News archive 2007

Boom and Bust: Bird stories for a dry country

Monday 12 November 2007, 10am - 4.30pm

This symposium considers the relationship between fauna, people and the environment, through stories about the ways individual bird species have responded to human-induced change. Some populations have boomed, others have busted - and some work opportunistically with the boom and bust ecology of the land itself. Visions Theatre. Free. Tea and coffeee provided. Bookings essential on (02) 6208 5021.

This is the first of a series of projects under the IHOPE-Oz umbrella looking at how the exceptional ecological and historical conditions of Australia speak to the international project to develop an Integrated History and future Of People on Earth (IHOPE).

Visit http://www.nma.gov.au/events/boom_and_bust/ for for information

Environment and Nature in New Zealand Journal September 2007

The latest edition of the Environment and Nature in New Zealand journal is available. Download the entire journal in PDF format: September 2007 (Vol. 2 No. 5) (596KB). This issue showcases two recent books exploring aspects of Australasian ecology. Tom Brooking reviews Libby Robin's new book, How a Continent Created a Nation, and highlights its applicability to New Zealand environmental history, while Charles Dawson reviews David Young's recently published book, Whio: Saving New Zealand's Blue Duck. Benedict Taylor also reports on a conference held earlier this year in Christchurch by the Australian Forest History Society, 'Trans-Tasman Forest History'.

National Museum of Australia Student Prize for the History of Australian Science 2008

The National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science through its National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science invite submissions for the National Museum of Australia Student Prize for the History of Australian Science 2008

The Prize will be a certificate and $2,500.

Closing date for submissions: 28 February 2008.

Details on National Museum of Australia website http://www.nma.gov.au
Inquiries: rosanne.walker@science.org.au

Annual History Colloquium in Darwin

The annual History Colloquium in Darwin, a joint initiative of the Australian National University, Charles Darwin University and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, takes place this year in the theatrette, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, between 9am and 5pm on Saturday 17 November and 9am and midday on Sunday 18 November. Entry is free and there is no need to register.

Most presentations are on Northern Territory history and a number are specifically about environmental history. For the current program see: http://www.cdu.edu.au/whatson/documents/history-colloquium07-program.pdf

Colonial Museums and Identities: Imperial, National, Civic, Ethnic

John M. MacKenzie, Professor Emeritus at the University of Lancaster, and currently affiliated to the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Stirling.

John MacKenzie is a leading environmental historian whose writings on the history of hunting in Africa and on the Scottish diaspora throughout the world have been highly influential. He is chair of the Editorial Board of Environment and History, and also has a long-standing research interest in museums.

Session to be chaired by Mathew Trinca, General Manager, Collections and Content Division, National Museum of Australia Tues 2 Oct - 12.30-1.45 in the Theatrette, Old Canberra House, ANU, Lennox Crossing Seminar is free and open to the public Enquiries: kylie.message@anu.edu.au

The Museums and Collections Program and the Public Culture Program, Research School of Humanities (The Australian National University) and the National Museum of Australia present the 2007 Collections seminar series, Museums and Collections in Public Culture.

'Linnaeus and his disciples' - lecture and film event

12.30 Sunday 23 September 2007
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Part of the celebrations of the tercentenary of birth of Carl von Linné (Linnaeus 300)

Introduced by Sverker Sörlin, Professor, History of Science and Technology, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm

A joint event sponsored by the National Museum of Australia and the Swedish Embassy

All welcome

Environment and Nature in New Zealand Journal September 2007

The latest edition of the Environment and Nature in New Zealand journal is available. Download the entire journal in PDF format: September 2007 (Vol. 2 No. 5) (596KB). This issue showcases two recent books exploring aspects of Australasian ecology. Tom Brooking reviews Libby Robin's new book, How a Continent Created a Nation, and highlights its applicability to New Zealand environmental history, while Charles Dawson reviews David Young's recently published book, Whio: Saving New Zealand's Blue Duck. Benedict Taylor also reports on a conference held earlier this year in Christchurch by the Australian Forest History Society, 'Trans-Tasman Forest History'.

Research School of Social Sciences History Seminars in Environmental History

Thursdays from 3.30 to 5.00 pm in the McDonald Room, Ground Floor, Menzies Library

• 23 August - Tom Griffiths, 'The Dead Heart and the Red Centre: J W Gregory and H H Finlayson in Central Australia'
• 20 September - Lawrence Niewójt, 'Settling and struggling in the Otway Ranges, 1880-1910'
• 25 October - Emily O'Gorman, 'Settlers, Government and the Darling: the 1890 Flood in Bourke'
• 1 November - Kylie Carman-Brown, 'Environmental history of the Gippsland Lakes Catchment'

All welcome.

A Cultural History of Deserts

ABC's Hindsight program will feature a 2-part series on the Cultural History of Deserts on 26 August and 2 September, presented by Gretchen Miller. It will include interviews with Mike Smith and Libby Robin, amongst others. Also accessible online at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/

Wattle Day Perspective

On the eve of Wattle Day, Libby Robin reflects on the relationship between nature and nation for ABC's Perspective program. Airs 31 August. Transcript and audio available online at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/

'The Big Here and the Long Now': Global forces for writing history

Dr Libby Robin Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University/ Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia

16 August, 12:00-1:00pm, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Seminar Room, Level 6, Hancock Building West (43), Biology Place, ANU. (Take lift to Level 5, then take stairs to Level 6)

Global changes are making all sorts of people reflect on history. This paper will consider a number of the different groups who have turned to history as a way of making sense of the world at many scales. The 'millennial moment' led to such projects as the Clock of the Long Now, which determined to stretch the present, to force people to think longer than a single lifetime and beyond artificial temporal barriers like the Millennium. This was a reference to the work of the musician Brian Eno. 'More and more', he declared, 'I want to be living in the Big Here and the Long Now'.

Space, in one sense, created the environmental revolution of the 1960s: NASA's 1969 view of the Earth from Space gave the immediacy to the idea that there is only one Earth. This is the Big Here - we must think locally and regionally, but in a sense, we must also imagine ourselves globally, and the global perspective forces us to consider change simultaneously at many different scales. Just as we think globally and act locally, we have to imagine time on a grand scale as we play out our individual human lifetimes, and this is the imperative of the Long Now - or history on many scales and for many purposes. I will consider the role of history-making for the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, now that anthropogenic factors can be shown to affect planetary systems of all sorts and at a wide range of scales. Describing changes to the Earth system over time demands understanding of the history of the biophysical factors, the human factors and, above all, putting the two together. While global warming has motivated an Integrated History and future Of People On Earth (IHOPE), a recent initiative of the Global Change community, there have been other cases where history writing across a Long Now has appealed to scientists. A growing awareness of global change and the triple bottom line of sustainability is driving a popular sense of the Big Here and the Long Now more broadly. The epoch of the Anthropocene demands that a whole range of new disciplines and interdisciplines consider history, and that historians, who have traditionally concerned themselves with the nation state, need to learn to speak at different scales.

Roads and tracks: 'making up the coast' of southern New South Wales

Dr Nicholas Brown Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University/ Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia

2 August, 12:00-1:00pm, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Seminar Room, Level 6, Hancock Building West (43), Biology Place, ANU. (Take lift to Level 5, then take stairs to Level 6)

This paper presents one of several themes I am charting through a social and environmental history of south-eastern NSW, from the Shoalhaven River to the Victorian border. How is a sense of an environment shaped by the modes in which it is accessed, and the social patterns associated with those modes, particularly when assessed in their historical contexts? Roads, and the patterns of land use, amenity and desire they enable and represent, are a distinctive feature of the region under discussion. They create its landscape while also, in significant ways, mediating the ways in which its environment has become a subject of policy and activism. Roads and tracks, then, might suggest some useful ways of exploring the intersections of social and environmental history.

Echidnas on screen

Matthew Higgins's echidna documentary will screen in the Canberra Short Seasons Film Festival, Fri 3 August, 7pm, National Museum of Australia. Free entry.

Special Event at the National Museum of Australia

Voyaging to the Continent of Ice

Tom Griffiths

In the year that Australia establishes an air link with Antarctica, Tom Griffiths, author of Slicing the Silence, will reflect on more than a hundred years of voyaging to the continent of ice, with photos from his own journey across the Southern Ocean to Casey Station.

Sunday 5 August 2pm - 3.30pm

Friends Lounge, National Museum of Australia

FREE
Bookings: 6208 5048

Cultural Landscapes Forum 22 August

An evening of talks has been organised to raise awareness and stimulate discussion on cultural landscapes and their heritage conservation. The session will be held at Old Canberra House, Acton on Wednesday 22 August 2007, commencing at 5.30pm with drinks followed by the presentations:

• Juliet Ramsay: Cultural Landscapes in 2007: a continuing challenge
• Professor Ken Taylor: Cultural Landscapes in Asia and the Pacific
• Marilyn Truscott: Intangible Heritage Value: new international initiatives
• Dr Jane Lennon AM: Cultural Landscape Management
• Kirsty Altenburg: Heritage Management of Chengde Cultural Landscape, China
• Pip Giovanelli: Cultural Landscapes in Local Government Areas

The evening is open to anyone interested in the topic.

Please RSVP to Juliet Ramsay : phone 02 62363214 or email julietdmramsay@hotmail.com

There will be a charge of $5 per head ($3 for students)

Into the desert: audio blog

Over the next month, Adjunct Professor Mike Smith will be trekking with a string of camels into the southern Simpson Desert, following Kallakoopah Creek (an old anabranch of the Warburton/Diamantina River).

If you would like to follow his progress (via a solar-powered sat phone) you can view 'Into the desert' and listen to audio on the National Museum website at Into the desert: audio blog.

Wintering: Surviving the Antarctic Night

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
National Library of Australia Theatre

Free

Author of 'Slicing the Silence', Tom Griffiths discusses understanding and surviving Antarctic winters - the ultimate test of sanity. Book signing follows.

Bookings: (02) 6262 1271

Next in the Historical Imagination Series

Sunday, June 24, 3 pm, Friends Lounge, National Museum of Australia.

Historical Imagination is a new public conversation series held at the National Museum of Australia

Historical Imagination is a new public conversation series that explores creative responses to history or historical research. Writers, poets, artists and musicians often draw on historical events to inspire and inform their work. Informal conversations with artists, historians and curators will invite the public to understand and appreciate the dynamic connections between history and imagination.

In our next conversation, meet Canberra novelist and nature writer Nick Drayson, in conversation with Dr Libby Robin, a leading environmental historian. They will explore the historical imagination through works of fiction and non-fiction. Nick Drayson will discuss his recently published and highly acclaimed novel Love and the Platypus, and Libby Robin will talk about history in her work of non-fiction, How a Continent Created a Nation.

Nick Drayson

Nick Drayson is a novelist and nature writer. His nature writing has included columns in The Good Weekend magazine and The Australian Women's Weekly, as well as the winning essay for the inaugural Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. Both his latest novel Love and the Platypus and his previous Confessing a Murder have natural history themes, and Nick has also worked for the National Museum of Australia, both as curator and consultant.

Dr Libby Robin

Dr Libby Robin is author of How a Continent Created a Nation (UNSW Press, 2007), which explores some of the relationships between nature and nation in Australia. The book developed partly out of her work as a curator, developing the foundation gallery for People and Environment at the National Museum of Australia. Since 1999, she has worked as an environmental historian at the Australian National University, and this year she joined the National Museum of Australia's Centre for Historical Research. Her earlier books include a history of ornithology, The Flight of the Emu (2001) and an exploration of ecological consciousness in Australia, Defending the Little Desert (1998). She was also one of the co-editors (with Tim Sherratt and Tom Griffiths) of A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia (NMA Press, 2005).

This free event is being held in the National Museum Friends Lounge from 3-4pm on Sunday, June 24.

Bookings are essential (02) 6208 5021

Leichhardt: the man, the mystery, the science, the history

A free public symposium at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra

8.30am-4.15pm, Visions Theatre, Friday 15 June 2007

Who completed one of the greatest overland journeys in Australian history? Who disappeared almost without trace a few years later? Who was one of the most acute observers of Australia's environment?

Ludwig Leichhardt was an extraordinary man, and his is an extraordinary story. Leading speakers from Canberra and interstate will talk about Ludwig Leichhardt in all his facets - explorer, scientist, figure of literature and mystery. The impact of Leichhardt is still being assessed today.

Following in the wake of the National Museum of Australia's purchase of the Leichhardt Nameplate in November 2006, this one-day event promises to be a wonderful forum for all people with an interest in this significant figure of Australian history, science, culture and beyond.

Bookings essential, please phone (02) 6208 5021

Environment and Nature in New Zealand journal May 2007

The latest edition of the Environment and Nature in New Zealand journal is available. Download the entire journal in PDF format: May 2007 (Vol. 2 No. 4) (728KB). This issue features an essay by Teresa Shewry: 'Literature and the Environment: Fictions of Nature, Culture, and Landscapes'.

Research School of Humanities Friday Forum:
"Voyaging to Antarctica via the Humanities"

27 April 1-2.30pm, Old Canberra House

Tom Griffiths discusses his new book Slicing the Silence, with Carolyn Strange.

Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica

Tom Griffiths, 9780868409726, New South Books, May 2007, 320pp, PB , 235x155mm. Price: AUD$34.95 (AUD$31.77 ex-tax)

In the summer of 2002–03, acclaimed writer and historian Tom Griffiths voyaged the Southern Ocean to Antarctica. He was on board the first Australian ship to 'slice the silence' of a year, arriving at Casey Station to deliver the new team of 'winterers' and take away the old. In Slicing the Silence Griffiths interweaves his own diary entries with rich and engaging essays on Antarctic history, science and culture.

See also: http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868409723.htm

National Museum of Australia Student Prize in Australian Environmental History 2007

The inaugural National Museum of Australia Student Prize in Australian Environmental History was awarded to Coral Dow, from the Centre for Gippsland Studies, Monash University (Gippsland), Victoria. Her prize-winning essay was entitled: "A 'Sportsman's Paradise': The Effects of Hunting on the Avifauna of the Gippsland Lakes". The judges were Rachel Ankeny (Chair) (Academy's National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science), Libby Robin (on behalf of the Historical Records of Australian Science) and Mike Smith (Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia).

The award will be presented at the Shine Dome, Australian Academy of Science on Thursday 26 April at 5 pm. All Environmental History Networkers welcome! Please let Rosanne Walker (rosanne.walker@science.org.au ) know if you are coming for catering purposes, by Monday 23 April.

The Ken Inglis Prize 2007

The Australian Historical Association's annual student prize, the Ken Inglis Prize, has been won by Jodie Frawley, from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney for an essay entitled: 'Prickly Pear Land: Transnational Networks in Settler Australia' . The essay will appear later this year in Australian Historical Studies. The judges, Frank Bongiorno and Jan Gothard, commented how Frawley's 'exploration of Australian environmental history in an international context' illuminated 'our historical understanding of such concepts as colonialism, empire, settlement and identity'.

More

New book:

Community, Environment & History: Keppel Bay Case Studies edited by Steve Mullins, Mike Danaher & Barbara Webster, CQU Press, 2006.

This book explores the natural formation of Keppel Bay in Central Queensland; early Aboriginal occupation of the area; modification on the coastline and Fitzroy River by early and recent settlers; community identity; port, resort and tourism development; ethnic diversity; challenges to local parks and wildlife; the problem of introduced plant and animal pests; and the provision of essential services of fresh water and sewerage to the local towns. The book cultivates a deeper and more textured appreciation of place.

The book retails for $35.95 plus $5 postage & handling.

It may be ordered from OutbackBooks