School of Geography - Theses

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    The water dreamers : how water and silence shaped Australia
    Cathcart, Michael John ( 2008)
    Australia is the most arid continent on earth. This thesis explores how that challenge shaped the ways in which the settlers appropriated the Aboriginal countries, and how those settlers tried to make sense of a land that was so unlike the places from which they came. On the shores of Sydney Cove, the British cut down gum trees. As they crashed to the ground, it seemed as if these trees were shattering the primal silence of Aboriginal Australia - initiating the land into time. The settlers were confident that this process would be repeated in valley after valley until they had brought the whole of this 'silent continent' to life. But in inland Australia, the settlers found that the silence would not disperse. This was the arid zone. The explorers John Oxley and Charles Sturt articulated a core idea when they referred to this region as a place of 'death-like silence'. By the mid-nineteenth century, this silence had become an accepted fact about Australia. But the colonists disagreed about how they should respond. Some argued that the inland was a place of despair, a place to be avoided. Others found consolation in a mythos I have called necronationalism, which imagined that the people who had died in the desert were somehow elevated into the mystery of the land itself. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, the water dreamers began to challenge the very idea of silence. Their optimism was based on the promise that hydroengineering could triumph over the climate itself, creating a new, luxuriant Australia in the silent voids of the desert. By the 1920s, this ethos of 'Australia Unlimited' had become a major site of debate in Australia, when it was challenged by the geographer Griffith Taylor. Taylor insisted that the environment was the determining factor in human settlement. It could not simply be overridden by engineering. The debate took on a patriotic urgency, because many Australians believed that their failure to occupy the inland and the 'open north', left the continent vulnerable to an Asian invader. This debate produced a series of plans for great hydro-engineering schemes, some of which were built and some not. Today, this phase has largely ended, as we face the environmental damage caused by a code of engineering which, for all its idealism, took insufficient account of the environment itself.
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    In the wake of June 4 : an analysis of the Chinese students' decision-making process to stay in Australia
    Gao, Jia ( 2001)
    This is a study of the Chinese students' efforts to gain the right and chance to stay on in Australia after the June 4 massacre event occurred in Beijing in 1989, when there were about 20,000 of them living in Australia. The specific focus of this study is the experiences of the students over a period of twelve months from 4 June 1989 to 27 June 1990, when the students were virtually allowed to stay permanently. This was a special onshore migration intake. Such an intake once had a significant impact upon Australian humanitarian and refugee immigration policies in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This is a topic relevant to international and refugee migration and in need of empirical explication and theoretical conceptualisation. A comprehensive study of the decision-making experiences of both international and refugee migrants has many dimensions. To develop an adequate portrayal of the onshore asylum seekers' decision-making process, this study uses the multimethod approach. Information gained from in-depth interviews forms the main empirical basis of this study. The data collected through participant observations is woven in among documentary sources, and both provide context to the main interview-based data. In the course of the literature review, current thinking on identity, especially on strategic identity formation is found to be a most useful theoretical framework to guide this study. By utilising the identity formation framework, this study addresses five aspects of the Chinese students' efforts to form their onshore asylum seekers' identity and to meet the Australian government's migration criteria for gaining the right and chance to stay on in this country permanently. The main features of the onshore asylum seekers' efforts to shape their identity to suit government criteria can be summarised as follows. Firstly, as these asylum seekers are onshore, they necessarily have extensive involvement with the local agencies in dealing with their residence issue. This involvement offers asylum seekers various notions of what a 'refugee identity' is, and this in turn influences how they constitute themselves in this local context. Secondly, the efforts of the onshore asylum seekers are made away from home in a new place. As such, they make their decisions in a newly formed primary social group, instead of within a family which, in current studies, is the most commonly documented decision-making unit. Thus, their decision-making distinguishes itself from the family-based process in many ways. Further, as onshore asylum seekers are not recognised by nor rescued by refugee agencies, they have to provide solid evidence to prove that they fit in with refugee criteria and are qualified to stay. This expectation results in onshore asylum seekers participating in a very self-conscious and more strategic process of constructing a refugee identity. Furthermore, the onshore refugee identity is consolidated and expressed by interactions with the major local agencies. This influences these agencies in terms of the way in which the onshore asylum seeker issue is perceived and solved. In particular, the asylum seekers actively contacted and lobbied the government, the media and the migrant service organisations. Lastly, as a logical development of the onshore asylum seekers' efforts to stay, the seekers take highly organised political actions, which often comply with the main themes of the conflicts in international political ideology.
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    What is the value of a hole in the ground?: What is the value of discrete choice contingent valuation?
    Cook, Darron Manuel ( 2001)
    The inability of market price systems to reflect the social value associated with environmental conservation presents a barrier to the achievement of overall allocative efficiency. Stated preference valuation techniques such as the contingent valuation method have been found to be useful in capturing and measuring unexpressed preferences for environmental protection and enhancement. When applied correctly, these techniques can alleviate some of the most intractable market failures, such as those which involve pure public goods. This thesis explores the theoretical validity of different approaches to contingent valuation questioning through a survey of Victorian households' attitudes to the dereliction of open gold mine pits in the Victorian countryside. The methodological research involves comparison of discrete and continuous models of contingent valuation questioning, including a wide scale test of a new approach to discrete questioning, referred to as the "dissonance minimising choice" method, which seeks to correct the upward bias of yea-saying suspected in dichotomous choice studies. The results reveal a notable level of community concern about present mining practices in Victoria and a considerable willingness to pay for minesite rehabilitation. The results for the contingent valuation method indicate that survey respondents made robust and rational utility-maximimsing choices. The discrete-choice results were still significantly higher than the results for open ended study, with the performance of the dissonance mimimising choice method rather mixed in comparison with the traditional dichotomous choice approach. i
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    If Descartes swam with dolphins: the framing and consumption of marine animals in contemporary Australian tourism
    Jarvis, Christina Harwood ( 2000)
    Cultural geography has become increasingly interested in the ways in which nature is socially constructed within society as other. In more closely examining the broad category of 'nature', the field of animal geography has come about in an attempt to rethink the place of animals in society. The Cartesian culture/nature binary is seen to be one reason for the mistreatment of animals in society. The thesis investigates to what extent the binary is challenged or reinforced through the act of visiting animals within an ecotourism context. To this end the thesis looks at the ways in which marine animals are produced for and consumed by the tourism industry in Australia. Set within a backdrop of the early collection and display of marine animals as a form of imperial expansion, the thesis travels across a spectrum of marine animal tourism experience, from a point of extreme mediation to one of minimum mediation. In investigating the ways in which marine animals are framed and toured in contemporary Australia, the thesis utilises two key case studies, the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island in Victoria, Australia and Wild Dolphin Tours in Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, Australia. At the same time, the case studies act to uncover a key question of the thesis, namely the reasons why people choose to visit marine animals in Australia. Initially the thesis investigates the display of marine animals in early aquaria, modem day theme parks and in Blue Zoos. In then moving on to the first case study, the thesis considers the ways in which penguins are framed as a novelty event, as a threatened animal and as a link 'to the wild' for tourists. Data collection through a visitor survey and participant observation showed that tourists visit the birds as part of a more general family/friends holiday experience. The second case study begins with an examination of the ways in which dolphins are framed through popular culture as at once human like and as better than humans. A visitor survey and participant observation undertaken with tourists who went to sightsee and swim with the bottlenose dolphins of Port Phillip Bay revealed that visitors primarily chose to visit these animals because of a desire to see them unconfined and to learn about them. The thesis found that marine animals are framed for tourism in Australia in a multitude of ways which simultaneously bring the animals closer to humans and set them apart. Environmental education differed between the case studies. Generally tourists felt they learnt about the animals through a combination of seeing them first hand and experiencing some form of interpretation. Overall the culture/nature binary was found to be actively supported but also challenged by the practice of ecomarine tourism examined in the thesis.
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    Data and information exchange in multi-jurisdictional river basins : an evaluation of procedures
    Chenoweth, Jonathan Lee ( 2000)
    The exact role that data and information exchange plays in the management of multi- jurisdictional river basins needs clarification if management processes are to be improved. With many major river basins being shared by several countries, and competition for water resources becoming increasingly severe, it is important that mechanisms are established to permit the comprehensive integrated management of shared basins. Under international law nations have a clear obligation to co-operate in the management of multi-jurisdictional river basins, including in the area of data and information exchange. Mechanisms for doing this, however, are not well developed. The Murray-Darling River basin in south-eastern Australia and the Mekong River basin in south-east Asia are both major multi-jurisdictional river basins in which inter-government authorities for managing the river basins have been established with similar aims and legal foundations. Despite the significant differences in the socio-economic and political environments of the two basins, both the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) and Mekong River Commission (MRC) have set up data collection networks and exchange mechanisms which function through quite similar means. The efficiency of the networks, however, differ markedly for a variety of reasons. The MDBC also engages in significant data and information exchange with its basin community as part of its extensive efforts at working with the community. This is integral to its management objectives for the basin. By contrast, the MRC's efforts at working with and communicating with its basin community have been limited to date. Existing community participation and communication mechanisms adopted by other organisations within the basin indicate the types of processes the MRC itself could adopt as it develops. The exchange of high quality data and information at the highest decision making level can help balance political based decision making with technical considerations. The internal working documents and meeting minutes of the MDBC and MRC reveal that the MDBC draws to a significant extent on the data and information channels it has developed to support its decision making processes. The MRC, however, has yet to make extensive use of its databases and other information sources, due to its developmental stage as an organisation. Several significant planned initiatives mean that it will depend extensively on the data and information systems it has put in place if these initiatives are implemented. Tough decisions, however, depend upon sufficiently reliable data, meaning that some improvements are required to the data and information systems the MRC has in place for supporting its decision making. This research shows that effective data and information exchange between all significant players in a multi-jurisdictional river basin is indispensable to achieving the integrated management of such river basins. The effective and sustainable management of multi- jurisdictional river basins depends upon sound functional data and information systems, with co-operative efforts being built upon this. Not only is data and information exchange between all significant players needed to implement integrated management itself, this research suggests that data and information exchange also plays a major role in developing the impetus for integrated management amongst those with political power in a multi-jurisdictional river basin.
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    The morphology and evolution of rock coasts over eustatic cycles in temperate, wave dominated environments
    Bezore, Rhiannon ( 2019)
    Rock coasts comprise 80% of the world’s shorelines and about 50% of the Victorian coast. Their morphology and evolution over time is the result of marine and subaerial erosional processes that carve features such as sea cliffs, shore platforms, and sea stacks out of the landscape. Rock coasts, therefore, evolve over multiple sea level cycles and create dynamic landscapes on an interglacial timescale. Sea level has risen and fallen over geologic time, with coastal features being formed during sea level high stands. While most coastal landforms found along the modern coast were formed over the past 6,000 years, older coastal features have also been preserved over multiple eustatic cycles, both above and beneath modern sea level. As coastal landforms are formed at or very near sea level, preserved paleo-shoreline features can be used as proxies to reconstruct past sea levels on a regional scale, which had not previously been done for the coast of Victoria, Australia. In this study, an integrated aerial LiDAR and bathymetric multibeam dataset from +20 to -80 m water depth was used to precisely map and quantify the morphology of the rock coast features along the coast of Victoria from Port Fairy in the west to Wilsons Promontory in the east and to analyze the relation between the features’ elevations and the sea levels at which they first formed. This was completed for both the modern coastline as well as paleo-shoreline landforms found 50-60 m below modern sea level, where the offshore geology reflected the onshore geologic units, allowing for an analogous study. These preserved features are believed to have formed during the MIS 3 high stand, during which time sea level most closely matched their average present depths. The culminating results provide not only the first study of the precise morphology of these submerged features in Victoria but also have wider applications for modelling sea level and rocky coast evolution in other temperate, wave dominated environments.
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    Speleothem-based explorations of millennial-scale climate change in southern Australasia
    Gordon, Jay ( 2018)
    Understanding the way Earth responds to rapid climate change is critical for understanding future climate scenarios. The best natural examples of rapid climate change are found in millennial-scale climate events recorded in Greenland ice cores over the Last Glacial Period (120-12 ka). These occur concurrently with similarly-paced, gradual warming events recorded in Antarctic ice cores. Understandings of the transition between Greenland-like and Antarctic-like millennial-scale climate events are limited by a lack of appropriate records from the southern mid-latitudes. However, calcite cave formations (speleothems) have the potential to record high-resolution millennial-scale climate change in this region. This study looks at three southern mid-latitude cave sites, develops or improves palaeoclimate reconstructions from each, compares these to external records of millennial-scale climate change, and assesses the suitability of each site for future millennial-scale palaeoclimate reconstructions. Palaeoclimate reconstructions were produced based on U-Th dating, stable isotope analysis and trace element analysis techniques. The first ever high-resolution palaeoclimate record from Naracoorte, Australia from the Last Glacial Period was produced, which suggested that millennial-scale climate change here was influenced by changes in the activity of the southern westerlies. The first ever palaeoclimate record from Wombeyan, Australia was produced, which suggested that millennial-scale climate change here was confounded by both tropical and mid-latitude climate effects. An existing palaeoclimate record from Nettlebed was improved upon and reinterpreted, which supported previous findings that millennial-scale climate in Nettlebed is influenced by the intensity of the southern westerlies. Naracoorte and Nettlebed demonstrated good potential for future millennial-scale palaeoclimate reconstructions, although Naracoorte is limited by a lack of speleothem samples from the Last Glacial Period. Wombeyan demonstrated poor potential for future millennial-scale palaeoclimate reconstructions due to its confounded climate signature, and high U-Th age uncertainties due to low speleothem uranium concentrations. These findings have implications for the future study of millennial-scale climate change, by presenting brand new millennial-scale palaeoclimate reconstructions and demonstrating how future millennial-scale palaeoclimate reconstructions can be developed from a critically under-sampled region.