Due to the scarcity of land at coastal regions around the world, land reclamation is commonly carried out for the future expansion of various infrastructure facilities. Marine clay is present at the coastal regions of Southeast Asia. Land reclamation on this highly compressible soil foundation often requires the use of soil improvement works to eliminate significant future settlements from occurring. The combination of prefabricated vertical drains with preloading is one of the most widely used ground improvement methods in land reclamation projects. The best means available for field measurement and back-analysis of the marine clay geotechnical characteristics under reclamation fills is by carrying out extensive field instrumentation and in-situ tests. In-situ testing of marine clay was carried out at a test site. In-situ penetration testing was used to analyse the degree of consolidation, the improved shear strengths, overconsolidation ratio and the effective stress of marine clay prior to reclamation as well as after surcharge loading. In-situ dissipation testing was used to determine the coefficient of consolidation due to horizontal flow and horizontal hydraulic conductivity of the marine clay prior to reclamation as well as after surcharge loading. The in-situ penetration and dissipation tests were carried out by means of the field vane shear, piezocone, dilatometer, self-boring pressuremeter and BAT permeameter. Field instrumentation methods, assessment and hack-analysis of marine clay behaviour under reclamation fills forms the crux of this research. / The factors that affect the field instrumentation assessment of marine clays treated with prefabricated vertical drains, forms an integral part of this research study. Settlement gauges and piezometers were used to monitor the performance of the vertical drains and to assess the degree of consolidation of the improved soil at two case study sites. The field settlement data were back-analysed by the Asaoka and Hyperbolic methods to predict the ultimate settlement of the reclaimed land under the surcharge fill. Back-analysis of the field settlement and piezometer monitoring data also enabled the coefficient of consolidation due to horizontal flow to be closely estimated. Finite element modeling of marine clay and prefabricated vertical drains was carried out and compared with the field surface settlement results at the two case study sites.

'Hungry Ghosts' is an account of thirty-six hours of a young woman's life following her arrival in Singapore. Sarah, the protagonist of the novel, is accompanying her partner Paul on a business conference. It is increasingly apparent that Sarah's motives for leaving her home town, Adelaide, have more to do with her need to escape than her commitment to Paul. A room in an international hotel offers Sarah the comforts of a cocoon, where signs of previous occupation and ties to the past are erased on a daily basis. But Sarah is obviously dislocated from her surroundings, which are in turn out of step with the external environment: the air-conditioning is freezing; the orchids are plastic and nod in an artificial breeze. In this sterile environment Sarah is troubled by flashbacks of what she has left behind. Sarah begins to emerge from her cocoon, venturing into a big city that, for her, could be anywhere. She recognizes places generic to big cities as well as a few unique landmarks, becoming aware of the continual and universal tensions of progress and the past. In this way the novel becomes a study of the role of memory, ghosts and the absent dead, all of which play a part in informing Sarah's present and her understanding of the future. At the hotel Sarah encounters a group of war ‘pilgrims'. A mother, her son Bradley and an elderly British Army Major are all on a 'pilgrimage', and, in their different ways, all trying to make peace with the past and its insatiable ghosts. As Sarah learns their stories and witnesses the battles they wage, she is forced to challenge her own beliefs about being able to leave traumatic events behind. Her absent mother haunts her on the sun-drenched streets of fast-moving Singapore. A bond begins to form between herself and Bradley who, like Sarah, has been left out-of-whack by a recent calamity. 'Hungry Ghosts' explores several dualities: the claims of the past, both cultural and personal, balanced against the demands of the future; private memories that must be reconciled with the demands of public living and progress; the world of the mind that is dependent on the physical body occupying 'real' space. The novel examines the strangely transitory spaces that people can find themselves in: the liminal areas of grief, travel, dislocation, the unfamiliar. It asks why, in an age of globalisation, the claims of place, and in particular of home, remain so strong. My exegesis, written as three essays, addresses three aspects of my manuscript, ‘Hungry Ghosts’. In the first essay I look at the importance of ‘place’ in my novel, and the different types of ‘places’ I explore. In the second essay I look at how contemporary theories on war commemoration, coupled with my own research and witnessing of ‘actual’ events, have informed my depiction and treatment of the theme of war memory. In my final essay I reflect on the role mourning has played in the development of my manuscript, considering both the challenges it has presented to my narrative and the ways in which it has strengthened it. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

This study investigates the challenges facing screenwriters in Australia who set out to represent the Japanese on screen. The study is presented in two parts; an exegesis and a creative practice component consisting of two full length feature film screenplays. The exegesis explores how certain screenwriting conventions have constrained recent screen images of the Japanese within the bounds of the cliched and stereotypical, and argues for a greater resistance to these conventions in the future. The two screenplays experiment with new ways of representing the Japanese in mainstream Australian film and aim to expand the repertoire of Asian images in the national film culture.