Arts Collected Works - Theses

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    The ousting of Billy Hughes : the 1922 Australian election
    McDonnell, John Terence (Terry). (University of Melbourne, 2008)
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    "I like the native names" : Aboriginal place names in settler Australian culture
    Furphy, Samuel (University of Melbourne, 2000)
    This thesis examines the use of Aboriginal words and place names by non-indigenous Australians from 1788 until the present. Place names with indigenous origins exist in large numbers on the maps of every state of Australia and are the result of an official preference for Aboriginal names that has spanned many generations. This thesis examines the origins and development of this official preference for indigenous name use with particular reference to New South Wales and Victoria. It also explores the many ways in which Aboriginal names have been used at a popular level for houses, boats, farms or homesteads. It argues that in a majority of cases (at both an official and popular level) indigenous name use is an example of cultural appropriation, for which Aboriginal linguistic diversity, cultural heritage and spatial organisation are largely irrelevant. The motives behind the appropriation of Aboriginal names are examined and, in particular, the role of Aboriginal place names in establishing an Australian national identity is explained. Consideration is given to the attitudes to actual indigenous people that accompanied the use of Aboriginal place names. The thesis asks whether non-indigenous use of Aboriginal names must always be described as appropriation or whether sensitive use can foster respect for indigenous cultures.
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    "I like the native names" : Aboriginal place names in settler Australian culture
    Furphy, Samuel (University of Melbourne, 2000)
    This thesis examines the use of Aboriginal words and place names by non-indigenous Australians from 1788 until the present. Place names with indigenous origins exist in large numbers on the maps of every state of Australia and are the result of an official preference for Aboriginal names that has spanned many generations. This thesis examines the origins and development of this official preference for indigenous name use with particular reference to New South Wales and Victoria. It also explores the many ways in which Aboriginal names have been used at a popular level for houses, boats, farms or homesteads. It argues that in a majority of cases (at both an official and popular level) indigenous name use is an example of cultural appropriation, for which Aboriginal linguistic diversity, cultural heritage and spatial organisation are largely irrelevant. The motives behind the appropriation of Aboriginal names are examined and, in particular, the role of Aboriginal place names in establishing an Australian national identity is explained. Consideration is given to the attitudes to actual indigenous people that accompanied the use of Aboriginal place names. The thesis asks whether non-indigenous use of Aboriginal names must always be described as appropriation or whether sensitive use can foster respect for indigenous cultures.
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    The policeman's eye: the photography of Paul Foelsche
    SMITH, TIMOTHY ( 2011)
    Inspector Paul Hinrich Matthias Foelsche was an enthusiastic amateur, who began to work in the field of photography shortly after his appointment as founding Inspector of Police for the Northern Territory in 1870. Foelsche's photographic practice spanned the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the period of focus of this thesis. His first tentative views of the temporary buildings of the Port Darwin settlement were made with a simple quarter-plate camera that used the latest reproducible method known as collodion or wet-plate photography, which instantly revolutionised the way exploration and surveying were visually recorded. Foelsche began using a whole-plate camera in 1873, and assumed the role of the colony's official photographer when asked to supply views of the newly established settlement for display at Melbourne's 1875 Intercolonial Exhibition. A subsequent government request for Aboriginal portraits for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878 introduced him to ethnographic photography, a purpose that became aligned with his wider interest in the prevailing scientific propositions surrounding the origins of humankind. Foelsche was occasionally invited to publish his findings on the North Australian Aborigines and, although he was not a scientist, he is more fittingly portrayed as a field collector, and an informant on the Northern Territory and its first inhabitants. By the early 1880s, Foelsche had separated his negatives into two distinct photographic purposes that were the raisons d' etre behind his photography - one that encompasses views of the developing urban landscape and scenery for international exhibitions, and a second undertaking that has become an important collection of ethnographic portraits of North Australian Aborigines. The combined significance of these intersecting projects constitutes his contribution to Australia's photography. One of the historiographic problems of the thesis has been to arrive at a just and fair assessment of Paul Foelsche, not only as a photographer, but also as a public servant. There is no doubt that Foelsche worked under equivocal and onerous circumstances, and within a very rudimentary legal system. The fact that over various parts of his career he was both the Inspector of Police and a magistrate certainly compromised his independence. His primary relationship with Aboriginal people was as a policeman, and his handling of frontier conflict remains a controversial aspect of the Northern Territory's early history. His role as a senior policeman presented opportunities for his photography, which would not have existed had he not occupied that position. Although there is no record of Foelsche directly participating in the violence, Foelsche's photographs of peaceful Aborigines sit uncomfortably with the sanctioned reprisals that took place against some of the Aboriginal peoples he was photographing. Foelsche, who was among the original Northern Territory pioneers, was first remembered as an intelligent and effective police official, however with the developing interest in frontier history in recent years he has been increasingly associated with the region's record of frontier conflict. His contributions with a camera and as a collector by comparison, have been largely overlooked. While his scientific collecting is deserving of attention, this thesis focuses on the figure of Foelsche as a photographer. Beyond its inherent geographic and ethnographic value, I will argue that his entire photographic opus presents a unique record of British colonisation of Australia's Northern Territory. The technical and creative quality of Foelsche's work has been underestimated and this thesis argues a place for him amongst the foremost Australian colonial photographers.
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    An empirical study of the usefulness of accounting ratios to describe levels of insolvency risk
    Lincoln, Mervyn George ( 1982)
    This study aims to add a new dimension to research in Australia on the use of accounting ratios to predict corporate failure. Previous studies have used the statistical technique of discriminant analysis to derive models for predicting whether a firm will or will not fail. This study will use the same statistical technique but with three differences: (a) The ratios to be used in the discriminant analysis are selected by a method which ensured that no arbitrary limit is placed on their number. (b) Because the significance of accounting ratios can vary from industry to industry, four industries are separately analysed: manufacturing, retail, property, and finance. (c) The statistical probabilities yielded by the analysis are used to measure a firm’s current level of insolvency risk. The extra dimension is added by interpreting the characteristic patterns of insolvency risk which emerge: an analysis of the factors causing the differences in these patterns throws new light on the causes, symptoms, and remedies of financial distress.