School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemMaking the deserts bloom: attitudes towards water and nature in the Victorian irrigation debate, 1880-1890( 1994)In 1836 Major Thomas Mitchell and his gaggle of supply carts, Europeans and Aboriginal interpreters camped on a river and named it Moonlight Creek. Those who followed after Mitchell called the town that grew up near Moonlight Creek “Kerang”, which was supposedly the local Koori word for moonlight. Locals now tell visitors Kerang means “moon over water.” Kerang lies north of Bendigo and south east of Swan Hill. It is part of the area known as northern Victoria. In the past it has been called the northern plains or regarded as part of Australia Felix. The major characteristic of this area is its dependence on water. Water was a major preoccupation of Major Mitchell, as it has been for all those who followed him. Water had both symbolic and practical applications. It has been used as a symbol which unified the experience of European settlers with those who followed them. In part this association can be explained by the ancient European image of the river as a symbol of endurance and of “changeless change”. A river seems to be continually changing between historical, linear time and future cyclical time, between a definite spatial context, and one which is continuous. At Swan Hill, residents have built a monument to their pioneers surrounded by a pool of water. The monument offers clues to the complex relationship between water and society, and attempts to impose a dominant meaning on this relationship. The monument stands at the entrance of Swan Hill’s major tourist attraction, the Pioneer Settlement, a recreation of a nineteenth century pioneer town where local residents in period costume sell boiled lollies and horse rides to tourists. (From Introduction)
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ItemThe yeast is red( 1994)The Yeast is Red is a case study of the Australian new left of the late sixties. The new left initially emerged as part of a movement of growing opposition to the Vietnam War. The war shattered the previously dominant framework of 'Cold War' assumptions and profoundly altered the Australian political culture. Even though Vietnam and the associated conscription of male youths was the catalyst for the youth radicalisation of the sixties which produced the new left, the new radical consciousness was caused also by the effects of the social and cultural changes of the period. While actively opposing the foreign war, theorists of the new left began to develop an original and sophisticated critique, based partly on the demand for more participatory democratic forms, of their own society. Vietnam, an increasingly unpopular involvement, became a metaphor for what was seen as a suffocating and conformist malaise at home.
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ItemThe defences of Hobson's Bay and Port Phillip, 1870-1901( 1994)This thesis examines the reasons behind the withdrawal of the Imperial garrison from Victoria in 1870, and the development of the defences of the colony in the period 1870-1901. These developments caused the importation of a large amount of naval and military technology into Victoria. The attitude that accompanied this transfer of technology is considered in this thesis as an impetus to the federation of the Australian colonies. The plans drawn up by Colonel Sir W. Drummond Jervois, and the development and acquisition of the armaments needed to implement his plans are also reviewed in the light of the rapid advances in arms manufacture which took place during the 1870s and 1880s. Victoria’s naval and military capacity, like that of the other self governing colonies of the Empire was recognised by the British government as a pool of reserve manpower which could be called upon to share the burden of Imperial commitments. The New South Wales contingent which hastened to the Sudan in 1885 confirmed that the colonies were able, and willing, to participate in this activity. During the 1880s the colonial military found that they were prevented from formulating plans for combined action in the event of a hostile incursion because of the constraints of their individual discipline acts. This was recognised by an Imperial officer, Major-general Sir J. Bevan Edwards during his inspection tour in 1889. His recommendations were used by Sir Henry Parkes to rekindle the federation debate. However, the centrality of Parkes’ role is questioned. The role played by the Victorian Premier, Duncan Gillies, and his Military Commandant Colonel H. S. Brownrigg, in being the first to advocate the need for combined defence is also reviewed.