Abstract not available

PhD / In Australia, like most countries, circus has been an element, at times a very important element, in the mosaic that constitutes its popular culture. An outgrowth of the circus as recast in a modern form in London in the 18th century, an Australian circus profession has existed almost continuously since 1847. Australia’s circus entrepreneurs took the principal features of English, and later American, circus arts and management and reworked these features to suit their new antipodean context. The athletic, intellectually undemanding nature of its equestrian-based entertainments harmonised with the emerging patterns of modern Australia’s way of life. In time, Australia produced renowned circus artists of its own, even artists capable of reinvigorating the concept of circus in the very countries from which their art had been derived. Since their transience and labours, indeed their very existence, were somehow tangential and inconsequential to mainstream Australian society, Australia’s circus people did not attract tokens of recognition in story and verse as did shearers, drovers, diggers and other identities of the Australian outback. Their contribution to Australia’s social, economic and cultural development has been largely overlooked. Despite its pervasive role in Australia’s cultural life over more than 150 years, examples of academically grounded research into Australian circus are few. The primary aim of this study is to demonstrate the major themes evident in Australia’s circus history, in terms of society, enterprise and culture, between 1847 and 2006. None of these areas, of course, is exclusive of the others, especially the first and last named. These deliberations are framed within the broader influences and events apparent in Australian society and history. Implicit within this demonstration is the notion that circus, whatever its characteristics and merits as an artform, has been, and continues to be, a ‘barometer’ of social, economic and cultural change in Australia.

There is considerable anxiety about teaching Australian history in schools. In part, such concern reflects the so-called "History Wars", which have been played out in museums and national commemorations, as well as history syllabuses and textbooks. Such concern also reveals a professional and pedagogical debate over the state of the subject in schools. This thesis problematises history education as a site of contested collective memory and argues that concern over "teaching the nation" is intensified and augmented by an educational discourse of "the child" that shifts the debate over the past to the future.

PhD / In Australia, like most countries, circus has been an element, at times a very important element, in the mosaic that constitutes its popular culture. An outgrowth of the circus as recast in a modern form in London in the 18th century, an Australian circus profession has existed almost continuously since 1847. Australia’s circus entrepreneurs took the principal features of English, and later American, circus arts and management and reworked these features to suit their new antipodean context. The athletic, intellectually undemanding nature of its equestrian-based entertainments harmonised with the emerging patterns of modern Australia’s way of life. In time, Australia produced renowned circus artists of its own, even artists capable of reinvigorating the concept of circus in the very countries from which their art had been derived. Since their transience and labours, indeed their very existence, were somehow tangential and inconsequential to mainstream Australian society, Australia’s circus people did not attract tokens of recognition in story and verse as did shearers, drovers, diggers and other identities of the Australian outback. Their contribution to Australia’s social, economic and cultural development has been largely overlooked. Despite its pervasive role in Australia’s cultural life over more than 150 years, examples of academically grounded research into Australian circus are few. The primary aim of this study is to demonstrate the major themes evident in Australia’s circus history, in terms of society, enterprise and culture, between 1847 and 2006. None of these areas, of course, is exclusive of the others, especially the first and last named. These deliberations are framed within the broader influences and events apparent in Australian society and history. Implicit within this demonstration is the notion that circus, whatever its characteristics and merits as an artform, has been, and continues to be, a ‘barometer’ of social, economic and cultural change in Australia.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines how the ideal of the Australian pioneer woman has been so broadly circulated in Australian national social memory. Through the study of the dissemination of the social memory in a range of diverse sources, I will scrutinise the tensions that have existed around this ideal; how these tensions have been reconciled into a dominant narrative; and how they have shifted through the time of the inception of the legend to the present day. In its approach to the creation of social memory, to understand the changing influences of this particular memory in the Australian psyche, this thesis draws upon a number of types of sources for history that have tended to be overlooked – such as headstones, popular and family histories, and museum exhibitions. Significantly, the thesis will examine the role that such non-traditional accounts of the past have played in the transmission of social memory. Most people do not gain their knowledge of the past through intensive and exhaustive research; instead, they appropriate, as their own, the messages and meanings that they are fed through a variety of modes. The relationship between sources and social memory is a symbiotic one, where the sources are informed by social memory, and then in turn shape and elaborate social memory. In so many cases, the very creation of sources happens within the parameters of the national social memory. These sources are then drawn upon by subsequent generations to form their own social memory of pioneer women. This thesis will demonstrate that social memory is not rigid, but instead is subjected to shifting energies and changing tensions; and explain, through a discussion of a diverse range of sources through which it is disseminated, how memory remains fluid so that it is able to respond to the needs of the community that it serves. Australia’s pioneer woman remains an important aspect of the national identity – her creation and, thus, significance situated firmly in the present.

The thesis is concerned with the establishment of the Anglican presence in Central Queensland and the history of the first fifty years of the Diocese of Rockhampton. The historical method employed examined the attitudes and mentalities of the Anglicans during that fifty years and attempted to determine how the process of transplantation and adaptation of the English social institution was, or was not, achieved in the new physical and social environment. Various aspects of Anglican Diocesan administration such as recruitment of clergy, financial shortages, cultural isolation, racial issues, episcopal appointments and ecumenical relationships, are taken as units and analysed in the overall context of transplantation and adaptation. It is argued that ‘Australianisation’ came gradually and without conscious manipulation. Where change from the English model was attempted, it was often initiated by the English clergy rather than the Australian laity.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines how the ideal of the Australian pioneer woman has been so broadly circulated in Australian national social memory. Through the study of the dissemination of the social memory in a range of diverse sources, I will scrutinise the tensions that have existed around this ideal; how these tensions have been reconciled into a dominant narrative; and how they have shifted through the time of the inception of the legend to the present day. In its approach to the creation of social memory, to understand the changing influences of this particular memory in the Australian psyche, this thesis draws upon a number of types of sources for history that have tended to be overlooked – such as headstones, popular and family histories, and museum exhibitions. Significantly, the thesis will examine the role that such non-traditional accounts of the past have played in the transmission of social memory. Most people do not gain their knowledge of the past through intensive and exhaustive research; instead, they appropriate, as their own, the messages and meanings that they are fed through a variety of modes. The relationship between sources and social memory is a symbiotic one, where the sources are informed by social memory, and then in turn shape and elaborate social memory. In so many cases, the very creation of sources happens within the parameters of the national social memory. These sources are then drawn upon by subsequent generations to form their own social memory of pioneer women. This thesis will demonstrate that social memory is not rigid, but instead is subjected to shifting energies and changing tensions; and explain, through a discussion of a diverse range of sources through which it is disseminated, how memory remains fluid so that it is able to respond to the needs of the community that it serves. Australia’s pioneer woman remains an important aspect of the national identity – her creation and, thus, significance situated firmly in the present.

No description available.

When Captain James Cook sailed into Botany Bay in Australia for the first time in 1770, his botanist Joseph Banks described the behaviour of the Aboriginals to be 'totally unmovd' and 'totally engagd'.During this same few days Cook named the place Stingray Bay. Within eight days the name was changed by Cook to Botany Bay. Banks' phrases generate oscillating perceptions and Cook's name change poses questions. The perceptions documented in Banks' journal, refer to an invisibility of the Aboriginals themselves. The name 'Stingray' and its change to 'Botany' raises political questions about the necessity for the change. The change also sheds light on a viewpoint at odds with its subject. The events that occurred during the eight days Cook was anchored in Botany Bay will be discussed firstly in the framework of an analysis of the implications of the terms 'totally unmovd' and 'totally engagd' in Banks' journal, and secondly in a discussion about the various historical notions concerning the name change. Did these curly histories and viewpoints render the indigenous culture invisible? Can these inscriptions made by Cook and Banks and the subsequent mythologies surrounding them, including those about the actual place, be a metaphor for 'further understanding'? / Master of Arts (Hons) (Visual Arts)

John Dwyer (1856-1934) was a London docks foreman who emigrated to Australia in 1888. Leaving his London employment on his 'own accord', Dwyer embarked upon a quest for recognition - recognition of his rights as a worker and his identity as an individual. Dwyer and his family arrived in New South Wales to be greeted by the economic depression of the 1890s, and state and employer mobilisation against organised labour and working class radicals. Dwyer was soon reduced to scraping together a living as a boarding house manager in Sydney's poorest districts, as he helped organise the Active Service Brigade, which agitated on behalf of the unemployed. Dwyer's surviving papers - twenty-one boxes of correspondence, manuscripts, minutes, handbills, tracts and newspaper clippings, plus several other volumes - document the life of a working class political radical and autodidact who embraced temperance, and who was fascinated by new ideas in religion and science - Darwinism, Theosophy and occult spiritualism. This thesis places Dwyer in the context of the intense ideological ferment of new ideas in politics, theology and science that characterised the period 1890-1914. Ideas that aggressively challenged the old certainties, and which Dwyer embraced in his project to 'change the face of the world.' Changing the world contested with the need to endure its conditions. Theosophy and temperance appealed to Dwyer's notion of duty, and an instinct to rationalise the social and economic roles he seemed unable to escape. The fragmented nature of his papers, and stop-start bursts of public activism - in politics, theosophy and temperance - reflect the tension between an urge to fight, to understand, to create - struggling against the daily demands of making a living and feeding a family. The thesis explores Dwyer's relationship with fellow radicals and workers, the labour movement and members of Sydney's social and political elite - men and women who shared and contested with his vision. Dwyer's complex and at times apparently contradictory values can be found amongst radicals and labourites alike - for example, William Lane, W.G. Spence and Bernard O'Dowd. Nor was Dywer's interest in theosophy or the occult as unusual as it might seem to modern readers. Dwyer's papers provide important insights into dilemmas that have challenged historians: the problem of alienation, the role of the individual in the historical process, the nature of working class radicalism. Issues often analysed in theoretically abstract terms, or at a broad level of historical inquiry, across a national or class-wide scale. Broad analyses of social forces or ideologies tend to distort their historical impact and meaning, failing to capture the complex relationship of phenomena such as class or ideology with individual experience. Working from Dwyer's experience, this thesis argues that it is possible to build a complex picture of working class life in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia.