School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemSocial and scientific factors in the development of Melbourne's early water supply( 1981)The research towards this thesis commenced in 1978 during a period of sabbatical leave from Melbourne State College. I would like to thank the College Council for the opportunity to consult material at the British Library and the Wellcome Institute, London. In my often fruitless searches for material I have been grateful for the knowledge and goodwill of many librarians and archivists. I would like to particularly acknowledge the assistance of Mr. R. Price, Wellcome Institute, London; Miss A. Tovell, Australian Medical Association library, Melbourne; Miss W. Johns, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works Library; and the reference staff of the La Tribe Library and the Victorian Public Records Office. My supervisor Miss D. Dyason introduced me to the history of public health. Her expertise and wide knowledge were utilised extensively throughout this project. I will always be grateful to Ingrid Barker for her ability to translate my endless rough drafts and marginal notes into a typed manuscript. Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis to my wife, Dawn, who more than anyone else encouraged me to continue my part-time studies and finally complete this research.
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ItemMcCrea, a matter of paradigms( 1980)
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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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ItemLithuanians in Melbourne 1947-1980( 1981)Lithuanians in Melbourne, or indeed in Australia as a whole, are a pretty rare species; not as rare as Norwegians, or Bulgarians, less than 500 of whom were listed in the 1976 census living in Melbourne but very much rarer that other eastern European nationals such as the Ukranians or Poles who numbered 2800 and 19500 respectively. Moreover they are a dying community, fewer than 100 people from Lithuania itself have migrated to Australia in the last decade. And of the 2,794 who were living in Victoria in 1954 nearly 600 had vanished by 1976. Melbourne Lithuanians then stood at 1701. A few migrated interstate or overseas but the large majority had died. The census of 1981 will undoubtedly reveal a further depletion in the ranks. The parish records of Fr Vaseris, the Lithuanian Catholic chaplain, reveal 420 deaths in the last 30 years. The rate of demise of the Lithuanians in Melbourne is increasing with each year, as the original immigrants, who reached Australia in the prime of life in the late 40's, are now approaching seventy. This is not a study of some rarified ethnic species of septigenerians living in Melbourne. It is intended, rather, to look at the lives of three generations of Lithuanians now living in Melbourne. This will entail looking at the background, the aspirations and achievements of the core group of settlers who came as refugees in the post war period; at their children, some born in displaced persons camps in Germany and elsewhere, between 1945 and 1949, many more born in Australia during the settling-in period of the early fifties – these I call second generation Lithuanian Australians; and lastly the progeny of these families, many of whom have Australian fathers of mothers, very few of whom can speak Lithuanian, most of whom prefer to be called simply Australians, and yet most of whom are aware of their toots and take a certain pride in their origins. This then is more than simply a look at the Lithuanian community in action, for a community must surely be defined as a body of people with a high degree of social integration, and this would have limited me to 600 people or so, whereas my three generations encompass more than two thousand living in the environs of Melbourne. Instead of looking at a small, fairly cohesive community-orientated group I prefer to look at a wider spectrum of people in terms of age structure and identity awareness. By concentrating on the lifestyles, the likes, the dislikes and aspirations of each of these differing groups or, put more simply, what it means to be a Lithuanian, a Lithuanian Australian or Australian of Lithuanian origin living in Melbourne today. (From Introduction)
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ItemGood men and true: the Aboriginal police of the Port Phillip District 1837-1853( 1986)Good men and true is the phrase used by the Commandant of the 1842 Corps of Native Police in summing up for Superintendent LaTrobe the outcome of the first experimental expedition of the Corps to the Western District. It is the age-old Service accolade, bespeaking praise and affection and pride in the troops under the command. This is a history of those men. Since Stanner wrote over twenty years ago that the Aborigines had been left out of Australian history, much has been written about them. Perhaps impelled by emergent black nationalism, maybe running parallel with it, this generation of writing about the Australian past has been useful and necessary in raising Australian consciousness to the extent necessary to take seriously the Aboriginal part of our joint past. To a large extent though, it has been an ethnocentric discussion of white behaviour towards Aborigines producing the Aboriginal people as subjects who seem to stand stock still, as one reviewer has said, and allow things to happen to them. It has produced the cultural perception of past and dead Aboriginal people as mainly victims, or in a few exceptional cases as heroic figures of resistance. Broome's observation about one chapter in one book is capable of general extension - we have replaced an earlier historical falsehood of a non-violent frontier with a new stereotype of a violent one. It could be added - with clearly defined and allocated roles, and moral evaluation thrown in for good measure. There is much truth in these histories, but even taken together, they do not encompass truth: they do not take account of positive Aboriginal choices. Our models of explanation, Stanner wrote, have been based either on the dramatic secondary causes - violence, disease, neglect, prejudice, or on the structure of Aboriginal society or both, but they have not taken into account Aboriginal initiatives towards European society, their curiosity, their zest for living, their choices, their creations. This study concerns itself with one of their choices - it is a history of co-operation, an Aboriginal success story. Why it has not been told before is puzzling: a cursory glance at the secondary section of the Bibliography (which is select, noting only those works which specifically mention the Corps) is sufficient to demonstrate a widespread awareness in the past of the Native Police Corps of the Port Phillip District. Yet out of all those passing mentions, it could scarcely be said that our knowledge has been advanced; five attempts only have been made to constitute the Corps as a subject of knowledge, and none to understand the men. Spender's question must at least be asked here, though it cannot be answered - "Why do we know so little about ... blacks for example, and why is so much of what we do know about them false, negative or derogatory. Who has made this knowledge, on what basis, and for what reasons?” Shades of Foucault. The explanatory processes used by white historians (which black historians reject) still draw their inspiration from Elkin's work. The story of Aboriginal co-operation in policing resembles to some extent the adaptive response which Elkin has described as intelligent parasitism. It was more though than that. Parasitism, however intelligent might well be an accurate description of the actions of men who choose a way of life for what they can get out of it, and abandon it when they get a better offer; or simply abandon it when its attractions dim, but it does not come anywhere near explaining in this particular instance the evident bonds of affection and loyalty which developed between the men who joined and their European officers. In this story, feelings matter. The Government's initial aim in setting up a Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District was two-fold: it wanted a policing force to deal with bushrangers, and at the same time, it hoped to "civilise" the men of the Corps. In this work, the civilising aim is ignored, except in so far as it was expressed in regulations for living, though it may be noted in passing that the Corps was described as the only success of all the Government's policy initiatives with regard to Aboriginal people. But success in European terms is not the issue. This enquiry is directed at the terms of existence for the men themselves; it seeks to tell the story of their choice, and to understand and explain it. The story and the explanation both turn around the dual consciousness of being Aboriginal and being a policeman.
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Item"Gentlemen, the ladies have come to stay!": the entry of women into the medical profession in Victoria and the founding of the Queen Victoria Hospital( 1987)In 1890 Emma Constance stone became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in Australia. Unable to gain admission to an Australian medical school, she obtained her qualifications overseas. While she was away women gained entry to the Melbourne Medical School. Stone, and the Melbourne pioneering medical women, the first of whom graduated in 1891, later went on to perform a wide variety of medical work, but their most outstanding achievement was the foundation of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women in 1896. The pioneers encountered hostility from the medical profession, especially from the male medical students, and enjoyed widespread support: from women who welcomed a hospital where they would be treated only by qualified female practitioners. American and British medical women had already started their own hospitals in order to provide health care for women after established hospitals had refused to appoint them. In Melbourne, although similar opposition limited the opportunities of women, they were not completely excluded from hospital staffs. Unlike the overseas hospitals on which it was modelled, the Queen Victoria Hospital was not founded only, or even, perhaps, primarily as a result of exclusion. The more positive aim of providing health care for women by women was a powerful motive behind the setting up of a hospital for women officered by qualified female doctors. (From Introduction)