Abstract not available

Studies were undertaken for estuarine stocking of mulloway Argyrosomus japonicus to develop efficient marking techniques; to identify key habitats and migratory patterns of stocked fish; to evaluate the diet and growth of stocked fish and recruitment to commercial fisheries; and to develop a numerical model to estimate optimal stocking density from the predatory impact of stocked fish. The 10-step responsible approach to marine stock enhancement (Blankenship and Leber 1995) was reviewed for four Australian species, and Argyrosomus japonicus and Lates calcarifer were found to be the best candidates for stocking in Australia. Immersion of mulloway in an oxytetracycline-undiluted seawater solution produced poor quality marks, whilst oxytetracycline-diluted seawater solutions and alizarin complexone-seawater solutions produced high quality marks in otoliths and fin spines. These techniques were applied to produce double marks, and in batch mode at fish densities of 30 kg m-3. Key habitats for mulloway were identified as discrete holes or basins up to 20 m deep. Hatchery-reared fish initially had significantly greater movements (greater than 10 km in 3 d) when released in shallow water, compared to hatchery-reared fish released directly over deep holes. Such targeted release strategies could revolutionise stocking of depleted fisheries in estuarine and aquatic habitats, and even oceans. Stomach content analysis of mulloway captured from a coastal lagoon and riverine estuary revealed ontogenetic changes in major prey of mysid shrimp, prawns and forage fish. Comparison between benthic resources and dietary composition in these two estuaries revealed that mulloway consume prey resources in proportion to those in the environment, and do not actively select prey. Simulations of a novel Predatory Impact Model were run for part of the Georges River Recreational Fishing Haven, Sydney, to evaluate appropriate stocking density and associated predatory impact. The 15 km stretch of the Georges River contained c. 361,000 m2 of key mulloway habitat, and 10% of mysid shrimp production within this habitat was assigned to support stocked fish. Given these values, this section of river could support c. 4,000 stocked 8 cm mulloway. Over the 4 y during which mulloway are resident in the estuary, these fish will have a maximum yearly predatory impact of 6.7 t y-1 forage fish, 1.8 t y-1 school prawns and 2.2 t y-1 cephalopods, which represents 48%, 17% and 127% of former commercial fishery in the Georges River respectively.

This study explored the experience of what it is to be a gay man and to live in a rural community. It sought to understand why gay men would want to live in places that are said to have a reputation for hostility towards them. The empirical data from the semi-structured interviews with twenty-one gay men living in fifteen small-town locations across New South Wales, Australia, was analysed using a qualitative method derived from phenomenology, ethnography and modified grounded theory. The distinctive findings of this thesis centre on these men???s desire and determination to stay in the bush. They chose to stay in rural locations and effectively employed a diverse range of strategies to both combat the difficulties of rural life and enhance its advantages. The bush was the place in which these men could find themselves, be themselves and also find others like themselves. The space and the isolation of the bush gave them the latitude and the scope to live gay lives. This is why they stayed. By staying, they were also able to live out both the homosexual and rural components of their personal and social identity. Building on a brief look at the Australian rural past, the conceptual framework utilises notions of ???the stranger??? and draws on resilience, agency and resistance theory to understand these men???s ability to live in an unwelcoming place. Resilience allowed these men to cope and deal with the difficulties they faced. Human agency, the individual's capacity to exert autonomy over his life, is used to restore prominence to resistance theory. Agency is the catalyst to resistance and resistance fuels an individual???s, and sometimes a collective, opposition to the dominant social forces that inhibits one???s agency. These men???s desire to live in a rural place can be understood through theoretical considerations of place, the freedom of place and queer theory. Their satisfaction with life can be theorised through the application of a concept new to theory in gay literature - thriving. This thesis documents a largely unreported aptitude and proficiency by rural gay men to live in the bush. It suggests that their close affinity with place gives them a sense of belonging that, when combined with their concept of a gay lifestyle, effectively queers the places in which they live. That gay men can live fulfilled lives in the very places they are said to have fled evokes an innovative perspective together with an appreciation of what it is to be gay in the bush.

This thesis examines the political economy of working class women in contemporary Campbelltown (NSW). A broad political economic approach is employed that considers relevant social structures, their effects, and working class women’s responses to them. It includes investigation of material and non-material, subjective and objective, aspects of this dialectical relationship. This study argues the political agency of Australian working class women has rarely been acknowledged, let alone understood. The thesis focuses on working class women in the suburbs and their politics of everyday life. Though these women rarely attract political investigation, they are too often assumed to be passive, apathetic, unenlightened or conservative bearers of oppression. These stereotypes persist despite the variability in historical portrayals of working class women, suggesting working class women’s politics only makes sense in the context of their conditions of existence in specific times and places. The thesis makes a contribution towards the field of applied feminist political economy research. It employs a historical materialist approach to demystify working class women’s politics. The empirical heart of the project draws on in-depth interviews with local working class women about their experiences and views of family, community, politics, work, unemployment and social institutions. This qualitative material is set against a detailed local political economic analysis of contemporary Campbelltown. The interconnections of capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production in which working class women labour, survive and resist are explored. The thesis questions what part capitalism and socialism play in their pursuit of self and social emancipation. Understanding the political economy of working class women is fundamental to social and ecological health and sustainability. Questions of class power and conflict, and gendered distributions of work and poverty locate working class women at the core of these pressing concerns. The central hypothesis of this study is that working class women are engaged in a wealth of political strategies stemming from their everyday bid for survival. Their (often contradictory) collective and self-activity coalesces around a politics antithetical to the logic of capitalism because it depends on their exploitation and immiseration for its viability. Working class women practice and reproduce a politics of survival and hope that informs their hidden worlds of resistance. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study represents an attempt by a distance educator at CB Alexander Agricultural College to find ways of improving the quality of its farm management distance education program. It describes an action research project in which the Principal Investigator and his co-researchers - a group of students enrolled in the Farm Management Certificate Course - simulate a distance education process as a springboard into collaborative and critical reflection. The study describes the present operations of the NSW Agriculture Farm Management Certificate Course and gives a critical overview of the current approach to course development. It draws on relevant professional literature to provide a theoretical basis for its critique of the curriculum. It asks whether inclusion of an epistemological development variable in course design could help the College more closely meet the needs of its clients. Rising out of this critique of existing practice, the thesis charts a quest by co-researchers for growth in understanding, by critical self-reflection, through dialogue. It proposes a theory of open system inquiry as a tool to help curriculum developers, distance educators and all aspiring open system learners to develop a personal praxis of open system inquiry in their vocations and in their lives. / Master of Science (Hons)

This mailed survey of nurses in all (111) New South Wales aged care facilities with Huntingdon Disease affected residents, used a custom designed questionnaire in a triangulated exploratory design. It was undertaken by an HD specialist nurse into the previously un-researched field of the nursing challenges in that setting. Knowledge was sought, through descriptive and correlational analysis of fixed choice and open-ended questions, of the facts of the affected resident profile (N=63). Similarly, nursing opinions were obtained on the following unsatisfactory aspects of care provision, the impact of internal resources and the HD nursing role and its support. Results are discussed in some detail. Overt evidence of stigmatisation was not evident. Approximately 32 additional long stay HD beds are needed plus more equipment and education for the aged care facilities. The outreach model of support was strongly endorsed. / Master of Nursing (Hons)

Emergent spatial signals which may be interpreted in the context of fluvial sediment transport processes are detected through the use of reflectance spectroscopy in the sand-sized sediments of the Towamba River, southeastern New South Wales. Reflectance spectroscopy of sufficiently fine spectral resolution represents a technique for mineral composition analysis which is complementary to X-ray diffraction, with advantages in terms of ease of sample preparation and rapidity of measurement. Instrumentation is available allowing high-quality spectrum acquisition in the field and from airborne and satellite-borne instruments. The former allows mineral analyses to more easily be incorporated into sediment tracing studies as an additional variable. The latter offers large scale, repeatable areal coverage of a dynamic system in which sediments are exposed to the sky. The Towamba River drains a catchment of c. 1000 km [square] in extensively altered granitic terrain along the south coast of New South Wales, and carries significant quantities of sand-sized sediment through much of the system. Pervasive but spatially variable chlorite, epidote, and sericite have been described in local and neighbouring terrain. These are spectrally active in the SWIR wavelength region in which the PIMA portable spectrometer operates. The airborne HyMap instrument is sensitive through this range as well as through the visible and near-infrared regions. Conventionally such channel sediments would represent a single class in the context of the broader landscape, and comparatively they represent a domain of restricted variance. In this study of samples of sediment were collected for analysis with the PIMA, the results of which supported the efficacy of such an exercise in a conventional tracing context and supported analysis of HyMap imagery. Although issues related to reduction of HyMap-detected radiance to reflectance prevented effective analysis of the shorter wavelengths sensitive to the presence of ferrous and ferric iron, the consideration of absorption feature depths and the application of a matched filtering operator revealed gross-scale spatial patterns which were interpreted as two populations of sand in the main channel. This interpretation is consistent with bank erosion occurring during two very large magnitude flow events in the 1970s, with minor ongoing perturbation of the sediment signal in the main channel by the contribution of sediment from tributaries. The presence of a definite spatial signal having been established, routes for further investigation are suggested. A noisy signal hypothesised on the basis of imagery may be used to better direct a field sampling program for a conventional sediment tracing study. The signal to noise ratio may be improved for example through calibration of radiance to reflectance and removal of atmospheric interference and improved field sampling schemes, after which more rigorous, quantitative exercises such as geostatistical ???field??? trial or spatial series analysis may be performed. Connections to process through sediment transport models are enabled through the use of GIS.

The proximate causes of many of the environmental issues facing residents of the Western Division are well known. Inappropriate land use practices (intensity, duration and timing of grazing), total grazing pressure, poor knowledge of ecosystem fragility and seasonal variation are some of the issues that contribute to an actual or perceived degradation of the landscape. Many of the current practices are seemingly at odds with the attitudes and values of the wider community and also those of the pastoralists who carry out these practices. This thesis seeks to explain this apparent contradiction. The thesis is composed of four elements. The first element reviews historical (mostly European) thinking about nature and the relationship between nature and society and traces how this thinking has changed through time. The second element is a review of the history of land settlement and land use in the division, and shows how the development of the division followed contemporary societal attitudes and values. The third element is an examination of the portrayal of landscape in a western visual art tradition and how this has the potential to be used to reflect contemporary social attitudes and values. The fourth element involves the use of three projects that used art and text as a basis for investigating the attitudes and values of people in the Western Division. The findings of the research indicate that visual landscape has the potential to become an aid in the identification of community attitudes and values about the landscape in which they live. Further, this technique allows for the emergence of other factors such as individual identity and its accommodation within the behavioural framework. In accommodating such factors as individual identity, individual and social attitudes and values toward the environment in any discussion of behaviour in relation to the landscape and its use, a better understanding of the motives underlying behaviour will be gained. In so doing better decisions can be made by both pastoralists and land administrators. Further research is needed to verify the usefulness of these findings in both opening up a positive dialogue with landholders and administrators and in aligning pastoralists’ behaviour towards a more sustainable land use ethic. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study focused on the interactions between small skinks and their major predators/competitors (birds) and prey (arthropods) in core and edge areas of small, long established remnant Cumberland Plain woodlands of Richmond, New South Wales, Australia. Eight study sites were selected (4 edge and 4 core) within the peri-urban environment to compare the abundance and diversity of small skinks, birds and arthropods. Of the three taxa, only arthropods maintained a similar abundance and diversity between edge and core areas. Birds and skinks were either in lower numbers in the perimeter areas (skinks), or were interior/perimeter specialists (birds). Arthropod diversity and abundance of preferred skink prey, was also examined. It was concluded that the distribution of arthropod prey was similar between core and edge areas, and therefore, was not considered to have an influence on small skinks’ ability to inhabit edges. However, large, aggressive/noisy birds (including skink and small bird predators) dominated edge areas. Those birds encountered in the edge foraged in a variety of niches, such as on the ground or they swooped from vantage points. This, coupled with other anti competitor behaviour (e.g. noise, aggression, flocking), placed these birds in proximity to skinks in the edge areas. However, as most of these birds were also predators of skinks, it was concluded that the evidence supported a predator/prey relationship in the perimeter area, rather than a competitive one. This was supported by predation rates on skinks, using decoys. Birds preyed on small skink in greater numbers in the perimeter of woodland remnants than in their interior. This predation pressure was sustained throughout the year. It was concluded that predation and/or displacement of skinks and small birds resulted in lower numbers being observed in edge compared to core areas. This study demonstrated that old, small remnants not continually exposed to major disturbances (e.g. logging, agricultural practices) can re-establish stability in terms of environmental conditions. However, a stable environment or a single taxonomic group does not necessarily predict the response individual taxa will have to edge habitats and that this can alter the interactions between dependent groups such as prey/predator or competitors. . / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The thesis is a historical study from a socio-legal perspective of debates about, and developments in, criminal investigation law in NSW since 1945. In that period, the NSW parliament has enacted extensive criminal investigation powers and safeguards. This can be seen as the result of the increasing political sensitivity of 'law and order'. Politicians have sought to exercise (and demonstrate) greater control over the criminal justice system. Legislation has been employed to provide a framework for police actions, and to define a role for others, including judges, magistrates and the Ombudsman. Political focus on law and order has also reversed the incentive structure for the police hierarchy. In the 1950s, there were strong incentives not to push for extra powers, lest policing practices and effectiveness receive unwanted scrutiny. In the 1970s, police were dragged into debate about their powers, in the face of the 'authorise and regulated' model suggested by numerous inquiries. More recently, police organisations have often initiated calls for new powers, in part to explain past failings. Another important factor driving debate and reform in recent decades has been the proliferation of oversight agencies, and academic insights that have debunked the 'rotten apple' paradigm. The Federal Government and Parliament have also been increasingly active in what would once have been considered purely State/Territory realms of criminal justice law and politics. These major influences have been coupled with a host of others, including the impact of a series of Royal Commission and law reform reports, the ongoing war on drugs, and the campaign against police verbals in the 1970s and 1980s. The examination of the forces that have influenced debate and reform yields other insights. For example, the complexity of the phenomenon of 'non-reform' is apparent from an examination of debates about policing in the 1950s. Prevailing trends in law and order politics (eg, that populist politics supports additional powers) can be seen to be anchored in the contemporary political context rather than being timeless truths. The multiple roles of law, in governing relationships between state agencies and actors, not just between police and suspects, are also highlighted.