Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities Symposia

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Placing the post in the landscape of colonial memories: revisiting the memory of a colonial frontier. [abstract].
(2005) Haggis, Jane
Paul Fox closes his exploration of the institutionalisation of memory within museums with the question 'do Australians inhabit a postcolonial world or a landscape of colonial memories?' [Fox, 1992, 317] The question forms for him out of an analysis of the ways in which the orderings of aboriginality and space of the colonial museum continued to haunt Australian cultural imaginaries in the early 1990s. Fox traces how colonial museums ordered their knowledge always in reference to the imperial centre, accomplishing a kind of double colonialism – reinforcing 'the European acquisition of space' while ensuring that, for the 'former peripheral city of empire ... memory exists in and belongs to a system of knowledge created elsewhere' [ibid, pp. 308-9]. It seems to me Fox posed his question to invite a response affirming the colonial quality of Australian memory. However, considering his question in 2005, ‘post’ the debates over race, reconciliation, and history that dominated the turn of century, elicits a more uncertain response in me. This paper explores these questions through a study of the social memory of a colonial frontier in the southeast of South Australia. Drawing on Healy’s conception of social memory as a 'network of performances' in which 'relationships between past and present are performed' (1995, p. 5) the paper focuses on the ways in which one colonial ‘memory’ of the frontier, Mrs Christina Smith’s book "The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: a Sketch of their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language", first published in 1880, is performed in two contemporary renderings of the social memory of colonialism: the Lady Nelson Discovery Centre, in Mount Gambier, South Australia, and the writings of Mrs Heather Carthew, great granddaughter of Mrs Smith.
Reading Social Organization in a Watery Landscape: Cutting Through South Australia's Woakwine Range. [abstract].
(2005) Fort, Carol Susan
The subject of this paper is the drainage landscape of an area that stretches along the South Australian coast from Robe to Beachport and extends inland by several kilometres, including Lakes Eliza, St Clair, George and Hawdon. The paper takes three time-slices (as European incursions began, early in the twentieth century to 1918, and 1955 to the early 1960s) through the landscape and subjects them to a comparative analysis that considers historical and cultural indications gleaned from archaeological data, letters and diaries, newspapers, interviews, photographs, films and government records. Central to the paper’s purpose is the question: what can historians learn about social organization from examining the cultural landscape of water control strategies? The paper argues that the three time-slice examples indicate several differences in social organization in the region: not only differences in the form, roles, responsibilities and attitudes towards government and the expected differences in environmental knowledge, appreciation and/or interpretation, but also, significant differences in people’s perception of themselves and each other, both as individuals and as social beings.
"All we see and all we seem..." - Australian Cinema and National Landscape. [abstract].
(2005) Prescott, Nicholas Adrian
In this paper I will argue that Australian feature filmmakers’ uses and depictions of “the Australian landscape” in their cinema have undergone a striking and important transformation since the 1970s, and that this transformation, while reflecting a developing and modulating sense of Australian cultural identity, has also been crucially linked with changes and developments in the Australian film industry itself, changes which relate to Government investment initiatives, increasingly complex production and co-production strategies, and, more recently, off-shore production by major Hollywood studios.
"A projection part of the main": an Elliston palimpsest. [abstract].
(2005) Hosking, Rick
This paper considers a number of ways of reading a particular cultural land/seascape at Elliston, on South Australia’s west coast. At first glance it may surprise some to hear a clifftop with a clearly defined track described as cultural, because cultural landscapes are usually regarded as places that live in the imaginations of a community, as repositories of shared notions about cultural value. They are usually both sites and sights. Cultural landscapes are usually domesticated in some way, reconstructed by human intervention over considerable periods of time as a consequence of complex human landuse and lived practices, and often representing an agrarian or pastoral ideal that summons up ideas of a golden age. Such landscapes usually reveal evidence of human intervention shaped not only by cultural practice but also by aesthetic judgment, and are often designed to maintain a way of life by conserving specific features of that landscape. How can a cliff in a littoral zone, a ‘projecting part of the main’, reveal evidence of human intervention, where any evidence of occupation is hard to find?
Cultural landscapes of a tourism destination: South Australia's Barossa Valley. [abstract].
(2005) Leader-Elliott, Lynette Frances
Alternative ways in which the cultural landscape of South Australia’s Barossa Valley is represented are examined briefly to demonstrate the difference in cultural landscape representations in recent tourism marketing print materials of the region, and in a large-scale textile artwork completed by a group of thirty nine Barossa women in 1999. The paper will compare cultural landscape elements included in this piece of community art work with the types of images included in recent tourism promotional material for the Barossa region.
Returning to Memory Cove. [abstract].
(2005) Manthorpe, Peter
In 2000 I was lucky enough to have been taken in tow by Wik elder Silas Wolmby for a walk around his country near Cape Keerweer on the Cape York Peninsula. I realised that if I was to be able to reach a deep understanding of Silas’s stories, of which I had heard only a tiny part of his repertoire, I would have to spend a lifetime with him. Similarly, to comprehend the Cape Keerweer landscape to the point where I could glide through it, completely at home like Silas, I would have to spend a lifetime there. There is a man whose stories I have been hearing all my life, who has shared his life’s traditions with me, who has schooled me in his sense of the landscape of our home territory, coastal South Australia, and taught me since childhood about his way of moving through it and perceiving it. My father is a seafarer, a navigator, by profession, and I followed in his wake. We are both master mariners. But long before I left home and went to sea he would take me sailing around the gulfs in his small wooden yacht. In this paper I will return to Cape Catastrophe in a boat with my father and hear him tell the story to me again. I will compare this experience with walking beside Silas and hearing his stories. There are similarities and obvious divergences, but reflecting on each casts new light on the other. As I hear this familiar story once again after so many iterations, I will examine the ways it connects me to the landscape, whether it influences my sense of ‘home’ (being in South Australia, or in southern Australia, or perhaps simply being in a boat girt by sea), and how it influences my understanding of my culture: as an Australian, as a whitefella, as an invader, as a seafarer, as a son.
The Adelaide Hills Face Zone as a Cultural Landscape. [abstract].
(2005) Smith, Pamela Alethea; Piddock, Susan; Pate, Frank Donald
Landscape archaeology is a recent approach employed in historical and indigenous archaeology that addresses the interaction of cultural and environmental variables associated with human landscape use (Yamin and Bescherer 1996; David and Lourandos 1999). This theoretical paradigm was derived from earlier systems-based approaches to human landscape use developed in relation to settlement pattern and human ecology studies (Clark 1952; Willey 1953, 1956; Steward 1955). Whereas many earlier approaches to human landscape use emphasised the natural environment as a prime mover, landscape archaeology focuses on the strong interactions between culture (i.e. learned behaviour, norms) and natural environments. In relation to historical archaeology, the cultural “baggage” that colonists bring with them has a major impact on how they view, interpret, and use new territories. After three years of archaeological and historical studies it is argued that Adelaide’s Hills Face Zone is one of the best preserved relict landscapes representing the era of European/English expansion and colonisation during the eighteen and nineteenth centuries.
Adopting and adapting: Italian settlement in South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. [abstract].
(2006) O'Connor, Desmond John
The biggest influx of Italians to Australia, including South Australia, occurred during the 1950s and 1960s as a result of the Australian government’s post-war immigration programme, which attempted to meet the perceived need to populate Australia and to supply labour for the nation’s expanding industries. In the two decades 1950-1970 over a quarter of a million Italians migrated to Australia, 30,000 of whom (12%) settled in South Australia. This paper considers some social and cultural implications of the settlement of Italians in South Australia during these two decades. Extensive use is made of the life experiences of a number of SA Italians who have been interviewed during the last ten years.
More than a sea change? Post-World War II French migration to South Australia. [abstract].
(2006) Bouvet, Eric James
The proposed paper seeks to examine the contextual reasons as well as the personal motivations that spurred the French to migrate and settle in South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. This study constitutes the second stage of the investigation of post-Word War II French migration to South Australia up to the early 1970s, this time from a qualitative perspective. A quantitative study carried out in 2003-2004 produced original demographic and socio-economic data about the French migrants settling in South Australia (see Bouvet & Boudet-Griffin, 2005), however, it did not provide information about the migration process as experienced by individuals.
Lost Generation: Women Writers in Postwar Australia. [abstract].
(2006) Sheridan, Susan Margaret
Australia, 1959: In Tasmania, poet Gwen Harwood starts sending out her poems under male pseudonyms, after several encounters with misogynist literary editors; Dorothy Hewett, silent for the previous decade, publishes "Bobbin Up", a successful novel in the social realist mode approved by the Communist Party (of which she was a member) but one that allowed little scope to her poetic gifts or her theatrical ambitions; Elizabeth Jolley arrives in Perth from England and begins to send out stories, but must wait until 1976 to publish a book. They are but three of the generation of women writers who were largely lost from view in the 1950s and 60s, and who are now in danger of being eclipsed in subsequent histories. In looking for answers to the question of why their early careers were so beset with difficulties, Professor Sheridan hopes at the same time to create a picture of the literary culture of the period that will be different because of the presence of women in it – and to offer accounts of these women’s writing lives that will expand our understanding of their art and its continuing significance.
The Irish in South Australia: names and naming. [abstract].
(2006) Lonergan, Dymphna
In celebrating its centennial in an Irish way, despite having little Irish background, The Dublin Progress Association chose to exploit what Pierre Bourdieu would call the ‘economic’, ‘cultural’ and ‘social capital’ associated with the name of their town. We can see that an ‘Irish’ place name in South Australia can have meaning and value that extends beyond its role as a geographic indicator and an historic reminder. Recognition of the economic, cultural, and social value of place names reveals new insights and possibilities. This paper explores Bourdieu’s concepts through the naming of, in the main, Irish related places in South Australia.
Narrative Strategies in the Fictive Diary: Reader-Response Theory and the Grossmiths' "The Diary of a Nobody". [abstract].
(2006) Morton, Peter Ralph
This paper argues that the English mock-diary emerged definitively in the late-Victorian years, when a flood of pompous, self-regarding diaries and memoirs finally drew the attention of satirists. The best and most enduring example – it has never been out of print – is "The Diary of a Nobody" (1888-9; 1892), by the brothers Grossmith. Apart from being arguably the first fully realised fictive diary of any type in English, the "Diary" has had a strong influence for more than a century not only on 'suburban' fiction generally, but on other popular mock-diaries, from Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1925) to Sue Townsend's "Adrian Mole" series (1982-2004) and Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones' Diary" (1996). All these authors have paid public tribute to it, and have, implicitly, built on Mr Pooter's defensive opening statement: 'I fail to see – because I do not happen to be a "Somebody" – why my diary should not be interesting.'
"Unrecorded Lives": Oral Narratives of a Group of First-Generation Campanian Women Residing in Adelaide, South Australia. [abstract].
(2006) Glenn, Diana Cavuoto
This paper will focus on issues of identity and cultural maintenance, as evidenced by the oral testimonies of a generational cohort who were born in the region of Campania in Southern Italy and who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s-1960s. Although, during the post-war period of mass migration by Italians to overseas destinations, an Assisted Migration Agreement was signed by Australia and Italy (in 1951), the majority of Campanian migrants to Adelaide were not the beneficiaries of assisted passages. Instead, sponsorship by spouses, relatives or paesani, followed by cluster settlement patterns, were strong features of transnational immigration by Campanians to South Australia in the post-WWII period. Therefore the journeying and resettlement experiences of this project’s sampling of first generation Campanian women were predominantly influenced by family kinship networks operating within a system of chain migration.
An Autobiography of Everyone? Intentions and Definitions in Doris Lessing’s “Memoirs of a Survivor”. [abstract].
(2006) Dooley, Gillian Mary
"Memoirs of a Survivor" was first published in 1974, and is the second of what Lessing has described as her “unrealistic stories”. The “real” setting of the novel is an unnamed English city in the near future, when for some unexplained reason civilization is crumbling. The narrator, a single middle-aged woman, is mysteriously put in charge of a young girl, Emily. The wall of her flat occasionally melts to reveal a large house. This is the “impersonal” world; however, shortly after Emily’s arrival, the narrator begins to be subjected, beyond the wall, to a child’s-eye view of an oppressive nursery where “personal” scenes from the childhood of Emily and her baby brother are played out. Meanwhile, in the “real” world, Emily passes with unnatural rapidity through the stages of adolescence, while outside cannibalism and violence become common among the gangs of young people. The narrator and Emily are besieged in the flat until the wall finally reopens and admits them to a new world. "Memoirs" is subtitled, in the early editions, “an attempt at autobiography.” Lessing complains, “curiously, no one noticed it, as if that precision was embarrassing”. This is not strictly true: of a sample of ten contemporary reviews, only half do not mention the autobiographical element.
"Written extempore" William Anderson Cawthorne's "Literarium Diarium", A Colonial Diary. [abstract].
(2006) Hosking, Rick
The Adelaide schoolteacher William Anderson Cawthorne began writing his "Literarium Diarium" 22 October 1842, keeping the diary going until the 1860s. It survives in a number of battered volumes in the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales; one of Cawthorne’s daughters left her father’s papers to the library in the 1920s. The "Literarium Diarium" is a remarkable — if sometimes self indulgent — informal record of life in and around colonial Adelaide in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, in both word and image, in that Cawthorne was not only a writer but also a watercolourist, and many of the pages are illustrated. Its perspective is that of the 'littérateur', of the weekend amateur ethnographer; the diary has been recognised as one of the best records of everyday contact between the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the colonists that we have. While the diary is of considerable importance for its representation of the day-to-day minutiae of Adelaide life in the 1840s and 1850s, it is also remarkably revealing of the private thoughts and feelings of a young man on the fringes of lower middle class society in Adelaide.
Constructing the Life of the Medieval Virgin Martyr as Death. [abstract].
(2006) Cadwallader, Robyn
'Passio' of the virgin martyr were extremely popular in the medieval world, providing a model and inspiration for women. Such Lives are distinguished from the biographies of female saints, which gave detailed accounts of women known to the writer, while virgin martyr Lives were legendary, formed from stories several centuries old, that were often adapted and supplemented according to the circumstances. Some, for example, were written for anchoresses, those committed to a perpetually enclosed life; others were used on saints’ days in church. The result is stories that are highly conventionalised in both structure and imagery, forming a body of literature that reflects attitudes to women and virginity, as well as raising some intriguing and complex questions about the nature of female agency and spirituality. In this paper, Dr Cadwallader firstly explores the highly conventional nature of the stories through a range of medieval passio to establish the qualities of the virgin martyr and the basic elements of her story. This study of the conventions of the virgin martyr Life establishes the base for the discussion which forms the second part of the paper, in which several major issues emerge.
Wog boy moves: Greek-Australian performance and the transnational masculine, 1955-2000. [abstract].
(2006) Bollen, Jonathan James
Drawing on archival research into Australian theatre history, this illustrated paper explores relations between Australian imaginings of ancient Greek theatre and a culture’s erotic investment in the transnational masculinity enacted among others by Greek-Australian men.
Italo Calvino: Attentive Observer of Life, Experienced or Imagined. [abstract].
(2006) Baker, Margaret Anne
The Italian writer Italo Calvino, who died in September 1985, is remembered as a fabulist and essayist. His writing spans a range that reflects the diversity of his cultural interests but shows a basic consistency of narrative purpose, as outlined in his essays and responses to his cultural environment. The intellectual curiosity that marked Calvino’s writing from his beginnings in the immediate postwar period of neorealism led him to many areas, the recent political situation as well as fantasy that at surface level seemed disengaged. Even though remaining a fabulist, his approach to his material gradually became concentrated on that close observation of the surrounding reality that we find in his last writing (Eng. titles: "Mr Palomar" of 1983, and "Under the Jaguar Sun", 1986). By making reference to this typical Calvinian mixture of insistence on the observable reality and on the writer’s, and readers’, freedom to float with the imagination, this paper points to the layers of reflection that the author brings to one of the traditional tropes used in his writing.
Values and traditions of South Australian Italian migrants from Caulonia (Calabria). [abstract].
(2006) Rose, Daniela
To what extent do South Australian Italian migrants from Caulonia (Calabria) maintain their cultural practices and traditions in everyday life in Adelaide, Australia? This is one of the main questions that this paper aims to explore. Cauloniese migration is particularly interesting because of the proportionately large percentage of arrivals in South Australia. Among the Australian states, South Australia was by far the preferred destination of the cauloniesi, followed by Western Australia and Victoria.
"Materialising" a Diasporic Irish Family on the Frontier of S.E. SA (1852-1860). [abstract].
(2006) Lynch, Gaynor Lyndon
This paper interrogates the idea of using fiction to re-imagine local myth. Can the novelist history-writer seeking to construct a narrative from the occluded stories of an 1850s Irish settler family, give just consideration to the essentialisms of modern history? A central concern of the paper is the representation, then and since, of the Irish diaspora on the frontier of S.E. SA. (1852-1860). It calls attention to the complex diversity of Irish immigrants on station settlements dominated by Scots cleared from the Highlands, Prussians fleeing religious persecution, and enterprising English pastoralists. How are Gambierton Irish settlers portrayed, and by whom? What did they carry with them? Where did they spring from, and have some histories fallen through the cracks? Are there contradictions, instabilities?

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