Christmas Island is situated in Long. 105°43' E and Lat. 10°25' S. The situation is climatically considered, strongly insular, being about 200 miles south of the Western part of Java. It is sheltered from the excessive rainfall of the East Indian Archipelago brought by the Easterly Trades which are greatly drained of their moisture by the time Java is passed. It is also outside the cyclonic region of the Indian Ocean, only one such storm being recorded since 1901, viz, that on 19th February 1904. The highest temperature recorded was 94.1° on 25th January 1903 and the lowest, 66.9° on 16th September 1902 - a range of 27.2°. The mean annual temperature is 80.8°. The mean is under 80.0° in the three months - July, August, September, but is above 80° during the other months of the year. The greatest variation of the temperature of Christmas Island is 20.0° or thereby and the least about 3.0°.

Abstract not available

In 1974 the Australian Government decided that from 1975 all education on its Territory of Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, would be integrated into a single service. It further decided that all schools would be staffed by Australian teachers from its recent1y established Commonwealth Teaching Service and would implement a curriculum closely reflecting those on the Australian mainland. These were decisive shifts from the previous system of separating the 'Asian' education system from the 'European' (Australian) system. This thesis sets out to find the reasons for these decisions and the expectations, or objectives, of those who made them. The changes to education had many Impacts on the Christmas Island community - both intended or unintended. These impacts are used to assist in evaluations of the policy objectives. The thesis uses the methodology of public policy analysis to examine the links between the government's education policy and its other broader policies regarding the Island. It thus examines operational decisions in the context of strategic considerations. The mid 1970s saw rapid changes in many Australian Government policies. Its new Christmas Island policies were responses to a range of complex, interrelated problems which emerged in the early 1970s - only 15 years after it assumed sovereignty. At the centre of these policy responses was Resettlement. The government's education decisions are examined in the light of the objectives and implications of its Resettlement policy as well as other inputs to the policy problem.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Murdoch University, 2005. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Bibliography: leaves 325-335.

[Truncated abstract] This research investigates social capital within the everyday space and actions of sociability on Christmas Island. The theory of social capital as proposed by Robert Putnam (1995) provides the framework for this investigation which was conducted in two phases. Quantitative and qualitative approaches and a mixed methods concurrent nested strategy were used in both phases of the investigation and the analyses. The analyses also incorporated multiple perspectives of both social capital and physical activity processes. In the first phase, I sought to: (a) uncover the determinants of social capital within the Christmas Island community; (b) develop a social capital typology; and (c) establish the relationship between the determinants of social capital and adults’ physical activity involvement. In all, 212 participants took part in the study . . . Overall, several factors affected women’s social capital and physical activity. These included: (a) women’s societal roles and positions; (b) household and cultural norms relating to gender-based time and space negotiations; (c) ideologies surrounding ethic of care; and (d) role commitment. These factors also influenced women’s recruitment into becoming active in their community. Network embeddedness and autonomy, assimilation and acculturation as well as language and knowledge competency further distinguished the community and physical activity status of European and Asian women. Analysis related to the two physical activity programmes in part 3 showed how various forms of latent social capital within the community can be synergized to produce physical activity benefits and empower inactive and minority-group women. Findings in this study also support trust as an important element in the establishment of relatedness in a physical activity setting.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2007.

A method of inferring tropospheric gravity wave source characteristics from middle atmosphere observations has been adapted from previous studies for use with MF radar observations of the equatorial mesosphere-lower thermosphere at Christmas Island in the central Pacific. The nature of the techniques applied also permitted an analysis of the momentum flux associated with the characterised sources and its effects on the equatorial mean flow and diurnal solar thermal tide. An anisotropic function of gravity wave horizontal phase speed was identified as being characteristic of convectively generated source spectra. This was applied stochastically to a ray-tracing model to isolate numerical estimates of the function parameters. The inferred spectral characteristics were found to be consistent with current theories relating convective gravity wave spectra to tropospheric conditions and parameters characterising tropical deep convection. The results obtained provide observational constraints on the model spectra used in gravity wave parameterisations in numerical weather prediction and general circulation models. The interaction of gravity waves with the diurnal solar thermal tide was found to cause an amplification of the tide in the vicinity of the mesopause. The gravity wave-tidal interactions were highly sensitive to spectral width and amplitude. Estimates were made of the high frequency gravity wave contribution to forcing the MSAO with variable results. The data used in the analysis are part of a large archive which now has the potential to provide tighter constraints on wave spectra through the use of the methods developed here. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1352362 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Chemistry and Physics, 2009