School of Geography - Theses

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    The historical geography of Australian coastal shipping
    Pemberton, Barry M. ( 1974)
    This thesis has been made possible by the help and encouragement of many, particularly during my later school years when shipping first became a serious interest, and I should like to thank generally both friends and waterfront personnel who took me on board various vessels or around the Sydney and Melbourne Waterfront complexes. Particular thanks for help during the preparation of this work go to Dr. T, M. Perry for his patient supervision and advice, and thanks to Staff of the Latrobe Library, Melbourne, of the public reference libraries at Adelaide, Launceston and Brisbane, and of university libraries at Melbourne, Monash and Queensland, for access to bound volumes of newspapers and periodicals, to several shipping companies for information about their services and history, and in particular to the Adelaide Steamship Company, the Australian National Line, and the State Shipping Service of Western Australia and their ships' crews for arranging visits to their ships. I should also like to acknowledge access to the Green and Dufty collection of ship photographs for reference.
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    The development of the Port of Melbourne 1877-1971
    Yarnasarn, Sanay ( 1974)
    The main purpose of this study is to describe and explain the physical and commercial development of the Port of Melbourne in the period 1877-1971. The year 1877 has been selected for the beginning of the study because it was the year in which the Melbourne Harbor Trust was established. The port has been modified in several ways since then and is now one of the most modern and best-equipped in the world. In tracing the port's evolution for nearly a century, the writer has tried to examine those factors, both human and physical, which have influenced its growth - world economic and political conditions, economic activities in its hinterland, policy decisions of the port authority and the national government and site conditions. The study does not encompass merely the physical development of the port, but also changes and trends in its trade and shipping. In addition, an attempt has been made to investigate those problems connected with the port's development. The growth and expansion of the manufacturing industries in the port district have also been considered. As well as these, the physical setting of the port, the discovery of Port Phillip Bay, Hobson's Bay and the River Yarra, the geology of the Yarra Delta, the condition of the port before 1877 and the genesis of the Melbourne Harbor Trust have been briefly referred to.
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    The geographical dimensions of social banditry: the Kelly outbreak 1878 -1880
    McQuilton, Francis John ( 1977)
    Bushranging was an integral part of nineteenth century- rural settlement in Australia and the bushranger earned a favoured place in the nation's folklore. There he has remained Academic studies of the bushranger and bushranging outbreaks have been few in number and limited in scope to biographical studies, divorcing the bushranger from his times. An academic tradition exists that treats the bushranger as a social aberration. Many, in fact, were social bandits, similar to those in southern Europe as identified and described by Hobsbawm. The bushranger often represented an extreme reaction to social conditions. His views were more extreme than but still compatible with social attitudes and mores developed in rural areas during the conflict that accompanied political ' attempts to foster agricultural settlement in nineteenth century Australia. This thesis examines the Kelly Outbreak of 1878-1880 in North-Eastern Victoria, sets the Outbreak in the context of its time and examines the inter-relationship between settlement failure and social banditry. Three successive rural land-use systems dominated the North-East between 1835 and 1884. The pastoralists (squatters) were the first settlers establishing huge runs for sheep. Gold discoveries of 1852 disrupted squatting land-use and mining dominated the region " for a decade. Declining yields and political ferment brought the first of the selection acts in I860. The digger was expected to turn to agriculture for his. livelihood. The acts pitted the selector and squatter against each other in a competition for the control and utilisation of the region's rural resources. The squatters' easy victory compounded the problems already posed by the failure of selection as a commercial agrarian enterprise. Selector communities developed a code of ethics that accepted selective stock theft. The four members of the Kelly Gang came from local selector communities in the North-East. All had served jail sentences for stock theft or crimes related to stock theft. The Kelly brothers belonged to a clan whose members had failed as selectors and who were notorious to the police and local squatters as stock thieves. The Kelly's had much in common with their selector neighbours and although their views were more extreme, they were never alien to those who lived in the same communities. In 1878, when four young selectors' sons formed the Kelly Gang after the tragedy at Stringybark Creek, they found widespread local support amongst selector communities in the region, a support that enabled them to elude the police for over I8 months. Without the failure of selection as an agrarian settlement process, a failure rooted in the conflict for the control of rural resources by two socially antagonistic groups, and the development of attitudes in rural areas favourable to the existence of social banditry, the Kelly Outbreak would not have posed the serious challenge to the Victorian authorities that it came to be. And the existence of social banditry in the capitalistic social structure of nineteenth century colonial Victoria suggests that the preconditions and social situation described by Hobsbawm as being necessary for the development of social banditry should be modified.
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    An investigation into the subdivisional growth of Melbourne
    Clark, Rohan G. ( 1972)
    No abstract available
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    A geographical study of the dairy manufacturing industry in Gippsland, 1840-1910
    Brinsmead, Gregory Stewart James ( 1977)
    Prior to 1888, dairy manufacture in Gippsland was a predominantly farm-based activity catering for a domestic market. Farmers close to a railway usually produced fresh butter, while those in more inaccessible areas produced potted butter. Concentrations of cheese manufacturers occurred in the Berwick - Cranbourne and the Sale - Maffra areas. This production pattern was strongly influenced by the factors of accessibility to the Melbourne market, product perishability and farmer's available capital. In 1888-89 the Victorian Government initiated a number of measures aimed at promoting the factory system of butter manufacture and the number of butter factories and the amount of butter exported to England rapidly increased. Initially in Gippsland most of the factories were farmers' co-operatives, however late in the 1890s proprietary interests gained control of a great deal of the manufacturing capacity. Co-operative factories were weakened by severe climatic conditions and poor management, while many proprietary selling agents used unfair trading practices to undermine co-operatives whilst these same agents promoted hand separators to create a cream supply for country and Melbourne proprietary factories. Discontent with proprietary factories and the establishment of co-operative selling companies allowed co-operative factories to partly re-establish their position in the later 1900s. The general distribution of butter factories in Gippsland was closely related to the density of milch cows and the location of railways, whilst the siting of factories was influenced by water supply, waste disposal, accessibility to transport, land surface, proximity to towns and availability of land. As hand separators became more widely used, factory supply areas increased and by the late 1890s competition between factories was intense and widespread overlapping of supply occurred. Significant variation between factories occurred in the amount of production,while each factory's output varied during the year and from season to season. A factory's output was influenced by the size of its supply area, the density of milch cows in its supply area, the seasonal conditions and the degree of competition with other factories. Production costs were influenced by the amount of milk/cream intake while the prices paid to farmers for milk/cream were influenced by prices received for butter on the London market. Following the introduction of hand separators, the quality of butter deteriorated but little was done by the government, in terms of export controls or cream grading, to rectify the situation. Cheese production do not show the same growth, after 1888, as butter production. The government showed little interest in promoting cheese exports and few new factories were established. Even by 1910, farm produced cheese was still a significant source of supply.
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