School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe settlement of Melbourne 1851-1893: selected aspects of urban growth( 1970-02)Melbourne was the obvious choice as a prototype of a nineteenth century colonial city in the following study in urban history. It succeeded early to a pre-eminent position within Victoria, indeed of the entire Australian continent and its position of supremacy went unchallenged until the twentieth century. It was never seriously threatened by the claims of rival cities such as Ballarat, Sandhurst or Geelong. In this respect, Melbourne was a classic primate city with a whole-state hinterland and was justly described as "the commercial metropolis of the South". Its favourable geographic location, centrally placed between eastern and western halves of the colony, together with its position at the northern end of Port Phillip Bay provided the logical point of convergance for a railway network spanning the reaches of the interior. This gave a nodal quality to the city which made it the sole effective input-output point for all commerce with the mainland interior.(For complete abstract open document)
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ItemThe constitutional powers of the senate during the reign of Augustus( 2011)The intent and effect of this study is to understand the legal foundations of Augustus’s power and the extent to which he respected the new constitution of the res publica through his actions from 28 BCE-14 CE. The arguments combine to show that the prerogatives of the Senate were not changed during the redefinition of the Roman state; rather, Augustus and his bureaucracy carried out many traditional senatorial duties without actually removing any powers from the Senate. Augustus was careful to respect the honour of the Senate and allowed them to keep most of their Republican privileges. While the prerogatives of the Senate had not changed, and their prestige in society was maintained by Augustus, in practice the Senate had little influence on the major decisions of the new imperial res publica.
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Item'That place': nineteenth century land selection in the Otways, Victoria, Australia( 2011)The Cape Otway forest was opened for selection under Victoria’s late nineteenth century land acts. There were few applicants for the heavily timbered country until the government produced a map in 1886 showing the forest cut into neat oblong blocks, when many hundreds of people, mostly labourers with a nest-egg of savings, applied for allotments. Before the applications could be assessed, there was such an outcry about the prospective waste of timber resources that although the government allowed the existing applications to go ahead, the forest was closed to further selection. This see-saw between settlement and timber reservation continued for decades. By 1900, in broken terrain with very high rainfall, the selectors in the Otways were failing in droves. Yet in similar but more isolated country in Gippsland, under arguably more difficult selection legislation, selectors had apparently done better. This micro-study of settlement under the Land Act 1884 and subsequent acts shows some of the ways in which the legislative and administrative framework unintentionally influenced the mindscape of a developing community. Gippsland selectors took up land under the Land Act 1869, and pegged out their selections next to friends and relatives, so that communities began with some ready-made roots. Under the Land Act 1884 in the Otways the Local Land Board deliberately restricted families to one selection each unless there were no other applicants for the land, so that communities had to be made from scratch. Leasing arrangements under the Land Act 1884 meant that selectors in the Otways did not have to reside on their land, so that neighbours might not see each other from one year to the next. When they used fire to clear their blocks they frequently set off bushfires which burnt their neighbours out. Changes to the forfeit regulations, too, undermined community-making in the Otways because those who reported on their neighbours’ non-compliance had first option on obtaining the forfeited land. Worst of all, numerous individual selectors in the Otways blocked the building of much-needed roads. When so many put their own interests ahead of the wider community, few were able to thrive.