School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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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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ItemThe Chinese in Australia 1930-45: beyond a history of racism( 1995)The present thesis is a contribution to the history of the Chinese in Australia. In it, I have endeavoured to look at the relations between European and Chinese settlers in Australia from a perspective other than that of racism. Discrimination against the Chinese was common in all settler societies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the basis of archival documentation and in conjunction with contemporary sources, I would suggest that a different history can be told in regard to Australian Chinese. To look at the history of the Chinese in Australia in light of the immigration policy alone ignores other aspects of Australian-Chinese history, aspects which concern the daily lives of those Chinese who lived and worked in Australia as Australian citizens. With due regard to Federal political policies implicated at a bureaucratic level, the actual experiences and achievements of Australian Chinese still indicate that they fared better than most authors on the subject would have us believe. ..... In presenting the results of my research, I do not mean to belittle the experience of racism suffered by people of Chinese ancestry in Australia. This experience has been well documented and is, moreover, still being endured. My point is merely that racism was not the sum total of the Chinese experiences of Australian society. As a recent collection of essays shows, the time has come to write about other aspects of Australia's Chinese history. In this thesis I have documented the attitudes and efforts of the Chinese Nationals and Australian Chinese in Australia during the war years. Their efforts, combined with the Australian Chinese communities' supportive role and the increased wartime interactions with other Australians contributed during this period to establishing a greater understanding between the different communities in Australian society. (From introduction)
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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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ItemVexed and volatile bodies: the drama of possession and exorcism in late Elizabethan England: the John Darrell cases( 1998)This thesis focuses on the drama of the possessed body in the ritual of exorcism in late Elizabethan England. It examines the various ways in which the devil manifests itself in the bodies of male and female demoniacs. It shows how cultural, religious and popular beliefs seep into the bodily performance of these demoniacs. The symptoms displayed by the demoniacs, such as uncontrolled rages, loss of appetite, hysterical screaming and crying, and clairvoyancy are read in a gendered way. The "vexed" bodies writhing in pain and experiencing volatile emotions are examined for the nature of their bodily performance. They create a theatrical dynamic which gives the devil a very real presence, in which he makes spectacular entrances and exits from the bodily orifices of the demoniacs. The thesis examines these issues through the public exorcisms performed by the Protestant exorcist, John Darrell, between 1586 and 1598 in England. The approach has been to adopt an unfolding narrative which emphasises the drama and public spectacle in each case The cases which are examined in separate chapters include the exorcism of Katherine Wright, a seventeen-year-old girl from Derbyshire, the thirteen-year-old Thomas Darling from Burton on Trent, a mass possession of 7 members of one family in Lancashire and William Somers, a twenty-year-old male who was exorcised publicly in Nottingham in 1598. The rituals or exorcism performed by Darrell are shown to have a changing script. The exorcist adapts this script according to the age and gender of the demoniac and the cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. Through the script of exorcism, the exorcist maps cultural beliefs onto the body of the demoniac and this results in different behavior by males and females. The demoniacs themselves sometimes also take an active role in the ritual as they confute the exorcist's logic, orchestrate their own bodily performances or direct their audiences, which sometimes swelled to a crowd of 500 people, to acts of praying and singing. The scripting of male and female demoniacs in the various accounts of the Darrell cases, is also examined for the way supernatural symptoms of possession are interpreted as specific to the gender of the demoniac. Female demoniacs are described for the most part as weak and uncontrolled. The two thirty-year-old demoniacs in the Lancashire case, Jane Ashton and Margaret Bynom for instance, are shown to suffer supernatural symptoms which attack and disable the body. Male demoniacs like Thomas Darling, on the other hand, who preached and at times even adopted the commanding voice of the exorcist, are more often represented as morally strong, their fits structured in a teleological fashion. Male demoniacs seem more able to slough off their uncontrolled rages and to resume their normal bodily and intellectual composure than female demoniacs. This is despite the intensity of the male demoniac's fits, which in the case of William Somers reportedly "consumed all partes of him". In this way the "vexed" and volatile body of the possessed demoniac in these rituals of exorcism offers the modern reader a particular insight into the manner in which religious and popular belief in late Elizabethan England needs to be understood with respect to the functioning of gender.
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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 Victorian Land Act of 1862 revisited( 1992)There is an extensive historiography of the Land Act of 1862, usually known as Duffy's Land Act, after the then Minister of Lands, Charles Gavan Duffy. However, this historiography is remarkable for the divergent views of the various writers as to the causes of the Act's failure to achieve its ostensible purposes. I have, therefore, undertaken a detailed study of the period October 1861 to June 1863 which, together with some later material, provides, I believe, a firmer basis for judging the motives and actions of the chief "players" in this little drama. These include, in particular, Duffy, John Dennistoun Wood, the Minister for Justice and my great-grandfather Richard Davies Ireland, the Attorney-Genera1. After reviewing the work of previous writers, which I do in the next four pages, four questions seem to me to arise and I have used these as a basis for an exploration of events and in establishing the degree of blame each of the above should properly share for the Act's failure. The first signs of failure were not long in appearing. Within a week of its coming into force on 10 September 1862 it had already become plain that, so far as its provisions for settling small farmers on the land were concerned, the Act was achieving the exact opposite of what it apparently set out to do. For while purporting to facilitate the development of agriculture, on small blocks owned by yeoman farmers, on an idealised European pattern, it was actually facilitating the permanent acquisition of broad acres for sheep grazing. This was particularly so in the Western District, parts of which, by their proximity to existing markets or ports, as well as their excellent soils, recommended themselves to contemporaries as potentially the most suitable agricultural land of all. This led the Geelong Advertiser to ask about the Act's operation in the area ‘Is Mr Duffy a rogue? Is he a fool? or is he a compound of both?’ (From Introduction)
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ItemThe religious aspects of the Jewish rebellions of the 1st century C.E.( 1997)This thesis examines a number of conflicts between the Jews and the Romans during the 1st century C. E.. It attempts to explain the role played by religion in these conflicts. It does not argue that religion was the only aspect of these revolts, but acknowledges that other issues, such as economics, politics and racism, were also important. However, little attempt has been made to examine these other issues. This thesis does not accuse the Romans of religious intolerance - on the contrary, it argues that the Romans allowed the Jews religious autonomy. However, it does argue that some Roman bureaucrats were provocative and insensitive to Jewish beliefs and practices, such as Pilate's use of the Korban in the construction of the aqueduct, or Gaius' attempt to install his statue in the Jerusalem temple. These provocative actions offended the Jews because they were considered to be a violation of their beliefs and practices. When such provocation occurred, the Jews reacted by showing hostility to the Romans in varying degrees. Sometimes their protest was of a passive nature, e,g. when Pilate allowed his soldiers to bring their effigies into Jerusalem, whereas during the years of 66-70 C.E. the Jews rose in armed rebellion. In this thesis I have endeavoured to treat each incident in isolation. While I agree that there is a correlation between some of them, I disagree with the general thrust of Josephus who wrote as if these events steadily escalated into the revolt of 66-70 C.E.. Therefore, I have not proposed causes for the revolt although I do consider aspects related to it. The three main parts of this thesis are an examination of the conflicts that developed over the issues of Monotheism, Messianism, and the Temple.
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ItemSticking to the land: a history of exclusion on Kangaroo Island, 1827-1996( 1996)In 1827, English ex-sailor Nathaniel Walles (Nat) Thomas and Aboriginal Tasmanian Betty were living at Antechamber Bay, in what later became the Hundred of Dudley, Kangaroo Island. They were among the several pre-colonial settlers who had come through the Bass Strait opened up by sealing and whaling industries from the turn of the nineteenth century. When the South Australia Company landed on Kangaroo Island in 1836, there were approximately five Tasmanian Aboriginal men and eight European men, some of whom, like Nat, had small farms of crops and stock. Nat and Betty appear to have been the only parents within this population of 1836 and the only Kangaroo Island pre-colonists to whom the descendants can trace their genealogies today. Their two surviving children, Mary born 1833 and Hannah born c.1839, married South Australia Company settlers; Mary married William Seymour in 1849 and Hannah married Thomas Simpson in 1860. Mary and William remained living near Nat Thomas at Antechamber Bay with their son and two daughters. William worked as a third keeper at the near-by Sturt Lighthouse, Cape Willoughby from 1852-1858. By 1885, however, Mary, by then widowed, moved to Penneshaw. There her son Joseph, a stone-mason, was married and had three daughters, whilst her eldest daughter Emma was married to local labourer Frank Barrett and had four sons and two daughters. The year they married, Hannah and Thomas took up a small lease of land near Penneshaw, known pre-1883 as Hog Bay, and Thomas, previously a Lincolnshire butcher, became the district postmaster. They had seven surviving sons and three daughters. At the age of nineteen, their eldest son, Nathaniel, inherited fifty-one acres of freehold land from his grandfather on his death in 1879. He and his brothers William, Thomas and Stephen worked on increasing this holding and, by 1893, were partners in over eleven thousand acres of land spanning south from Antechamber Bay to Cape Hart. Stephen Simpson also owned one hundred and eighty acres of suburban blocks in Sapphiretown, a township further west, and a forty acre section in Penneshaw where he lived. Nathaniel was a Justice of the Peace and he and his brothers Thomas and William councillors for the District of Dudly. The Simpsons had become an established family; they had houses, land and positions of influence. They could not, however, marry into the other established families. The colonial pastoralist families who had taken up leases on the Hundred of Dudley, predominantly in the 1850’s and 60’s found the pre-colonial descendants unacceptable on the grounds of their Aboriginal ancestry. Having met the colonial families on every other front- acreage, power and respectability-marriage; the mixing of black and white blood, proved the ultimate boundary the pre-colonial descendants could not penetrate. Chapter two discusses the marital frontier between colonised and coloniser, a barrier which was suppressed in daily and mundane interaction but tacitly expressed in forbidden or broken engagements. As one colonial descendant explained, “no-one would make a fuss until you start [sic] to talk of marrying one’. It was not that the second and particularly third or filial pre-colonial looked black; it was that they carried a contaminant gene. Interviews with colonial descendants expose that there was fear that mixed blood would create the “throw-back”. Far less fantastic, however, was the feat that marriage into an Aboriginal pre-colonial descendant family would lead to their own exclusion. While blood expresses the basic contamination, however, it only operates within a place. When the third and filial generation of pre-colonial descendants left Kangaroo Island for the mainland, where their ancestry was not known, they were able to marry. It is, therefore, evident that race is defined not only genetically, but by place, a notion more fully developed in the discussions of pre-colonial descendants ownership and loss of land in chapter one.