Journal articles on the topic 'Halls Creek Region (W A )'

This paper describes the collaboration between an Aboriginal community and Western Australia's (WA) Department for Child Protection (DCP) in designing and operating a residential child care facility in a predominantly Aboriginal community. Research literature has established that the effective operation of child protection systems in remote Aboriginal communities requires practitioners and policy-makers to have awareness of local and extra-local cultural, historical and contemporary social factors in nurturing children. This ethnographic case study describes how a newspaper campaign heightened public and professional awareness of child abuse in the town of Halls Creek, in WA's Kimberley region. With its largely Aboriginal population, Halls Creek lacked the infrastructure to accommodate an inflow of regional people. Homelessness, neglect and poverty were widespread. Within a broader government and local response, DCP joined with community leaders to plan out of home care for children. Detailed are the importance and complexities of negotiating between universal standardised models of care and local input. Strategies for building positive relationships with children's family while strengthening both parenting capacity and community acceptance, and use of the facility are identified. Key to success was the development of a collaborative ‘third-space’ for threading together local and professional child protection knowledge.

The Australian endemic humicolous and hygropetric water beetle genus Tympanogaster Perkins, 1979, is revised, based on the study of 7,280 specimens. The genus is redescribed, and redescriptions are provided for T. cornuta (Janssens), T. costata (Deane), T. deanei Perkins, T. macrognatha (Lea), T. novicia (Blackburn), T. obcordata (Deane), T. schizolabra (Deane), and T. subcostata (Deane). Lectotypes are designated for Ochthebius labratus Deane, 1933, and Ochthebius macrognathus Lea, 1926. Ochthebius labratus Deane, 1933, is synonymized with Ochthebius novicius Blackburn, 1896. Three new subgenera are described: Hygrotympanogaster new subgenus (type species Tympanogaster (Hygrotympanogaster) maureenae new species; Topotympanogaster new subgenus (type species Tympanogaster (Topotympanogaster) crista new species; and Plesiotympanogaster new genus (type species Tympanogaster (Plesiotympanogaster) thayerae new species. Seventy-six new species are described, and keys to the subgenera, species groups, and species are given. High resolution digital images of all primary types are presented (online version in color), and geographic distributions are mapped. Male genitalia, representative spermathecae and representative mouthparts are illustrated. Scanning electron micrographs of external morphological characters of adults and larvae are presented. Selected morphological features of the other members of the subtribe Meropathina, Meropathus Enderlein and Tympallopatrum Perkins, are illustrated and compared with those of Tympanogaster. Species of Tympanogaster are typically found in the relict rainforest patches in eastern Australia. Most species have very limited distributions, and relict rainforest patches often have more than one endemic species. The only species currently known from the arid center of Australia, T. novicia, has the widest distribution pattern, ranging into eastern rainforest patches. There is a fairly close correspondence between subgenera and microhabitat preferences. Members of Tympanogaster (s. str.) live in the splash zone, usually on stream boulders, or on bedrock stream margins. The majority of T. (Hygrotympanogaster) species live in the hygropetric zone at the margins of waterfalls, or on steep rockfaces where water is continually trickling; a few rare species have been collected from moss in Nothofagus rainforests. Species of T. (Plesiotympanogaster) have been found in both hygropetric microhabitats and in streamside moss. The exact microhabitats of T. (Topotympanogaster) are unknown, but the morphology of most species suggests non-aquatic habits; most specimens have been collected in humicolous microhabitats, by sifting rainforest debris, or were taken in flight intercept traps. Larvae of hygropetric species are often collected with adults. These larvae have tube-like, dorsally positioned, mesothoracic spiracles that allow the larvae to breathe while under a thin film of water. The key morphological differences between larvae of Tympanogaster (s. str.) and those of Tympanogaster (Hygrotympanogaster) are illustrated. New species of Tympanogaster are: T. (s. str.) aldinga (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek), T. (s. str.) amaroo (New South Wales, Back Creek, downstream of Moffatt Falls), T. (s. str.) ambigua (Queensland, Cairns), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) arcuata (New South Wales, Kara Creek, 13 km NEbyE of Jindabyne), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) atroargenta (Victoria, Possum Hollow falls, West branch Tarwin River, 5.6 km SSW Allambee), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) barronensis (Queensland, Barron Falls, Kuranda), T. (s. str.) bluensis (New South Wales, Blue Mountains), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) bondi (New South Wales, Bondi Heights), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) bryosa (New South Wales, New England National Park), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) buffalo (Victoria, Mount Buffalo National Park), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) canobolas (New South Wales, Mount Canobolas Park), T. (s. str.) cardwellensis (Queensland, Cardwell Range, Goddard Creek), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) cascadensis (New South Wales, Cascades Campsite, on Tuross River), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) clandestina (Victoria, Grampians National Park, Golton Gorge, 7.0 km W Dadswells Bridge), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) clypeata (Victoria, Grampians National Park, Golton Gorge, 7.0 km W Dadswells Bridge), T. (s. str.) cooloogatta (New South Wales, New England National Park, Five Day Creek), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) coopacambra (Victoria, Beehive Falls, ~2 km E of Cann Valley Highway on 'WB Line'), T. (Topotympanogaster) crista (Queensland, Mount Cleveland summit), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) cudgee (New South Wales, New England National Park, 0.8 km S of Pk. Gate), T. (s. str.) cunninghamensis (Queensland, Main Range National Park, Cunningham's Gap, Gap Creek), T. (s. str.) darlingtoni (New South Wales, Barrington Tops), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) decepta (Victoria, Mount Buffalo National Park), T. (s. str.) dingabledinga (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek, upstream from Coachwood Falls), T. (s. str.) dorrigoensis (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek, upstream from Coachwood Falls), T. (Topotympanogaster) dorsa (Queensland, Windin Falls, NW Mount Bartle-Frere), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) duobifida (Victoria, 0.25 km E Binns, Hill Junction, adjacent to Jeeralang West Road, 4.0 km S Jeerelang), T. (s. str.) eungella (Queensland, Finch Hatton Gorge), T. (Topotympanogaster) finniganensis (Queensland, Mount Finnigan summit), T. (s. str.) foveova (New South Wales, Border Ranges National Park, Brindle Creek), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) grampians (Victoria, Grampians National Park, Epacris Falls, 2.5 km WNW Halls Gap), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) gushi (New South Wales, Mount Canobolas Park), T. (s. str.) hypipamee (Queensland, Mount Hypipamee National Park, Barron River headwaters below Dinner Falls), T. (s. str.) illawarra (New South Wales, Macquarie Rivulet Falls, near Wollongong), T. (Topotympanogaster) intricata (Queensland, Mossman Bluff Track, 5–10 km W Mossman), T. (s. str.) jaechi (Queensland, Running Creek, along road between Mount Chinghee National Park and Border Ranges National Park), T. (Topotympanogaster) juga (Queensland, Mount Lewis summit), T. kuranda (Queensland, Barron Falls, Kuranda), T. (s. str.) lamingtonensis (Queensland, Lamington National Park, Lightening Creek), T. (s. str.) magarra (New South Wales, Border Ranges National Park, Brindle Creek), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) maureenae (New South Wales, Back Creek, Moffatt Falls, ca. 5 km W New England National Park boundary), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) megamorpha (Victoria, Possum Hollow falls, W br. Tarwin River, 5.6 km SSW Allambee), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) merrijig (Victoria, Merrijig), T. (s. str.) millaamillaa (Queensland, Millaa Millaa), T. modulatrix (Victoria, Talbot Creek at Thomson Valley Road, 4.25 km WSW Beardmore), T. (Topotympanogaster) monteithi (Queensland, Mount Bartle Frere), T. moondarra (New South Wales, Border Ranges National Park, Brindle Creek), T. (s. str.) mysteriosa (Queensland), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) nargun (Victoria, Deadcock Den, on Den of Nargun Creek, Mitchell River National Park), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) newtoni (Victoria, Mount Buffalo National Park), T. (s. str.) ovipennis (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek, upstream from Coachwood Falls), T. (s. str.) pagetae (New South Wales, Back Creek, downstream of Moffatt Falls), T. (Topotympanogaster) parallela (Queensland, Mossman Bluff Track, 5–10 km W Mossman), T. (s. str.) perpendicula (Queensland, Mossman Bluff Track, 5–10 km W Mossman), T. plana (Queensland, Cape Tribulation), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) porchi (Victoria, Tarra-Bulga National Park, Tarra Valley Road, 1.5 km SE Tarra Falls), T. (s. str.) precariosa (New South Wales, Leycester Creek, 4 km. S of Border Ranges National Park), T. (s. str.) protecta (New South Wales, Leycester Creek, 4 km. S of Border Ranges National Park), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) punctata (Victoria, Mount Buffalo National Park, Eurobin Creek), T. (s. str.) ravenshoensis (Queensland, Ravenshoe State Forest, Charmillan Creek, 12 km SE Ravenshoe), T. (s. str.) robinae (New South Wales, Back Creek, downstream of Moffatt Falls), T. (s. str.) serrata (Queensland, Natural Bridge National Park, Cave Creek), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) spicerensis (Queensland, Spicer’s Peak summit), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) storeyi (Queensland, Windsor Tableland), T. (Topotympanogaster) summa (Queensland, Mount Elliott summit), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) tabula (New South Wales, Mount Canobolas Park), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) tallawarra (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek, Cedar Falls), T. (s. str.) tenax (New South Wales, Salisbury), T. (Plesiotympanogaster) thayerae (Tasmania, Liffey Forest Reserve at Liffey River), T. (s. str.) tora (Queensland, Palmerston National Park), T. trilineata (New South Wales, Sydney), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) truncata (Queensland, Tambourine Mountain), T. (s. str.) volata (Queensland, Palmerston National Park, Learmouth Creek, ca. 14 km SE Millaa Millaa), T. (Hygrotympanogaster) wahroonga (New South Wales, Wahroonga), T. (s. str.) wattsi (New South Wales, Blicks River near Dundurrabin), T. (s. str.) weiri (New South Wales, Allyn River, Chichester State Forest), T. (s. str.) wooloomgabba (New South Wales, New England National Park, Five Day Creek).

Arenaceous foraminifera from the upper Albian Viking Formation and associated strata are recorded and charted from five wells in the northwestern portion of the West Alberta Basin, viz. Gulf Giroux Lake 04-11-66-21W5, Candel Arco Giroux Lake 00/10-05-65-20W5, Pan Am B-1 Giroux 02/10-05-65-20W5, Calstan B.A. Kaybob W 02-28-63-20W5, and Chevron Fox Creek 10-15-62-19W5. An anomalous calcareous foraminiferal component in three Gulf Giroux Lake samples is illustrated. Ichnological, sedimentological, and stratigraphic studies of the Viking Formation strata, based on 26 cored intervals, indicate largely transgressive, shallow-marine deposition in the area. The microfaunal and ichnological assemblages indicate a general increase in salinity toward normal marine conditions. Facies analysis demonstrates the stacking of two shoreface parasequences, truncated by wave-ravinement surfaces. The calcareous foraminifera in the Viking Formation are associated with abundant and diverse arenaceous foraminifera, with arctic affinities that we have used for determining the microfaunal zone positions. Biostratigraphic correlation has been made with a calcareous faunule in the lower part of the Hasler Formation, within the expanded Fort St. John Group, found in the southern portion of the Keg River subbasin, Hudson Hope region, northeastern British Columbia. This helps to resolve the problem of correlating the stratigraphically equivalent Paddy Member at the type section near the town of Peace River, Alberta.

The study evaluated the concentrations of some chemical elements namely Copper (Cu), M anganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn) , Chromium (Cr), Nickel (Ni) and Lead (Pb) in the mangrove oyster ( Crossostrea gasar ) and water from Golubo creek in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, to ascertain the impact of these metals on the investigated ecosystem. T he evaluation was carried out using Atomic Absorption spectroscopy technique. The mean concentrations of the aforementioned elements in C.gasar were 1.06 mg/kg, 0.38 mg/kg, 50.13 mg/kg, 0.14 mg/kg, 0.39 mg/kg and 1.55 mg/kg , respectively while the m ean concentrations of the elements in water were 0.65 mg/l, 0.04 mg/l, 16.47 mg/l, 0.86 mg/l, 0.85 mg/ l and 1.50 mg/l , respectively. Copper , Manganese, Zinc and Lead were bioaccumulated by C.gasar while the estimated daily intake of these elements ranged from 0.0056 mg/person/day for Chromium to 2.0 1 mg/person/day for Zinc . The M aximum Acceptable Risk values for Copper , Manganese, Zinc , Chromium, Nickel and Lead in C. gasar were 0.79, 0.05, 24.67, 0.94, 1.08 and 1.94, respectively. T he Toxicity Quotient values for the chemical elements in C.gasar ranged from 0.66 for Zinc to 0.93 for Chromium while in the case of water , the range was from 0.65 for Copper to 1.5 for Lead. With regard to health risk to man, the mean concentrations of the chemical elements in the oysters, did not exceed the Federal Environmental Protection Agency ( FEPA ) maximum allowable limit for chemical elements in food. The mean concentrations of these metals in the bivalve were , therefore , within health limits and therefore do not present an immediate health threat to consumers . It w as observed that the mean concentrations of the chemical elements in water were generally below the FEPA maximum allowable limits for chemical elements in drinking water with the exception of Lead . The study , thus , revealed that there is a potential health risk to man as a result of consuming Pb- contaminated water . Based on the findings from this study, it is advocated that the creek be closely monitored for toxic metals in order to avert the occurrence of episodic ecological accidents.

The Tintina Trench in west-central Yukon has preserved an extensive record of late Cenozoic preglacial, glacial, and interglacial deposits. These deposits comprise multiple sequences of tills, outwash, loesses, and paleosols. The sediments that were laid down directly by ice (tills) are of both local (montane) and regional (Cordilleran) provenance. The Tintina Trench area was impacted repeatedly by montane ice from the southern Ogilvie Mountains to the northwest (2500 m above sea level (asl)), and also repeatedly along its southern extent by Cordilleran ice from the Selwyn Mountains to the east (2759 m asl), the latter forming the continental divide in this region. We report here the magnetostratigraphy of three sections: Rock Creek (64°13′N, 139°07′W), West Fifteenmile River (64°29′N, 139°55′W), and East Fifteenmile River (64°23′N, 139°48′W). The majority of the units identified at these sections record late Pliocene to mid-Pleistocene glaciations, although relatively thin surficial sequences of late middle Pleistocene to late Pleistocene loesses and tills are present as well. Of the 11 units described in the Tintina Trench, seven have normal polarity, three have reversed polarity, and one has an undefined polarity. These units span about 3.0 million years. It appears that most of the polarity chrons and subchrons of the late Cenozoic are present and that the sequence of six reversals record at least 10 glaciations (three in the Brunhes Chron and seven in the Matuyama Chron), and 11 interglaciations (four in the Brunhes Chron and seven in the Matuyama Chron). The interglacials are recorded as either paleosols or unconformities between glacial or loess units having opposite polarity. While not all Matuyama Chron glacial and interglacial cycles recorded in marine isotopic records are seen on land, the terrestrial records found in the Tintina Trench have thus far proven to be the most complete in terms of the polarity record. While no absolute ages were obtained from the sediments in the trench, the extensive polarity sequence constrains the timing of glaciations to a considerably greater degree than was previously possible for this region. The magnetostratigraphy of the trench sites are compared with the glacial, glaciofluvial, and loessic deposits at the nearby Klondike River valley and Fort Selkirk sites, central Yukon, where tephras and basalts provide absolute ages, and stratigraphic units contain an extensive late Cenozoic climate proxy for northwestern North America (eastern Beringia). In this study, we present new paleomagnetic polarity data and establish a magneto-lithostratigraphy describing preglacial, glacial, and interglacial deposits in the Tintina Trench. These deposits are referred to as the West Tintina Trench Allogroup and provide a broad framework for establishing a paleoclimate record for the northern Canadian Cordillera.

The discovery of gold in Australia forced many changes to theory on the occurrence and origin of gold deposits. Initial discoveries appeared to confirm existing ideas on the global distribution of gold-bearing terrains. Later discoveries and research would show that this confirmation was largely coincidental, but nevertheless helpful in early prospecting. Prior to the first Australian gold rush, theoretical predictions of payable gold were made by Sir Roderick Murchison and Rev. W. B. Clarke based on knowledge of accidental gold finds and geological analogy with known areas of significant gold occurrence, particularly the Ural region in Russia. These predictions were overwhelmed when Edward Hargraves, realised he might be able to spark a gold rush that would prove the existence of payable gold. Hargraves travelled to the Bathurst region of New South Wales where numerous gold finds had already been made and with local guides, prospected Lewis Ponds Creek and the Macquarie River. He demonstrated the methods of alluvial mining, to John Lister and William and James Tom enabling them to find sufficient alluvial gold to initiate a gold rush. The crowd of attracted diggers demonstrated the existence of a payable goldfield. The unstoppable first rush resulted in the pragmatic introduction of government regulation and administration to allow alluvial gold mining. Other discoveries of payable goldfields quickly followed. As the local scientific expert on gold, W. B. Clarke was commissioned to conduct two extensive surveys of the goldfields between 1851 and 1853. Clarke also drew on his geological knowledge to provide practical advice to the thousands of prospecting gold diggers. Gold-bearing quartz reefs and lodes were discovered, but it was predicted that these could not be mined economically. Theory also predicted that the reef gold would not continue to depth. Practical observations and mining experience from the numerous discoveries led to revision of the widely held dicta on gold occurrence. Alluvial gold was found in a range of settings, including the recent drainage and ancient and buried leads. A wider variety of rock types was recognised as favourable for gold. Different styles of reef gold were identified and found to be economically mineable to great depth. Evolving ideas on the origin of gold deposits were widely discussed, tested, and refined. Of the many players involved in the early discovery of gold in Australia, Clarke, Hargraves and Murchison probably had the greatest overall influence in terms of theoretical predication and practical outcomes that initiated the Australian gold-mining industry.

During his life, Wojciech Kętrzyński was a renowned and valued historian, librarian and publicist. Many obituaries and commemorations appeared in magazines and academic journals after his death. The employees of the Lviv Ossolineum made sure to preserve the memory of their director also outside the town. In Lviv, Kętrzyński has had a street and one of the reading halls in Ossolineum named after him. His poems and memoir were pub-lished, along with some commemorations dedicated to his achievements. The memory of Kętrzyński has also lasted in southern parts of Eastern Prussia. Michał Kajka translated his poems into Polish, while Emilia Sukerto-wa-Biedrawina in Działdowo published articles about Kętrzyński in her calendars. After 1945, as Polish borders encompassed those parts of Eastern Prussia, Kętrzyński became a reclaimant, even a warrior of Polishness. In his honour, the town of Rastenburg was renamed to Kętrzyn. He has had streets and schools named after him. The research on Kętrzyński’s activities gained momentum with the establishment of the Wojciech Kętrzyński Centre for Scientific Research (Pol. Ośrodek Badań Naukowych, OBN) in Olsztyn. Thanks to the efforts of OBN, a Polish plaque appeared at Kętrzyński’s grave, which was found by Leonard Turkowski in 1969 at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. In 2008, the tombstone was renovated as a result of the activity of Kętrzyn authorities. When the old pre-War fragment of the tombstone was found in 2016, it was returned to its proper place, while the medallion with Kętrzyński’s image was gifted by Kętrzyn authorities to the Wrocław Ossolineum. The memory of Kętrzyński in Warmia and Masuria was preserved by publishing his poems and research articles O ludności polskiej w Prusiech niegdyś krzyżackich [Eng. On Polish people in the previously Teutonic Prussia]. Numerous academic conferences confirmed the current nature of Kętrzyński’s conclusions. The Marshall of the Warmińsko-Mazurskie voivode-ship established an all-Poland award in humanities named after Kętrzyński, contributing to the movement of commemorating the researcher in the region and in Poland. This paper summarises all such activities during the 100-years period since Wojciech Kętrzyński’s death.

Ruth's golden aster (Pityopsis ruthii (Small) Small: Asteraceae) is an endangered, herbaceous perennial that occurs only at a few sites along the Hiwassee and Ocoee rivers in Polk County, Tennessee. This species is drought, heat, and submergence tolerant and has ornamental potential as a fall flowering landscape plant. In 2012, we vegetatively propagated various genotypes and established plantings in a landscape at Poplarville, Mississippi. In June and July of 2013, during periods of hot and humid weather, several well-established plants exhibited black or brown necrotic aerial blight symptoms including desiccation of stems and leaves. Blighted leaf samples were surface sterilized (10% commercial bleach, active ingredient 8.25% sodium hypochlorite, 1 min), rinsed in sterile water, air-dried, and plated on 2% water agar amended with 3.45 mg fenpropathrin/liter (Danitol 2.4 EC, Valent Chemical, Walnut Creek, CA) and 10 mg/liter rifampicin (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO). Rhizoctonia sp. was identified based on hyphal morphology and cultures were maintained on potato dextrose agar. Colonies were fast growing, consisting of light tan to brown mycelia and tufts of crystalline aerial hyphae. Within 10 days, brown exudates were present in cultures and there was no pigmented reverse to the agar. Hyphae were a mean of 5.2 μm wide (4.6 to 6.1 μm; n = 10) and each compartment contained three or more nuclei. Hyphae were constricted at septa with right angle branching and no clamp connections, which is typical for Rhizoctonia solani (1). Light- to medium-brown, oblong to irregularly shaped sclerotia measuring 1.2 mm long (0.7 to 2.1 mm) × 0.9 mm wide (0.5 to 1.2 mm; n = 20) were formed in cultures after 3 weeks of growth. Total genomic DNA was extracted from two different colonies grown in potato dextrose broth for 7 days, amplified with PCR using ITS1 and ITS4 primers for amplification of the 18S rDNA subunit (2), the products purified, and sequenced. A consensus sequence of 657 bp was deposited in GenBank (Accession Nos. KF843729 and KF843730) and was 96% identical to two R. solani Kühn ITS sequences in GenBank (HF678125 and HF678122). R. solani was grown on twice autoclaved oats for 2 weeks at 21°C and incorporated into Pro-Mix BX, low fertility soilless medium (Premier Horticulture, Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, Canada) at 4% (w/w) to inoculate seven P. ruthii plants grown in 10 cm-diameter pots; seven additional plants were grown in the same medium amended with 4% (w/w) sterile oats. Plants were grown in a greenhouse and covered with a plastic dome to maintain high humidity. After 2 weeks, six of the seven inoculated plants exhibited the same aerial blight symptoms as did the original infected plants from the field; none of the control plants developed disease symptoms. Colony morphology and hyphal characteristics as well as the sequence for the ITS region of rDNA from the re-isolated fungus were identical to the original isolate. To our knowledge, this is the first report of R. solani infecting Ruth's golden aster. We are not aware of the disease occurring in wild populations of the plant, but may impact plants grown in the landscape or greenhouse. References: (1) B. Sneh et al. Identification of Rhizoctonia Species. The American Phytopathological Society, St Paul, MN, 1991. (2) T. J. White et al. Page 315 in: PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications. M. A. Innis et al., eds. Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1990.

The citrus industries of North and South America are endangered by Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening, a devastating disease associated with ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’ and ‘Ca. L. americanus’, two species of fastidious phloem-limited bacteria spread by the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri, Kuwayama. The first reports of HLB from the Americas were from Brazil in 2004 followed by Florida in 2005 (3). The ACP was found in Belize in 2005 (S. Williams, personal communication) and is now present throughout Central America. On the basis of the report that the HLB-associated bacteria can be easily detected in the ACP vector (4), an initial sampling of ACP from 67 locations was collected in February 2009 from trees in the Belize, Corozal, Orange Walk, Stann Creek, and Toledo Districts of Belize, and shipped in 95% ethanol to Riverside, CA for analysis. DNA was extracted from lots containing three to five psyllids from each of the 67 samples with Fast DNA kits (MP Biomedicals, Solon, OH) and analyzed by multiplex qPCR for ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ and ‘Ca. L. americanus’ with a Stratagene MX3005P thermocycler with primers and Taqman probes to detect the 16sRNA gene of ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ or ‘Ca. L. americanus’ and a psyllid gene, wingless, as an internal control target (4). Nine of the sixty-seven psyllid extractions were clearly positive for ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ with cycle threshold values of 24 to 29. ‘Ca. L. americanus’ was not detected in any of the samples. From the districts previously sampled for ACP, leaves and fruit peduncles were collected from Citrus sinensis and C. aurantifolia plants showing HLB symptoms of asymmetrical leaf mottle and lopsided fruit with aborted seeds. DNA extracted from 10 of the 12 plant samples with a Qiagen Plant DNeasy kit (Qiagen Inc., Valencia, CA) was positive for ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ with the qPCR procedure of Li et al (3). The presence of ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ in the positive plant and ACP samples was corroborated by amplification, cloning, and sequencing of a 1,168-bp region of the 16S rRNA gene (2) with SpeedSTAR HS DNA polymerase (TaKaRa Bio Inc., Shiga, Japan). Consensus sequences obtained from three clones each from psyllids (Accession No. GQ502291) and plants (Accession No. GU061003) showed >99% identity to corresponding regions of ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ in GenBank. The presence of ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ was further indicated by amplification of a 227-bp fragment from the same 10 positive plant samples using primers for the ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ preprotein translocase subunit SecE gene (nucleotides 31418 to 31644 of the genomic DNA) (1). Presence of trees with HLB symptoms and the detection of the associated ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ confirm the disease in the Cayo, Corozal, Stann Creek, and Toledo districts in Belize. Analyses of psyllids from limited surveys conducted from 2006 to 2008 had not detected ‘Ca. L. asiaticus’ or ‘Ca. L. americanus’. Confirmation of HLB in Belize has significant implications to the citrus industries in Central America. References: (1) T. H. Hung et al. J. Phytopathol. 147:599, 1999. (2) S. Jagoueix et al. Mol. Cell. Probes 10:43, 1996. (3) W. Li et al. J. Microbiol. Methods 66:104, 2006. (4) K. L. Manjunath et al. Phytopathology 98:387, 2008.

Abstract The 23 November 1984 ML 5.8 Round Valley earthquake is one in a series of moderate (ML ≈ 6) earthquakes to have occurred in the Bishop-Mammoth Lakes, California, area since 1978. This earthquake and its aftershock sequence occurred within a dense seismic network, and hypocentral location quality is excellent. In a previous study, we determined that the Round Valley sequence involved faulting on a conjugate set of fault planes; one, a near-vertical plane striking N30°E, the mainshock fault plane showing principally left-lateral strike-slip motion, and another subperpendicular to the mainshock fault plane striking N40°W and dipping 55°NE, exhibiting dominantly right-lateral strike slip. This conjugate fault plane conforms to a postulated extension of the Hilton Creek fault and is the only significant activity on this structure in the 12-year Bishop-Mammoth Lakes earthquake sequence. Source dimensions and stress drops for 87 aftershocks (ML 2.8 to 4.2) of the Round Valley sequence have been determined using an adaptation of the initial P-wave pulse width time-domain deconvolution technique of Frankel and Kanamori (1983). The aftershock sequence is confined to a limited volume of crust. We have shown that site and instrument effects and not whole-path attenuation control the minimum pulse widths for this limited region. The determination of a site minimum pulse width, rather than a minimum pulse width for each source receiver pair as in the Frankel and Kanamori study, makes the deconvolution procedure practical for processing the large numbers of events in an aftershock sequence. With the large data set available for the Round Valley aftershock sequence, patterns of the stress drop along the active fault planes can be seen in detail. Source radii systematically increase with magnitude from about 100 m for events near magnitude 3.0 to 500 m for events near magnitude 4.0. Static stress drops range from 10 to 200 bars and are not strongly correlated with magnitude or depth. The stress release pattern reveals a broad stress drop low (Δσ ≈ 10 bars) for aftershocks within the mainshock fault plane that is consistent with other evidence of the rupture surface of the Round Valley mainshock. Higher stress release occurs above and below the mainshock rupture surface and on the shallower, conjugate fault plane. Further distant from the rupture surface of the mainshock, stress drops decrease to average values. On the conjugate fault surface, stress drops are seen to be high in areas that may be interpreted as “off-fault” clusters with respect to the mainshock rupture surface.

Abstract The Cenomanian–Turonian Eagle Ford Shale of south Texas occupies an important gateway between the Western Interior Seaway (WIS) of North America and the Gulf of Mexico. While the Eagle Ford north of the San Marcos Arch and its stratigraphic equivalents to the east of the Sabine Arch are shallow-water sediments dominated by terrigenous clastics, the more distal localities in south Texas are dominated by hemi-pelagic carbonates draped over an Early Cretaceous carbonate platform, called the Comanche Platform, and adjacent submarine plateaus and basins. This region was strongly affected by major oceanographic changes during the Cenomanian-Turonian, particularly a significant transgression that drove localized upwelling and organic matter burial in the Lower Eagle Ford prior to the global Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2). These pre-OAE2 organic-rich shales are the basis of Eagle Ford shale gas play, which has spurred commercial and academic research into many aspects of the geology of the Eagle Ford Group. Much of this research has been fairly locally focused, and little effort has been made to understand the timing of events across the platform. We compared new data from three study sites across south Texas—Lozier Canyon in Terrell Co.; Bouldin Creek in Travis Co., near the San Marcos Arch in the center of the Comanche Platform; and Swift Energy's Fasken Core in Webb Co., off the platform on the Rio Grande Submarine Plateau—as well as published data from near Big Bend National Park on the western margin, and from Atacosta and Karnes counties on the eastern margin. Using these data we document the occurrence of key foraminiferal species across the platform and present a regional biostratigraphic scheme incorporating five global planktic foraminiferal zones (and contemporaneous occurrences that may serve as proxies for the zonal markers, which tend to be rare in Texas) and four local origination or acme events that serve as useful secondary markers. The succession of events is: 1) highest occurrence (HO) Favusella washitensis, 2) lowest occurrence (LO) Rotalipora cushmani, 3) “Benthonic Zone”, 4) HO R. cushmani and/or Thalmaninella greenhornensis, 5) “Heterohelix shift”, 6) LO “Anomalina W”, 7) LO Helvetoglobotruncana helvetica, 8) HO H. sp., and 9) LO Dicarinella concavata. Overall, we show that lithologic and geochemical trends through most of the Eagle Ford, particularly the oxygenation at the onset of OAE2 and the concurrent shift to more carbonate-rich lithologies, are synchronous across the Comanche Platform. However, the transition from the Eagle Ford Group to the Austin Chalk varies in age. While Austin Chalk deposition began in the middle Turonian Marginotruncana schneegansi Zone on the Rio Grande Submarine Plateau, a transgressive surface on the Comanche Platform (known as the “Rubble Zone” in central Texas) represents a condensed interval at the top of the Eagle Ford that ends in the upper Turonian D. concavata Zone. This is part of a transgressive disconformity that extends north through the WIS, where it is associated with the Juana Lopez Calcarenite.

AbstractFloods generate both risks and benefits. In Langhorne Creek, South Australia, a historically-embedded system of shared floodwater management exists among farmers, who rely on semi-regular flood inundations as part of the region’s hydrosocial terroir – a dynamic conjunction of water, landscape, social relations and agricultural practice. Unruly floods coexist with a heavily regulated and precisely measured system of modern water management for viticultural irrigation across the region. Since the mid-twentieth century, groundwater extraction and new pipeline schemes have linked Langhorne Creek to the Murray Darling Basin water management system, which has displaced flooding as the primary source of irrigation water. The associated modernist shift towards the rationalization of water as a measurable resource has acted to sideline flood irrigation. Yet, floods maintain important viticultural, ecological and social roles in Langhorne Creek, adding to the flexibility and resilience of the region in response to water management challenges. The system involves technological and infrastructural components, such as flood gates and channels, but also relies upon the cooperation and coordination of community members. Local vignerons suggest that flood irrigation is environmentally as well as economically beneficial, rejuvenating riparian wetlands along watercourses. A more formal acknowledgement of the specific regional experiences of water management in a wine region like Langhorne Creek helps to fill a gap between emplaced and hydrosocial understandings of flood irrigation and broader assumptions about flooding as wasteful and inefficient.

Identifying the offshore thrust faults of the Western Transverse Ranges that could produce large earthquakes and seafloor uplift is essential to assess potential geohazards for the region. The Western Transverse Ranges in southern California are an E-W trending fold-and-thrust system that extends offshore west of Ventura. Using a high-resolution seismic CHIRP dataset, we have identified the Last Glacial Transgressive Surface (LGTS) and two Holocene seismostratigraphic units. Deformation of the LGTS, together with onlapping packages that exhibit divergence and rotation across the active structures, provide evidence for three to four deformational events with vertical uplifts ranging from 1 to 10 m. Based on the depth of the LGTS and the Holocene sediment thickness, age estimates for the deformational events reveal a good correlation with the onshore paleoseismological results for the Ventura-Pitas Point fault and the Ventura-Avenue anticline. The observed deformation along the offshore segments of the Ventura-Pitas Point fault and Ventura-Avenue anticline trend diminishes toward the west. Farther north, the deformation along the offshore Red Mountain anticline also diminishes to the west with the shortening stepping north onto the Mesa-Rincon Creek fault system. These observations suggest that offshore deformation along the fault-fold structures moving westward is systematically stepping to the north toward the hinterland. The decrease in the amount of deformation along the frontal structures towards the west corresponds to an increase in deformation along the hinterland fold systems, which could result from a connection of the fault strands at depth. A connection at depth of the northward dipping thrusts to a regional master detachment may explain the apparent jump of the deformation moving west, from the Ventura-Pitas Point fault and the Ventura-Avenue anticline to the Red Mountain anticline, and then, from the Red Mountain anticline to the Mesa-Rincon Creek fold system. Finally, considering the maximum vertical uplift estimated for events on these structures (max ∼10 m), along with the potential of a common master detachment that may rupture in concert, this system could generate a large magnitude earthquake (>Mw 7.0) and a consequent tsunami.

Introduction Eating is one of the most quintessential activities of human life. Because of this primacy, eating is, as food anthropologist Sidney Mintz has observed, “not merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity as well” (48). This article posits that the current awareness of climate change in the Western world is animating such cultural activity as the Slow Food movement and is, as a result, stimulating what could be seen as an evolutionary change in popular foodways. Moreover, this paper suggests that, in line with modelling provided by the Slow Food example, an increased awareness of the connections of climate change to the social injustices of food production might better drive social change in such areas. This discussion begins by proposing that contemporary foodways—defined as “not only what is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food” (Davey 182)—are changing in the West in relation to current concerns about climate change. Such modification has a long history. Since long before the inception of modern Homo sapiens, natural climate change has been a crucial element driving hominidae evolution, both biologically and culturally in terms of social organisation and behaviours. Macroevolutionary theory suggests evolution can dramatically accelerate in response to rapid shifts in an organism’s environment, followed by slow to long periods of stasis once a new level of sustainability has been achieved (Gould and Eldredge). There is evidence that ancient climate change has also dramatically affected the rate and course of cultural evolution. Recent work suggests that the end of the last ice age drove the cultural innovation of animal and plant domestication in the Middle East (Zeder), not only due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall, but also to a higher level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which made agriculture increasingly viable (McCorriston and Hole, cited in Zeder). Megadroughts during the Paleolithic might well have been stimulating factors behind the migration of hominid populations out of Africa and across Asia (Scholz et al). Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern anthropogenically induced global warming—in all its’ climate altering manifestations—may be driving a new wave of cultural change and even evolution in the West as we seek a sustainable homeostatic equilibrium with the environment of the future. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed some of the threats that modern industrial agriculture poses to environmental sustainability. This prompted a public debate from which the modern environmental movement arose and, with it, an expanding awareness and attendant anxiety about the safety and nutritional quality of contemporary foods, especially those that are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and/or are highly processed. This environmental consciousness led to some modification in eating habits, manifest by some embracing wholefood and vegetarian dietary regimes (or elements of them). Most recently, a widespread awareness of climate change has forced rapid change in contemporary Western foodways, while in other climate related areas of socio-political and economic significance such as energy production and usage, there is little evidence of real acceleration of change. Ongoing research into the effects of this expanding environmental consciousness continues in various disciplinary contexts such as geography (Eshel and Martin) and health (McMichael et al). In food studies, Vileisis has proposed that the 1970s environmental movement’s challenge to the polluting practices of industrial agri-food production, concurrent with the women’s movement (asserting women’s right to know about everything, including food production), has led to both cooks and eaters becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the links between agricultural production and consumer and environmental health, as well as the various social justice issues involved. As a direct result of such awareness, alternatives to the industrialised, global food system are now emerging (Kloppenberg et al.). The Slow Food (R)evolution The tenets of the Slow Food movement, now some two decades old, are today synergetic with the growing consternation about climate change. In 1983, Carlo Petrini formed the Italian non-profit food and wine association Arcigola and, in 1986, founded Slow Food as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. From these humble beginnings, which were then unashamedly positing a return to the food systems of the past, Slow Food has grown into a global organisation that has much more future focused objectives animating its challenges to the socio-cultural and environmental costs of industrial food. Slow Food does have some elements that could be classed as reactionary and, therefore, the opposite of evolutionary. In response to the increasing homogenisation of culinary habits around the world, for instance, Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity has established the Ark of Taste, which expands upon the idea of a seed bank to preserve not only varieties of food but also local and artisanal culinary traditions. In this, the Ark aims to save foods and food products “threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage” (SFFB). Slow Food International’s overarching goals and activities, however, extend far beyond the preservation of past foodways, extending to the sponsoring of events and activities that are attempting to create new cuisine narratives for contemporary consumers who have an appetite for such innovation. Such events as the Salone del Gusto (Salon of Taste) and Terra Madre (Mother Earth) held in Turin every two years, for example, while celebrating culinary traditions, also focus on contemporary artisanal foods and sustainable food production processes that incorporate the most current of agricultural knowledge and new technologies into this production. Attendees at these events are also driven by both an interest in tradition, and their own very current concerns with health, personal satisfaction and environmental sustainability, to change their consumer behavior through an expanded self-awareness of the consequences of their individual lifestyle choices. Such events have, in turn, inspired such events in other locations, moving Slow Food from local to global relevance, and affecting the intellectual evolution of foodway cultures far beyond its headquarters in Bra in Northern Italy. This includes in the developing world, where millions of farmers continue to follow many traditional agricultural practices by necessity. Slow Food Movement’s forward-looking values are codified in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture 2006 publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This calls for changes to the World Trade Organisation’s rules that promote the globalisation of agri-food production as a direct response to the “climate change [which] threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture and food preparation, bringing the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in the near future” (ICFFA 8). It does not call, however, for a complete return to past methods. To further such foodway awareness and evolution, Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Slow Food’s headquarters in 2004. The university offers programs that are analogous with the Slow Food’s overall aim of forging sustainable partnerships between the best of old and new practice: to, in the organisation’s own words, “maintain an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science” (UNISG). In 2004, Slow Food had over sixty thousand members in forty-five countries (Paxson 15), with major events now held each year in many of these countries and membership continuing to grow apace. One of the frequently cited successes of the Slow Food movement is in relation to the tomato. Until recently, supermarkets stocked only a few mass-produced hybrids. These cultivars were bred for their disease resistance, ease of handling, tolerance to artificial ripening techniques, and display consistency, rather than any culinary values such as taste, aroma, texture or variety. In contrast, the vine ripened, ‘farmer’s market’ tomato has become the symbol of an “eco-gastronomically” sustainable, local and humanistic system of food production (Jordan) which melds the best of the past practice with the most up-to-date knowledge regarding such farming matters as water conservation. Although the term ‘heirloom’ is widely used in relation to these tomatoes, there is a distinctively contemporary edge to the way they are produced and consumed (Jordan), and they are, along with other organic and local produce, increasingly available in even the largest supermarket chains. Instead of a wholesale embrace of the past, it is the connection to, and the maintenance of that connection with, the processes of production and, hence, to the environment as a whole, which is the animating premise of the Slow Food movement. ‘Slow’ thus creates a gestalt in which individuals integrate their lifestyles with all levels of the food production cycle and, hence to the environment and, importantly, the inherently related social justice issues. ‘Slow’ approaches emphasise how the accelerated pace of contemporary life has weakened these connections, while offering a path to the restoration of a sense of connectivity to the full cycle of life and its relation to place, nature and climate. In this, the Slow path demands that every consumer takes responsibility for all components of his/her existence—a responsibility that includes becoming cognisant of the full story behind each of the products that are consumed in that life. The Slow movement is not, however, a regime of abstention or self-denial. Instead, the changes in lifestyle necessary to support responsible sustainability, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasure inherent in such a lifestyle, exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship (Pietrykowski 2004). This positive feedback loop enhances the potential for promoting real and long-term evolution in social and cultural behaviour. Indeed, the Slow zeitgeist now informs many areas of contemporary culture, with Slow Travel, Homes, Design, Management, Leadership and Education, and even Slow Email, Exercise, Shopping and Sex attracting adherents. Mainstreaming Concern with Ethical Food Production The role of the media in “forming our consciousness—what we think, how we think, and what we think about” (Cunningham and Turner 12)—is self-evident. It is, therefore, revealing in relation to the above outlined changes that even the most functional cookbooks and cookery magazines (those dedicated to practical information such as recipes and instructional technique) in Western countries such as the USA, UK and Australian are increasingly reflecting and promoting an awareness of ethical food production as part of this cultural change in food habits. While such texts have largely been considered as useful but socio-politically relatively banal publications, they are beginning to be recognised as a valid source of historical and cultural information (Nussel). Cookbooks and cookery magazines commonly include discussion of a surprising range of issues around food production and consumption including sustainable and ethical agricultural methods, biodiversity, genetic modification and food miles. In this context, they indicate how rapidly the recent evolution of foodways has been absorbed into mainstream practice. Much of such food related media content is, at the same time, closely identified with celebrity mass marketing and embodied in the television chef with his or her range of branded products including their syndicated articles and cookbooks. This commercial symbiosis makes each such cuisine-related article in a food or women’s magazine or cookbook, in essence, an advertorial for a celebrity chef and their named products. Yet, at the same time, a number of these mass media food celebrities are raising public discussion that is leading to consequent action around important issues linked to climate change, social justice and the environment. An example is Jamie Oliver’s efforts to influence public behaviour and government policy, a number of which have gained considerable traction. Oliver’s 2004 exposure of the poor quality of school lunches in Britain (see Jamie’s School Dinners), for instance, caused public outrage and pressured the British government to commit considerable extra funding to these programs. A recent study by Essex University has, moreover, found that the academic performance of 11-year-old pupils eating Oliver’s meals improved, while absenteeism fell by 15 per cent (Khan). Oliver’s exposé of the conditions of battery raised hens in 2007 and 2008 (see Fowl Dinners) resulted in increased sales of free-range poultry, decreased sales of factory-farmed chickens across the UK, and complaints that free-range chicken sales were limited by supply. Oliver encouraged viewers to lobby their local councils, and as a result, a number banned battery hen eggs from schools, care homes, town halls and workplace cafeterias (see, for example, LDP). The popular penetration of these ideas needs to be understood in a historical context where industrialised poultry farming has been an issue in Britain since at least 1848 when it was one of the contributing factors to the establishment of the RSPCA (Freeman). A century after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (published in 1906) exposed the realities of the slaughterhouse, and several decades since Peter Singer’s landmark Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) posited the immorality of the mistreatment of animals in food production, it could be suggested that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (released in 2006) added considerably to the recent concern regarding the ethics of industrial agriculture. Consciousness-raising bestselling books such as Jim Mason and Peter Singer’s The Ethics of What We Eat and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both published in 2006), do indeed ‘close the loop’ in this way in their discussions, by concluding that intensive food production methods used since the 1950s are not only inhumane and damage public health, but are also damaging an environment under pressure from climate change. In comparison, the use of forced labour and human trafficking in food production has attracted far less mainstream media, celebrity or public attention. It could be posited that this is, in part, because no direct relationship to the environment and climate change and, therefore, direct link to our own existence in the West, has been popularised. Kevin Bales, who has been described as a modern abolitionist, estimates that there are currently more than 27 million people living in conditions of slavery and exploitation against their wills—twice as many as during the 350-year long trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bales also chillingly reveals that, worldwide, the number of slaves is increasing, with contemporary individuals so inexpensive to purchase in relation to the value of their production that they are disposable once the slaveholder has used them. Alongside sex slavery, many other prevalent examples of contemporary slavery are concerned with food production (Weissbrodt et al; Miers). Bales and Soodalter, for example, describe how across Asia and Africa, adults and children are enslaved to catch and process fish and shellfish for both human consumption and cat food. Other campaigners have similarly exposed how the cocoa in chocolate is largely produced by child slave labour on the Ivory Coast (Chalke; Off), and how considerable amounts of exported sugar, cereals and other crops are slave-produced in certain countries. In 2003, some 32 per cent of US shoppers identified themselves as LOHAS “lifestyles of health and sustainability” consumers, who were, they said, willing to spend more for products that reflected not only ecological, but also social justice responsibility (McLaughlin). Research also confirms that “the pursuit of social objectives … can in fact furnish an organization with the competitive resources to develop effective marketing strategies”, with Doherty and Meehan showing how “social and ethical credibility” are now viable bases of differentiation and competitive positioning in mainstream consumer markets (311, 303). In line with this recognition, Fair Trade Certified goods are now available in British, European, US and, to a lesser extent, Australian supermarkets, and a number of global chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks and Virgin airlines utilise Fair Trade coffee and teas in all, or parts of, their operations. Fair Trade Certification indicates that farmers receive a higher than commodity price for their products, workers have the right to organise, men and women receive equal wages, and no child labour is utilised in the production process (McLaughlin). Yet, despite some Western consumers reporting such issues having an impact upon their purchasing decisions, social justice has not become a significant issue of concern for most. The popular cookery publications discussed above devote little space to Fair Trade product marketing, much of which is confined to supermarket-produced adverzines promoting the Fair Trade products they stock, and international celebrity chefs have yet to focus attention on this issue. In Australia, discussion of contemporary slavery in the press is sparse, having surfaced in 2000-2001, prompted by UNICEF campaigns against child labour, and in 2007 and 2008 with the visit of a series of high profile anti-slavery campaigners (including Bales) to the region. The public awareness of food produced by forced labour and the troubling issue of human enslavement in general is still far below the level that climate change and ecological issues have achieved thus far in driving foodway evolution. This may change, however, if a ‘Slow’-inflected connection can be made between Western lifestyles and the plight of peoples hidden from our daily existence, but contributing daily to them. Concluding Remarks At this time of accelerating techno-cultural evolution, due in part to the pressures of climate change, it is the creative potential that human conscious awareness brings to bear on these challenges that is most valuable. Today, as in the caves at Lascaux, humanity is evolving new images and narratives to provide rational solutions to emergent challenges. As an example of this, new foodways and ways of thinking about them are beginning to evolve in response to the perceived problems of climate change. The current conscious transformation of food habits by some in the West might be, therefore, in James Lovelock’s terms, a moment of “revolutionary punctuation” (178), whereby rapid cultural adaption is being induced by the growing public awareness of impending crisis. It remains to be seen whether other urgent human problems can be similarly and creatively embraced, and whether this trend can spread to offer global solutions to them. References An Inconvenient Truth. 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BASTARDYAll children born before matrimony, or so long after the death of the husband as to render it impossible that the child could be begotten by him, are bastards.– Cro. Jac. 451William Toone: The Magistrates Manual, 1817 (66)On 4 September 1832, the body of a newborn baby boy was found washed up on the shore at the port town of Fremantle, Western Australia. As the result of an inquest into the child’s suspicious death, a 20-year-old, unmarried woman named Mary Summerland was accused of concealing his birth. In October 2014, 25-year-old Irish backpacker Caroline Quinn faced court in Perth, Western Australia, over claims that she concealed the birth of her stillborn child after giving birth in the remote north west town of Halls Creek during May of the same year. Both women denied the existence of their children, both appear to have given birth to their “illegitimate” babies alone, and both women claimed that they did not know that they had ever been pregnant at all. In addition, both women hid the body of their dead child for several days while the people they lived with or were close to, did not appear to notice that the mother of the child had had a baby. In neither case did any person associated with either woman seek to look for the missing child after it had been born.Despite occurring 182 years apart, the striking similarities between these cases could lead to the assumption that it is almost as if there were a written script of behaviour that would explain the actions of both young women. Close examination of the laws surrounding child murder, infanticide and concealment of birth reveals evidence of similar behaviours being enacted by women as far back as the 1600s (and earlier), and all are shaped in response to the legal frameworks that prosecuted women who gave birth outside of marriage.This article traces the history of child murder law from its formation in England in the 1600s and explores how early moral assumptions concerning unmarried mothers echoed through the lived experiences of women who killed their illegitimate babies in colonial Western Australia, and continue to resonate in the treatment of, and legal response to, women accused of similar crimes in the present day. The Unlicensed ChildThe unlicensed child is a term coined by Swain and Howe to more accurately define the social matrix faced by single women and their children in Australia. The term seeks to emphasise the repressive and controlling religious, legal and social pressures that acted on Australian women who had children outside marriage until the mid-1970s (xxi, 1, 92, 94). For the purposes of this article, I extend Swain and Howe’s term the unlicensed child to coin the term the unlicensed mother. Following on from Swain and Howe’s definition, if the children of unmarried mothers did not have a license to be born, it is essential to acknowledge that their mothers did not have a license to give birth. Women who had children without social and legal sanction gave birth within a society that did not allocate them “permission” to be mothers, something that the corporeality of pregnancy made it impossible for them not to be. Their own bodies—and the bodies of the babies growing inside them—betrayed them. Unlicensed mothers were punished socially, religiously, legally and financially, and their children were considered sinful and inferior to children who had married parents simply because they had been born (Scheper-Hughes 410). This unspoken lack of authorisation to experience the unavoidably innate physicality of pregnancy, birth and motherhood, in turn implies that, until recently unmarried mothers did not have license to be mothers. Two MothersAll that remains of the “case” of Mary Summerland is a file archived at the State Records Office of Western Australia under the title CONS 3472, Item 10: Rex V Mary Summerland. Yet revealed within those sparse documents is a story echoed by the events surrounding Caroline Quinn nearly two hundred years later. In September 1832, Mary Summerland was an unmarried domestic servant living and working in Fremantle when the body of a baby was found lying on a beach very close to the settlement. Western Australia had only been colonized by the British in 1829. The discovery of the body of an infant in such a tiny village (colonial Fremantle had a population of only 436 women and girls out of 1341 non-Aboriginal emigrants) (Gardiner) set in motion an inquest that resulted in Mary Summerland being investigated over the suspicious death of the child.The records suggest that Mary may have given birth, apparently alone, over a week prior to the corpse of the baby being discovered, yet no one in Fremantle, including her employer and her family, appeared to have noticed that Mary might have been pregnant, or that she had given birth to a child. When Mary Summerland was eventually accused of giving birth to the baby, she strongly denied that she had ever been pregnant, and denied being the mother of the child. It is not known how her infant ended up being disposed of in the ocean. It is also not known if Mary was eventually charged with concealment or child murder, but in either scenario, the case against her was dismissed as “no true bill” when she faced her trial. The details publically available on the case of Caroline Quinn are also sparse. Even the sex of her child has not been revealed in any of the media coverage of the event. Yet examination of the limited details available on her charge of “concealment of birth” reveal similarities between her behaviours and those of Mary Summerland.In May 2014 Caroline Quinn had been “travelling with friends in the Kimberly region of Western Australia” (Lee), and, just as Mary did, Caroline claims she “did not realise that she was pregnant” when she went into labour (Independent.ie). She appears, like Mary Summerland, to have given birth alone, and also like Mary, when her child died due to unexplained circumstances she hid the corpse for several days. Also echoing Mary’s story, no person in the sparsely populated Hall’s Creek community (the town has a populace of 1,211) or any friends in Caroline’s circle of acquaintances appears to have noticed her pregnancy, nor did they realise that she had given birth to a baby until the body of the child was discovered hidden in a hotel room several days after her or his birth. The media records are unclear as to whether Caroline revealed her condition to her friends or whether they “discovered” the body without her assistance. The case was not brought to the attention of authorities until Caroline’s friends took her to receive medical attention at the local hospital and staff there notified the police.Media coverage of the death of Caroline Quinn’s baby suggests her child was stillborn or died soon after birth. As of 13 August 2014 Caroline was granted leave by the Chief Magistrate to return home to Ireland while she awaited her trial, as “without trivialising the matter, nothing more serious was alleged than the concealing of the birth” (Collins, "Irish Woman"). Caroline Quinn was not required to return to Australia to appear at her trial and when the case was presented at the Perth Magistrates Court on Thursday 2 October, all charges against her were dropped as the prosecutor felt “it was not in the public interest” to proceed with legal action (Collins, "Case").Statutory MarginalisationTo understand the similarities between the behaviours of, and legal and medical response to, Mary Summerland and Caroline Quinn, it is important to situate the deaths of their children within the wider context of child murder, concealment of birth and “bastardy” law. Tracing the development of these methods of law-making clarifies the parallels between much of the child murder, infanticide and concealment of birth narrative that has occurred in Western Australia since non-Aboriginal settlement.Despite the isolated nature of Western Australia, the nearly 400 years since the law was formed in England, and the extremely remote rural locations where both these women lived and worked, their stories are remarkably alike. It is almost as if there were a written script and each member of the cast knew what role to play: both Mary and Caroline knew to hide their pregnancies, to deny the overwhelmingly traumatic experience of giving birth alone, and to conceal the corpses of their babies. The fathers of their children appear to have cut off any connection to the women or their child. The family, friends, or employers of the parents of the dead babies knew to pretend that they did not know that the mother was pregnant or who the father was. The police and medical officers knew to charge these women and to collect evidence that could be used to simultaneously meet the needs of the both prosecution and the defence when the cases were brought to trial.In reference to Mary Summerland’s case, in colonial Western Australia when a woman gave birth to an infant who died under suspicious circumstances, she could be prosecuted with two charges: “child murder” and/or “concealment of birth”. It is suggestive that Mary may have been charged with both. The laws regarding these two offences were focused almost exclusively on the deaths of unlicensed children and were so deeply interconnected they are difficult to untangle. For Probyn, shame pierces the centre of who we think we are, “what makes it remarkable is that it reveals with precision our values, hopes and aspirations, beyond the generalities of good manners and cultured norms” (x). Dipping into the streams of legal and medical discourse that flow back to the seventeenth century highlights the pervasiveness of discourses marginalising single women and their children. This situates Mary Summerland and Caroline Quinn within a ‘burden on society’ narrative of guilt, blame and shame that has been in circulation for over 500 years, and continues to resonate in the present (Coull).An Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murthering of Bastard ChildrenIn England prior to the 17th century, penalties for extramarital sex, the birth and/or maintenance of unlicensed children or for committing child murder were expressed through church courts (Damme 2-6; Rapaport 548; Butler 61; Hoffer and Hull 3-4). Discussion of how the punishment of child murder left the religious sphere and came to be regulated by secular laws that were focused exclusively on the unlicensed mother points to two main arguments: firstly, the patriarchal response to unlicensed (particularly female) sexuality; and secondly, a moral panic regarding a perceived rise in unlicensed pregnancies in women of the lower classes, and the resulting financial burden placed on local parishes to support unwanted, unlicensed children (Rapaport 532, 48-52; McMahon XVII, 126-29; Osborne 49; Meyer 3-8 of 14). In many respects, as Meyer suggests, “the legal system subtly encouraged neonaticide through its nearly universally negative treatment of bastard children” (240).The first of these “personal control laws” (Hoffer and Hull 13) was the Old Poor Law created by Henry VIII in 1533, and put in place to regulate all members of English society who needed to rely on the financial assistance of the parish to survive. Prior to 1533, “by custom the children of the rich depended on their relations, while the ‘fatherless poor’ relied on the charity of the monastic institutions and the municipalities” (Teichman 60-61). Its implementation marks the historical point where the state began to take responsibility for maintenance of the poor away from the church by holding communities responsible for “the problem of destitution” (Teichman 60-61; Meyer 243).The establishment of the poor law system of relief created a hierarchy of poverty in which some poor people, such as those suffering from sickness or those who were old, were seen as worthy of receiving support, while others, who were destitute as a result of “debauchery” or other self-inflicted means were seen as undeserving and sent to a house of correction or common gaol. Underprivileged, unlicensed mothers and their children were seen to be part of the category of recipients unfit for help (Jackson 31). Burdens on SocietyIt was in response to the narrative of poor unlicensed women and their children being undeserving fiscal burdens on law abiding, financially stretched community members that in 1576 a law targeted specifically at holding genetic parents responsible for the financial maintenance of unlicensed children entered the secular courts for the first time. Called the Elizabethan Poor Law it was enacted in response to the concerns of local parishes who felt that, due to the expenses exacted by the poor laws, they were being burdened with the care of a greatly increased number of unlicensed children (Jackson 30; Meyer 5-6; Teichman 61). While the 1576 legislation prosecuted both parents of unlicensed children, McMahon interprets the law as being created in response to a blend of moral and economic forces, undergirded by a deep, collective fear of illegitimacy (McMahon 128). By the 1570s “unwed mothers were routinely whipped and sent to prison” (Meyer 242) and “guardians of the poor” could force unlicensed mothers to wear a “badge” (Teichman 63). Yet surprisingly, while parishes felt that numbers of unlicensed children were increasing, no concomitant rise was actually recorded (McMahon 128).The most damning evidence of the failure of this law, was the surging incidence of infanticide following its implementation (Rapaport 548-49; Hoffer and Hull 11-13). After 1576 the number of women prosecuted for infanticide increased by 225 percent. Convictions resulting in unlicensed mothers being executed also rose (Meyer 246; Hoffer and Hull 8, 18).Infanticide IncreasesBy 1624 the level of infanticide in local communities was deemed to be so great An Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murthering of Bastard Children was created. The Act made child murder a “sex-specific crime”, focused exclusively on the unlicensed mother, who if found guilty of the offence was punished by death. Probyn suggests that “shame is intimately social” (77) and indeed, the wording of An Act to Prevent highlights the remarkably similar behaviours enacted by single women desperate to avoid the shame and criminal implication linked to the social position of unlicensed mother: Whereas many lewd Women that have been delivered of Bastard Children, to avoyd their shame and to escape punishment [my italics], doe secretlie bury, or conceale the Death of their Children, and after if the child be found dead the said Women doe alleadge that the said Children were borne dead;…For the preventing therefore of this great Mischiefe…if any Woman…be delivered of any issue of the Body, Male or Female, which being born alive, should by the Lawes of this Realm be a bastard, and that she endeavour privatlie either by drowning or secret burying thereof, or any other way, either by herselfe of the procuring of others, soe to conceale the Death thereof, as that it may not come to light, whether it be borne alive or not, but be concealed, in every such Case the Mother so offending shall suffer Death… (Davies 214; O'Donovan 259; Law Reform Commission of Western Australia 104; Osborne 49; Rose 1-2; Rapaport 548). An Act to Prevent also “contained an extraordinary provision which was a reversion of the ordinary common law presumption of dead birth” (Davies 214), removing the burden of proof from the prosecution and placing it on the defence (Francus 133; McMahon 128; Meyer 2 of 14). The implication being that if the dead body of a newborn, unlicensed baby was found hidden, it was automatically assumed that the child had been murdered by their mother (Law Reform Commission of Western Australia 104; Osborne 49; Rapaport 549-50; Francus 133). This made the Act unusual in that “the offence involved was the concealment of death rather than the death itself” (O'Donovan 259). The only way an unlicensed mother charged with child murder was able to avoid capital punishment was to produce at least one witness to give evidence that the child was “borne dead” (Law Reform Commission of Western Australia 104; Meyer 238; McMahon 126-27).Remarkable SimilaritiesClearly, the objective of An Act to Prevent was not simply to preserve infant life. It is suggestive that it was enacted in response to women wishing to avoid the legal, social, corporal and religious punishment highlighted by the implementation of the poor law legislation enacted throughout earlier centuries. It is also suggestive that these pressures were so powerful that threat of death if found guilty of killing their neonate baby was not enough to deter women from concealing their unlicensed pregnancies and committing child murder. Strikingly analogous to the behaviours of Mary Summerland in 19th century colonial Western Australia, and Caroline Quinn in 2014, the self-preservation implicit in the “strategies of secrecy” (Gowing 87) surrounding unlicensed birth and child murder often left the mother of a dead baby as the only witness to her baby’s death (McMahon xvii 49-50).An Act to Prevent set in motion the legislation that was eventually used to prosecute Mary Summerland in colonial Western Australia (Jackson 7, Davies, 213) and remnants of it still linger in the present where they have been incorporated into the ‘concealment of birth law’ that prosecuted Caroline Quinn (Legal Online TLA [10.1.182]).Changing the ‘Script’Shame runs like a viral code through the centuries to resonate within the legal response to women who committed infanticide in colonial Western Australia. It continues on through the behaviours of, and legal responses to, the story of Caroline Quinn and her child. As Probyn observes, “shame reminds us about the promises we keep to ourselves” in turn revealing our desire for belonging and elements of our deepest fears (p. x). While Caroline may live in a society that no longer outwardly condemns women who give birth outside of marriage, it is fascinating that the suite of behaviours manifested in response to her pregnancy and the birth of her child—by herself, her friends, and the wider community—can be linked to the narratives surrounding the formation of “child murder” and “concealment” law nearly 400 years earlier. Caroline’s narrative also encompasses similar behaviours enacted by Mary Summerland in 1832, in particular that Caroline knew to say that her child was “born dead” and that she had merely concealed her or his body—nothing more. This behaviour appears to have secured the release of both women as although both Mary and Caroline faced criminal investigation, neither was convicted of any crime. Yet, neither of these women or their small communities were alone in their responses. My research has uncovered 55 cases linked to child murder in Western Australia and the people involved in all of these incidences share unusually similar behaviours (Gardiner). Perhaps, it is only through the wider community becoming aware of the resonance of child murder law echoing through the centuries, that certain women who are pregnant with unwanted children will be able to write a different script for themselves, and their “unlicensed” children. ReferencesButler, Sara, M. "A Case of Indifference? Child Murder in Later Medieval England." Journal of Women's History 19.4 (2007): 59-82. Collins, Padraig. "Case against Irish Woman for Concealing Birth Dropped." The Irish Times 2 Oct. 2014. ---. "Irish Woman Held for Hiding Birth in Australia Allowed Return Home." The Irish Times 13 Aug. 2014. Coull, Kim. “The Womb Artist – A Novel: Translating Late Discovery Adoptee Pre-Verbal Trauma into Narrative”. Dissertation. Perth, WA: Edith Cowan University, 2014.Damme, Catherine. "Infanticide: The Worth of an Infant under Law." Medical History 22.1 (1978): 1-24. Davies, D.S. "Child-Killing in English Law." The Modern Law Review 1.3 (1937): 203-23. Dickinson, J.R., and J.A. Sharpe. "Infanticide in Early Modern England: The Court of Great Sessions at Chester, 1650-1800." Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000. Ed. Mark Jackson. Hants: Ashgate, 2002. 35-51.Francus, Marilyn. "Monstrous Mothers, Monstrous Societies: Infanticide and the Rule of Law in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century England." Eighteenth-Century Life 21.2 (1997): 133-56. Gardiner, Amanda. "Sex, Death and Desperation: Infanticide, Neonaticide and Concealment of Birth in Colonial Western Australia." Dissertation. Perth, WA: Edith Cowan University, 2014.Gowing, Laura. "Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England." Past & Present 156 (1997): 87-115. Hoffer, Peter C., and N.E.H. Hull. Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558-1803. New York: New York University Press, 1984. Independent.ie. "Irish Woman Facing Up to Two Years in Jail for Concealing Death of Her Baby in Australia." 8 Aug. 2014. Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. "Chapter 3: Manslaughter and Other Homicide Offences." Review of the Law of Homicide: Final Report. Perth: Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, 2007. 85-117.Lee, Sally. "Irish Backpacker Charged over the Death of a Baby She Gave Birth to While Travelling in the Australia [sic] Outback." Daily Mail 8 Aug. 2014. Legal Online. "The Laws of Australia." Thomson Reuters 2010. McMahon, Vanessa. Murder in Shakespeare's England. London: Hambledon and London, 2004. Meyer, Jon'a. "Unintended Consequences for the Youngest Victims: The Role of Law in Encouraging Neonaticide from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries." Criminal Justice Studies 18.3 (2005): 237-54. O'Donovan, K. "The Medicalisation of Infanticide." Criminal Law Review (May 1984): 259-64. Osborne, Judith A. "The Crime of Infanticide: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater." Canadian Journal of Family Law 6 (1987): 47-59. Rapaport, Elizabeth. "Mad Women and Desperate Girls: Infanticide and Child Murder in Law and Myth." Fordham Urban Law Journal 33.2 (2006): 527-69.Rose, Lionel. The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800-1939. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1986. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Swain, Shurlee, and Renate Howe. Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Teichman, Jenny. Illegitimacy: An Examination of Bastardy. Oxford: Cornell University Press, 1982. Toone, William. The Magistrate's Manual: Or a Summary of the Duties and Powers of a Justice of the Peace. 2nd ed. London: Joseph Butterworth and Son, 1817.

Unconventional energy sources have become increasingly important to the global energy mix. These include coal seam gas, shale gas and shale oil. The unconventional gas industry was pioneered in the United States and embraced following the first oil shock in 1973 (Rogers). As has been the case with many global resources (Hiscock), many of the same companies that worked in the USA carried their experience in this industry to early Australian explorations. Recently the USA has secured significant energy security with the development of unconventional energy deposits such as the Marcellus shale gas and the Bakken shale oil (Dobb; McGraw). But this has not come without environmental impact, including contamination to underground water supply (Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, Jackson) and potential greenhouse gas contributions (Howarth, Santoro, Ingraffea; McKenna). The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction has raised serious public concern about the introduction and growth of the industry in Australia. In coal rich Australia coal seam gas is currently the major source of unconventional gas. Large gas deposits have been found in prime agricultural land along eastern Australia, such as the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales and the Darling Downs in Queensland. Competing land-uses and a series of environmental incidents from the coal seam gas industry have warranted major protest from a coalition of environmentalists and farmers (Berry; McLeish). Conflict between energy companies wanting development and environmentalists warning precaution is an easy script to cast for frontline media coverage. But historical perspectives are often missing in these contemporary debates. While coal mining and natural gas have often received “boosting” historical coverage (Diamond; Wilkinson), and although historical themes of “development” and “rushes” remain predominant when observing the span of the industry (AGA; Blainey), the history of unconventional gas, particularly the history of its environmental impact, has been little studied. Few people are aware, for example, that the first shale gas exploratory well was completed in late 2010 in the Cooper Basin in Central Australia (Molan) and is considered as a “new” frontier in Australian unconventional gas. Moreover many people are unaware that the first coal seam gas wells were completed in 1976 in Queensland. The first four wells offer an important moment for reflection in light of the industry’s recent move into Central Australia. By locating and analysing the first four coal seam gas wells, this essay identifies the roots of the unconventional gas industry in Australia and explores the early environmental impact of these wells. By analysing exploration reports that have been placed online by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines through the lens of environmental history, the dominant developmental narrative of this industry can also be scrutinised. These narratives often place more significance on economic and national benefits while displacing the environmental and social impacts of the industry (Connor, Higginbotham, Freeman, Albrecht; Duus; McEachern; Trigger). This essay therefore seeks to bring an environmental insight into early unconventional gas mining in Australia. As the author, I am concerned that nearly four decades on and it seems that no one has heeded the warning gleaned from these early wells and early exploration reports, as gas exploration in Australia continues under little scrutiny. Arrival The first four unconventional gas wells in Australia appear at the beginning of the industry world-wide (Schraufnagel, McBane, and Kuuskraa; McClanahan). The wells were explored by Houston Oils and Minerals—a company that entered the Australian mining scene by sharing a mining prospect with International Australian Energy Company (Wiltshire). The International Australian Energy Company was owned by Black Giant Oil Company in the US, which in turn was owned by International Royalty and Oil Company also based in the US. The Texan oilman Robert Kanton held a sixteen percent share in the latter. Kanton had an idea that the Mimosa Syncline in the south-eastern Bowen Basin was a gas trap waiting to be exploited. To test the theory he needed capital. Kanton presented the idea to Houston Oil and Minerals which had the financial backing to take the risk. Shotover No. 1 was drilled by Houston Oil and Minerals thirty miles south-east of the coal mining town of Blackwater. By late August 1975 it was drilled to 2,717 metres, discovered to have little gas, spudded, and, after a spend of $610,000, abandoned. The data from the Shotover well showed that the porosity of the rocks in the area was not a trap, and the Mimosa Syncline was therefore downgraded as a possible hydrocarbon location. There was, however, a small amount of gas found in the coal seams (Benbow 16). The well had passed through the huge coal seams of both the Bowen and Surat basins—important basins for the future of both the coal and gas industries. Mining Concepts In 1975, while Houston Oil and Minerals was drilling the Shotover well, US Steel and the US Bureau of Mines used hydraulic fracture, a technique already used in the petroleum industry, to drill vertical surface wells to drain gas from a coal seam (Methane Drainage Taskforce 102). They were able to remove gas from the coal seam before it was mined and sold enough to make a profit. With the well data from the Shotover well in Australia compiled, Houston returned to the US to research the possibility of harvesting methane in Australia. As the company saw it, methane drainage was “a novel exploitation concept” and the methane in the Bowen Basin was an “enormous hydrocarbon resource” (Wiltshire 7). The Shotover well passed through a section of the German Creek Coal measures and this became their next target. In September 1976 the Shotover well was re-opened and plugged at 1499 meters to become Australia’s first exploratory unconventional gas well. By the end of the month the rig was released and gas production tested. At one point an employee on the drilling operation observed a gas flame “the size of a 44 gal drum” (HOMA, “Shotover # 1” 9). But apart from the brief show, no gas flowed. And yet, Houston Oil and Minerals was not deterred, as they had already taken out other leases for further prospecting (Wiltshire 4). Only a week after the Shotover well had failed, Houston moved the methane search south-east to an area five miles north of the Moura township. Houston Oil and Minerals had researched the coal exploration seismic surveys of the area that were conducted in 1969, 1972, and 1973 to choose the location. Over the next two months in late 1976, two new wells—Kinma No.1 and Carra No.1—were drilled within a mile from each other and completed as gas wells. Houston Oil and Minerals also purchased the old oil exploration well Moura No. 1 from the Queensland Government and completed it as a suspended gas well. The company must have mined the Department of Mines archive to find Moura No.1, as the previous exploration report from 1969 noted methane given off from the coal seams (Sell). By December 1976 Houston Oil and Minerals had three gas wells in the vicinity of each other and by early 1977 testing had occurred. The results were disappointing with minimal gas flow at Kinma and Carra, but Moura showed a little more promise. Here, the drillers were able to convert their Fairbanks-Morse engine driving the pump from an engine run on LPG to one run on methane produced from the well (Porter, “Moura # 1”). Drink This? Although there was not much gas to find in the test production phase, there was a lot of water. The exploration reports produced by the company are incomplete (indeed no report was available for the Shotover well), but the information available shows that a large amount of water was extracted before gas started to flow (Porter, “Carra # 1”; Porter, “Moura # 1”; Porter, “Kinma # 1”). As Porter’s reports outline, prior to gas flowing, the water produced at Carra, Kinma and Moura totalled 37,600 litres, 11,900 and 2,900 respectively. It should be noted that the method used to test the amount of water was not continuous and these amounts were not the full amount of water produced; also, upon gas coming to the surface some of the wells continued to produce water. In short, before any gas flowed at the first unconventional gas wells in Australia at least 50,000 litres of water were taken from underground. Results show that the water was not ready to drink (Mathers, “Moura # 1”; Mathers, “Appendix 1”; HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 21-24). The water had total dissolved solids (minerals) well over the average set by the authorities (WHO; Apps Laboratories; NHMRC; QDAFF). The well at Kinma recorded the highest levels, almost two and a half times the unacceptable standard. On average the water from the Moura well was of reasonable standard, possibly because some water was extracted from the well when it was originally sunk in 1969; but the water from Kinma and Carra was very poor quality, not good enough for crops, stock or to be let run into creeks. The biggest issue was the sodium concentration; all wells had very high salt levels. Kinma and Carra were four and two times the maximum standard respectively. In short, there was a substantial amount of poor quality water produced from drilling and testing the three wells. Fracking Australia Hydraulic fracturing is an artificial process that can encourage more gas to flow to the surface (McGraw; Fischetti; Senate). Prior to the testing phase at the Moura field, well data was sent to the Chemical Research and Development Department at Halliburton in Oklahoma, to examine the ability to fracture the coal and shale in the Australian wells. Halliburton was the founding father of hydraulic fracture. In Oklahoma on 17 March 1949, operating under an exclusive license from Standard Oil, this company conducted the first ever hydraulic fracture of an oil well (Montgomery and Smith). To come up with a program of hydraulic fracturing for the Australian field, Halliburton went back to the laboratory. They bonded together small slabs of coal and shale similar to Australian samples, drilled one-inch holes into the sample, then pressurised the holes and completed a “hydro-frac” in miniature. “These samples were difficult to prepare,” they wrote in their report to Houston Oil and Minerals (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 10). Their program for fracturing was informed by a field of science that had been evolving since the first hydraulic fracture but had rapidly progressed since the first oil shock. Halliburton’s laboratory test had confirmed that the model of Perkins and Kern developed for widths of hydraulic fracture—in an article that defined the field—should also apply to Australian coals (Perkins and Kern). By late January 1977 Halliburton had issued Houston Oil and Minerals with a program of hydraulic fracture to use on the central Queensland wells. On the final page of their report they warned: “There are many unknowns in a vertical fracture design procedure” (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 17). In July 1977, Moura No. 1 became the first coal seam gas well hydraulically fractured in Australia. The exploration report states: “During July 1977 the well was killed with 1% KCL solution and the tubing and packer were pulled from the well … and pumping commenced” (Porter 2-3). The use of the word “kill” is interesting—potassium chloride (KCl) is the third and final drug administered in the lethal injection of humans on death row in the USA. Potassium chloride was used to minimise the effect on parts of the coal seam that were water-sensitive and was the recommended solution prior to adding other chemicals (Montgomery and Smith 28); but a word such as “kill” also implies that the well and the larger environment were alive before fracking commenced (Giblett; Trigger). Pumping recommenced after the fracturing fluid was unloaded. Initially gas supply was very good. It increased from an average estimate of 7,000 cubic feet per day to 30,000, but this only lasted two days before coal and sand started flowing back up to the surface. In effect, the cleats were propped open but the coal did not close and hold onto them which meant coal particles and sand flowed back up the pipe with diminishing amounts of gas (Walters 12). Although there were some interesting results, the program was considered a failure. In April 1978, Houston Oil and Minerals finally abandoned the methane concept. Following the failure, they reflected on the possibilities for a coal seam gas industry given the gas prices in Queensland: “Methane drainage wells appear to offer no economic potential” (Wooldridge 2). At the wells they let the tubing drop into the hole, put a fifteen foot cement plug at the top of the hole, covered it with a steel plate and by their own description restored the area to its “original state” (Wiltshire 8). Houston Oil and Minerals now turned to “conventional targets” which included coal exploration (Wiltshire 7). A Thousand Memories The first four wells show some of the critical environmental issues that were present from the outset of the industry in Australia. The process of hydraulic fracture was not just a failure, but conducted on a science that had never been tested in Australia, was ponderous at best, and by Halliburton’s own admission had “many unknowns”. There was also the role of large multinationals providing “experience” (Briody; Hiscock) and conducting these tests while having limited knowledge of the Australian landscape. Before any gas came to the surface, a large amount of water was produced that was loaded with a mixture of salt and other heavy minerals. The source of water for both the mud drilling of Carra and Kinma, as well as the hydraulic fracture job on Moura, was extracted from Kianga Creek three miles from the site (HOMA, “Carra # 1” 5; HOMA, “Kinma # 1” 5; Porter, “Moura # 1”). No location was listed for the disposal of the water from the wells, including the hydraulic fracture liquid. Considering the poor quality of water, if the water was disposed on site or let drain into a creek, this would have had significant environmental impact. Nobody has yet answered the question of where all this water went. The environmental issues of water extraction, saline water and hydraulic fracture were present at the first four wells. At the first four wells environmental concern was not a priority. The complexity of inter-company relations, as witnessed at the Shotover well, shows there was little time. The re-use of old wells, such as the Moura well, also shows that economic priorities were more important. Even if environmental information was considered important at the time, no one would have had access to it because, as handwritten notes on some of the reports show, many of the reports were “confidential” (Sell). Even though coal mines commenced filing Environmental Impact Statements in the early 1970s, there is no such documentation for gas exploration conducted by Houston Oil and Minerals. A lack of broader awareness for the surrounding environment, from floral and faunal health to the impact on habitat quality, can be gleaned when reading across all the exploration reports. Nearly four decades on and we now have thousands of wells throughout the world. Yet, the challenges of unconventional gas still persist. The implications of the environmental history of the first four wells in Australia for contemporary unconventional gas exploration and development in this country and beyond are significant. Many environmental issues were present from the beginning of the coal seam gas industry in Australia. Owning up to this history would place policy makers and regulators in a position to strengthen current regulation. The industry continues to face the same challenges today as it did at the start of development—including water extraction, hydraulic fracturing and problems associated with drilling through underground aquifers. Looking more broadly at the unconventional gas industry, shale gas has appeared as the next target for energy resources in Australia. Reflecting on the first exploratory shale gas wells drilled in Central Australia, the chief executive of the company responsible for the shale gas wells noted their deliberate decision to locate their activities in semi-desert country away from “an area of prime agricultural land” and conflict with environmentalists (quoted in Molan). Moreover, the journalist Paul Cleary recently complained about the coal seam gas industry polluting Australia’s food-bowl but concluded that the “next frontier” should be in “remote” Central Australia with shale gas (Cleary 195). It appears that preference is to move the industry to the arid centre of Australia, to the ecologically and culturally unique Lake Eyre Basin region (Robin and Smith). 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IntroductionWe five friends clinked glasses in our favourite wine and cocktail bar, and considered our next collaborative writing project. We had seen M/C Journal’s call for articles for a special issue on ‘regional’ and when one of us mentioned the television program, Escape from the City, we began our critique:“They haven’t featured Armidale yet, but wouldn’t it be great if they did?”“Really? I mean, some say any publicity is good publicity but the few early episodes I’ve viewed seem to give little or no screen time to the sorts of lifestyle features I most value in our town.”“Well, seeing as we all moved here from the city ages ago, let’s talk about what made us stay?”We had found our next project.A currently popular lifestyle television show (Escape from the City) on Australia’s national public service broadcaster, the ABC, highlights the limitations of popular cultural representations of life in a regional centre. The program is targeted at viewers interested in relocating to regional Australia. As Raymond Boyle and Lisa Kelly note, popular television is an important entry point into the construction of public knowledge as well as a launching point for viewers as they seek additional information (65). In their capacity to construct popular perceptions of ‘reality’, televisual texts offer a significant insight into our understandings and expectations of what is going on around us. Similar to the concerns raised by Esther Peeren and Irina Souch in their analysis of the popular TV show Farmer Wants a Wife (a version set in the Netherlands from 2004–present), we worry that these shows “prevent important aspects of contemporary rural life from being seen and understood” (37) by the viewers, and do a disservice to regional communities.For the purposes of this article, we interrogate the episodes of Escape from the City screened to date in terms of the impact they may have on promoting regional Australia and speculate on how satisfied (or otherwise) we would be should the producers direct their lens onto our regional community—Armidale, in northern NSW. We start with a brief précis of Escape from the City and then, applying an autoethnographic approach (Butz and Besio) focusing on our subjective experiences, we share our reflections on living in Armidale. We blend our academic knowledge and knowledge of everyday life (Klevan et al.) to argue there is greater cultural diversity, complexity, and value in being in the natural landscape in regional areas than is portrayed in these representations of country life that largely focus on cheaper real estate and a five-minute commute.We employ an autoethnographic approach because it emphasises the socially and politically constituted nature of knowledge claims and allows us to focus on our own lives as a way of understanding larger social phenomena. We recognise there is a vast literature on lifestyle programs and there are many different approaches scholars can take to these. Some focus on the intention of the program, for example “the promotion of neoliberal citizenship through home investment” (White 578), while others focus on the supposed effect on audiences (Tsay-Vogel and Krakowiak). Here we only assert the effects on ourselves. We have chosen to blend our voices (Gilmore et al.) in developing our arguments, highlighting our single voices where our individual experiences are drawn on, as we argue for an alternative representation of regional life than currently portrayed in the regional ‘escapes’ of this mainstream lifestyle television program.Lifestyle TelevisionEscape from the City is one of the ‘lifestyle’ series listed on the ABC iview website under the category of ‘Regional Australia’. Promotional details describe Escape from the City as a lifestyle series of 56-minute episodes in which home seekers are guided through “the trials and tribulations of their life-changing decision to escape the city” (iview).Escape from the City is an example of format television, a term used to describe programs that retain the structure and style of those produced in another country but change the circumstances to suit the new cultural context. The original BBC format is entitled Escape to the Country and has been running since 2002. The reach of lifestyle television is extensive, with the number of programs growing rapidly since 2000, not just in the United Kingdom, but internationally (Hill; Collins). In Australia, they have completed, but not yet screened, 60 episodes of Escape from the City. However, with such popularity comes great potential to influence audiences and we argue this program warrants critical attention.Like House Hunters, the United States lifestyle television show (running since 1997), Escape from the City follows “a strict formula” (Loof 168). Each episode uses the same narrative format, beginning with an introduction to the team of experts, then introducing the prospective house buyers, briefly characterising their reasons for leaving the city and what they are looking for in their new life. After this, we are shown a map of the region and the program follows the ‘escapees’ as they view four pre-selected houses. As we leave each property, the cost and features are reiterated in the written template on the screen. We, the audience, wait in anticipation for their final decision.The focus of Escape from the City is the buying of the house: the program’s team of experts is there to help the potential ‘escapees’ find the real estate gem. Real estate value for money emerges as the primary concern, while the promise of finding a ‘life less ordinary’ as highlighted in the opening credits of the program each week, seems to fall by the wayside. Indeed, the representation of regional centres is not nuanced but limited by the emphasis placed on economics over the social and cultural.The intended move of the ‘escapees’ is invariably portrayed as motivated by disenchantment with city life. Clearly a bigger house and a smaller mortgage also has its hedonistic side. In her study of Western society represented in lifestyle shows, Lyn Thomas lists some of the negative aspects of city life as “high speed, work-dominated, consumerist” (680), along with pollution and other associated health risks. While these are mentioned in Escape from the City, Thomas’s list of the pleasures afforded by a simpler country life including space for human connection and spirituality, is not explored to any satisfying extent. Further, as a launching point for viewers in the city (Boyle and Kelly), we fear the singular focus on the price of real estate reinforces a sense of the rural as devoid of creative arts and cultural diversity with a focus on the productive, rather than the natural, landscape. Such a focus does not encourage a desire to find out more and undersells the richness of our (regional) lives.As Australian regional centres strive to circumvent or halt the negative impacts of the drift in population to the cities (Chan), lifestyle programs are important ‘make or break’ narratives, shaping the appeal and bolstering—or not—a decision to relocate. With their focus on cheaper real estate prices and the freeing up of the assets of the ‘escapees’ that a move to the country may entail, the representation is so focused on the economics that it is almost placeless. While the format includes a map of the regional location, there is little sense of being in the place. Such a limited representation does not do justice to the richness of regional lives as we have experienced them.Our TownLike so many regional centres, Armidale has much to offer and is seeking to grow (Armidale Regional Council). The challenges regional communities face in sustaining their communities is well captured in Gabriele Chan’s account of the city-country divide (Chan) and Armidale, with its population of about 25,000, is no exception. Escape from the City fails to emphasise cultural diversity and richness, yet this is what characterises our experience of our regional city. As long-term and satisfied residents of Armidale, who are keenly aware of the persuasive power of popular cultural representations (O’Sullivan and Sheridan; Sheridan and O’Sullivan), we are concerned about the trivialising or reductive manner in which regional Australia is portrayed.While we acknowledge there has not been an episode of Escape from the City featuring Armidale, if the characterisation of another, although larger, regional centre, Toowoomba, is anything to go by, our worst fears may be realised if our town is to feature in the future. Toowoomba is depicted as rural landscapes, ‘elegant’ buildings, a garden festival (the “Carnival of the Flowers”) and the town’s history as home of the Southern Cross windmill and the iconic lamington sponge. The episode features an old shearing shed and a stock whip demonstration, but makes no mention of the arts, or of the University that has been there since 1967. Summing up Toowoomba, the voiceover describes it as “an understated and peaceful place to live,” and provides “an attractive alternative” to city life, substantiated by a favourable comparison of median real estate prices.Below we share our individual responses to the question raised in our opening conversation about the limitations of Escape from the City: What have we come to value about our own town since escaping from city life?Jane: The aspects of life in Armidale I most enjoy are, at least in part, associated with or influenced by the fact that this is a centre for education and a ‘university town’. As such, there is access to an academic library and an excellent town library. The presence of the University of New England, along with independent and public schools, and TAFE, makes education a major employer, attracting a significant student population, and is a major factor in Armidale being one of the first towns in the roll-out of the NBN/high-speed broadband. University staff and students may also account for the thriving cafe culture, along with designer breweries/bars, art house cinema screenings, and a lively classical and popular music scene. Surely the presence of a university and associated spin-offs would deserve coverage in a prospective episode about Armidale.Alison: Having grown up in the city, and now having lived more than half my life in an inner-regional country town, I don’t feel I am missing out ‘culturally’ from this decision. Within our town, there is a vibrant arts community, with the regional gallery and two local galleries holding regular art exhibitions, theatre at a range of venues, and book launches at our lively local book store. And when my children were younger, there was no shortage of sporting events they could be involved with. Encountering friends and familiar faces regularly at these events adds to my sense of belonging to my community. The richness of this life does not make it to the television screen in episodes of Escape from the City.Kerry: I greatly value the Armidale community’s strong social conscience. There are many examples of successful programs to support diverse groups. Armidale Sanctuary and Humanitarian Settlement sponsored South Sudanese refugees for many years and is currently assisting Ezidi refugees. In addition to the core Sanctuary committee, many in the local community help families with developing English skills, negotiating daily life, such as reading and responding to school notes and medical questionnaires. The Backtrack program assists troubled Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth. The program helps kids “to navigate their relationships, deal with personal trauma, take responsibility […] gain skills […] so they can eventually create a sustainable future for themselves.” The documentary film Backtrack Boys shows what can be achieved by individuals with the support of the community. Missing from Escape from the City is recognition of the indigenous experience and history in regional communities, unlike the BBC’s ‘original’ program in which medieval history and Vikings often get a ‘guernsey’. The 1838 Myall Creek massacre of 28 Wirrayaraay people, led to the first prosecution and conviction of a European for killing Aboriginals. Members of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community in Armidale are now active in acknowledging the past wrongs and beginning the process of reconciliation.Josie: About 10am on a recent Saturday morning I was walking from the car park to the shopping complex. Coming down the escalator and in the vestibule, there were about thirty people and it occurred to me that there were at least six nationalities represented, with some of the people wearing traditional dress. It also struck me that this is not unusual—we are a diverse community as a result of our history and being a ‘university city’. The Armidale Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place was established in 1988 and is being extended in 2019. Diversity is apparent in cultural activities such as an international film festival held annually and many of the regular musical events and stalls at the farmers’ market increasingly reflect the cultural mix of our town. As a long-term resident, I appreciate the lifestyle here.Wendy: It is early morning and I am walking in a forest of tall trees, with just the sounds of cattle and black cockatoos. I travel along winding pathways with mossy boulders and creeks dry with drought. My dog barks at rabbits and ‘roos, and noses through the nooks and crannies of the hillside. In this public park on the outskirts of town, I can walk for two hours without seeing another person, or I can be part of a dog-walking pack. The light is grey and misty now, the ranges blue and dark green, but I feel peaceful and content. I came here from the city 30 years ago and hated it at first! But now I relish the way I can be at home in 10 minutes after starting the day in the midst of nature and feeling part of the landscape, not just a tourist—never a possibility in the city. I can watch the seasons and the animals as they come and go and be part of a community which is part of the landscape too. For me, the first verse of South of My Days, written by a ‘local’ describing our New England environment, captures this well:South of my days’ circle, part of my blood’s country,rises that tableland, high delicate outlineof bony slopes wincing under the winter,low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-clean, lean, hungry country. The creek’s leaf-silenced,willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapplebranching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;and the old cottage lurches in for shelter. (Wright 20)Whilst our autoethnographic reflections may not reach the heady heights of Judith Wright, they nevertheless reflect the experience of living in, not just escaping to the country. We are disappointed that the breadth of cultural activities and the sense of diversity and community that our stories evoke are absent from the representations of regional communities in Escape from the City.Kate Oakley and Jonathon Ward argue that ‘visions of the good life’, in particular cultural life in the regions, need to be supported by policy which encourages a sustainable prosperity characterised by both economic and cultural development. Escape from the City, however, dwells on the material aspects of consumption—good house prices and the possibility of a private enterprise—almost to the exclusion of any coverage of the creative cultural features.We recognise that the lifestyle genre requires simplification for viewers to digest. What we are challenging is the sense that emerges from the repetitive format week after week whereby differences between places are lost (White 580). Instead what is conveyed in Escape from the City is that regions are homogenous and monocultural. We would like to see more screen time devoted to the social and cultural aspects of the individual locations.ConclusionWe believe coverage of a far richer and more complex nature of rural life would provide a more ‘realistic’ preview of what could be ahead for the ‘escapees’ and perhaps swing the decision to relocate. Certainly, there is some evidence that viewers gain information from lifestyle programs (Hill 106). We are concerned that a lifestyle television program that purports to provide expert advice on the benefits and possible pitfalls of a possible move to the country should be as accurate and all-encompassing as possible within the constraints of the length of the program and the genre.So, returning to what may appear to have been a light-hearted exchange between us at our local bar, and given the above discussion, we argue that television is a powerful medium. We conclude that a popular lifestyle television program such as Escape from the City has an impact on a large viewing audience. For those city-based viewers watching, the message is that moving to the country is an economic ‘no brainer’, whereas the social and cultural dimensions of regional communities, which we posit have sustained our lives, are overlooked. Such texts influence viewers’ perceptions and expectations of what escaping to the country may entail. Escape from the City exploits regional towns as subject matter for a lifestyle program but does not significantly challenge stereotypical representations of country life or does not fully flesh out what escaping to the country may achieve.ReferencesArmidale Regional Council. Community Strategic Plan 2017–2027. Armidale: Armidale Regional Council, 2017.“Backtrack Boys.” Dir. Catherine Scott. Sydney: Umbrella Entertainment, 2018.Boyle, Raymond, and Lisa W. 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