic megafauna of the north was central to their characters. The excitement surrounding large game still influences visions of northern Australia. At present there is no particularly striking northern bushman media personage, but the large animals of the north still regularly provoke discussion. The north’s safari camps continue to do business, trading on the availability of large game (particularly buffalo, banteng, pigs, and samba) and northern Australia’s crocodiles have established themselves as a significant source of interest among international big game hunters. Australia’s politicians regularly debate the possibility of legalising a limited crocodile safari in Australia, based on the culling of problem animals, and that debate highlights a continuing sense of Australia’s north as a place apart from the more settled, civilised south of the continent.ReferencesAdams, Keith. ’Aussie Bites.’ Australian Screen 2017. <https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/northern-safari/clip2/>.———. ‘Crocodile Hunting.’ Australian Screen 2017. <https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/northern-safari/clip3/>.———. Crocodile Safari Man: My Tasmanian Childhood in the Great Depression & 50 Years of Desert Safari to the Gulf of Carpentaria 1949-1999. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2000.Bahnemann, Gunther. New Guinea Crocodile Poacher. 2nd ed. London: The Adventurers Club, 1965.Berzins, Baiba. Australia’s Northern Secret: Tourism in the Northern Territory, 1920s to 1980s. Sydney: Baiba Berzins, 2007.Brennan, Claire. "’An Africa on Your Own Front Door Step’: The Development of an Australian Safari.” Journal of Australian Studies 39.3 (2015): 396-410.———. “Crocodile Hunting.” Queensland Historical Atlas (2013): 1-3.———. "Imperial Game: A History of Hunting, Society, Exotic Species and the Environment in New Zealand and Victoria 1840-1901." Dissertation. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2005.Clinch, M.A. “Home on the Range: The Role of the Buffalo in the Northern Territory, 1824–1920.” Northern Perspective 11.2 (1988): 16-27.Cole, Tom. Crocodiles and Other Characters. Chippendale, NSW: Sun Australia, 1992.———. Hell West and Crooked. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1990.———. Riding the Wildman Plains: The Letters and Diaries of Tom Cole 1923-1943. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1992.———. Spears & Smoke Signals: Exciting True Tales by a Buffalo & Croc Shooter. Casuarina, NT: Adventure Pub., 1986.Cowan, Adam. Letter. “A Feeling of Disgust.” Canberra Times 12 Mar. 1971: 2.Crocodile Dundee. Dir. Peter Faiman. Paramount Pictures, 1986.Crump, Barry. Gulf. Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1964.Gay, Edward. “Adventure. Tally-ho after Cape York Crocodiles.” The World’s News (Sydney), 27 Feb. 1954: 15.Nolan, Cynthia. Outback. London: Methuen & Co, 1962.Northeast, Brian. Preface. Crocodile Safari Man: My Tasmanian Childhood in the Great Depression & 50 Years of Desert Safari to the Gulf of Carpentaria 1949-1999. By Keith Adams. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2000. vi-viii.Northern Safari. Dir. Keith Adams. Keith Adams, 1956.Northern Safari. n.d. <http://northernsafari.com/>.Stewart, Allan. The Green Eyes Are Buffaloes. Melbourne: Lansdown, 1969.Stokes, John Lort. Discoveries in Australia: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea. London: T. and W. Boone, 1846.Thompson, Linda. “’You Call That a Knife?’ The Crocodile as a Symbol of Australia”. New Voices, New Visions: Challenging Australian Identities and Legacies. Eds. Catriona Elder and Keith Moore. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012: 118-134.Warburton, Carl. Buffaloes: Adventure and Discovery in Arnhem Land. Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd, 1934.Willey, Keith. Crocodile Hunt. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1966.

IntroductionNew Orleans is one of a number of infamous swamp cities—cities built in swamps, near them or on land “reclaimed” from them, such as London, Paris, Venice, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Petersburg, and Perth. New Orleans seemed to be winning the battle against the swamps until Hurricane Katrina of 2005, or at least participating in an uneasy truce between its unviable location and the forces of the weather to the point that the former was forgotten until the latter intruded as a stark reminder of its history and geography. Around the name “Katrina” a whole series of events and images congregate, including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his monumental book, After the Flood. Katrina, and the exacerbating factors of global warming and drained wetlands, and their impacts, especially on the city of New Orleans (both its infrastructure and residents), point to the cultural construction and production of the disaster. This suite of occurrences is a salutary instance of the difficulties of trying to maintain a hard and fast divide between nature and culture (Hirst and Woolley 23; Giblett, Body 16–17) and the need to think and live them together (Giblett, People and Places). A hurricane is in some sense a natural event, but in the age of global warming it is also a cultural occurrence; a flood produced by a river breaking its banks is a natural event, but a flood caused by breeched levees and drained wetlands is a cultural occurrence; people dying is a natural event, but people dying by drowning in a large and iconic American city created by drainage of wetlands is a cultural disaster of urban planning and relief logistics; and a city set in a swamp is natural and cultural, with the cultural usually antithetical to the natural. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in and as “one single catastrophe” of history, as Benjamin (392) put it, and of geography I would add in the will to fill, drain, or reclaim wetlands. Rather than a series of catastrophes proceeding one after the other through history, Benjamin's (392) “Angel of History” sees one single catastrophe of history. This single catastrophe, however, occurs not only in time, in history, but also in space, in a place, in geography. The “Angel of Geography” sees one single catastrophe of geography of wetlands dredged, filled, and reclaimed, cities set in them and cities being re-reclaimed by them in storms and floods. In the case of “Katrina,” the catastrophe of history and geography is tied up with the creation, destruction, and recreation of New Orleans in its swampy location on the Mississippi delta.New OrleansNew Orleans is not only “the nation’s quintessential river city” as Kelman (199) puts it, but also one of a number of infamous swamp cities. In his post-Katrina preface to his study of New Orleans as what he calls “an unnatural metropolis,” Colten notes:While other cities have occupied wetlands, few have the combination of poorly-drained and flood-susceptible territory of New Orleans. Portions of Washington, D.C. occupied wetlands, but there was ample solid ground above the reach of the Potomac [River’s] worst floods. Chicago’s founders platted their city on a wetland site, but the sluggish Chicago River did not drain the massive territory of the Mississippi. (5)“Occupied” is arguably a euphemism for dredging, draining, filling, and reclaiming wetlands. Occupation also conjures up visions of an occupying army, which may be appropriate in the case of New Orleans as the Army Corps of Engineers have spearheaded much of the militarisation by dredging and draining wetlands in New Orleans and elsewhere in the U.S.The location for the city was not propitious. Wilson describes how “the city itself was constructed on an uneven patch of relatively high ground in the midst of a vast swamp” (86). New Orleans for Kelman “is surrounded by a wet world composed of terrain that is not quite land” (22) with the Mississippi River delta on one side and Lake Pontchartrain and the “backswamps” on the other, though the latter were later drained. The Mississippi River for Kelman is “the continent’s most famed and largest watercourse” (199). Perhaps it is also the continent’s most tamed and leveed watercourse. Earlier Kelman related how a prominent local commentator in 1847 “personified the Mississippi as a nurturing mother” because the river “hugged New Orleans to its ‘broad bosom’” (79). Supposedly this mother was the benign, malign, and patriarchal Mother Nature of the leveed river and not the recalcitrant, matrifocal Great Goddess of the swamps that threatened to break the levees and flood the city (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands; People and Places, especially Chapter 1). The Mississippi as the mother of all American rivers gave birth to the city of New Orleans at her “mouth,” or more precisely at the other end of her anatomy with the wetland delta as womb. Because of its location at the “mouth” of the Mississippi River, New Orleans for Flint was “historically the most important port in the United States” (230). Yet by the late 1860s the river was seen by New Orleanians, Kelman argues, only as “an alimentary canal, filled with raw waste and decaying animal carcasses” (124). The “mouth” of the river had ceased to be womb and had become anus; the delta had ceased to be womb and had become bowel. The living body of the earth was dying. The river, Kelman concludes, was “not sublime” and had become “an interstate highway” (146). The Angel of Geography sees the single catastrophe of wetlands enacted in the ways in which the earth is figured in a politics of spaces and places. Ascribing the qualities of one place to another to valorise one place and denigrate another and to figure one pejoratively or euphemistically (as in this case) is “placist” (Giblett, Landscapes 8 and 36). Deconstructing and decolonising placism and its use of such figures can lead to a more eco-friendly figuration of spaces and places. New Orleans is one place to do so.What Colten calls “the swampy mire behind New Orleans” was drained in the first 40 years of the twentieth century (46). Colten concludes that, “by the 1930s, drainage and landfilling efforts had successfully reclaimed wetland between the city and the lake, and in the post-war years similar campaigns dewatered marshlands for tract housing eastward and westward from the city” (140–1). For Wilson “much of New Orleans’s history can be seen as a continuing battle with the swamp” (86). New Orleans was a frontline in the modern war against wetlands, the kind of war that Fascists such as Mussolini liked to fight because they were so easy to win (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 115). Many campaigns were fought against wetlands using the modern weapons of monstrous dredgers. The city had struck what Kelman calls “a Faustian bargain with the levees-only policy” (168). In other words, it had sold its soul to the devil of modern industrial technology in exchange for temporary power. New Orleans tried to dominate wetlands with the ironic result that not only “efforts to drain the city dominate early New Orleans history into the present day” as Wilson (86) puts it, but also that these efforts occasionally failed with devastating results. The city became dominated by the waters it had sought to dominate in an irony of history and geography not lost on the student of wetlands. Katrina was the means that reversed the domination of wetlands by the city. Flint argues that “Katrina’s wake-up call made it unconscionable to keep building on fragile coastlines […] and in floodplains” (232–3). And in swamps, I would add. Colten “traces the public’s abandonment of the belief that the city is no place for a swamp” (163). The city is also no place for the artificial swamp of the aftermath of Katrina depicted by Polidori. As the history of New Orleans attests, the swamp is no place for a city in the first place when it is being built, and the city is no place for a swamp in the second place when it is being ravaged by a hurricane and storm surges. City is antithetical and inimical to swamp. They are mutually exclusive. New Orleans for Wilson is “a city on a swamp” (90 my emphasis). In the 1927 flood (Wilson 111), for Kelman “one of the worst flood years in history” (157), and in the 2005 hurricane, the worst flood year so far in its history, New Orleans was transformed into a city of a swamp. The 1927 flood was at the time, and as Kelman puts it, “the worst ‘natural’ disaster in U.S. history” (161), only to be surpassed by the 2005 flood in New Orleans and the 2012 floods in north-eastern U.S. in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in which the drained marshlands of New York and New Jersey returned with a vengeance. In all these cases the swamp outside the city, or before the city, came into the city, became now. The swamp in the past returned in the present; the absent swamp asserted its presence. The historical barriers between city and swamp were removed. KatrinaKatrina for Kelman (xviii) was not a natural disaster. Katrina produced “water […] out of place” (Kelman x). In other words, and in Mary Douglas’s terms for whom dirt is matter out of place (Douglas 2), this water was dirt. It was not merely that the water was dirty in colour or composition but that the water was in the wrong place, in the buildings and streets, and not behind levees, as Polidori graphically illustrates in his photographs. Bodies were also out of place with “corpses floating in dirty water” (Kelman x) (though Polidori does not photograph these, unlike Dean Sewell in Aceh in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in what I call an Orientalist pornography of death (Giblett, Landscapes 158)). Dead bodies became dirt: visible, smelly, water-logged. Colten argues that “human actions […] make an extreme event into a disaster […]. The extreme event that became a disaster was not just the result of Katrina but the product of three centuries of urbanization in a precarious site” (xix). Yet Katrina was not only the product of three centuries of urbanisation of New Orleans’ precarious and precious watershed, but also the product of three centuries of American urbanisation of the precarious and precious airshed through pollution with greenhouse gases.The watery geographical location of New Orleans, its history of drainage and levee-building, the fossil-fuel dependence of modern industrial capitalist economies, poor relief efforts and the storm combined to produce the perfect disaster of Katrina. Land, water, and air were mixed in an artificial quaking zone of elements not in their normal places, a feral quaking zone of the elements of air, earth and water that had been in the native quaking zone of swamps now ran amok in a watery wasteland (see Giblett, Landscapes especially Chapter 1). Water was on the land and in the air. In the beginning God, when created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, and the earth was without form and void in the geographical location of a native quaking zone. In the ending, when humans are recreating the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos move over the face of the waters, and the earth is without form and void in the the geographical location and catastrophe of a feral quaking zone. Humans were thrown into this maelstrom where they quaked in fear and survived or died. Humans are now recreating the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of “Katrina.” In the beginning of the history of the city, humans created the city; from the disastrous destruction of some cities, humans are recreating the city.It is difficult to make sense of “Katrina.” Smith relates that, “as well as killing some 1500 people, the bill for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans […] was US$200 billion, making it the most costly disaster in American history,” more than “9/11” (303; see also Flint 230). A whole series of events and images congregate around the name “Katrina,” including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his book of photographs, After the Flood, with its overtones of divine punishment for human sin as with the biblical flood (Coogan et al. Genesis, Chapters 6–7). The flood returns the earth to the beginning when God created heaven and earth, when “the earth was without form and darkness moved […] upon the face of the waters” (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 2)—God's first, and arguably best, work (Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 142–143; Canadian Wetlands “Preface”). The single catastrophe of history and geography begins here and now in the act of creation on the first day and in dividing land from water as God also did on the second day (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 7)—God’s second, and arguably second best, work. New Orleans began in the chaos of land and water. This chaos recurs in later disasters, such as “Katrina,” which merely repeat the creation and catastrophe of the beginning in the eternal recurrence of the same. New Orleans developed by dividing land from water and is periodically flooded by the division ceasing to be returning the city to its, and the, beginning but this time inflected as a human-made “swamp,” a feral quaking zone (Giblett, Landscapes Chapter 1). Catastrophe and creativity are locked together from the beginning. The creation of the world as wetland and the separation of land and water was a catastrophic action on God's part. Its repetition in the draining or filling of wetlands is a catastrophic event for the heavens and earth, and humans, as is the unseparation of land and water in floods. What Muecke calls the rhetoric of “natural disaster” (259, 263) looms large in accounts of “Katrina.” In an escalating scale of hyperbole, “Katrina” for Brinkley was a “natural disaster” (5, 60, 77), “the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history” (62), “the biggest natural disaster in recent American history” (273), and “the worst natural disaster in modern American history” (331). Yet a hurricane in and by itself is not a disaster. It is a natural event. Perhaps all that could simply be said is that “Katrina was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in U.S. history” (Brinkley 73). Yet to be recorded in U.S. history “Katrina” had to be more than just a storm. It had also to be more than merely what Muecke calls an “oceanic disaster” (259) out to sea. It had to have made land-fall, and it had to have had human impact. It was not merely an event in the history of weather patterns in the U.S. For Brinkley “the hurricane disaster was followed by the flood disaster, which was followed by human disasters” (249). These three disasters for Brinkley add up to “the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, [which] was a man-made disaster, resulting from poorly designed and managed levees and floodwalls” (426). The result was that for Brinkley “the man-made misery was worse than the storm” (597). The flood and the misery amount to what Brinkley calls “the Great Deluge [which] was a disaster that the country brought on itself” (619). The storm could also be seen as a disaster that the country brought on itself through the use of fossil fuels. The overall disaster comprising the hurricane the flood, the sinking city and its drowning or displaced inhabitants was preceded and made possible by the disasters of dredging wetlands and of global warming. Brinkley cites the work of Kerry Emanuel and concludes that “global warming makes bad hurricanes worse” (74). Draining wetlands also makes bad hurricanes worse as “miles of coastal wetlands could reduce hurricane storm surges by over three or four feet” (Brinkley 10). Miles of coastal wetlands, however, had been destroyed. Brinkley relates that “nearly one million acres of buffering wetlands in southern Louisiana disappeared between 1990 and 2005” (9). They “disappeared” as the result, not of some sort of sleight of hand or mega-conjuring trick, nor of erosion from sea-intrusion (though that contributed), but of deliberate human practice. Brinkley relates how “too many Americans saw these swamps and coastal wetlands as wastelands” (9). Wastelands needed to be redeemed into enclave estates of condos and strip developments. In a historical irony that is not lost on students of wetlands and their history, destroying wetlands can create the wasteland of flooded cities and a single catastrophe of history and geography, such as New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.In searching for a trope to explain these events Brinkley turns to the tried and true figure of the monster, usually feminised, and “Katrina” is no exception. For him, “Hurricane Katrina had been a palpable monster, an alien beast” (Brinkley xiv), “a monstrous hurricane” (72), “a monster hurricane” (115), and “the monster storm” (Brinkley 453 and Flint 230). A monster, according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Allen 768), is: (a) “an imaginary creature, usually large and frightening, composed of incongruous elements; or (b) a large or ugly or misshapen animal or thing.” Katrina was not imaginary, though it or she was and has been imagined in a number of ways, including as a monster. “She” was certainly large and frightening. “She” was composed of the elements of air and water. These may be incongruous elements in the normal course of events but not for a hurricane. “She” certainly caused ugliness and misshapenness to those caught in her wake of havoc, but aerial photographs show her to be a perfectly shaped hurricane, albeit with a deep and destructive throat imaginable as an orally sadistic monster. ConclusionNew Orleans, as Kelman writes in his post-Katrina preface, “has a horrible disaster history” (xii) in the sense that it has a history of horrible disasters. It also has a horrible history of the single disaster of its swampy location. Rather than “a chain of events that appears before us,” “the Angel of History” for Benjamin “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” (392). Rather than a series of disasters of the founding, drainage, disease, death, floods, hurricanes, etc. that mark the history of New Orleans, the Angel of History sees a single, catastrophic history, not just of New Orleans but preceding and post-dating it. This catastrophic history and geography began in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, the earth was without form and void, and when God divided the land from the water, and is ending in industrial capitalism and its technologies, weather, climate, cities, floods, rivers, and wetlands intertwining and inter-relating together as entities and agents. Rather than a series of acts and sites of creativity and destruction that appear before us, the Angel of Geography sees one single process and place which keeps (re)creating order out of chaos and chaos out of order. This geography and history began at the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, and the wetland, and divided land from water, and continues when and as humans drain(ed) wetlands, create(d) cities, destroy(ed) cites, rebuilt/d cities and rehabilitate(d) wetlands. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in the one single catastrophe and creativity of divine and human history and geography.ReferencesAllen, Robert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary. 8th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938–1940. Eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2003. 389–400.Brinkley, Douglas. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: William Morrow, 2006.Colten, Craig. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006.Coogan, Michael, Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966.Flint, Anthony. This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996.———. The Body of Nature and Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.———. Landscapes of Culture and Nature. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011.———. Canadian Wetlands: Place and People. Bristol: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2014.Hirst, Paul, and Penny Woolley. “The Social Formation and Maintenance of Human Attributes.” Social Relations and Human Attributes. London: Tavistock, 1982. 23–31.Kelman, Ari. A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006.Muecke, Stephen. “Hurricane Katrina and the Rhetoric of Natural Disasters.” Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia. Eds. Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 2005. 259–71.Polidori, Robert. After the Flood. Göttingen: Steidl, 2006.Smith, P.D. City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.Wilson, Anthony. Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2006.

The traditional German tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin inhabits an ambiguous narrative borderland, a liminal space between fact and fiction, fantasy and horror, concrete details and elusive mystery. In his study of the Pied Piper in Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature, Wolfgang Mieder describes how manuscripts and other evidence appear to confirm the historical base of the story. Precise details from a fifteenth-century manuscript, based on earlier sources, specify that in 1284 on the 26th of June, the feast-day of Saints John and Paul, 130 children from Hamelin were led away by a piper clothed in many colours to the Koppen Hill, and there vanished (Mieder 48). Later manuscripts add details familiar today, such as a plague of rats and a broken bargain with burghers as a motive for the Piper’s actions, while in the seventeenth century the first English-language version advances what might also be the first attempt at a “rational” explanation for the children’s disappearance, claiming that they were taken to Transylvania. The uncommon pairing of such precise factual detail with enigmatic mystery has encouraged many theories. These have ranged from references to the Children’s Crusade, or other religious fervours, to the devastation caused by the Black Death, from the colonisation of Romania by young German migrants to a murderous rampage by a paedophile. Fictional interpretations of the story have multiplied, with the classic versions of the Brothers Grimm and Robert Browning being most widely known, but with contemporary creators exploring the theme too. This includes interpretations in Hamelin itself. On 26 June 2015, in Hamelin Museum, I watched a wordless five-minute play, entirely performed not by humans but by animatronic stylised figures built out of scrap iron, against a montage of multilingual, confused voices and eerie music, with the vanished children represented by a long line of small empty shirts floating by. The uncanny, liminal nature of the story was perfectly captured. Australia is a world away from German fairy tale mysteries, historically, geographically, and culturally. Yet, as Lisa M. Fiander has persuasively argued, contemporary Australian fiction has been more influenced by fairy tales than might be assumed, and in this essay it is proposed that major motifs from the Pied Piper appear in several Australian novels, transformed not only by distance of setting and time from that of the original narrative, but also by elements specific to the Australian imaginative space. These motifs are lost children, the enigmatic figure of the Piper himself, and the power of a very particular place (as Hamelin and its Koppen Hill are particularised in the original tale). Three major Australian novels will be examined in this essay: Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), Christopher Koch’s The Doubleman (1985), and Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Golden Day (2011). Dubosarsky’s novel was written for children; both Koch’s and Lindsay’s novels were published as adult fiction. In each of these works of fiction, the original tale’s motifs have been developed and transformed to express unique evocations of the Pied Piper theme. As noted by Fiander, fiction writers are “most likely to draw upon fairy tales when they are framing, in writing, a subject that generates anxiety in their culture” (158). Her analysis is about anxieties of place within Australian fiction, but this insight could be usefully extended to the motifs which I have identified as inherent in the Pied Piper story. Prominent among these is the lost children motif, whose importance in the Australian imagination has been well-established by scholars such as Peter Pierce. Pierce’s The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety explores this preoccupation from the earliest beginnings of European settlement, through analysis of fiction, newspaper reports, paintings, and films. As Pierce observed in a later interview in the Sydney Morning Herald (Knox), over time the focus changed from rural children and the nineteenth-century fear of the vast impersonal nature of the bush, where children of colonists could easily get lost, to urban children and the contemporary fear of human predators.In each of the three novels under examination in this essay, lost children—whether literal or metaphorical—feature prominently. Writer Carmel Bird, whose fiction has also frequently centred on the theme of the lost child, observes in “Dreaming the Place” that the lost child, the stolen child – this must be a narrative that is lodged in the heart and imagination, nightmare and dream, of all human beings. In Australia the nightmare became reality. The child is the future, and if the child goes, there can be no future. The true stories and the folk tales on this theme are mirror images of each other. (7) The motif of lost children—and of children in danger—is not unique to the Pied Piper. Other fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, contain it, and it is those antecedents which Bird cites in her essay. But within the Pied Piper story it has three features which distinguish it from other traditional tales. First, unlike in the classic versions of Hansel and Gretel or Red Riding Hood, the children do not return. Neither are there bodies to find. The children have vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. Second, it is not only parents who have lost them, but an entire community whose future has been snatched away: a community once safe, ordered, even complacent, traumatised by loss. The lack of hope, of a happy ending for anyone, is striking. And thirdly, the children are not lost or abandoned or even, strictly speaking, stolen: they are lured away, semi-willingly, by the central yet curiously marginal figure of the Piper himself. In the original story there is no mention of motive and no indication of malice on the part of the Piper. There is only his inexplicable presence, a figure out of fairy folklore appearing in the midst of concrete historical dates and numbers. Clearly, he links to the liminal, complex world of the fairies, found in folklore around the world—beings from a world close to the human one, yet alien. Whimsical and unpredictable by human standards, such beings are nevertheless bound by mysteriously arbitrary rules and taboos, and haunt the borders of the human world, disturbing its rational edges and transforming lives forever. It is this sense of disturbance, that enchanting yet frightening sudden shifting of the border of reality and of the comforting order of things, the essence of transformation itself, which can also be seen at the core of the three novels under examination in this essay, with the Piper represented in each of them but in different ways. The third motif within the Pied Piper is a focus on place as a source of uncanny power, a theme which particularly resonates within an Australian context. Fiander argues that if contemporary British fiction writers use fairy tale to explore questions of community and alienation, and Canadian fiction writers use it to explore questions of identity, then Australian writers use it to explore the unease of place. She writes of the enduring legacy of Australia’s history “as a settler colony which invests the landscape with strangeness for many protagonists” (157). Furthermore, she suggests that “when Australian fiction writers, using fairy tales, describe the landscape as divorced from reality, they might be signalling anxiety about their own connection with the land which had already seen tens of thousands of years of occupation when Captain James Cook ‘found’ it in 1770” (160). I would argue, however, that in the case of the Pied Piper motifs, it is less clear that it is solely settler anxieties which are driving the depiction of the power of place in these three novels. There is no divorce from reality here, but rather an eruption of the metaphysical potency of place within the usual, “normal” order of reality. This follows the pattern of the original tale, where the Piper and all the children, except for one or two stragglers, disappear at Koppen Hill, vanishing literally into the hill itself. In traditional European folklore, hollow hills are associated with fairies and their uncanny power, but other places, especially those of water—springs, streams, even the sea—may also be associated with their liminal world (in the original tale, the River Weser is another important locus for power). In Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, it is another outcrop in the landscape which holds that power and claims the “lost children.” Inspired partly by a painting by nineteenth-century Australian artist William Ford, titled At the Hanging Rock (1875), depicting a group of elegant people picnicking in the bush, this influential novel, which inspired an equally successful film adaptation, revolves around an incident in 1900 when four girls from Appleyard College, an exclusive school in Victoria, disappear with one of their teachers whilst climbing Hanging Rock, where they have gone for a picnic. Only one of their number, a girl called Irma, is ever found, and she has no memory of how and why she found herself on the Rock, and what has happened to the others. This inexplicable event is the precursor to a string of tragedies which leads to the violent deaths of several people, and which transforms the sleepy and apparently content little community around Appleyard College into a centre of loss, horror, and scandal.Told in a way which makes it appear that the novelist is merely recounting a true story—Lindsay even tells readers in an author’s note that they must decide for themselves if it is fact or fiction—Picnic at Hanging Rock shares the disturbingly liminal fact-fiction territory of the Piper tale. Many readers did in fact believe that the novel was based on historical events and combed newspaper files, attempting to propound ingenious “rational” explanations for what happened on the Rock. Picnic at Hanging Rock has been the subject of many studies, with the novel being analysed through various prisms, including the Gothic, the pastoral, historiography, and philosophy. In “Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush,” Kathleen Steele has depicted Picnic at Hanging Rock as embodying the idea that “Ordered ‘civilisation’ cannot overcome the gothic landscapes of settler imaginations: landscapes where time and people disappear” (44). She proposes that Lindsay intimates that the landscape swallows the “lost children” of the novel because there is a great absence in that place: that of Aboriginal people. In this reading of the novel, it is that absence which becomes, in a sense, a malevolent presence that will reach out beyond the initial disappearance of the three people on the Rock to destroy the bonds that held the settler community together. It is a powerfully-made argument, which has been taken up by other scholars and writers, including studies which link the theme of the novel with real-life lost-children cases such as that of Azaria Chamberlain, who disappeared near another “Rock” of great Indigenous metaphysical potency—Uluru, or Ayers Rock. However, to date there has been little exploration of the fairy tale quality of the novel, and none at all of the striking ways in which it evokes Pied Piper motifs, whilst transforming them to suit the exigencies of its particular narrative world. The motif of lost children disappearing from an ordered, safe, even complacent community into a place of mysterious power is extended into an exploration of the continued effects of those disappearances, depicting the disastrous impact on those left behind and the wider community in a way that the original tale does not. There is no literal Pied Piper figure in this novel, though various theories are evoked by characters as to who might have lured the girls and their teacher, and who might be responsible for the disappearances. Instead, there is a powerful atmosphere of inevitability and enchantment within the landscape itself which both illustrates the potency of place, and exemplifies the Piper’s hold on his followers. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, place and Piper are synonymous: the Piper has been transformed into the land itself. Yet this is not the “vast impersonal bush,” nor is it malevolent or vengeful. It is a living, seductive metaphysical presence: “Everything, if only you could see it clearly enough, is beautiful and complete . . .” (Lindsay 35). Just as in the original tale, the lost children follow the “Piper” willingly, without regret. Their disappearance is a happiness to them, in that moment, as it is for the lost children of Hamelin, and quite unlike how it must be for those torn apart by that loss—the community around Appleyard, the townspeople of Hamelin. Music, long associated with fairy “takings,” is also a subtle feature of the story. In the novel, just before the luring, Irma hears a sound like the beating of far-off drums. In the film, which more overtly evokes fairy tale elements than does the novel, it is noteworthy that the music at that point is based on traditional tunes for Pan-pipes, played by the great Romanian piper Gheorge Zamfir. The ending of the novel, with questions left unanswered, and lives blighted by the forever-inexplicable, may be seen as also following the trajectory of the original tale. Readers as much as the fictional characters are left with an enigma that continues to perplex and inspire. Picnic at Hanging Rock was one of the inspirations for another significant Australian fiction, this time a contemporary novel for children. Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Golden Day (2011) is an elegant and subtle short novel, set in Sydney at an exclusive girls’ school, in 1967. Like the earlier novel, The Golden Day is also partly inspired by visual art, in this case the Schoolgirl series of paintings by Charles Blackman. Combining a fairy tale atmosphere with historical details—the Vietnam War, the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the drowning of Harold Holt—the story is told through the eyes of several girls, especially one, known as Cubby. The Golden Day echoes the core narrative patterns of the earlier novel, but intriguingly transformed: a group of young girls goes with their teacher on an outing to a mysterious place (in this case, a cave on the beach—note the potent elements of rock and water, combined), and something inexplicable happens which results in a disappearance. Only this time, the girls are much younger than the characters of Lindsay’s novel, pre-pubertal in fact at eleven years old, and it is their teacher, a young, idealistic woman known only as Miss Renshaw, who disappears, apparently into thin air, with only an amber bead from her necklace ever found. But it is not only Miss Renshaw who vanishes: the other is a poet and gardener named Morgan who is also Miss Renshaw’s secret lover. Later, with the revelation of a dark past, he is suspected in absentia of being responsible for Miss Renshaw’s vanishment, with implications of rape and murder, though her body is never found. Morgan, who could partly figure as the Piper, is described early on in the novel as having “beautiful eyes, soft, brown, wet with tears, like a stuffed toy” (Dubosarsky 11). This disarming image may seem a world away from the ambiguously disturbing figure of the legendary Piper, yet not only does it fit with the children’s naïve perception of the world, it also echoes the fact that the children in the original story were not afraid of the Piper, but followed him willingly. However, that is complicated by the fact that Morgan does not lure the children; it is Miss Renshaw who follows him—and the children follow her, who could be seen as the other half of the Piper. The Golden Day similarly transforms the other Piper motifs in its own original way. The children are only literally lost for a short time, when their teacher vanishes and they are left to make their own way back from the cave; yet it could be argued that metaphorically, the girls are “lost” to childhood from that moment, in terms of never being able to go back to the state of innocence in which they were before that day. Their safe, ordered school community will never be the same again, haunted by the inexplicability of the events of that day. Meanwhile, the exploration of Australian place—the depiction of the Memorial Gardens where Miss Renshaw enjoins them to write poetry, the uncomfortable descent over rocks to the beach, and the fateful cave—is made through the eyes of children, not the adolescents and adults of Picnic at Hanging Rock. The girls are not yet in that liminal space which is adolescence and so their impressions of what the places represent are immediate, instinctive, yet confused. They don’t like the cave and can’t wait to get out of it, whereas the beach inspires them with a sense of freedom and the gardens with a sense of enchantment. But in each place, those feelings are mixed both with ordinary concerns and with seemingly random associations that are nevertheless potently evocative. For example, in the cave, Cubby senses a threateningly weightless atmosphere, a feeling of reality shifting, which she associates, apparently confusedly, with the hanging of Ronald Ryan, reported that very day. In this way, Dubosarsky subtly gestures towards the sinister inevitability of the following events, and creates a growing tension that will eventually fade but never fully dissipate. At the end, the novel takes an unexpected turn which is as destabilising as the ending of the Pied Piper story, and as open-ended in its transformative effects as the original tale: “And at that moment Cubby realised she was not going to turn into the person she had thought she would become. There was something inside her head now that would make her a different person, though she scarcely understood what it was” (Dubosarsky 148). The eruption of the uncanny into ordinary life will never leave her now, as it will never leave the other girls who followed Miss Renshaw and Morgan into the literally hollow hill of the cave and emerged alone into a transformed world. It isn’t just childhood that Cubby has lost but also any possibility of a comforting sense of the firm borders of reality. As in the Pied Piper, ambiguity and loss combine to create questions which cannot be logically answered, only dimly apprehended.Christopher Koch’s 1985 novel The Doubleman, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, also explores the power of place and the motif of lost children, but unlike the other two novels examined in this essay depicts an actual “incarnated” Piper motif in the mysteriously powerful figure of Clive Broderick, brilliant guitarist and charismatic teacher/guru, whose office, significantly, is situated in a subterranean space of knowledge—a basement room beneath a bookshop. Both central yet peripheral to the main action of the novel, touched with hints of the supernatural which never veer into overt fantasy, Broderick remains an enigma to the end. Set, like The Golden Day, in the 1960s, The Doubleman is narrated in the first person by Richard Miller, in adulthood a producer of a successful folk-rock group, the Rymers, but in childhood an imaginative, troubled polio survivor, with a crutch and a limp. It is noteworthy here that in the Grimms’ version of the Pied Piper, two children are left behind, despite following the Piper: one is blind, one is lame. And it is the lame boy who tells the townspeople what he glimpsed at Koppen Hill. In creating the character of Broderick, the author blends the traditional tropes of the Piper figure with Mephistophelian overtones and a strong influence from fairy lore, specifically the idea of the “doubleman,” here drawn from the writings of seventeenth-century Scottish pastor, the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle. Kirk’s 1691 book The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies is the earliest known serious attempt at objective description of the fairy beliefs of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. His own precisely dated life-story and ambiguous end—it is said he did not die but is forever a prisoner of the fairies—has eerie parallels to the Piper story. “And there is the uncanny, powerful and ambiguous fact of the matter. Here is a man, named, born, lived, who lived a fairy story, really lived it: and in the popular imagination, he lives still” (Masson).Both in his creative and his non-fiction work Koch frequently evoked what he called “the Otherland,” which he depicted as a liminal, ambiguous, destabilising but nevertheless very real and potent presence only thinly veiled by the everyday world. This Otherland is not the same in all his fictions, but is always part of an actual place, whether that be Java in The Year of Living Dangerously, Hobart and Sydney in The Doubleman, Tasmania, Vietnam and Cambodia in Highways to a War, and Ireland and Tasmania in Out of Ireland. It is this sense of the “Otherland” below the surface, a fairy tale, mythical realm beyond logic or explanation, which gives his work its distinctive and particular power. And in The Doubleman, this motif, set within a vividly evoked real world, complete with precise period detail, transforms the Piper figure into one which could easily appear in a Hobart lane, yet which loses none of its uncanny potency. As Noel Henricksen writes in his study of Koch’s work, Island and Otherland, “Behind the membrane of Hobart is Otherland, its manifestations a spectrum stretched between the mystical and the spiritually perverted” (213).This is Broderick’s first appearance, described through twelve-year-old Richard Miller’s eyes: Tall and thin in his long dark overcoat, he studied me for the whole way as he approached, his face absolutely serious . . . The man made me uneasy to a degree for which there seemed to be no explanation . . . I was troubled by the notion that he was no ordinary man going to work at all: that he was not like other people, and that his interest couldn’t be explained so simply. (Koch, Doubleman 3)That first encounter is followed by another, more disturbing still, when Broderick speaks to the boy, eyes fixed on him: “. . . hooded by drooping lids, they were entirely without sympathy, yet nevertheless interested, and formidably intelligent” (5).The sense of danger that Broderick evokes in the boy could be explained by a sinister hint of paedophilia. But though Broderick is a predator of sorts on young people, nothing is what it seems; no rational explanation encompasses the strange effect of his presence. It is not until Richard is a young man, in the company of his musical friend Brian Brady, that he comes across Broderick again. The two young men are looking in the window of a music shop, when Broderick appears beside them, and as Richard observes, just as in a fairy tale, “He didn’t seem to have changed or aged . . .” (44). But the shock of his sudden re-appearance is mixed with something else now, as Broderick engages Brady in conversation, ignoring Richard, “. . . as though I had failed some test, all that time ago, and the man had no further use for me” (45).What happens next, as Broderick demonstrates his musical prowess, becomes Brady’s teacher, and introduces them to his disciple, young bass player Darcy Burr, will change the young men’s lives forever and set them on a path that leads both to great success and to living nightmare, even after Broderick’s apparent disappearance, for Burr will take on the Piper’s mantle. Koch’s depiction of the lost children motif is distinctively different to the other two novels examined in this essay. Their fate is not so much a mystery as a tragedy and a warning. The lost children of The Doubleman are also lost children of the sixties, bright, talented young people drawn through drugs, immersive music, and half-baked mysticism into darkness and horrifying violence. In his essay “California Dreaming,” published in the collection Crossing the Gap, Koch wrote about this subterranean aspect of the sixties, drawing a connection between it and such real-life sinister “Pipers” as Charles Manson (60). Broderick and Burr are not the same as the serial killer Manson, of course; but the spell they cast over the “lost children” who follow them is only different in degree, not in kind. In the end of the novel, the spell is broken and the world is again transformed. Yet fittingly it is a melancholy transformation: an end of childhood dreams of imaginative potential, as well as dangerous illusions: “And I knew now that it was all gone—like Harrigan Street, and Broderick, and the district of Second-Hand” (Koch, Doubleman 357). The power of place, the last of the Piper motifs, is also deeply embedded in The Doubleman. In fact, as with the idea of Otherland, place—or Island, as Henricksen evocatively puts it—is a recurring theme in Koch’s work. He identified primarily and specifically as a Tasmanian writer rather than as simply Australian, pointing out in an essay, “The Lost Hemisphere,” that because of its landscape and latitude, different to the mainland of Australia, Tasmania “genuinely belongs to a different region from the continent” (Crossing the Gap 92). In The Doubleman, Richard Miller imbues his familiar and deeply loved home landscape with great mystical power, a power which is both inherent within it as it is, but also expressive of the Otherland. In “A Tasmanian Tone,” another essay from Crossing the Gap, Koch describes that tone as springing “from a sense of waiting in the landscape: the tense yet serene expectancy of some nameless revelation” (118). But Koch could also write evocatively of landscapes other than Tasmanian ones. The unnerving climax of The Doubleman takes place in Sydney—significantly, as in The Golden Day, in a liminal, metaphysically charged place of rocks and water. That place, which is real, is called Point Piper. In conclusion, the original tale’s three main motifs—lost children, the enigma of the Piper, and the power of place—have been explored in distinctive ways in each of the three novels examined in this article. Contemporary Australia may be a world away from medieval Germany, but the uncanny liminality and capacious ambiguity of the Pied Piper tale has made it resonate potently within these major Australian fictions. Transformed and transformative within the Australian imagination, the theme of the Pied Piper threads like a faintly-heard snatch of unearthly music through the apparently mimetic realism of the novels, destabilising readers’ expectations and leaving them with subversively unanswered questions. ReferencesBird, Carmel. “Dreaming the Place: An Exploration of Antipodean Narratives.” Griffith Review 42 (2013). 1 May 2016 <https://griffithreview.com/articles/dreaming-the-place/>.Dubosarsky, Ursula. The Golden Day. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2011.Fiander, Lisa M. “Writing in A Fairy Story Landscape: Fairy Tales and Contemporary Australian Fiction.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 2 (2003). 30 April 2016 <http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/index>.Henricksen, Noel. Island and Otherland: Christopher Koch and His Books. Melbourne: Educare, 2003.Knox, Malcolm. “A Country of Lost Children.” Sydney Morning Herald 15 Aug. 2009. 1 May 2016 <http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-country-of-lost-children-20090814-el8d.html>.Koch, Christopher. The Doubleman. 1985. Sydney: Minerva, 1996.Koch, Christopher. Crossing the Gap: Memories and Reflections. 1987. Sydney: Vintage, 2000. Lindsay, Joan. Picnic at Hanging Rock. 1967. Melbourne: Penguin, 1977.Masson, Sophie. “Captive in Fairyland: The Strange Case of Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle.” Nation and Federation in the Celtic World: Papers from the Fourth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, University of Sydney, June–July 2001. Ed. Pamela O’Neil. Sydney: University of Sydney Celtic Studies Foundation, 2003. Mieder, Wolfgang. “The Pied Piper: Origin, History, and Survival of a Legend.” Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature. 1987. London: Routledge Revivals, 2015.Pierce, Peter. The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Steele, Kathleen. “Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush: Gothic Landscapes in Bush Studies and Picnic at Hanging Rock.” Colloquy 20 (2010): 33–56. 27 July 2016 <http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/wp-content/arts/files/colloquy/colloquy_issue_20_december_2010/steele.pdf>.

There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisements (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale & Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. & A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.

All history of this area and the general talk and all of that is that 1973 was a turning point and the Aquarius Festival is credited with having turned this region around in so many ways, but I think that is a myth ... and I have to honour the truth; and the truth is that old Dicke Donelly came and did a Welcome to Country the night before the festival. (Joseph in Joseph and Hanley)In 1973 the Australian Union of Students (AUS) held the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival in a small, rural New South Wales town called Nimbin. The festival was seen as the peak expression of Australian counterculture and is attributed to creating the “Rainbow Region”, an area with a concentration of alternative life stylers in Northern NSW (Derrett 28). While the Aquarius Festival is recognised as a founding historical and countercultural event, the unique and important relationships established with Indigenous people at this time are generally less well known. This article investigates claims that the 1973 Aquarius Festival was “the first event in Australian history that sought permission for the use of the land from the Traditional Owners” (Joseph and Hanley). The diverse international, national and local conditions that coalesced at the Aquarius Festival suggest a fertile environment was created for reconciliatory bonds to develop. Often dismissed as a “tree hugging, soap dodging movement,” the counterculture was radically politicised having sprung from the 1960s social revolutions when the world witnessed mass demonstrations that confronted war, racism, sexism and capitalism. Primarily a youth movement, it was characterised by flamboyant dress, music, drugs and mass gatherings with universities forming the epicentre and white, middle class youth leading the charge. As their ideals of changing the world were frustrated by lack of systematic change, many decided to disengage and a migration to rural settings occurred (Jacob; Munro-Clarke; Newton). In the search for alternatives, the counterculture assimilated many spiritual practices, such as Eastern traditions and mysticism, which were previously obscure to the Western world. This practice of spiritual syncretism can be represented as a direct resistance to the hegemony of the dominant Western culture (Stell). As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order. A recurring feature of this countercultural ‘back to the land’ migration was not only an empathetic awareness of the injustices of colonial past, but also a genuine desire to learn from the Indigenous people of the land. Indigenous people were generally perceived as genuine opposers of Westernisation, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal and communal, thus encompassing the primary values to which the counterculture was aspiring (Smith). Cultures converged. One, a youth culture rebelling from its parent culture; the other, ancient cultures reeling from the historical conquest by the youths’ own ancestors. Such cultural intersections are rich with complex scenarios and politics. As a result, often naïve, but well-intended relations were established with Native Americans, various South American Indigenous peoples, New Zealand Maori and, as this article demonstrates, the Original People of Australia (Smith; Newton; Barr-Melej; Zolov). The 1960s protest era fostered the formation of groups aiming to address a variety of issues, and at times many supported each other. Jennifer Clarke says it was the Civil Rights movement that provided the first models of dissent by formulating a “method, ideology and language of protest” as African Americans stood up and shouted prior to other movements (2). The issue of racial empowerment was not lost on Australia’s Indigenous population. Clarke writes that during the 1960s, encouraged by events overseas and buoyed by national organisation, Aborigines “slowly embarked on a political awakening, demanded freedom from the trappings of colonialism and responded to the effects of oppression at worst and neglect at best” (4). Activism of the 1960s had the “profoundly productive effect of providing Aborigines with the confidence to assert their racial identity” (159). Many Indigenous youth were compelled by the zeitgeist to address their people’s issues, fulfilling Charlie Perkins’s intentions of inspiring in Indigenous peoples a will to resist (Perkins). Enjoying new freedoms of movement out of missions, due to the 1967 Constitutional change and the practical implementation of the assimilation policy, up to 32,000 Indigenous youth moved to Redfern, Sydney between 1967 and 1972 (Foley, “An Evening With”). Gary Foley reports that a dynamic new Black Power Movement emerged but the important difference between this new younger group and the older Indigenous leaders of the day was the diverse range of contemporary influences. Taking its mantra from the Black Panther movement in America, though having more in common with the equivalent Native American Red Power movement, the Black Power Movement acknowledged many other international struggles for independence as equally inspiring (Foley, “An Evening”). People joined together for grassroots resistance, formed anti-hierarchical collectives and established solidarities between varied groups who previously would have had little to do with each other. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was directly aligned with “back to the land” philosophies. The intention was to provide a place and a reason for gathering to “facilitate exchanges on survival techniques” and to experience “living in harmony with the natural environment.” without being destructive to the land (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Early documents in the archives, however, reveal no apparent interest in Australia’s Indigenous people, referring more to “silken Arabian tents, mediaeval banners, circus, jugglers and clowns, peace pipes, maypole and magic circles” (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Obliterated from the social landscape and minimally referred to in the Australian education system, Indigenous people were “off the radar” to the majority mindset, and the Australian counterculture similarly was slow to appreciate Indigenous culture. Like mainstream Australia, the local counterculture movement largely perceived the “race” issue as something occurring in other countries, igniting the phrase “in your own backyard” which became a catchcry of Indigenous activists (Foley, “Whiteness and Blackness”) With no mention of any Indigenous interest, it seems likely that the decision to engage grew from the emerging climate of Indigenous activism in Australia. Frustrated by student protestors who seemed oblivious to local racial issues, focusing instead on popular international injustices, Indigenous activists accused them of hypocrisy. Aquarius Festival directors, found themselves open to similar accusations when public announcements elicited a range of responses. Once committed to the location of Nimbin, directors Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen began a tour of Australian universities to promote the upcoming event. While at the annual conference of AUS in January 1973 at Monash University, Dunstan met Indigenous activist Gary Foley: Gary witnessed the presentation of Johnny Allen and myself at the Aquarius Foundation session and our jubilation that we had agreement from the village residents to not only allow, but also to collaborate in the production of the Festival. After our presentation which won unanimous support, it was Gary who confronted me with the question “have you asked permission from local Aboriginal folk?” This threw me into confusion because we had seen no Aboriginals in Nimbin. (Dunstan, e-mail) Such a challenge came at a time when the historical climate was etched with political activism, not only within the student movement, but more importantly with Indigenous activists’ recent demonstrations, such as the installation in 1972 of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. As representatives of the counterculture movement, which was characterised by its inclinations towards consciousness-raising, AUS organisers were ethically obliged to respond appropriately to the questions about Indigenous permission and involvement in the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin. In addition to this political pressure, organisers in Nimbin began hearing stories of the area being cursed or taboo for women. This most likely originated from the tradition of Nimbin Rocks, a rocky outcrop one kilometre from Nimbin, as a place where only certain men could go. Jennifer Hoff explains that many major rock formations were immensely sacred places and were treated with great caution and respect. Only a few Elders and custodians could visit these places and many such locations were also forbidden for women. Ceremonies were conducted at places like Nimbin Rocks to ensure the wellbeing of all tribespeople. Stories of the Nimbin curse began to spread and most likely captivated a counterculture interested in mysticism. As organisers had hoped that news of the festival would spread on the “lips of the counterculture,” they were alarmed to hear how “fast the bad news of this curse was travelling” (Dunstan, e-mail). A diplomatic issue escalated with further challenges from the Black Power community when organisers discovered that word had spread to Sydney’s Indigenous community in Redfern. Organisers faced a hostile reaction to their alleged cultural insensitivity and were plagued by negative publicity with accusations the AUS were “violating sacred ground” (Janice Newton 62). Faced with such bad press, Dunstan was determined to repair what was becoming a public relations disaster. It seemed once prompted to the path, a sense of moral responsibility prevailed amongst the organisers and they took the unprecedented step of reaching out to Australia’s Indigenous people. Dunstan claimed that an expedition was made to the local Woodenbong mission to consult with Elder, Uncle Lyle Roberts. To connect with local people required crossing the great social divide present in that era of Australia’s history. Amy Nethery described how from the nineteenth century to the 1960s, a “system of reserves, missions and other institutions isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people” (9). She explains that the people were incarcerated as a solution to perceived social problems. For Foley, “the widespread genocidal activity of early “settlement” gave way to a policy of containment” (Foley, “Australia and the Holocaust”). Conditions on missions were notoriously bad with alcoholism, extreme poverty, violence, serious health issues and depression common. Of particular concern to mission administrators was the perceived need to keep Indigenous people separate from the non-indigenous population. Dunstan described the mission he visited as having “bad vibes.” He found it difficult to communicate with the elderly man, and was not sure if he understood Dunstan’s quest, as his “responses came as disjointed raves about Jesus and saving grace” (Dunstan, e-mail). Uncle Lyle, he claimed, did not respond affirmatively or negatively to the suggestion that Nimbin was cursed, and so Dunstan left assuming it was not true. Other organisers began to believe the curse and worried that female festival goers might get sick or worse, die. This interpretation reflected, as Vanessa Bible argues, a general Eurocentric misunderstanding of the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the land. Paul Joseph admits they were naïve whites coming into a place with very little understanding, “we didn’t know if we needed a witch doctor or what we needed but we knew we needed something from the Aborigines to lift the spell!”(Joseph and Hanley). Joseph, one of the first “hippies” who moved to the area, had joined forces with AUS organisers. He said, “it just felt right” to get Indigenous involvement and recounted how organisers made another trip to Woodenbong Mission to find Dickee (Richard) Donnelly, a Song Man, who was very happy to be invited. Whether the curse was valid or not it proved to be productive in further instigating respectful action. Perhaps feeling out of their depth, the organisers initiated another strategy to engage with Australian Indigenous people. A call out was sent through the AUS network to diversify the cultural input and it was recommended they engage the services of South African artist, Bauxhau Stone. Timing aligned well as in 1972 Australia had voted in a new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Whitlam brought about significant political changes, many in response to socialist protests that left a buoyancy in the air for the counterculturalist movement. He made prodigious political changes in support of Indigenous people, including creating the Aboriginal Arts Board as part of the Australian Council of the Arts (ACA). As the ACA were already funding activities for the Aquarius Festival, organisers were successful in gaining two additional grants specifically for Indigenous participation (Farnham). As a result We were able to hire […] representatives, a couple of Kalahari bushmen. ‘Cause we were so dumb, we didn’t think we could speak to the black people, you know what I mean, we thought we would be rejected, or whatever, so for us to really reach out, we needed somebody black to go and talk to them, or so we thought, and it was remarkable. This one Bau, a remarkable fellow really, great artist, great character, he went all over Australia. He went to Pitjantjatjara, Yirrkala and we arranged buses and tents when they got here. We had a very large contingent of Aboriginal people come to the Aquarius Festival, thanks to Whitlam. (Joseph in Joseph and Henley) It was under the aegis of these government grants that Bauxhau Stone conducted his work. Stone embodied a nexus of contemporary issues. Acutely aware of the international movement for racial equality and its relevance to Australia, where conditions were “really appalling”, Stone set out to transform Australian race relations by engaging with the alternative arts movement (Stone). While his white Australian contemporaries may have been unaccustomed to dealing with the Indigenous racial issue, Stone was actively engaged and thus well suited to act as a cultural envoy for the Aquarius Festival. He visited several local missions, inviting people to attend and notifying them of ceremonies being conducted by respected Elders. Nimbin was then the site of the Aquarius Lifestyle and Celebration Festival, a two week gathering of alternative cultures, technologies and youth. It innovatively demonstrated its diversity of influences, attracted people from all over the world and was the first time that the general public really witnessed Australia’s counterculture (Derrett 224). As markers of cultural life, counterculture festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were as iconic as the era itself and many around the world drew on the unique Indigenous heritage of their settings in some form or another (Partridge; Perone; Broadley and Jones; Zolov). The social phenomenon of coming together to experience, celebrate and foster a sense of unity was triggered by protests, music and a simple, yet deep desire to reconnect with each other. Festivals provided an environment where the negative social pressures of race, gender, class and mores (such as clothes) were suspended and held the potential “for personal and social transformation” (St John 167). With the expressed intent to “take matters into our own hands” and try to develop alternative, innovative ways of doing things with collective participation, the Aquarius Festival thus became an optimal space for reinvigorating ancient and Indigenous ways (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). With philosophies that venerated collectivism, tribalism, connecting with the earth, and the use of ritual, the Indigenous presence at the Aquarius Festival gave attendees the opportunity to experience these values. To connect authentically with Nimbin’s landscape, forming bonds with the Traditional Owners was essential. Participants were very fortunate to have the presence of the last known initiated men of the area, Uncle Lyle Roberts and Uncle Dickee Donnely. These Elders represented the last vestiges of an ancient culture and conducted innovative ceremonies, song, teachings and created a sacred fire for the new youth they encountered in their land. They welcomed the young people and were very happy for their presence, believing it represented a revolutionary shift (Wedd; King; John Roberts; Cecil Roberts). Images 1 and 2: Ceremony and talks conducted at the Aquarius Festival (people unknown). Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Paul White. The festival thus provided an important platform for the regeneration of cultural and spiritual practices. John Roberts, nephew of Uncle Lyle, recalled being surprised by the reaction of festival participants to his uncle: “He was happy and then he started to sing. And my God … I couldn’t get near him! There was this big ring of hippies around him. They were about twenty deep!” Sharing to an enthusiastic, captive audience had a positive effect and gave the non-indigenous a direct Indigenous encounter (Cecil Roberts; King; Oshlak). Estimates of the number of Indigenous people in attendance vary, with the main organisers suggesting 800 to 1000 and participants suggesting 200 to 400 (Stone; Wedd; Oshlak: Joseph; King; Cecil Roberts). As the Festival lasted over a two week period, many came and left within that time and estimates are at best reliant on memory, engagement and perspectives. With an estimated total attendance at the Festival between 5000 and 10,000, either number of Indigenous attendees is symbolic and a significant symbolic statistic for Indigenous and non-indigenous to be together on mutual ground in Australia in 1973. Images 3-5: Performers from Yirrkala Dance Group, brought to the festival by Stone with funding from the Federal Government. Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Dr Ian Cameron. For Indigenous people, the event provided an important occasion to reconnect with their own people, to share their culture with enthusiastic recipients, as well as the chance to experience diverse aspects of the counterculture. Though the northern NSW region has a history of diverse cultural migration of Italian and Indian families, the majority of non-indigenous and Indigenous people had limited interaction with cosmopolitan influences (Kijas 20). Thus Nimbin was a conservative region and many Christianised Indigenous people were also conservative in their outlook. The Aquarius Festival changed that as the Indigenous people experienced the wide-ranging cultural elements of the alternative movement. The festival epitomised countercultural tendencies towards flamboyant fashion and hairstyles, architectural design, fantastical art, circus performance, Asian clothes and religious products, vegetarian food and nudity. Exposure to this bohemian culture would have surely led to “mind expansion and consciousness raising,” explicit aims adhered to by the movement (Roszak). Performers and participants from Africa, America and India also gave attending Indigenous Australians the opportunity to interact with non-European cultures. Many people interviewed for this paper indicated that Indigenous people’s reception of this festival experience was joyous. For Australia’s early counterculture, interest in Indigenous Australia was limited and for organisers of the AUS Aquarius Festival, it was not originally on the agenda. The counterculture in the USA and New Zealand had already started to engage with their Indigenous people some years earlier. However due to the Aquarius Festival’s origins in the student movement and its solidarities with the international Indigenous activist movement, they were forced to shift their priorities. The coincidental selection of a significant spiritual location at Nimbin to hold the festival brought up additional challenges and countercultural intrigue with mystical powers and a desire to connect authentically to the land, further prompted action. Essentially, it was the voices of empowered Indigenous activists, like Gary Foley, which in fact triggered the reaching out to Indigenous involvement. While the counterculture organisers were ultimately receptive and did act with unprecedented respect, credit must be given to Indigenous activists. The activist’s role is to trigger action and challenge thinking and in this case, it was ultimately productive. Therefore the Indigenous people were not merely passive recipients of beneficiary goodwill, but active instigators of appropriate cultural exchange. After the 1973 festival many attendees decided to stay in Nimbin to purchase land collectively and a community was born. Relationships established with local Indigenous people developed further. Upon visiting Nimbin now, one will see a vibrant visual display of Indigenous and psychedelic themed art, a central park with an open fire tended by local custodians and other Indigenous community members, an Aboriginal Centre whose rent is paid for by local shopkeepers, and various expressions of a fusion of counterculture and Indigenous art, music and dance. While it appears that reconciliation became the aspiration for mainstream society in the 1990s, Nimbin’s early counterculture history had Indigenous reconciliation at its very foundation. The efforts made by organisers of the 1973 Aquarius Festival stand as one of very few examples in Australian history where non-indigenous Australians have respectfully sought to learn from Indigenous people and to assimilate their cultural practices. It also stands as an example for the world, of reconciliation, based on hippie ideals of peace and love. 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