The strength and deformation behaviour of rocks are time-dependent. Therefore the design of rock structures underground should be based on the long-term strengths rather than the strength determined by short-term laboratory tests. The direct method of determining the long-term strength of a rock is tedious and time consuming. Hence it is considered important that short-term methods of predicting long-term strengths of rocks be evolved. Short-term methods based on measurement of volumetric strain, stress-strain, log stress-log strain and loading rate were investigated. The long-term strength of Sicilian marble was determined by the direct method and was found to be close to the predicted long-term strengths by short-term methods. With the equipment used in this project, the leading rate method proved to be quicker and more accurate than other short-term methods as the processing and plotting of data were not involved in this case. The volumetric strain method predicted higher time-dependent strengths than the direct method. Dilatancy was observed in many intact rock specimens tested in uniaxial compression. It was also found that the values of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of a specimen are stress-dependent. All the three stages of the idealized creep curve i.e. transient, steady state and accelerated stage, were observed in Sicilian marble and Wombayan marble specimens. The lateral creep rate in the above two marbles was found to be larger than the axial creep rate at sustained stresses greater than their yield stresses. In the triaxial tests, in which only Sicilian marble specimens were tested, the ratios of predicted long-term strength to maximum strength showed a declining trend with increasing confining pressures. In the study of friction along the fractured surfaces of Sicilian marble specimens in the triaxial tests, it was found that during sliding the sheer stress and normal stress on the sliding plane have a straight line relationship. The average coefficient of friction for Sicilian marble was found to be 0.84.

Inspector Paul Hinrich Matthias Foelsche was an enthusiastic amateur, who began to work in the field of photography shortly after his appointment as founding Inspector of Police for the Northern Territory in 1870. Foelsche's photographic practice spanned the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the period of focus of this thesis. His first tentative views of the temporary buildings of the Port Darwin settlement were made with a simple quarter-plate camera that used the latest reproducible method known as collodion or wet-plate photography, which instantly revolutionised the way exploration and surveying were visually recorded. Foelsche began using a whole-plate camera in 1873, and assumed the role of the colony's official photographer when asked to supply views of the newly established settlement for display at Melbourne's 1875 Intercolonial Exhibition. A subsequent government request for Aboriginal portraits for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878 introduced him to ethnographic photography, a purpose that became aligned with his wider interest in the prevailing scientific propositions surrounding the origins of humankind. Foelsche was occasionally invited to publish his findings on the North Australian Aborigines and, although he was not a scientist, he is more fittingly portrayed as a field collector, and an informant on the Northern Territory and its first inhabitants. By the early 1880s, Foelsche had separated his negatives into two distinct photographic purposes that were the raisons d' etre behind his photography - one that encompasses views of the developing urban landscape and scenery for international exhibitions, and a second undertaking that has become an important collection of ethnographic portraits of North Australian Aborigines. The combined significance of these intersecting projects constitutes his contribution to Australia's photography. One of the historiographic problems of the thesis has been to arrive at a just and fair assessment of Paul Foelsche, not only as a photographer, but also as a public servant. There is no doubt that Foelsche worked under equivocal and onerous circumstances, and within a very rudimentary legal system. The fact that over various parts of his career he was both the Inspector of Police and a magistrate certainly compromised his independence. His primary relationship with Aboriginal people was as a policeman, and his handling of frontier conflict remains a controversial aspect of the Northern Territory's early history. His role as a senior policeman presented opportunities for his photography, which would not have existed had he not occupied that position. Although there is no record of Foelsche directly participating in the violence, Foelsche's photographs of peaceful Aborigines sit uncomfortably with the sanctioned reprisals that took place against some of the Aboriginal peoples he was photographing. Foelsche, who was among the original Northern Territory pioneers, was first remembered as an intelligent and effective police official, however with the developing interest in frontier history in recent years he has been increasingly associated with the region's record of frontier conflict. His contributions with a camera and as a collector by comparison, have been largely overlooked. While his scientific collecting is deserving of attention, this thesis focuses on the figure of Foelsche as a photographer. Beyond its inherent geographic and ethnographic value, I will argue that his entire photographic opus presents a unique record of British colonisation of Australia's Northern Territory. The technical and creative quality of Foelsche's work has been underestimated and this thesis argues a place for him amongst the foremost Australian colonial photographers.

The primary concern of this thesis is an exploration of the questions which film theory inevitably poses for any applied usage of historical films. It is a concern bred by experience: in fact, this work as it now stands is an attempt to highlight some of the problems raised by my research as it was first conceived. Initially working with the notion of using historical films within a sociological framework, I was first interested in the fact that such a steady proportion of our recent film and television productions were of an historical nature. More predictable, but no less interesting, was the fact that most of these Australian productions stem from fictional sources, e.g. novels, secondary historical accounts, myths and legends. This made me wonder what parallels might be drawn between earlier Australian films and the more recent historical ones, expecting that comparative questions of myth, genre, legend, tradition, melodrama, and the like, would all be there for the asking. For some time I worked upon the notion of 'major themes' in these historical representations, looking at Bushranging and the Kelly's in particular, and the depiction of Australian involvement in wars. Not for a moment do I regret this initial period of research, in fact I am positive that without having experimented with this kind of 'comparative philosophy', that I would never have realised the necessity of questioning the very basis of such idealist research. From which it became obvious that a more rigorous theoretical approach would be required. (From Introduction)

The aim of this study is to establish the main phases of Emanuel Phillips Fox's artistic development between the years 1884 and 1913. Since the works painted in Australia during the two final years of Fox's career form a less original phase in his oeuvre than the preceding ones, and because of a need to limit the scope, the period between 1913 and 1915 has been omitted from the discussion. (From introduction)