Masters Research - Master Creative Arts / Food, as a social signifier, is an important device in literature that has been used skilfully by writers like Woolf, Proust and Carver. My short story collection, A Taste of Dreams, employs food as a theme across the collection to reveal details about characters and the relationships between those who come together to cook and dine. The essay that follows examines suburban fiction and domestic routines including the preparation and consumption of food, food-related spaces such as the kitchen and dining table and the significance of meals beyond the food itself. Domestic fiction set in the Australian suburbs had a late and uncertain beginning. The image of the Australian bush and frontier dominated both art and literature through the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, well after the cities and suburbs were established. It was only after the Second World War, with the great postwar land boom, that artists and writers turned to the suburbs. Initially, this residential space, where the majority of Australians lived, was derided and spurned, viewed as homogeneous, status-oriented and uniformly conservative. Intellectuals attacked the architecture of the new landscape and concluded that the residents who bought into this lifestyle were conditioned by their streetscape. In the 1970s, new writers like Garner, Winton, Malouf and Updike emerged. They looked beyond the streetscape, front fence and lawns to reveal the details, the diversity and complexities of lives within the suburban milieu. Domestic situations were explored against a background of iconic symbols and signifiers—the backyard, shed, garage, bedroom, laundry and kitchen—to reveal the unique details of characters’ lives within the suburban home. A Taste of Dreams is a contribution to the genre of short story writing set in the Australian suburbs. Food links the stories and provides an avenue through which the reader can gain an understanding of the characters, their homes and their relationships.

Masters Research - Master Creative Arts / Food, as a social signifier, is an important device in literature that has been used skilfully by writers like Woolf, Proust and Carver. My short story collection, A Taste of Dreams, employs food as a theme across the collection to reveal details about characters and the relationships between those who come together to cook and dine. The essay that follows examines suburban fiction and domestic routines including the preparation and consumption of food, food-related spaces such as the kitchen and dining table and the significance of meals beyond the food itself. Domestic fiction set in the Australian suburbs had a late and uncertain beginning. The image of the Australian bush and frontier dominated both art and literature through the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, well after the cities and suburbs were established. It was only after the Second World War, with the great postwar land boom, that artists and writers turned to the suburbs. Initially, this residential space, where the majority of Australians lived, was derided and spurned, viewed as homogeneous, status-oriented and uniformly conservative. Intellectuals attacked the architecture of the new landscape and concluded that the residents who bought into this lifestyle were conditioned by their streetscape. In the 1970s, new writers like Garner, Winton, Malouf and Updike emerged. They looked beyond the streetscape, front fence and lawns to reveal the details, the diversity and complexities of lives within the suburban milieu. Domestic situations were explored against a background of iconic symbols and signifiers—the backyard, shed, garage, bedroom, laundry and kitchen—to reveal the unique details of characters’ lives within the suburban home. A Taste of Dreams is a contribution to the genre of short story writing set in the Australian suburbs. Food links the stories and provides an avenue through which the reader can gain an understanding of the characters, their homes and their relationships.

The distribution of resources is vital to any system or society. This is particularly true of social insect colonies where independent access to resources is not available to all members. Only a fraction of individuals are responsible for obtaining food for the colony from outside the nest. Surprisingly little is known about how this food is subsequently distributed to members inside the nest. The work in this thesis is focused around a set of food distribution experiments conducted using four colonies of the ant Temnothorax albipennis. The study applies a well-used technique in a new way to investigate the distribution of food under two different scenarios: feeding under normal conditions and famine relief feeding after a period of starvation. All ants in each colony are marked and then individually tracked recording every feeding interaction to obtain a complete network of food transmission. This work has shown that all four colonies efficiently relieved the famine within 30 minutes of introducing new food. This process was facilitated by workers abandoning their spatial structure and expanding their space use; feeding multiple recipients from a single donor; and simultaneously spreading stored food and new food. Recruitment of foragers did not play a major role in relieving the famine but foragers were responsible for most of the first round of feeding. The study revealed that not all members received the same amount of food and most ants received food in multiple feeding interactions. The transmission pathways used to distribute the food present an opportunity for harmful substances to spread. The pathways are explored in this context to see whether the colonies might aim to minimize the spread by partitioning the pathways or maximise spread by mixing to promote social immunity. The study reveals behavioural differences between the four colonies which are likely to result from the inherent variation in demographic and geometric properties. These differences highlight the flexibility of ant colonies during problem solving under different conditions.