Oceania Books

Interesting snippets and factoids about all sorts of natural and human phenomena in Australia. Want to know the deepest gorge in each State/Territory? Height of some well-known waterfalls? Longest road ascents? All the answers are here.

Nothing terribly profound, and it is not hard to imaging how much of a crashing dinner-party bore you could become if you start to recite 'interesting snippets. On the other hand, if you are a Quiz night afficianado, or compiler of questions, this is one of the tomes to have at hand! It could also be a useful addition to the primary or high school reference library.

This is a work of quantitative depth that redresses a series of alleged misconceptions about female convicts sent to Australia. Deborah Oxley argues that to understand Australia's socio-economic development one must first understand the nature of a large portion of its first settlers that has gone overlooked. She makes a convincing case. Her research engages a historiography that previously saw all convicts as part of a `criminal class', and it argues that female convicts were in fact heterogeneous and diverse in origins, and only marginally criminal, for the most part. This, she feels, helps to account for the fact that within a few decades after mass transportation began

convicts were successful in establishing a socio-economic
system which quickly replicated aspects of the Anglo-Celtic
culture that spawned the settlement. Moving rapidly to the
status of a "free society" in which female convicts laboured
as workers, wives, lovers and mothers. (12)

Her first item of business is to describe accurately what type of female convicts arrived to advance Australia fair. Generally speaking, these were not career criminals, but people guilty of petty crimes - usually theft - and convicted of crimes that in less merciful days would have carried a sentence of hanging or, in the case of the lucky and clergied, flogging. In any event, they were not members of a well established and at times romanticised `criminal class' of mythical fame. Accurate statistical data bear this out. And, unlike the formerly obedient American colonies where such criminals were sold as indentured servants, Australian transportees had to be integrated into a society in which they were expected to play more than an auxiliary role. It was a role for which they were surprisingly well suited.

After a somewhat tangential review of female convicts in literature, Oxley returns to quantitative analysis of the convicts themselves. Though they spanned a wide age range, most were in their twenties and not all were incapable of working in skilled professions - the English more than the Irish transportees. The majority was not completely illiterate. In fact, they closely resembled the working class comrades they left behind. They were valuable if not indispensable in light of the fact that the vast majority of British emigrants chose North America ahead of Australia to start a new life, and some four fifths of transportees were male. In time, forced Australian immigration was supplement with the aggressive recruiting of suitable free women; however, these were only slightly more skilled on the whole than their un-free sisters in the prison holds of Australia-bound ships.

That convict women have been so unfairly maligned is, in Oxley's opinion, the product of nineteenth-century literature about criminals. Though not a particularly profound point, Oxley spends a chapter elaborating upon this. At the very least it helps to fill out the book. But all's well that ends well, and Britain's loss of a pseudo-criminal `class' that also filled a literary need to decry female baseness and excess turn out to be Australia's gain.

This study draws upon a wide array of primary sources, the richest of which are the `indents' of the convict ships, containing detailed demographic and even anatomical data on the ships' human cargoes. She compares this to nineteenth century (mis)conceptions about convicts and invariably proves them wrong, along with the twentieth-century historiography that fell for such appraisals.

Oxley weighs her various evidence judiciously, but still seems inclined to accept most of her data as reliable in spite of some cause for potential inaccuracies. Her analysis, however, is chronologically weak. It initially stresses the importance of the merciful reforms of the criminal justice system of the 1820s without providing much information about how this may have changed the demographic or social nature of transportation, apart from accelerating it. Oxley also does not say a great deal about what happened to the convicts, or how they actually made early Australian society, once they arrived. She seems to assume that clarifying who these women were is enough to demonstrate that they must have largely underlay the successful society they helped to engender. This book's argument and foci also become rather repetitive, as Oxley frequently reiterates the historiographical significance of what she is doing and displays her evidence in ways that essentially rephrase her thesis - one, she notes, that is a continuation of an existing historiographical revisionism. Nevertheless, she does meaningfully enhance the some of the points this revision has been attempting to make.

Oxley's prose is vivid and replete with short, pithy sentences that engage the reader in her arduous task. However, it also emanates an annoyingly patriotic type of proselytising about a (more politically?) correct understanding of `our history', `our social origins', and `this country' typically becoming only of Canadian and, to a lesser extent, insular American left-wing nationalism. Her structure, as noted, is very comprehensive, although her engagement of a literary dialogue with quantitative analysis leaves the reader a bit unsatisfied at times. In the end, however, the evidence she presents speaks for itself and clearly demonstrates that however they served the new colony's needs after their arrival, Australia's female convicts were well suited to the task of forging a functional society.

Every Aussie knows that the first European settlers were involuntary. But in our history books, convicts are often a nameless bunch. What was life really like for them? The contributors to this book attempt to reach back into musty archives and reconstruct a bicentennial past.

Various aspects of convict life are treated. Including how female convicts fared in a society with far more men than women. For most convicts, conditions were often hard, especially in the early years, when starvation was a real threat.

However, in total, it was still better to be a convict than an African slave brought to the Americas. Convicts who served their sentences were freed and often prospered.

This is a modern reprint of 11 gay stories by Stoddard, originally published in South Sea Idyls, 1892 and island of Tranquil Delights 1904. The stories are based on Stoddard's early experiences in Polynesia with very friendly, bisexual/ homosexual young men of his acquaintance. A few of the stories are very frank, but involve nothing more (in public) than affectionate caresses and kissing, etc. Truth to tell, they are rather boring, but do convey a dreamy atmosphere of south seas paradisiacal delight and hunky, affectionate Polynesian young men, made all the more poignant when one remembers that within a generation or two Europeans would slaughter most of the natives, or confiscate their land, resulting in the death of 90% or more of them, and their enforced christianization in religion and morals, etc.

After you finish the stories, you may enjoy Stoddard's novel For the Pleasure of his Company, also available in a cheap modern reprint.

This book was invaluable to me on my tours of Tazmania, South Australia and Victoria. In addition to excellent directions, the author provides you with recommended budget accomadations. Insights into Aussie culture and even a list of helpful Aussie phrases. Fair dinkum mate!

This is a great, specializated guide with the best diving and snorkeling tours in the impressive Australian reef. Information about the best agencies, tours' schedules, instructors and amateurs courses and different submarines kinds that habitate the colorful coral world. An indispensable book for this magnific adventure.

Design City Melbourne

Leon Van Schaik
Photography by John Gollings

Wiley Academy, 2006
ISBN-13 978 470 01640 4 (HB)


With a light touch `Design City Melbourne' tells the wonderful story of Melbourne's late 20th century architectural renaissance as an incubator of local design culture. And who better to tell that story than Leon van Schaik AO, Professor of Architecture (Innovation Chair) at RMIT where for 20 years he has been a passionate teacher, curator, administrator and advocate of innovation across the arts. And who better to photograph that story than John Gollings.

The development of Melbourne as a Design City - a city Van Schaik defines as one which is temporarily "hot" with a catalytic mix of curators and creators - has been held in orbit by RMIT during his tenure and dominated by its vociferous architecture programs. Most of the book is taken up with brief biographies of the established and incipient Melbourne architectural glitterati, nearly all of whom are tethered to RMIT in some capacity. Most have been part of its graduate design school, a forum where the theory-practice nexus that Van Schaik insists upon, has been crystallized as nowhere else in this country and for that matter in only a few places around the world.

Descriptions of these people and their practices are framed by a main essay regarding the curatorial methods and agendas Van Schaik developed since his arrival in Melbourne in 1986. Other shorter essays map the links between architecture and the academy, between architecture and other disciplines, and most importantly, between architecture and the city itself.

In short, the story of Melbourne becoming a Design City in the course of the last 20 years is one of how, through this network of interconnections that Van Schaik in no small part engineered, a generation of designers has converted the crippling cringe that generally affects settler societies, in to the source of their liberation. As opposed to recoiling from the global so as to romanticize and essentialise the local, Van Schiak the immigrant, saw the cringe from all sides and exposed Melbourne to a consistent stream of international influences, trusting the locals to make their own, local sense of it.

They were steeled for this by Peter Corrigian and his partner Maggie Edmond who had already pioneered a gritty Melbournian brand of critical regionalism in several small suburban riots. But it was their high risk gymnastics across the front of RMIT's Building 8, a building Van Schaik championed, that came to headline Swanston Street as a new axis of innovation cutting across establishment lines. With this project the conversations inside both RMIT and the local journal `Transition' (RIP), literally started spilling out onto the streets and muscled their way in to the otherwise dull Melbourne grid.

Of course, many bright Melbourne architects, not least of all Howard Raggatt who nailed his own thesis on the cringe to RMIT's door in 1990 would have found their voices in the wilderness, and Van Schaik is not claiming credit for all, rather, as this book attests, the Design City is one of multiple synergies.

From Edmond and Corrigan the baton was handed to Ashton Raggatt McDougall whose Storey Hall next door to Building 8 was thought so radical that they kept a bag over its head until opening day. Completely misunderstanding its brilliance, many wanted the bag put back on - Ralph Neale, the former editor of this journal included. ARM have since reinforced their importance in Melbourne's inner city renaissance by digging in to the Shrine at one end of Swanston and opening Pandora's box with the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre at the other. Federation Square by LAB architects replete with Paul Carter's footnotes to an-other history of colonization and the new QV complex by Lyons, Kerstin Thompson, John Wardle and Rob McBride all consolidate Van Schaik's thesis of a Design City. The temporal and spatial linkages between these works and Van Schaik's role in the cultural life of Melbourne are no coincidence, although a finer grained history of these breakthroughs would reveal more.

As a somewhat overt homage to Libeskind, Federation Square is however more difficult to package as radically and originally local. Nonetheless, Van Schaik recoups it as a part of geometric arguments being waged in Melbourne, arguments between the platonic and the fractal to which he errs on the side of the latter. Whilst at this level he takes sides, this book makes clear that he never set out to form one school of thought and certainly not a style: quite the opposite. Just as it is the crucial factor in the biological world, diversity is the key to the cultural. But this is not to say that anything goes; the curator has to tie it all together and find commonalities without compromising the differences.

Although it provides a poetic, political and geographic structure, there is much more in this book than an appreciation of Swantson Street's well known trophies. The whole kaleidoscope of designers who have inspired or helped Van Schaik in his quest to create a Design City are all showcased. Risking the perils of writing his own story through theirs, Van Schaik's tone is humble and indeed humbled by the creative work of his colleagues. He played his role and they played theirs, both fulfilling the Design City contract.

Although he connects the dots from the efflorescence of his time back into Melbourne's deeper architectural history, this book is not about dispassionate historical analysis; rather it is about recognizing that there is a latent ecology of creative intelligence in any city and that if you nourish it, things happen. Neither does Van Schaik tell us what to think about this outpouring of work and nor, as he so easily could have done, does he admonish other Australian cities for doing so little in the time that Melbourne has done so much. And although this book seems designed for a broad audience and is to an extent promotional for all included, Van Schaik doesn't tell us why the Design City is good nor amass data about its benefits - those arguments have been won and now the work speaks for itself. Those who define themselves by their distance from RMIT would be hard pressed to deny the remarkable achievement of this group of people.

By announcing what has been, however, books like this tend to also announce that which is about to pass and whilst Van Schaik worries for a future that could so easily acquiesce back into stylistic echoes, this is an uplifting book for anyone involved in the daily struggle to create serious cultural production.

Given the theme of innovation, the design of this book is surprisingly conventional and some essays are too short and too cool for such a hot topic. The conclusion, a proposal to erect a copper sheath over the Arts Centre seems unnecessarily heroic. As opposed to vertical triumphs over the inner city symbolic order, perhaps the future of this Design City, like most in the 21st century has to be about horizontality, about landscape.

In this book, Landscape architecture as a discipline and a profession, despite being there throughout it all, gets very short shrift. Van Schaik doffs his hat to VicRoads and RMIT landscape graduates, Cath Stutterheim, Patrick Franklyn and Leanne O'Shea are noted. Their works suggest that some of the rich conversations held in RMIT's landscape program are starting to find form but perhaps landscape is yet to be curated in the manner that Van Schaik has done for architecture. If that is so, then, the creators need to rise to the occasion and give the curator something inspirational to work with.

RW

Australia is a large continent, and to provide a resource book that adequately covers all that could be possibly be seen or done by 4WD would require a far more voluminous tome.

Discover Australia By 4WD attempts to provide the best of the rest and in my opinion does so admirably.

Anyone who owns and frequently tours in their 4WD will find this book a must. It provides plenty of useful information, tips and genuine and up to date advice, which I find should be compulsory for such a book. There are lots of relevant photographs, and the maps are as up to date as you can get.

Lots of links to almost everything you could want, such as tourist bureaus, information centres and the like as well as useful advice on road conditions, weather conditions, camping sites, and so on.

I was, however, a little disappointed at the lack of information on Western Australia, which is the largest state, and yet rated very little by way of 4WD trips through the north west of that state, which is one of the better regions in W.A.

Otherwise, I would heartily recommend this book to all Australian 4WD enthusiasts and international travellers alike.

The main countries considered here are Australia and New Zealand. Alley explores how external relations have impacted internal politics in those countries. Though attention is also given to Papua New Guinea vis-a-vis its Bourgainville conflict.

For Australia, climate change is used as a good case study. Revolving around the Kyoto Treaty and the fear of global warming. We see how domestic Australian companies in affected industries raised many objections. Leading to the government stalling for time regarding ratification. With perhaps a dimunition in Australia's international credibility.

As a second grade teacher, my students loved hearing this book during our Australia unit. Very informative with great pictures! I recommend for any child with a love of animals and an interest in Australia.