Since the first flights in Sydney in 1910, the problem of exactly where to locate Sydney's airport has preoccupied and troubled planners, politicians and residents of the city. This thesis examines Sydney airport as a space, site and symbol under contestation by major social forces - Zukin - throughout the twentieth century. In doing so, it seeks to question the claims of both planners and anti-airport protestors to resolve and manage large-scale urban developments. Via a series of case studies of representations of the airport, the thesis develops an argument for understanding the airport as a heterotopia: neither sublime nor abject, but through such an extremist spatial imaginary pointing to the production of modernist space as a highly contested process. Because it localises and materialises discourses on the nature and goals of progress,internationalisation and globalisation, it is argued that the built form of the airport is, and will continue to be, a key site of such aerial modernity. The final chapter closely reads a series of airport tales- (a film, a play and a park) in order to consider the ways in which they rework the modernist sublime in domestic space.It is concluded that these stories offer a method of representing locality that goes beyond the existing understandings of locality as an essence of place. The appeal of the narratives lies in the shift that they develop, through excessive and negotiated representations of both the domestic and the sublime, from the local as essence, to locality as practice. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis discusses some aspects of the exhibition designer's role in state museums and galleries. It draws on the author's experiences in Singapore and his observations as a student living in Sydney. Museum exhibition designers are servants of the state. They help create public culture and promote a version of history. But if one is to understand the ways in which designers create meaning (and serve their employer's interests) we need to identify the 'vocabulary' and 'grammar' that they have at their disposal. To this end, the thesis outlines the variables that they work with and argues that they need to understand their employer's ideologies and history. The design vocabulary and grammar that the exhibition designer works with to create meaning in bridging understanding needs to be commensurate with the knowledge of history and the primary ideologies of the state which he/she serves. Singapore's recent interest in arts and heritage museums as part of a larger desire for regional economic and cultural survival and pre-eminence needs to be identified with the evolution, interconnectedness and ambitions of Singapore's arts and cultural organisations. In conjunction, some of the implications of Singapore's Arts and Heritage Policy need to be unpacked. A brief but concise comparative history of Sydney, Australia is made for the arts, cultural and museum comparison between Australia and Singapore. The exhibition designer's vocabulary and grammar can then be used to evaluate four exhibitions in Sydney and Singapore. This dissertation addresses the issues of 'Asian-ness' , modernisation without westernisation and the state's desire to meet the challenges which global communication systems place upon Singapore citizen's welfare. The dissertation is very art focused. It discusses all display objects as though they were paintings and works of fine art / Master of Arts (Hons)

This study is an exploratory study, descriptive in nature and investigates the familiarity and practices of midwives and women with regard to complementary therapies during pregnancy and labour. The study was conducted in four major hospitals in Western Sydney, namely Nepean, Jamieson, Blue Mountains Anzac Memorial and Hawkesbury hospitals. The findings showed that in the main the midwives and women were familiar and made use of four therapies, ie. aromatherapy, massage, music and hydrotherapy. The midwives practiced without any significant training in these therapies. Hospital policies were almost non existant in relation to the practice of complementary therapies and nurses often felt frustrated at not being able to implement complementary therapies. The main issues that emerged from the study were the need for education for the midwives related to specific complementary therapies, hospital policies conducive to the practice of complementary therapies and research into the efficacy of the different complementary therapies. The women need further exposure to complementary therapies and education in the respective therapies if they are to feel empowered in dealing with the stress of their daily lives / Master of Nursing (Hons)

Re-framing is the documentation and analysis of a process of theoretical and practical performance research. The terms of reference for this research were to experiment with the practical workshopping and development of three productions which each restructured and reconceived a 'canonical' written playscript in a format which combined audio-visual media with live performance. The perfromances were specifically developed for highschools in New South Wales and developed models and ideas for using portable technology so that they could easily travel from location to location. The research methodology also included the practical investigation of a process of collaborative production of a multimedia theatre piece with a group of highschool students (from Plumpton High School in Western Sydney). The documentation consists of an interactive multimedia component and a number of text 'modules' that correspond to sections of the interactive. The analysis formulates the process of construction, execution and reception of the performances in terms of a number of interesting and interacting spaces. The focus is on the practice and effects of creating combinations and interactions between these otherwise discreet spaces. The nature of these spaces helps to define and situate the performance but the space can, conversely, be redefined by the performance. In the specific context of multimedia theatre performances for highschools, the spaces that may come into interplay and be modified include: those of the audio-visual media, the meeting space of live performer and audience, the school environment and the wider institution of public education that it is a part of, the written text of a playscript as a space for constructing a fictional reality and the 'virtual space' where this fiction is reconstructed within the mind of the spectator in response to the symbolism of the performance. If such spaces are bounded by frames which are at least partly socially and discursively defined, the thesis proposes, then the performance can act as a catalyst to create new spaces, with languages and ways of structuring reality that differ to those of the old spaces. The implications of this hybridisation may reach beyond the immediate time, space and subject of the performance to reframe ideas, images, narratives and mythologies in domains that extend into many areas of social life and destabilize the systems upon which they are based. Reframing a space can reform the perception and structuring of realities within it / Master of Arts (Hons)(Performance)

In project appraisal of infrastructure projects, cost benefit analysis has an important role. One of the central concerns is to adjust the distortions in markets to provide a better guide to a more effective allocation of scarce resources. The objectives of this thesis are : to establish the lack of a comprehensive estimation of the shadow wage rate (SWR) in most project appraisals in the Australian context; to develop a model for the estimation of the SWR for groups of occupations; to estimate the SWRs for the major groups of occupations in Australia; to forecast the number of employees required for Sydney's second airport project and to apply the estimated SWRs to the project, followed by estimation of the total social cost of the project. The latter estimation is done using a novel approach which, unlike many previous studies of transport infrastructure projects, estimates the SWR entirely from published statistical sources. Overall, the results are significant not only in the context of Sydney's second airport, but for other airports, the transportation sector, and in general for Australian project appraisal. The study proposes the need to change the traditional approach to the treatment of labour costs in project appraisal in Australia and provides a framework which can be useful to other researchers and analysts who wish to examine the pricing of labour in Australian project appraisal. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Beginning in 1978, the learning paradigm of the Faculty of Agriculture at the (now) University of Western Sydney - Hawkesbury was progressivly altered from the classical didactic approach to, by 1985, a student self-directed, experiential learning environment. This entailed shifting from a faculty-perceived narrow agricultural production perspective to one of a multi-discplinary rural development focus. The focus of this systems inquiry is that of a marketer examining a well-established faculty task (function), with the objective of determining how well that task is being performed, and what (if any) remedial action is indicated. The inquiry indicates that there has been a failure to maximise potential in the faculty subsystem that is responsible for communication with concerned publics. The failure is general, in that it was not confined just to communication with employers of faculty outputs. All publics were involved; the faculty's separate messages were not being sensibly delivered to employers, prospective students, undergraduates, academic peers, and government. Analysis of the issues led to the development of a marketing (information) strategy that recognises the need to re-order the faculty's information-formulation and delivery subsystem. A series of proposals is advanced for consideration and debate by the Action Research Team as to which of these several actions should be considered as desirable and feasible for implementation. The estimated costs of implementation of the plan are presented on an item by item basis. / Master of Science (Hons)

The study focuses on the types of cultural practice that are, in the main, generated by the young people themselves (hereafter referred to as youth generated cultures) who fall within the age group of 14-20 yrs of age. The research was undertaken in the Western Sydney region, which is the largest expanding population in Australia, and is regularly defined as a socio-economically disadvantaged region, therefore, an important factor within this study is the issue of class determinants. The paper explores the youth generated cultural practice of graffiti, skateboarding, street machining, and street dancing. These creative practices challenge traditional notions of culture and the arts, however the young people also employ strategies of an aesthetic nature in their creative process. Youth generated cultures are actively engaged in criticism through the use of instrumentalist aesthetics such as Monroe Beardsley describes. The thesis proposes that youth generated cultures have, in a united and structured manner, provided for themselves a framework of economic and pedagogical support that has afforded them a place within the cultural mainstream without the recognition or approval of mainstream cultural establishments. It is argued that these particular youth generated cultures are not rebellious or destructive subcultures, that they are creative in nature and have been established primarily to produce and display their creative cultures. Youth agency is essential to the character of these youth generated cultures and it is this agency that is under challenge from the cultural hegemony. The young people involved in youth generated cultures demand that any account of their cultural practice must also accept the agency of youth as fundamental to their cultural status. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Art History and Theory)

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the educational outcomes of Lebanese-background students in high schools in South-western Sydney, and to investigate some of the factors contributing to their pattern of achievement. The main thrust of this study is to empirically examine in detail two factors which are strong contributors to school achievement. The first is the motivational goals of these students. The second is the Language proficiency of Lebanese-background students in their first language (Arabic) and their second lanaguage (English). The study involves quantitative analyses of two sets of questionnaires administered to all the Year 9 students in three South-western metropolitan Sydney high schools. The Year 10 School Certificate results of this same group of students was then used to measure their level of achievement. Four groups were established for comparison: the non-Lebanese-, English-, Chinese- and Vietnamese- background groups. This study is contextualized within a discussion of some of the family factors which contribute to the achievement of migrant children in schools. Of particular relevance to Lebanese-background students are the socio-economic and educational background of parents, and the historical and social context of the Lebanese in Australia. The thesis concludes by putting forth some recommendations which involve the collaborative efforts of the home, the school and the community, suggesting that part of the solution lies in this collaborative effort. Boundaries can be crossed and stereotypes changed only through a concerted effort by the three sides / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis explores the team identification of fans of a new sport team, using social identity theory. As there is limited research on fans of new sport teams, this study sought to redress this situation by seeking to explain and measure new team identification. Through investigating new team identification, this study extends current applications of social identity theory and understanding of fans of a new sport team. Additionally, by measuring new team identification, this thesis contributes a valid and reliable measure of the construct, and discovery of key themes driving the formation and development of new team identification. A mixed-method research design was used to investigate the central thesis topic. A case study of members of a new sport team, Sydney FC, provided the sample population. The research design included two surveys, administered at the end of the new team’s first and second seasons, respectively, in addition to twenty-one interviews undertaken to deepen understanding of new team identification. The Sports Spectator Identity Scale (SSIS) was used to measure new team identification and test for differences in identity strength based on participant characteristics. Results indicated that three defining behaviours provided the basis for the formation of new team identification. These were termed: Football first, Origin and Occasion. Measurement of new team identification using the SSIS validated the model in a new team context; however, the value of victory and the identification of rival groupings did not relate strongly to the construct. Member identity strength was significantly influenced by age, salary, membership category and games attended. Five behaviours underpinned the development of new team identification; these were termed: Searching, Expression, Eagerness, Names and Faces, and Spruiking. Social identity theory provided a useful framework to explore the formation and extent of new team identification. The formation of new team identification was strongly influenced by support of football, in this case. The implementation of the SSIS to measure new team identification extended its previous applications. Participant characteristics exerted a clear influence on the strength of new team identification. Members engaged in additional teamrelated behaviours as their new team identification increased and they developed multi-faceted and socially important bonds. Stemming from the key thesis findings, the conceptual outcomes provided a significant contribution to current literature exploring members of new sport teams. Furthermore, the nuanced differences between identification with new and established teams provide a distinct agenda for future research into new sport teams.

The vegetation of the Sydney Basin, Australia, is highly flammable and subject to a wide range of fire regimes. Sclerophyllous shrubs and sedges are common and in some vegetation types up to 70 % of fuel consumed during a fire can be live. Research into fire behaviour and fuel dynamics has been minimal. To address this issue this thesis investigated the principal factor affecting the ease of ignition and rate of combustion of individual fuel particles and fuel beds in bushfires: dead fine fuel moisture (FFM). Two common Sydney Basin vegetation types, eucalypt woodland and heathland, each with a history of problematic fire management, were measured in the field for diurnal fluctuations in FFM following rain, under conditions similar to when prescribed burns are conducted. The FFM components of current operational fire behaviour models were found to be inadequate for predictions of FFM and fire behaviour under these conditions. The equilibrium moisture content (EMC) of five fuel types from the field site was investigated in a laboratory study. An existing function describing EMC as a function of temperature and relative humidity was evaluated and found to be very accurate for these fuels. Two FFM predictive models incorporating this function were evaluated on the field data and the laboratory results were shown to be applicable to the estimation of FFM in the field. One model gave very accurate predictions of FFM below fibre saturation point, but its accuracy was reduced when screen level conditions were used instead of those measured at fuel level. A recent process-based model that accounts for rainfall showed promise for predicting when fuel is < 25 % FFM. Systematic problems with the radiation budget of this model reduced the accuracy of predictions and further refinement is required. Live fine fuel moisture content (LFMC) of common heathland shrubs and sedge was investigated over two years and found to be both seasonal and influenced by phenology. LFMC minima occurred in late winter and spring (August to October), and maxima were in summer (December to February) when new growth was recorded. The dominant near-surface fuel in mature heath was sedge. It was found to have little seasonal variation in its??? percentage dead but the percentage dead maxima occured at the same time as the LFMC minima of shrubs and sedge in both years. Simple instantaneous models for duff moisture content in woodland and heathland and LFMC and the percentage dead sedge in heathland were developed. The information gained by this study will form the basis for future development of fuel moisture models for prescribed burning guidelines and fire spread models specific to the vegetation communities of the Sydney Basin.