School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemVagrancy and the Victorians: the social construction of the vagrant in Melbourne, 1880-1907( 1990)In Melbourne between 1880 and 1907, the construction and propagation of a vagrant stereotype and its manifestation in law, constituted an important means of controlling the behaviour of individuals and groups who were perceived to be socially undesirable or economically burdensome.
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ItemShadows on the landscape: memorial aspects of the Great Ocean Road( 1999)Victoria's commemorative landscape is made up of a series of natural and constructed features comprising roads, bridges, memorial sculptures, avenues of honour, coastal fortifications and military memorabilia, yet their memorializing function is largely unrecognized by the general population. Some of these memorials have been linked with the scenic landscape and have become privileged as tourist sites. Their original meanings, however, have been blurred by twentieth century progress. This thesis examines one component of Australia's memorial landscape, the Great Ocean Road in South West Victoria, and questions whether there is a parallel between the Western concept of a memorial landscape and the notions of spirituality in the land which are a primary component of the belief structure of indigenous peoples. This leads to an examination of the local geographical landscape in relation to Aboriginal massacre sites, and a questioning of the congruence between such sites and the now memorialized battlefields of World War 1. Chapter One deals with the history of the Great Ocean Road and traces its development and construction from 1916 to 1932. Chapter Two examines the place of the Great Ocean Road in the overall scheme of post World War 1 memorialization, and questions why its original function has been so little recognized by the community. Chapter Three looks at the complex relationships between the physical and spiritual elements of the land as perceived by Aboriginal culture, investigates the Aboriginal massacre sites within close proximity to the Great Ocean Road, and questions why no memorials have been raised to Aborigines who died defending their land. The theoretical base of the thesis is supported by the notion that landscape is socially and culturally determined, and that place can be invested with spiritual potency. Finally, it is argued that for a place to retain its spiritual strength, regardless of the culture, the spiritual content must be recognized, ritualized and constantly refreshed within the culture.
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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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ItemEvolution of a zoo: a history of the Melbourne Zoological Gardens, 1857-1900( 1990)The Melbourne Zoo in the late twentieth century is a popular venue which attracts up to one and a half million visitors per year. It has a large income gathered from entrance fees, Government contribution and private sponsorship. The gardens are most attractive, some of the enclosures are of the latest design, there is an active and innovative education program which reaches large numbers of school children every year, the breeding programs have achieved some measure of success, and the collection of animals is large and diverse. Yet there is something discomfiting about an institution which holds baboons in wire cages with concrete floors and tigers in an enclosure not much bigger than a tennis court. A history of the institution can shed light on why the Zoo now incorporates such features; more importantly it can assist the contemporary administration in planning a Zoo by identifying the historical legacies and evaluating their relevance for a twenty-first century audience.
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ItemThe itinerary of our days: the historical experience of the street in Melbourne, 1837-1923( 1993)By the 1920s, the automobile had radically altered the social experience of Melbourne’s streets, and an apparent demise of social vibrancy together with the marginalising of traditional street culture have been attributed to its impact on the function and use of public space. The increased regulation of public street life, as enforced particularly by municipal authority, can however be related to broader motives dating back to the city’s earliest days. The planning of the colonial grid in 1837 established a physical and symbolic template for social organisation, and developing spatial hierarchies characterised the street as a social zone. Aided by technological developments, the interface between the footpath and the carriageway gradually became more distinguished, the space of the footpath being allocated not simply in terms of circulatory function, but on the basis of moral, gendered, and aesthetic interpretations. A range of street facilities and municipal ordinances combatted a variety of nuisance definitions, effectively enhancing the physical and sanitary experience of the urban setting, but at the same time creating more rigid surveillance over public social behaviour. The function of the street as economic space for the itinerant hawker and fixed-stand vendor was regulated in the face of growing concerns not only about circulatory congestion, but about class respectability, noise, race, litter, and municipal self-image. The street as the setting for urban public ritual was by the 1920s limited on the grounds of both congestion and cultural homogeneity, where once a diverse range of social groups actually and symbolically claimed the space of the streets for public display. The street is seen as an increasingly regulated urban form, a setting for complex negotiations over public social behaviour and the instrument of a detailed regulatory apparatus demanding conformity to particular conceptions of class, aesthetics, etiquette, convenience, nuisance, race and gender. While nostalgic images of nineteenth-century street life often edit out its negative aspects, the legacy of the first century of municipal authority over public urban domain has been the limitation of the very social diversity which may be an antidote to more contemporary urban ills.
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ItemLaw and the new left: a history of the Fitzroy Legal Service, 1972-1994( 1995)When Fitzroy Legal Service (FLS) opened in December 1972 as the first non-Aboriginal community legal centre in Australia, Its volunteer workers posed a radical critique of the legal system and of the legal profession. They depicted both to be intricately involved in the oppression of Australians on low incomes. In a bid to combat this oppression, FLS developed two broad objectives: to provide free and accessible legal assistance, and to operate as a medium of social change. The adoption and pursuit of these at times contradictory aims amounted to an attempt by FLS volunteers to marry the politics of the New Left to the workings of the law. The adoption of these aims also meant that FLS would be involved, at a very practical level, in the debate concerning the relationship between the law and social change in Australia. In the years after its formation, the radical critique once posed by FLS dissipated. This occurred primarily because the State, n the form of the Whitlam Government moved to accommodate the most persuasive criticisms that FLS workers had of the legal system. The Whitlam Government’s creation of a new legal aid system in 1973, the high profile taken by FLS workers in debates about legal aid and the fact that FLS received government funding were all crucial to FLS’s increasingly accepted status as a part albeit an unusual one of the legal profession. Notwithstanding this acceptance, FLS workers have continued to pursue the organisation's two original aims. As a result of this FLS has continued to draw clients and workers to the Service, while at the same time it has continued to operate as an effective social critic.