This thesis captures the memories of the 1987 Huntly mineworkers who were severely impacted by the corporatisation of State Coal Mines. There were just 19 days between the announcement of job-loss numbers and employment notices being sent out. Over half of the workforce was made redundant. For some of the miners, there were opportunities and new challenges, for others it was the end of their working lives. This thesis considers how the redundancies affected the miners, their families, and the wider community. As a coal town, Huntly is steeped in mining tradition. There was an unwritten social contract between State Coal Mines and the community, which was replaced with a clause advocating social responsibility in the State-Owned Enterprises Act. Miners share a deep sense of camaraderie, reinforced by their dangerous working conditions. Social employment policies meant that generations of a wider family network could be working together in one location. Huntly was placed under enormous strain as a result of the widespread redundancies. A level of social dysfunction, including illiteracy and domestic violence, became apparent in Huntly during this time. Despite the shock, the community rallied around to support the miners, and to explore options for future business and employment in Huntly. This thesis is based on oral history and examines the response of those who were affected in 1987. Their recollection of the corporatisation process and the effects it had on their community are revealing. Furthermore, this thesis explores the reaction of the community to the redundancies and highlights initiatives that were implemented to mitigate the effects. The miners’ perspective of how corporatisation affected their community, and the challenges Huntly faces to the present day, are also considered.

In the last twenty-five years there has been a boom in scholarship on Charles Brockden Brown that connects his work to social developments that occurred in the early American republic. Brown scholars often read him as a man ahead of his time as his writing addresses, hints at, or even inverts social mores. The scholarship around Brown's novel Edgar Huntly has concentrated on how the narrative addresses westward expansion and white settlers' relationship with Native Americans or the ways in which Edgar Huntly connects to Revolutionary society. Kate Ward Sugar engages with this narrative in a different way, exploring the dynamic of sleepwalking as a way to address male homosocial bonds. Scholars though continue to side step the eroticism within this narrative and the implications of somnambulism's status as a mental illness being tied to an unnamed desire. My thesis will therefore address this gap in the scholarship by integrating a queer and historicist reading of Edgar Huntly to suggest that Brown's use of sleepwalking is done to reflect a social fear of the homoerotic. It is the goal of my thesis to explore Edgar Huntly as a narrative that weaves the danger of sodomy to sleepwalking, suggesting an implicit relationship between madness, illness, and same-sex desire. In order to fulfill this goal this thesis will employ a queer historicist approach, which aims to engage with the ambiguity of Brown's work to reveal insights into the early American republic. After all as Brown wrote in Edgar Huntly, "There are two modes of drawing forth the secrets of another, by open and direct means and by circuitous and indirect" (4). To develop this paper's argument, I will need to explore the casual relationship between the loss of Waldegrave's letters and Edgar's emotional distress as the cause of his sleepwalking. Brown himself described this as, "...a supposition not to be endured. Yet ominous terrors haunted me", as Edgar's dread is fixated upon the potential of an unauthorized reader seeing these texts (91). Furthermore, close readings of Brown's description of Edgar's fixation on Clithero will highlight his unspeakable desire. This relationship will also allow us to later compare their fates as Clithero becomes, "a madman whose liberty is dangerous, and who requires to be fettered and imprisoned as the most atrocious criminal," while Edgar leaves for Europe with his fiancé (193). Finally, drawing upon medical and legal texts from this period will show how Edgar Huntly suggests a pathologization of sexuality within the time period, in particular the developing figure of a secularized sodomite. This reading of Edgar Huntly not only expands the scholarship on sexuality in Brown's writing, but also the history of sexuality, pointing towards a social development currently unexplored by scholars of the early American republic.

The exploration for unconventional energy reserves has rapidly increased over the last five to ten years. Currently, there are a number of companies actively exploring for coalbed methane (CBM) in New Zealand. This study investigates one of these prospects, the subbituminous Huntly coalfield. Coal core was retrieved from the two major seams in the coalfield, the Renown and the Kupakupa. Three coals types were identified (1) bright lustre, non-banded, (2) bright lustre, moderately banded and (3) bright lustre, highly banded. As the degree of banding increases, the average thickness of the vitrain bands increase, the amount of structured vitrinite macerals also increase and the vitrodetrinite content decreases. The Renown seam is predominantly composed of bright non-banded coal while in the Kupakupa seam the more banded coal types are dominant. On average, the Renown seam has both the capacity to hold more gas and has higher gas contents than the stratigraphically lower Kupakupa seam. Additionally, gas content, on average, was found to be highest in intervals of the non-banded coal type and lowest in the highly banded coal type. Cluster analysis found that gas content is associated with hydrogen, volatile matter, calorific value and collodetrinite. As such, gas appears to be preferentially retained/produced in the matrix-dominated material. While not causally linked with gas content, gas holding capacity showed associations with the sporinite, inertodetrinite, funginite and vitrodetrinite; of note, these macerals are highest in the non-banded coal type. Gas holding capacity is thought to be a function of coal texture. Ash yield was found to inversely affect total gas content when ash yield is >10%. Below 10%, it is thought that inorganic elements are organically bound. The small angle scattering analysis indicated that inorganic matter was in the 12.5 Å < r < 125 Å pore size range. The influence of inorganic material was more noticeable in vitrain than matrix samples and is proposed to exist as thin inorganic coatings. Total porosity of the Huntly coal is primarily composed of micropores with macroporosity only contributing a small proportion. In addition, the specific surface area of the coals is also largely contributed by the micropores. Methane holding capacity on a dry, ash-free basis showed positive correlations with both micro- and macroporosity. When methane holding capacity was considered on an ‘as analysed’ basis, correlation was only identified with macroporosity. Possibly gas holding capacity is affected by the presence of moisture blocking access to gas adsorption sites in smaller pores. Considerable variation is present in both gas adsorption and gas desorption results between drill holes, between seams and also within individual seam intersections. Gas adsorption capacity and gas content are used to calculate % saturation for a reservoir, a key assessment parameter. It was found that multiple samples of both gas adsorption capacity and gas content are required to reduce the uncertainty around the calculated % saturation (at least three of each in the current study). Additionally, adsorption isotherm samples need to be collected as fresh as possible to minimize oxidation and moisture loss. Delaying sample analysis was found to result in an overestimation of gas adsorption capacity.

This thesis is a study of George Gordon, sixth earl of Huntly, from July 1581 to March 1595, analysing the role he played in the confessional politics of the period (both national and internation) and how a strong Catholic magnate affected the balance of power and wider policy decisions in Scotland. The thesis is a narrative, with comentary on the political events of the reign of James VI, including the relationship Huntly had with James VI and the wider repercussions thereof. Huntly returned to Scotland from France in July 1581, becoming a courtier and an adherent of Esme Stewart, duke of Lennox. He served a political apprenticeship to Lennox and was exposed to covert Catholic politicking, as well as to the nascent Jesuit mission in Scotland. After James was captured by the Ruthven Raiders in August 1582, Huntly entered politics in his own right, becoming influential in the opposition to the rithven regime. Huntly assisted in enforcing the regime change when James escaped from the Ruthven lords in June 1583, his loyalty to the king winning James's trust and close friendship - the dividends of which he reaped throughout his life. Huntly initially supported the new administration under James Stewart, earl of Arran and assiduously attended to his duties in both the locality and the central government. Following Arran's fall in November 1585, Huntly deliberately distanced himself from the Court and the new Anglophile government. He opposed the anglo-Scottish treaty which was concluded in July 1586 and worked hard to counter the rise of John Maitland of Thirlestane. For the first time, Huntly made contact with the European counter-Reformation in Apriland May 1586. The period June 1587 to April 1589 was marked by faction fighting between Huntly and Maitland, who were both instrumental in James' pursuit of diametrically opposed policies. The discovery of Huntly's covert correspondece with Spain in February 1589 made his Catholic politicking public, subsequently colouring the conflict vetween Maitland and Huntly with confessional politics. Events excalated until Huntly mustered troops on the field of Brig o' Dee near Aberdeen, Although Huntly refused to meet the king on the field, Maitland's vitory was only parial. Brig o' Dee was not the manifestation of the politics of the Counter-Reformation in Scotland, but the productof years of faction fighting between Maitland and Huntly. The period of January 1590 to March 1595 was characterised by Hunrly's continuing influence at Court with marked favour from James and his bloodfeud with James Stewart, second earl of Moray. Huntly used his twin centres of influnce, the Court and power in the region, to fight a vivious and protacted bloodfeud with Moray and his faction. The interception of the Spanish Blanks at the end of 1592 brought confessional politics to bear on a purely secular bloodfeud. Political agitation from the Kirk and Stewarts caused James to commission an army under Archibald Campbell, seventh earl of Argyll to pursue Huntly in October 1594. The result was the battle of Glenlivet between Huntly and Argyll which came to represent the fight against Catholicism, although its root cause was Huntly's bloodfeud with Moray and the Stewarts. When James later raised his own army and marched north against Huntly, the early refused to face James on the field and in March 1595 he voluntarily went into exile abroad. This ended the most active phase of huntly's participation in national and international politics; after his political rehabilitation in 1597, he no longer played an influential role in the king's domestic or foreign policies. Overall, the thesis agues that Huntly needs to be understood as a political faction leader, whose Catholicism was a tool he eomplyed to widen his political influence but not the determinant of all his actions.

The purpose of this thesis is to show that Charles Brockden Brown was influenced by the American Revolution and the incidents that come after it. It is suggested that Brown created a gothic fiction that was intended to be a critique on the American Revolution by using murder narrratives present during the time to create his characters. Gothic fiction consists of many elements such as setting arechetypal characters, terror, emotion, psychological turmoil and language use.

Coal seam gas has been recognised as a new, potential energy resource in New Zealand. Exploration and assessment programmes carried out by various companies have evaluated the resource and indicated that this unconventional gas may form a part of New Zealand's future energy supply. This study has delineated some of the controls between coal properties and gas content in coal seams in selected New Zealand locations. Four coal cores, one from Huntly (Eocene), two from Ohai (Cretaceous) and one from Greymouth (Cretaceous), have been sampled and analysed in terms of gas content and coal properties. Methods used include proximate, sulphur and calorifc value analyses; ash constituent determination; rank assessment; macroscopic analysis; mineralogical analysis; maceral analysis; and gas analyses (desorption, adsorption, gas quality and gas isotopes). Coal cores varied in rank from sub-bituminous B-A (Huntly); sub-bituminous C-A (Ohai); and high volatile bituminous A (Greymouth). All locations contained high vitrinite content (~85 %) with overall relatively low mineral matter observed in most samples. Mineral matter consisted of both detrital grains (quartz in matrix material) and infilling pores and fractures (clays in fusinite pores; carbonates in fractures). Average gas contents were 1.6 m3/t in the Huntly core, 4.7 m3/t in the Ohai cores, and 2.35 m3/t in the Greymouth core. The Ohai core contained more gas and was more saturated than the other cores. Carbon isotopes indicated that the Ohai gas composition was more mature, containing heavier 13C isotopes than either the Huntly or Greymouth gas samples. This indicates the gas was derived from a mixed biogenic and thermogenic source. The Huntly and Greymouth gases appear to be derived from a biogenic (by CO2 reduction) source. The ash yield proved to be the dominant control on gas volume in all locations when the ash yield was above 10 %. Below 10 % the amount of gas variation is unrelated to ash yield. Although organic content had some influence on gas volume, associations were basin and /or rank dependant. In the Huntly core total gas content and structured vitrinite increased together. Although this relationship did not appear in the other cores, in the Ohai SC3 core lost gas and fusinite are associated with each other, while desmocollinite (unstructured vitrinite) correlated positively with residual gas in the Greymouth core. Although it is generally accepted that higher rank coals will have higher adsorption capacities, this was not seen in this data set. Although the lowest rank coal (Huntly) contains the lowest adsorption capacity, the highest adsorption capacity was not seen in the highest rank coal (Greymouth), but in the Ohai coal instead. The Ohai core acted like a higher rank coal with respect to the Greymouth coal, in terms of adsorption capacity, isotopic signatures and gas volume. Two hypothesis can be used to explain these results: (1) That a thermogenically derived gas migrated from down-dip of the SC3 and SC1 drill holes and saturated the section. (2) Rank measurements (e.g. proximate analyses) have a fairly wide variance in both the Greymouth and Ohai coal cores, thus it maybe feasible that the Ohai cores may be higher rank coal than the Greymouth coal core. Although the second hypothesis may explain the adsorption capacity, isotopic signatures and the gas volume, when the data is plotted on a Suggate rank curve, the Ohai coal core is clearly lower rank than the Greymouth core. Thus, pending additional data, the first hypothesis is favoured.

Coal seam gas has been recognised as a new, potential energy resource in New Zealand. Exploration and assessment programmes carried out by various companies have evaluated the resource and indicated that this unconventional gas may form a part of New Zealand's future energy supply. This study has delineated some of the controls between coal properties and gas content in coal seams in selected New Zealand locations. Four coal cores, one from Huntly (Eocene), two from Ohai (Cretaceous) and one from Greymouth (Cretaceous), have been sampled and analysed in terms of gas content and coal properties. Methods used include proximate, sulphur and calorifc value analyses; ash constituent determination; rank assessment; macroscopic analysis; mineralogical analysis; maceral analysis; and gas analyses (desorption, adsorption, gas quality and gas isotopes). Coal cores varied in rank from sub-bituminous B-A (Huntly); sub-bituminous C-A (Ohai); and high volatile bituminous A (Greymouth). All locations contained high vitrinite content (~85 %) with overall relatively low mineral matter observed in most samples. Mineral matter consisted of both detrital grains (quartz in matrix material) and infilling pores and fractures (clays in fusinite pores; carbonates in fractures). Average gas contents were 1.6 m3/t in the Huntly core, 4.7 m3/t in the Ohai cores, and 2.35 m3/t in the Greymouth core. The Ohai core contained more gas and was more saturated than the other cores. Carbon isotopes indicated that the Ohai gas composition was more mature, containing heavier 13C isotopes than either the Huntly or Greymouth gas samples. This indicates the gas was derived from a mixed biogenic and thermogenic source. The Huntly and Greymouth gases appear to be derived from a biogenic (by CO2 reduction) source. The ash yield proved to be the dominant control on gas volume in all locations when the ash yield was above 10 %. Below 10 % the amount of gas variation is unrelated to ash yield. Although organic content had some influence on gas volume, associations were basin and /or rank dependant. In the Huntly core total gas content and structured vitrinite increased together. Although this relationship did not appear in the other cores, in the Ohai SC3 core lost gas and fusinite are associated with each other, while desmocollinite (unstructured vitrinite) correlated positively with residual gas in the Greymouth core. Although it is generally accepted that higher rank coals will have higher adsorption capacities, this was not seen in this data set. Although the lowest rank coal (Huntly) contains the lowest adsorption capacity, the highest adsorption capacity was not seen in the highest rank coal (Greymouth), but in the Ohai coal instead. The Ohai core acted like a higher rank coal with respect to the Greymouth coal, in terms of adsorption capacity, isotopic signatures and gas volume. Two hypothesis can be used to explain these results: (1) That a thermogenically derived gas migrated from down-dip of the SC3 and SC1 drill holes and saturated the section. (2) Rank measurements (e.g. proximate analyses) have a fairly wide variance in both the Greymouth and Ohai coal cores, thus it maybe feasible that the Ohai cores may be higher rank coal than the Greymouth coal core. Although the second hypothesis may explain the adsorption capacity, isotopic signatures and the gas volume, when the data is plotted on a Suggate rank curve, the Ohai coal core is clearly lower rank than the Greymouth core. Thus, pending additional data, the first hypothesis is favoured.