School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemIn search of identity : engineering in Australia 1788-1988( 1988)This is the first historical study of the social organisation of engineering in Australia. Engineering education, professional associations, industrial relations, engineering populations and attitudes concerning occupational title, professional recognition and nature of employment are analysed as to their influence upon occupational control and identity. The shared values among engineers concerning occupational identity stem from these factors. The study is not concerned with the technological and resource management functions of engineers. In considering the first of the research questions: 'How has the occupational identity of engineers developed in Australia?', two further questions arise. The second question: 'What have been the influences of the professional associations, engineering education and industrial relations in the development of occupational identity for engineers in Australia?', gives rise to the major historical themes in the study. The analysis goes well beyond the history of engineering education and the engineering associations in addressing the third research question: 'What are the shared values of engineering concerning occupational control and professionalisation, especially in relation to occupational identity?' The study shows that Australian engineers have long been concerned about the identity of their occupation, and that they have developed mechanisms for occupational control that not only depend upon clarity of Identity, but also reinforce it. Early concern about use of 'engineer' by the non-qualified persons caused adoption of the descriptor professional engineer. Concerns about community recognition caused engineers to argue that their education and the importance of their work should attract the prestige accorded to other professions. Believing that they deserve to be ranked high among the professions, engineers sought a commensurate level of income. But engineers predominantly are not independent practitioners, they are employed in teams in organisations, and such concerns existed mainly within the context of employment, requiring the issues of corporate patronage and industrial relations to be addressed. There was little engineering in the Australian colonies until after the gold rushes of the 1850s. The study includes quantitative analyses of the growth of the Australian engineering population from 1850 to gauge of the influence of different modes of formation of engineers in the evolution of shared values. The antecedents of Australian engineering are traced to the beginnings of the occupation in Britain and North America. During the last half-century industrial relations became a major element in the occupational control and identity of Australian engineers, and this factor provides a contrast between the manner in which occupational control, is exercised in Britain and North America. The conclusions are that occupational control in Australia differs from that in Britain and North America, and that, in contrast with those countries, occupational identity has been strongly reinforced in Australia through industrial relations. However, trends indicate possible changes in the future social organisation of Australian engineering, with diminished strength in occupational control mechanisms.
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ItemThe Professional Engineers Cases : origins, conduct and outcomes( 1986)The forty-year lead-up to the commencement of the Professional Engineers Case in 1959, following the formation of the institution of Engineers, Australia, in 1919, was characterised by a continuous search for the status and reward appropriate to a profession. Engineers were predominantly in the employ of State governments, and the Commonwealth Government also grew in importance as a major employer. The dominant factor in the control of the profession therefore was governmental corporate patronage. Engineers were represented industrially by a large number of organisations, and their inadequate salaries were fixed within structures preserving relativities with other less qualified and non-professional occupations. Engineers were powerless to achieve enhancement of their salaries, and hence of their status, even though there was strong support from leading engineers throughout Australia. Through the imaginative determination of new leaders who emerged with the formation of the Association of Professional Engineers, Australia, in 1946, engineers were able to develop a new approach to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission for a fundamental evaluation of the work and the salary levels of engineering as a national employee profession. Despite fierce opposition mainly from the States, the situation of government corporate patronage was substantially modified by the achievement of Federal salary awards.
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ItemJohn Ridley's contributions to Australian technology and to the early progress of South Australia( 1979)This study is primarily concerned with the working career of John Ridley (1806-1887), and with his contributions to the flour-milling industry of South Australia, to wheat harvesting technology, and to the progress of the colony generally. Ridley emigrated to South Australia from the north of England in 1840, and remained there until early 1853. Although still a relatively young man, he then returned to England to live in semi-retirement. The following text will show that Ridley contributed substantially to the technical and economic progress of the young- colony in at least two separate ways :- (i) He built the first flour-mill in South Australia in the year 1840, and subsequently operated it as a very successful business until he left the colony in 1853. The mill was steam-driven, of substantial capacity for the time, and of considerable economic significance to the colony. The local flour-milling industry which grew up soon afterwards freed the colony from crippling expenditures for imported flour and other breadstuffs, thus permitting a sound local economy to be developed. During 1842 Ridley leased a second (inoperative) flourmill near Adelaide, completely refitted it, and brought it too into successful operation. As well as helping to alleviate the financial difficulties of the colony at the time, these two mills provided a timely stimulus to local wheat growing. Ridley exerted a considerable influence upon the early development of South Australia's flour-milling industry, by virtue of the high standards for efficiency, operating reliability, and sound profitability he established in his own businesses. The competitors he attracted were forced to achieve similarly high standards in order to survive. His work was thus of importance in helping to secure a sound base for the future growth of the industry. (ii) In late-1843 Ridley invented, constructed, and demonstrated a unique mechanical harvester for gathering grain crops. This machine, later known as the "Ridley Reaper" or the "South Australian Stripper", was subsequently manufactured and used in thousands within the colony. For more than half a century the machine played a major part in stimulating wheat production in the region by providing the simplest and cheapest harvesting method in the world at that time. Ridley's invention embodied a principle of operation which was entirely novel at the time it was introduced. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries this same principle was incorporated into the designs of many other widely used grain harvesters. Ridley's machine therefore occupies an important place in the evolution of modern grain-harvesting machinery. The first two machines (both built by Ridley) were directly responsible for averting a serious harvesting crisis in South Australia at the 1843-44 season. Afterwards, when ever-increasing numbers of the machines went into service, a dramatic expansion of the colony's wheat-growing industry became possible. This in turn led to the development of a large export trade in wheat, and thus to an enviable economic prosperity for the colony. Whilst there is unanimous agreement that Ridley constructed and demonstrated the first successful machine of the "Stripper" type, his claim to have also invented the principle of its operation has been disputed. John Wrathall Full, another. pioneer South Australian settler, insisted that he and not Ridley originated the fundamental principle. In fact, he directly accused Ridley of stealing his idea and putting it into practice. The resulting controversy is examined in detail, and Bull's claim shown to be falsely based. Two further points of historical interest are also made and substantiated. Firstly, the "Stripper" was the first ever harvesting machine to successfully combine the operations of gathering and threshing the grain. And secondly, Ridley's "Stripper" was the first machine in the world to substantially displace hand-methods of cereal harvesting in its region. In the light of all the above considerations, it is suggested that Ridley's machine has not received either fair or sufficient notice in the histories of agricultural technology published to date. John Ridley's importance in the story of the development of mechanical harvesting has thus been unjustly neglected.
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ItemThe Australian missionary endeavour in China, 1888-1953( 1978)Late in the nineteenth century, when cultural and commercial contact between China and Australia was minimal and the Australian public felt a deep, ingrained distaste for its own Chinese immigrant population, Australian missionaries began to join the Christian missionary enterprise in China. The initial stimulus for the movement was, however, provided largely by British missions and their deputationists who visited Australia in the 1890s. The first stage of the movement was not, therefore, an expression of the burgeoning Australian nationalism in which distrust and loathing of the Chinese immigrant was an integral element. Furthermore, it continued as it began. Between 1888 and 1953, more than 500 missionaries worked in China, the great majority in British, not exclusively Australian, mission organizations. The endeavour was a predominantly Protestant phenomenon, characterized by a high proportion of evangelists, a small core of post-secondary or tertiary-trained professionals, and a large number of women. Apart from a few outstanding contributions to China's social welfare and Sinology, most missionaries were fully occupied with converting the Chinese to Christianity. Although initially and continually stimulated by influences which were external to the Australian environment, the movement had its own internal logic. It was highly self-propagating, drawing a large proportion of its members from friends and families within the ecclesia, the religious community. It did not, however, constitute a homogeneous community. This was due to the wide differences in the ethos and methods of the mission societies involved. Once in China, the great majority of missionaries obeyed the rules and followed the policies of the British societies to which they belonged. They responded to the Chinese and conditions in China in this capacity and adopted the image of Christian internationalism which those societies increasingly projected to accommodate to the demands of Chinese nationalism. Most missionaries therefore voluntarily suppressed their Australian identity. Australian branches of mission societies, with few exceptions, followed suit. As a consequence of the way the movement began, and this effort to remain supranational, Australian missionary interest in China never harmonized with developing Australian secular interest. The missionary movement peaked in 1923 and again in 1933 in response to favourable conditions for Christianity in China; secular interest developed after 1938 and during World War II in response to China's valuable resistance to the common enemy, Japan. For the above reasons, and because of their own mission-centrism, Australian missionaries were not effective translators of the Chinese culture to Australia; nor did they transmit Australian secular attitudes to China. Those Chinese who, in the last stages of the endeavour, were aware of the identity of the Australian missionary, saw him as the colonial subject of British imperial domination. Finally, the missionary body's effect on China's culture and historical development is best assessed in terms of its role as an intellectual stimulus to the social revolution which fomented throughout the undertaking, climaxed in 1949, and rejected the entire Western missionary enterprise.
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ItemThe Chiltern Standard newspaper, 1859-1860: an expression of community life( 1986)This thesis is a study of a Victorian country newspaper, the Chiltern Standard during the period 1859-60. Using the Indigo-Chiltern goldfield (discovered in 1858) as a case study, it investigates how the life of the community was expressed through the pages of its local paper.
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Item"The friendly games"?: The Melbourne Olympic Games in Australian culture 1946-1956( 1989)Melbourne is making a concerted bid to obtain the centenary 1996 Olympic Games. While much of its bid is occupied with explanations of the city’s ability to meet the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) requirements, it is underpinned by a common theme that the city possesses a unique quality of “Friendliness”. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemThe emergence of a bayside suburb: Sandringham, Victoria c. 1850-1900( 1971-03)The past neglect of the Australian city by historians is frequently the subject of lament. The neglect can be highlighted by noting that not only has the impact of the city been generally avoided in Australian historiography despite its overarching importance but also by the fact that Melbourne and Sydney still lack biographies. By contrast, major British and United States cities have had substantial treatment. Therefore, in the circumstance of very considerable gaps in Australian urban historiography, there is probably little need to justify a research topic which tackles the emergence of Sandringham, a Melbourne suburb in the late 19th century. Apart from the narrow and local purpose of providing a means by which local residents can further identify themselves with their community, a suburb history can provide a case study in urbanization which can be of relevance to the whole field of urban history and more specifically, it can enrich the written history of the city of which it is part.
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ItemThe state of modern Greek language as spoken in Victoria( 1986)This thesis reports a sociolinguistic study, carried out between 1981 and 1984, of the state of the Modern Greek (MG) language in Australia, as spoken by native-speaking first-generation Greek immigrants in Victoria. Particular emphasis is given to the analysis of those characteristics of the linguistic behaviour of these Greek Australians which can be attributed to the contact with English and to other environmental, social and linguistic influence. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemBonegilla Reception and Training Centre: 1947-1971( 1985-08)In 1945 the Australian Government created the Department of Immigration. Its purpose was the promotion of a solution to Australia’s limited natural population growth in the face of defence fears and of an Australian society which, using the voices of its politicians, was increasingly willing to depict itself as an isolated and threatened British outpost. The fears themselves revolved as much around the defence of a singularly British heritage in terms of political, social and economic institutions, as a purely geographical or military threat. While the “threat” was more often perceived as assuming an Asian or non-European identity, Australians also had a history of feeling socially insecure when confronted by “non-British groups” within their own shores; the extent of that insecurity varying according to more specific ethnic categorisations within the general “non-British” label (i.e. northern c.f. southern Europeans, western c.f. eastern Europeans). The significance of the post-war period is that within two years of the formation of an Immigration bureaucracy by a party which had traditionally been hostile to immigration, an immigration programme had also begun to be formulated which would eventually allow, encourage, and financially assist, the introduction of groups which, traditionally, were depicted as posing the very threat to Australian homogeneity which immigration had been posited as assuaging.