School of Geography - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableBreaking bread with bin chickens: more-than-human dumpster diving in Naarm/Melbourne( 2023)This project investigates embodied experiences and nonhuman encounters in dumpster diving in Naarm/Melbourne. Overall, my thesis argues that divers use their senses, collective labour, and networks of care to recover not just wasted food, but wasted places. Adopting a multi-sited, embodied, and creative approach, my research methods include participant observation, ‘dive-along’ interviews, and zine-making workshops. The approach to zine-making in the research design highlights the value of creative methods for not only data collection and communication but also for collaborative (preliminary) data analysis. Drawing on these methods, I develop insight into, first, how divers get to know certain types of dumpsters and participate in making dumpster places. Second, while building this familiarity, divers engage in collective labour with other divers (human and not) to salvage food (from being waste) and to overcome threats to their work. Third, through these practices of place- making and collaboration, divers demonstrate care through outrage about a problematic food system and care for themselves and wider communities. This analysis of how divers learn, labour, and care offered in this thesis supports an argument that dumpster diving not only recovers food, but begins to enact different worlds. Divers bring shadowy dumpster places out of carparks and loading bays and into the light—refusing to leave food waste in the dark.
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ItemThe timing of glacial Termination IX in Italian lake sediments: a test of orbital theory( 2022)Over the last million years, glacial terminations (transitions between glacial and interglacial periods every 100,000 years) have been driven by changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters. Historically, it was believed that changes in the Earth’s climatic precession paced terminations. A recent assessment of 11 radiometrically dated terminations by Bajo et al. (2020) has instead implicated obliquity as a persistent influence on their initiation and duration, contributing to the wider debate surrounding the relative importance of obliquity and precession in governing ice-age cycles. However, a lack of well-constrained age estimates for the two-remaining Early-Pleistocene terminations (T-VIII and T-IX) hinders the robustness of the obliquity theory. This thesis addresses the timing of T-IX by combining tephra-dated lacustrine calcium carbonate content (%CaCO3), and oxygen stable isotope (δ18O) records from the Sulmona Basin, Central Italy, with a North Atlantic ocean sediment record (from Site U1385, the Iberian Margin) to test this new orbital theory. Here I show that T-IX began at 793.2 ka ±2.5 kyr and ended at 785.5 ka ±3.5 kyr, lasting around 7.7 kyr (which is consistent with the duration of previous terminations). Following a thorough investigation of various orbital parameters and insolation metrics at the start of T-IX, it emerges that T-IX correlates more strongly to a high phase of obliquity than precession. It also began when NH summer insolation intensity was below average, while integrated summer energy was high. Furthermore, the midpoint of T-IX occurs at a peak in the insolation metric of Huybers (2011) (equal amounts of precession and obliquity), consistent with the 11 other terminations. T-IX also occurred two obliquity cycles after T-X, which is consistent with obliquity-paced terminations. As such, T-IX supports Bajo et al. (2020)’s obliquity theory of glacial terminations, challenging previous conceptions of precession-dominated glacial cycles.
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ItemThe Cape Woolamai faunal reserve: a study of the physical geography and ecology as a basis for conservation management( [1969])This thesis is presented in the form of a report on a Reserve, similar to the kind prepared for National Nature Reserves in Britain as outlined by Ovington (1964) and Eggeling (1964), and is intended as a basis for the preparation of a Management Plan for the Cape Woolamai Faunal Reserve, Victoria. The thesis does not set out to solve any specific problem the aim is to present data which are relevant to the problem of how this Reserve should be managed. The Plan falls into three parts. The first section provides background information, the second, objectives, sets out the objects of management, the third, contains proposals for future management. Part 1 consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1, on general Information, describes the locality, size and main features of interest, and also traces the historical land-use leading to the establishment of the Reserve. Chapter 2 describes the climate and Chapters 3, 4 and 5, the physical geography with maps on the geology, geomorphology and soil. Chapter 6 describes the main vegetation formation and includes a preliminary floristic list. Chapter 7 on the Shorttailed Shearwater, Puffinus tenuirostris, traces the population history of the bird and includes a series of experiment on vegetation regeneration, breeding success and stability of breeding burrows. The distribution of Shearwater breeding colonies is mapped and the breeding bird population on the Reserve estimated. Part II consists of Chapter 8 which outlines the type of management and research desired, based on available information on the Reserve. Part III prescrlbes suitable management and research programmes for the Cape Woolamai Faunal Reserve.
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ItemThe role of gardens in neighbourhood houses( 2018)While there is plenty of literature on most types of community gardens, there is none in the space of neighbourhood house gardens. Neighbourhood houses are places focused on community development, targeting the needs of residents in the local area, with a particular focus on disadvantaged groups. Gardens in these contexts are different to stand-alone community gardens due to their attachment to a service provider, in this case, one that provides for individuals and groups attending the neighbourhood house for programs, classes, assistance, and leisure. How the garden is in turn used may reflect what these spaces are trying to achieve for the disadvantaged community members they serve. This research investigated neighbourhood house gardens in Melbourne. The aim of this study was to understand what roles the gardens fulfil, their purpose, who uses them, and how they function. Comparing them to stand-alone community gardens reveals how these spaces deal with the issues associated with community gardening. A mixed-methodology was employed to uncover information about neighbourhood houses across Melbourne, using a desktop review and phone survey to provide an overview of gardens, and semi-structured interviews with four garden coordinators in four houses across Melbourne, to gain a more detailed look at how some of these gardens are used. Most gardens are governed by the house and operates both as an extended classroom and as a productive garden servicing the house and its attendees. Neighbourhood houses use gardens for purposes that extend beyond food production, most notably, as educational spaces for learning outcomes. People from culturally diverse backgrounds use them to learn about food in Australia, and to learn English. Produce is used to supplement the diets of severely disadvantaged groups. Gardens are also places of leisure and interaction between people who use the neighbourhood house but do not necessarily garden in the space. Gardens are operated with a communal system, with only a handful of houses using individual plots and paid memberships, like those found in most stand-alone gardens. Gardeners volunteer their time and labour in the space, and will harvest produce for their own use, for the house to use in its own programs or distribute to other house attendees, or produce is made available to the wider public by ensuring the garden is open access. Neighbourhood house gardens can potentially overcome some of the issues related to ownership and exclusivity found in stand-alone gardens due to their operation as communal and collective spaces. However tensions are ever present and are managed accordingly by staff. The house plays a major role in shaping the space, choosing what outcomes are to be prioritised, and deciding the direction of the space. Volunteers are often consulted when deciding plants, however this is mainly under the control of the house and its representatives in the garden: coordinators and employed garden staff. While much is intended for these spaces, the perspectives of house attendees who tend the garden would further shed light on what outcomes are experienced in these spaces, and as such, should receive ongoing research attention.