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Gardening in a time of water scarcity

Gardening in a time

Back to the future Risks for

education at home and abroad

La Trobe UNIVERSITY

MARCH 2005

One of the world’s leading lawyers specialising in information technology and business process

outsourcing, Dr Trevor Nagel, above, recently spent a week at La Trobe University teaching a unit in La Trobe Law’s Global Business Law program.

Australian-born, Harvard qualified Dr Nagel is a Partner, and Head of the Global Technology Practice Group, at Shaw Pittman in Washington, DC, USA, a firm that ranks in the Am Law (American Lawyer) top 100 list. Dr Nagel is also Vice Chairman of the International Bar Association Committee on Technology and e-Commerce.

He says advances in communications and technology have led to a global consciousness and fundamental changes to the way we do business at the beginning of the 21st century. Spending on IT outsourcing, US $68 billion in 2002, is projected to grow to almost $100 billion by 2007.

Not only do lawyers have to be reconciled with changing technology and its commercial impact, but these dynamic

changes have, in turn, dramatically changed the practice of technology law, encouraging clients to think in terms of ‘global transactions’, rather than just international deals done in other jurisdictions.

Dr Nagel says complex technology transactions, structured around sophisticated framework and alliance agreements, now encourage clients to ‘counsel-shop’ and hire lawyers from outside home jurisdictions on a ‘special counsel’ basis.

These global counsel often have significant roles in not only structuring transactions and determining processes to bring sophisticated deals to completion, but also in advising

how the various components of scope, price and performance should be co-ordinated and integrated.

For example, he advises clients on a wide range of legal and business issues, including joint ventures and other strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, licensing and technology transfer transactions, and ways to structure and manage global networks.

Head of La Trobe Global Business Law, Professor Gordon Walker, says the La Trobe course was a rare opportunity in Australia to be taught by this recognised world-leader.

He says Dr Nagel was a pioneer of IT outsourcing law in the early 90s. His firm has a strong client base in Australia, including BHP Billiton, ANZ, NAB, Telstra, the Commonwealth of Australia and South Australian Water. Dr Nagel also has considerable experience in the European Union and Pacific Basin countries, having advised on global outsourcing and strategic alliance arrangements for McDonald’s, Cable & Wireless, MCI, Equant, Ahold and Pepsi. •

Visit by leading IT outsourcing lawyer

NEWSBulletinLa Trobe UNIVERSITY

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 20052

Cover:

Acacias v Agapanthus;

research into reshaping

Australian gardens at a

time of water scarcity,

see page 7.

The La Trobe Bulletin is published ten times a year by the Public Affairs Office, La Trobe University. Articles may be reproduced with acknowledgement. Enquiries and submissions to the editor, Ernest Raetz, La Trobe University, Victoria. 3086 Australia Tel (03) 9479 2315, Fax (03) 9479 1387 Email: bulletin@latrobe.edu.auArticles: Noel Carrick, Ernest Raetz Photos: La Trobe University DPI Design: Campus Graphics, 62740 La Trobe University.Printed by Work & Turner.Website: www.latrobe.edu.au/bulletin

IN THIS ISSUE

La Trobe’s role in disaster reconstruction 3New guide for parenting after separation 3TIGER radar opens across the Tasman 4Vice-Chancellor’s comment: Risks for our education system at home and abroad 5Hyllus Maris Lecture on Reconcilation 6Faulty footwear may increase fall risk 6

Research in Action:Acacia v Agapanthus: Reshaping Australian gardens 7Kneedeep in water! The message is in the mating croak 8Prehistoric Oceania: Sweating for science in the Pacific 9Genetic time machine helps plan forests of the future 10

Public sector accountability - a dilemma for democracy 11Modern Mexico: all you have ever wanted to know 12Space for television on the cultural shelf 13The films of Roy Ward Baker 13There’s Medicare - and then there’s Medicare 14Speaking Israeli: Language on hybrid wings 15130 years of change at Kew Cottages 16

La Trobe University will commit up to $1M to aid in the reconstruction of

countries affected by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

‘The University believes that the greatest contribution it can make is to focus on assisting in the long-term reconstruction of the region,’ the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne, said.

‘To this end La Trobe University will offer five full scholarships for students from affected countries to undertake postgraduate studies at the University.’

The scholarships are: in health sciences to a student from south-east India; in regional redevelopment to a student from eastern Sri Lanka; in tourism and hospitality to a student from the Phuket region in Thailand; and two scholarships to students from Aceh, in education and environmental management.

The scholarships will cover tuition and living costs up to four years. Each research thesis will address a field-based problem from the students’ home region.

‘This targeted approach will enable the scholarship program to have some positive impacts in the affected regions in a relatively short time period but should also provide a substantial contribution to longer-term reconstruction,’ Professor Osborne said.

In addition, the University has announced that it will waive current course tuition fees for its international students seriously affected by the tsunami disaster.

La Trobe postgraduate student in history, Mr Issa Farah, has gone to Somalia with a team of three doctors, an anaesthetist and representative from the NGO ‘Kids in Need’ to help following the tsunami. Mr Farah is originally from Somalia. •

A new booklet to help couples in conflict build a better parenting base for their children after separation was launched recently by Federal Sex Discrimination

Commissioner, Ms Pru Goward.

The book, Because it’s for the Kids: Building a Secure Base for Parenting After Separation, has been written by leading Melbourne child psychologist and La Trobe associate senior lecturer, Dr Jennifer McIntosh.

Dr McIntosh says international research and her own Australian data reveals that one in four children from separated families suffers from poor mental health.

‘That’s a lot more than “normal”. Separation doesn’t cause this. Long, bitter, unresolved conflict does. Babies and young children are especially vulnerable to family conflict and being looked after by overwhelmed parents.’

The book, funded by the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department, and published by ‘Children in Focus’, is based on recognition that it is not the changes in family structures that are critical to the welfare of each child, but the way parents conduct themselves during and after separation.

‘Children in Focus’ is co-directed by Dr McIntosh and La Trobe Director of Counselling and Psychological Health, Dr Lawrie Moloney. It is based at the Australian Institute for Primary Care, in the Faculty of Health Sciences on the University’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora.

The program has led research over a number of years to help professionals work more effectively with separating couples in high conflict, designing effective child-centred mediation programs and promoting their use over family court litigation.

Dr McIntosh says: ‘With the right support, most parents can find a way to build a secure base for their children after separation. That’s good for parents – and vital for their kids. The book is a guide to help parents achieve this.

‘Some parents focus on how much time they will each get with the children. From the children’s point of view, it’s much more important to work out what kind of support they need from each parent.’

Dr McIntosh, an advocate for the experience of children in traumatic family circumstances, also directs Family Transitions, a Melbourne-based psychology clinic for family trauma and mediation.

For more information, see www.childreninfocus.org •

La Trobe’s role in disaster reconstruction

It’s for the KidsNew guide for parenting after separation

NEWS

3La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

TIGER – the Tasman International Geospace Environment Radar – is

taking a much larger bite at southern skies following the opening in February of its second radar base in Invercargill, New Zealand, helping to measure the impact of auroras and detect echoes from meteors.

Operated by a consortium of Australian Research Institutes headed by La Trobe University, TIGER is part of the international SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network) operated by ten nations to cover both southern and northern polar regions.

The New Zealand ‘Unwin Radar’ link follows TIGER’s first radar built on Bruny Island in Tasmania in 1999.

The new radar is named after New Zealand scientist, Dr Bob Unwin, a pioneer of ionospheric studies in the 1950s and 60s who set up an auroral radar in New Zealand and explored the possibility of having a second radar in Tasmania.

It was opened by his son, Mr Martin Unwin, a scientist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd, Christchurch, NZ.

La Trobe University Head of Physics, Professor Peter Dyson, Principal Investigator of the TIGER project, delivered a public lecture on The Unwin

Radar – A New Look at the Aurora and Other Impacts of the Solar Wind, prior to the opening.

La Trobe was represented at the opening ceremony by Associate Professor in Electronic Engineering, Dr John Devlin, the Scientist-Engineer responsible for the development of the radar system and colleague Dr Harvey Ye; Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Brian Stoddart; and Dean of the Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering, Professor David Finlay.

TIGER monitors the location of aurora and related phenomena in the ionosphere, 100 to 300 km above the Earth. Results from its full operation will include greater knowledge of space physics and space weather processes to help manage radio communications, navigation systems such as GPS, satellite operations, magnetic surveying for minerals and occasionally, under extreme solar conditions, impacts on electricity supplies.

La Trobe University operates TIGER on behalf of a consortium that also comprises Monash University, University of Newcastle, the Australian Antarctic Division, IPS Radio & Space Services, and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. TIGER’s first component,

which uses a 300 metre long antenna on Bruny Island, Tasmania, probes a fifty-two degree sector in azimuth with a range from 200 km south of Tasmania to the Antarctic coast 3,000 km away.

The New Zealand component is an improved ‘stereo’ version of the Bruny Island radar. The radar’s electronics were built on La Trobe University’s main Melbourne campus in Bundoora, and installed with another large antenna array near Invercargill on Awarua Station, a farming property that is the site of one of the first radio communications stations in New Zealand.

Professor Dyson says each radar emits beams that cross, giving different line of sight velocities that, combined, provide scientists with accurate ‘vector’ velocities of motions in the highly disturbed auroral ionosphere.

TIGER explores an area half the size of Australia by directing HF radio signals via the ionosphere towards Antarctica and detecting weak echoes from structures in the ionosphere. These echoes are used to form images of the ionospheric structures and measure their speed and

direction of motion. It also detects echoes from meteors which are used to calculate wind speeds at heights of around 100km, and it can even detect signals from the sea.

Professor Dyson says when the sun’s corona ejects huge amounts of matter that reaches the Earth, there are rapid changes in wind speed and temperature in the ionosphere as well as the magnetosphere, the outer region of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Auroras are caused by electrons striking molecules and atoms after entering the atmosphere near the poles. Auroras can move 500 km in less than a minute during magnetic storms and can disrupt communication and navigation systems. TIGER monitors such storms and can provide real-time data on space weather storms.

TIGER uses HF radio waves in the 8 - 20 MHz range. Although it transmits pulses with a peak power of 9.6 kW, it consumes only 2 kW of power, the same as some electric kettles, and transmits an average power of 200 W – the same as two bright light globes. •

TIGER opens second eye across the Tasman

At the TIGER launch, from left, Dr Ye, Professors Finlay, Stoddart, Dyson and Dr Devlin

NEWS

4 La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

The proposition is now widespread that, in the near future, the Government will move to divide

universities into two distinct groups – on the one hand those that engage in both teaching and research, on the other those whose primary, if not exclusive, role will be in teaching and learning.

This is a dangerous dichotomy in that, internationally, research is surely an intrinsic and automatic attribute of a genuine university. It may also prove to be an exceedingly foolhardy division for Australia to make generally, unless there is a radical change from the currently narrow evaluation of research performance and achievement largely on the basis of the amount of funding a university receives from the ARC and the NHMRC. The use of such narrow criteria could mean that some universities in the IRU-A group, despite their very strong showing in independent evaluations of the world’s leading universities and despite their acknowledged research strength in international reviews, might see their status in Australia imperilled.

Of course, winning public funds through competition is an important criterion for research capacity, but it is not the only one and, as should be

obvious, the amount of funding attracted relates very much to the kind of research undertaken. A university strong in Humanities and Social Sciences but lacking a Medical Faculty, for example, would almost certainly not elicit the level of funding attracted by a long established university with a Medical School – but that does not necessarily, or even probably, mean that the former is an ‘inferior’ research performer. Indeed, one of the great misperceptions of the day is that whole institutions rather than particular entities within them can be characterised as possessing research capacity and quality. In reality, no institution in Australia (and probably few, if any, in the world) can claim research strengths across all fields of study.

A requisite for any plausible system of evaluating research strength is, as in (say) Britain, a process of expert peer review subject by subject. Account needs to be taken not just of attraction of funds, but of several other qualitative indicators such as the number of academicians, the presence of active Research and Development Parks and Research Centres, the level of expenditure on library facilities, the strength of citation indices, and a record of publications. (The last are currently

acknowledged in Australia, but at ridiculously low level and without critical evaluation by peer review, meaning that quantity counts rather more than quality.) A comprehensive exercise, providing genuinely expert assessment, subject by subject, must be the indispensable feature of any convincing evaluation of research capacity. I have no hesitation in asserting that all IRU-A members, indeed all universities professing research strengths, would warmly welcome this kind of exercise.

It is instructive to consider the evaluation of the top 100 universities in the British Research Assessment Exercise [RAE] system. A striking feature is that the top 10 universities comprise a mixture of old and new institutions. Still more striking is the strong performance of many newer universities in the research arena as assessed by peer review. Purely for illustrative purposes I reproduce here the most recent data for three large and long established universities in Britain (Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds) and three newer universities (Warwick, York, Lancaster – the last two founded in the 1960s synchronously with La Trobe University):

Risks for our education system at home and abroad

Continued page 6

The Vice-Chancellors of, and more than 100 senior officers from, Australia’s Innovative Research Universities network, IRU-A, held their inaugural meeting at La Trobe University during February.

With research performance and innovation as their key identifying characteristics, the IRU-A’s six internationally recognised, student-focused and research-intensive universities cover five states: Flinders, Griffith, La Trobe, Macquarie, Murdoch and Newcastle. Including more than 140,000 students and 13,000 staff, these universities were established during the 1960s and 70s as research-driven universities with comprehensive disciplinary coverage, strong commitment to innovation and inter-disciplinary focus.

Among guests at the meeting were the new CEO of the Australian Research Council, Professor Peter Hoj, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Professor David Eastwood who was the international guest speaker. La Trobe University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne, opened the meeting. In this modified text of his address, he warns that increased polarisation between teaching and research universities in Australia, and declining investment generally, could pose:

COMMENT

5La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

It is possible that such a comprehensive analysis would produce similar results in Australia. Indeed, the data provided by at least two of the recent international surveys (the British and the Swiss) indicated that, in terms of research citations, some IRU-A universities out-scored some of the so-called GO8 institutions whose research prestige in Australia, whilst incontrovertible, is certainly magnified by undue reliance on the simple criterion of attracting research income.

Such independent data are significant, and they certainly render risible the frequently voiced apprehension that research funding is in danger of being spread too thinly. I would suggest that the real danger is that funding may be accorded too thickly and uncritically to too few so that newer institutions may be squeezed out, despite their manifest capacity and excellence in many fields of research.

In the competitive world in which we live, we cannot afford to restrict to a tiny number the universities to be recognised as research-based. The crucial challenge is to increase that number and to support all those that demonstrate capacity and excellence.

We also need to accept that genuine research excellence is unlikely to be evidenced across a whole institution, as opposed to parts of it, and that recognition (and support) should be afforded to research productive elements, not uncritically to whole institutions.

Australia has an outstanding record

for higher education internationally – hence its capacity to attract international students – but we cannot afford complacency. In particular, we need to reverse two trends that, if not arrested, will lead to decline. First, urgent action is required to ameliorate student/staff ratios in Australian Universities. Currently they are in excess of 21:1, with obvious implications for quality education. In Britain, by contrast, only one of the top twenty universities has a ratio above 16:1, and most are considerably lower. This is a damning statistic.

Secondly, Australia is now beginning to lag in investment in its universities in contrast to sundry Asian neighbours. How long before our declining facilities reach a point where our universities are no longer attractive to international students, on whose recruitment most now have a serious dependence? How long, indeed, before better endowed universities in Asia not only compete for international students but act as a magnet for Australian students? And how long before that starts to have an impact upon the research performance of Australian universities? •

Continued from page 5

University Overall Ranking

Research Rank

Manchester 17 10 equal

Birmingham 20 24 equal

Leeds 34 24 equal

Warwick 5 5 equal

York 7 7 equal

Lancaster 24 7 equal

Reconciliation after the ‘Bridge Walks’‘Five years on from the Bridge Walks - taking the next step for Reconciliation’ will be the theme of this year’s Hyllus Maris Lecture to be held on La Trobe University’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora on 20 April.

The lecture will be delivered by historian and author, Jackie Huggins.

Ms Huggins, a woman of the Bidjara/Birri-Gubba Juru peoples, is Co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia and Deputy Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland.

Ms Huggins was a member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation for six years, serving on its Executive for three years. She is currently a Director of the Telstra Foundation and the Pacific Film and Television Commission.

Further details from tel: (03) 9479 3147 or 1300 134 522. •Faulty footwear may increase risk of falls Inappropriate footwear is a major cause of foot problems and may increase the risk of falls in older people.

This is the advice from La Trobe University researcher, Dr Hylton Menz, who is conducting research on foot problems, footwear, balance, and falls in older people.

His research, conducted at the La Trobe Retirement Village in Reservoir, found that 70 per cent of the 176 people he is assessing aged between 63 and 96 wore shoes that were too small for their feet.

Dr Menz is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) clinical research fellow working in La Trobe’s Musculoskeletal Research Centre in the University’s School of Physiotherapy.

He and fellow researcher, Professor Meg Morris, have grants from both the NHMRC and the Australian Association of Gerontology to research the cause of falls in older people. •

COMMENT

Professor Osborne: drawing a line between teaching and research creates a dangerous dichotomy.

6 La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

Have a breather from mowing the lawn, stop pruning that rose or tidying that agapanthus – and refl ect

for a few seconds on this question: why are Australian gardeners hooked on exotic plants at the expense of natives?

And what will convince us that many natives can not only be visually as pleasing as exotics, but are also environmentally much more sensible?

Two La Trobe University researchers are conducting a three-year study to fi nd out the cause of our obsession with introduced plants.

With the answer to that, they then hope to change our horticultural fi xation with exotics so that we incline more and more to natives.

Dr Katie Holmes, a senior lecturer in History, and Dr Sue Martin, senior lecturer in English, have received a $149,000 ARC Discovery Grant over three years to investigate Australian cultural attitudes towards native gardens.

They hope to make us think abut our gardens and to contribute to changing our botanical preferences.

It is estimated that 36 per cent of Melbourne’s domestic water consumption is used on gardens. Drs Holmes and Martin say that the imperative to reduce this level of urban and suburban Australian water use is clear and planting natives in the garden is frequently advocated as a way of doing so.

The Department of Primary Industries estimates that native gardens use one

third of the water supply required by a traditional garden. Planting indigenous fl ora is also promoted as a means of protecting Australia’s biodiversity.

Assisted by independent researcher, La Trobe PhD graduate Dr Kylie Mirmohamadi, Drs Martin and Holmes aim to discover how attitudes to native gardens have refl ected, and been refl ected in, ideas about Australian identity, our sense of place, and a sustainable future for our environment.

They will investigate the ways in which ‘native gardening’ and ‘native plants’ have been crucial to the construction of Australian national identity and examine the different meanings ascribed to ‘native’ and ‘indigenous’ gardening, historically and in contemporary Australia.

These investigations will lead to the more practical tasks of exploring the reasons for the popularity of, and the extent of the resistance to, gardening with native plants.

Another important aspect of the project is the pursuit of the fi rst scholarly cross-disciplinary study of the use and meanings of native plants in domestic gardens in Australia from settlement to the present day.

The term ‘native garden’ was invented only as late as the second half of the 20th century and the popularity of this concept reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s. The popularity of native fl ora has long been with us – but has never managed to alter many gardeners’ preference for exotics.

This is despite some recent offi cial coercion to limit in some municipalities, mainly those on the fringe of bushland, the kinds of exotics that can be planted.

‘Pressure is being applied and in some cases is being resisted,’ says Dr Holmes.

This is not new. Drs Martin and Holmes say that 19th century gardeners were encouraged to plant or retain gum trees in recognition of the land in which they lived. The association between nationalism and native plants took root.

In their submission for the ARC grant, they said that at the time of Federation, native plants were seen as a way of expressing allegiance to the newly formed nation.

The earliest ‘native gardens’ date from this period, and the stained glass windows, carvings and decorations of ‘Federation’ homes featured native fl ora. Wattle Day celebrations, fi rst held in 1910, were explicitly intended to ‘cultivate Australian national sentiment’.

‘There are some who take a chauvinistic view and oppose all but natives,’ says Dr Martin. ‘We believe it is not a question of replacing the “evil” geranium with the “patriotic” grevillea, but of coming to an understanding of the cultural resistance to native gardens,’ •

Reshaping Australian gardens

Photo top of page, from right, Drs Holmes, Martin and Mirmohamadi: understanding the cultural resistance to native planting at a time when 36 per cent of domestic water consumption is used on gardens.

Acacia v Agapanthus

RESEARCH IN ACTION

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005 7

IN A WAY some frogs seeking sex partners are the same as humans, only different. The girls go for the boys who

can best convince them that they can provide a suitable place for sex and the production of strong healthy offspring.

And in the case of male Australian terrestrial breeding frogs in the Pseudophyrne genus, an ability to tell prospective partners about their desirable characteristics plays a vital role, making their mating call – or mating croak to be more exact – extremely important.

Just what the mating calls convey is the subject of a $270,000 three-year ARC Discovery Project research grant for La Trobe University post doctoral zoology fellow, Dr Nicola Mitchell.

Many species of this genus, including the brightly coloured Corroboree frog, are critically endangered through changes to their habitat all over Australia.

Dr Mitchell, as a result of 12 years working with frogs in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, is Australia’s foremost expert on terrestrial breeding species, which constitute about a quarter of Australia’s 230 frog species.

Her research has important conservation implications because it takes in the effects of changes in the hydrology of our landscape caused by increasing salinity, wetland and urban development and climate change. It examines the effects of variable moisture regimes on the physiology and reproductive behaviours of terrestrial breeding frogs.

Dr Mitchell explains that male terrestrial breeding frogs, which nest under leaf litter and rocks, choose nest sites which are usually dry in summer but which flood or become moist in winter.

Like many other creatures, males signal to attract females, employing their distinctive croaks for the same reason that peacocks strut displaying brightly coloured feathers.

Traditional scientific theory is that such behaviours attract females which know instinctively that the best displays come from prospective partners with the best genes which in turn make them the best breeders.

Scientifically this is called signalling theory, but in the case of terrestrial frogs, there are complications which don’t occur with other species.

Female terrestrial frogs ‘cruise’ around the males’ nests and then mate with the one whose croak she finds the most attractive. She lays her eggs in his nest and when the nest is later flooded or moistened, the tadpoles hatch and complete their development in water like other frogs. However, embryos that develop in wetter nest sites do better than those that develop in drier nests.

Because of this unique breeding environment in which males compete vigorously for the best breeding sites, Dr Mitchell believed that signalling behaviour may not simply be dictated by genetics as in other species.

‘My research will attempt to establish why the males in the wetter nest sites call more.

‘Do some males call better because they are stronger or because they are advertising a superior nest?

‘Or is it simply that a male’s high call output has a physiological basis in that moist breeding sites allow the male to take up water through its skin from its nest site, so perhaps it calls better from a moist nest site because it doesn’t have to worry about dehydration.

‘This may mean that males emit “honest” signals of nest quality because they have no choice and the female recognises this.’

Many scientists around the world are studying amphibians, but as far as Dr Mitchell is aware, none are researching the physiological constraints operating on call behaviours.

‘Most studies of amphibians focus on systems where males provide females with nothing but genes. My interdisciplinary approach and focus on a group poorly represented in the literature will challenge current paradigms in sexual selection.’ •

Kneedeep in water! The message is in the mating croak

Trust me! Male frog near eggs.

RESEARCH IN ACTION

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 20058

Sweating for science in the Pacific Kneedeep in water!

The message is in the mating croak Success often comes from 90 per cent perspiration and 10 per cent inspiration.

This certainly applies in the case of a major project on which archaeologists from La Trobe University and New Zealand’s University of Otago are working in the Pacific.

Their objective is to improve knowledge of the Tongan maritime empire, the most widespread and complex socio-political entity known in prehistoric Oceania.

A collaboration between La Trobe University archaeologist, Professor Tim Murray, historian, Professor Alan Frost, and Dr Geoffrey Clark from Otago University, their work has received a five-year ARC $365,000 Discovery Grant.

Professor Murray says the project goes beyond the usual single-island / archipelago-based research and aims to understand the dynamic past of the entire Central Pacific over the past 1,000 years.

‘Spanning the ethnological boundaries of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, the Tongan maritime empire was organised by a pair of paramount chiefs who brought under Tongan influence Pacific Islander populations living far beyond the Tongan archipelago – an event unique in Polynesia.

‘At its height, from AD 1000 to AD 1500, Tongan influence extended to the neighbouring archipelagos of Fiji and Samoa, as well as to the islands of Rotuma, Futuna and ‘Uvea, an area of more than three million square kilometres of ocean.’

Monumental architecture, including large burial and house mounds, platforms and forts, built of earth, volcanic stone or limestone, are associated with the Tongan presence.

One such mound is at Pulemelei in Samoa, the largest stone structure in Polynesia. With base dimensions of 60m by 50m and a height of 12m, it incorpo-rates 30,000 cubic metres of stone.

An archaeological team led by Dr Clark, comprising up to three archaeologists, several post graduate

students, specialists, and 20 local workers, has worked at the Pulemelei mound for three years.

The team does its field work for four to five weeks in the dry season. A large part of each season has been spent clearing vegetation, exposing rocks and surrounding stone features. With plant cover removed, the sun heats the mound, a monumental structure radiating enormous amounts of heat, which acts on some days like a solar-powered oven.

Since the mound has been cleared it has again became a place where ceremonies and socio-political rituals take place. It is now considered by the former Prime Minister of Samoa, Tupua Tamasese, as a place central to Samoan culture. Plans are afoot to hold a festival at Pulemelei celebrating the common heritage of Polynesians.

Says Dr Clarke: ‘Through our archaeological investigations, the mound has again become a living monument connecting the voiceless prehistoric past of ancestors with the aspirations and lives of descendents.’

The project has a number of aims. It will provide the first comprehensive radiocarbon chronology of the extensive network of monuments in the Central Pacific, and obtain detailed stylistic

information for major field monuments through excavation and mapping.

It will also improve understanding of indigenous cross-cultural contact. If the spread of Tongan monuments indicates imposition of Tongan authority, the transformative effect of culture contact between Tongans and other indigenous peoples will be in the record of inter-personal encounters away from imperial infrastructure.

Another aim is to build up a comparative picture of empire that can be used to help understand the development of maritime empires elsewhere in the world, from antiquity (Mycenaean, Norse) and from history, like the Portuguese in Asia, the Indian and Arab empires of the Indian Ocean and European colonial expansion in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. •

Field research on the mound at Pulemelei.

RESEARCH IN ACTION

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005 9

LA TROBE UNIVERSITY geneticists are using a genetic ‘time machine’ – which takes them back millions of years

– to help them make recommendations for the future health of our forests.

Their ‘time machine’ enables them to pinpoint Noah’s Ark-type refuges where tiny forest creatures have taken refuge and safeguarded their unique DNA structures during successive ice ages.

They have located a number of these refuges high in the Great Dividing Range in the Tallaganda State Forest and National Park about 80 km south east of Canberra.

The same refuges have been used during all the ice ages that have occurred at 100,000 year intervals over about the past two million years. The log-dwelling invertebrates dubbed ‘giant’ Collembola move away from the refuges when the ice ages end – but retreat back to them when the next one approaches and causes downhill contraction of the forests on which the animals depend.

Their presence today is vital, owing to their role in the ecological community that keeps forests healthy by breaking down forest floor litter and rotting logs, thereby enriching the soil. Should their special refuge habitats be destroyed by logging or other means, their role in maintaining future forest health and biodiversity will

disappear. La Trobe PhD student, Mr Ryan Garrick, is making a significant contribution to this overall study by researching the phylogeography, the relationship between gene relationships and geography, of giant Collembola.

A paper on his work appeared in the November 2004 edition of the science journal, Molecular Ecology.

The 6 mm-long log-dwelling six-legged invertebrates are called giant Collembola to distinguish them from the common microscopic Collembola which exist in countless millions in leaf litter and soil.

Like their tiny but abundant cousins, commonly known as springtails, giant Collembola are primitive insects. Unlike their relatives, giant Collembola are little-known, are specially adapted to living in rotting logs, and have no ‘spring’. They play an important role in the ‘saproxylic’ – decomposing wood – habitat. Primarily they eat slime moulds and small fungi which invade rotting logs.

Delineation of the glacial refuges became possible only with the recent application of genetic ‘time machine’ techniques by which the geneticists examine evolutionary relationships among different mitochondrial DNA sequences from Collembola found in different parts of the 100 kilometre long forest.

Mr Garrick located the refuges that

comprise deep gullies and creeks high in the mountains likely to have retained some forest coverage during succeeding ice ages.

He found that each Collembolon living inside a particular refuge contained similar DNA, but there were strong genetic differences among Collembola collected in adjoining refuges, some of which are less than 15 kilometres apart. Such large genetic differences occurring over very small spatial scales have seldom been reported, but may well be a common phenomenon for log-dwelling invertebrates.

‘It remains to be confirmed, but at the moment we think that some of these different Collembola do not interbreed when they venture from the refuges at the end of each ice age,’ Mr Garrick said.

‘The technology enables us to detect major changes, for example, what major splits occurred in animals that lived in different parts of the forest,’ he said.

Apart from publication in Molecular Ecology, Mr Garrick has received additional recognition for his work.

He won the La Trobe University David Myers PhD Scholarship and in 2003 was awarded a two-year research grant by the ANZ Trustees, Holsworth Wildlife Research Fund. He was also sponsored to attend the International Congress of Genetics (Genetics Society of Australia) and 34th Australian Entomological Society/ 6th Invertebrate Biodiversity & Conservation Conference (Department of the Environment and Heritage).

His PhD supervisor, La Trobe senior lecturer in Genetics, Dr Paul Sunnucks, said Mr Garrick’s research was making a significant contribution towards the future management of the State Forest and National Park area.

‘Some parts of the State Forest have been logged over the past century, are being logged and can potentially be logged in future. Some areas must be protected – such as those refuges where biodiversity is generated and maintained,’ Dr Sunnucks said.

‘Ryan’s work will allow prioritisation and thus protection of evolutionarily important parts of the forest. This will achieve the maintenance not only of the pattern of biodiversity, but also the fundamental processes generating it.’ •

Genetic time machine helps plan forests of the future

Two of the species of Collembola being studied by Mr Garrick.

RESEARCH IN ACTION

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 200510

River cruises, winery tours, fashion parades, beach parties...

It’s all in a semester’s hard work for La Trobe University tourism and hospitality students.

As part of their third-year Tourism Venture Planning elective, groups of students organise these and other events, generating pass marks – and a very tidy profit donated to the Cancer Council Victoria for research.

Mr Blake Stanwick, lecturer and the subject’s co-ordinator, says students have now raised more than $50,000 from 50 projects since the scheme began in 2001.

Late last year six students broke all records, raising more than $5,000 in one night. They were Jess Derham, Jodie Hegedus, Jacqui Dennis, Adelino Rovito, Kate Robinson and Joseph Cini.

Mr Stanwick says students choose the activity, negotiate with suppliers, sponsors, venues and hire firms. They confront ‘real-world’ frustration, bureaucracy and learn that customers in this industry can be extremely fickle.

While the amount raised does not necessarily equate with a high mark, Mr Stanwick says consistent profits demonstrate an impressive track record by La Trobe students.

‘Some groups may set a

modest profit target, work hard to achieve it, produce excellent reports and excel in teamwork. They are not penalised for a lower profit.

‘For example, Yarra River cruises, which appeal to students, are often very profitable because they can attract large numbers of customers. Up to two hundred is not uncommon, and this covers costs and generates a substantial profit.

‘On the other hand, winery tours with 40 passengers have high overheads for a quality

coach and luxurious lunch. This cuts into profits.’

Whether they are high or low ‘earners’, Mr Stanwick says students appreciate the hands-on experience and the practical aspects of the subject.

And so do two Melbourne doctors working on cell regulation in bone cancer. They are grateful for the funding made possible by La Trobe’s Tourism Venture Planning students. •

Tourism students help cancer research

Political leaders in Australia and overseas make speeches about ‘good governance’

and ‘accountability’. Similar concerns have been raised by many organisations, including the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

However, according to La Trobe University Professor of Accounting, Kerry Jacobs, initiatives to improve governance and accountability often focus on changes to the bureaucracy, or calls to strengthen watchdogs outside the parliamentary system.

‘These initiatives can endanger the dignity and integrity of parliament and therefore undermine the core process of democracy.’

Professor Jacobs made these points recently when he addressed the concluding session of ACPAC 2005 – the 8th Biennial Conference of the Australasian Council of Public Accounts Committees – held in Brisbane.

The conference was attended by 120 delegates, comprising Auditors General and the Heads and members of Public Accounts committees from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and South Africa.

Professor Jacobs is Director of La Trobe University’s ‘Public Sector Governance and Accountability Research Centre’ (PSGARC).

Based on the University’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora, the centre carries out independent research, training and support for members of public accounts and similar committees throughout Australia, the Commonwealth, and in neighbouring countries.

The Centre was launched at a ceremony in the Victorian Parliament House last year by Mr Peter Loney, MP, Deputy Speaker of the Victorian Parliament and Immediate Past Chairman of ACPAC.

Professor Jacobs told delegates to ACPAC 2005: ‘Little effort or expenditure has been focused on improving legislative capacity, particularly the functions of public accounts or similar committees, something that I think is central to good governance. The comparison would be if we were having discussions about corporate governance which failed to address the role and significance of the board of directors.

‘Another danger is the focus only on anti-corruption. While stopping corruption is clearly an important objective, it is easy to tar all politicians with the same brush.

‘The consequence is that anti-corruption campaigns generally turn their back on parliamentary systems and propose alternative structures and measures – which also undermine parliamentary democracy.’ •

Public sector accountability A dilemma for democracies

Mr Stanwick with, from left, Adelina Rovito, Jess Derham, Jodie Hegedus and Kate Robinson.

SOCIETY

11La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

Want to know something about contemporary

Mexico? When Drs Barry Carr and Stephen Niblo of La Trobe University’s Institute of Latin American Studies have finished their current ARC research, there will be excellent local multi-media sources of information.

These will comprise a book, CDs, plus an interactive website containing information about a wide range of Mexican topics.

Both Associate Professors in La Trobe’s History program, Drs Carr and Niblo have received an ARC Discovery Grant of $117,000 over three years to produce the book and the website which will prove extremely valuable for scholars, journalists, businesses, governments, international agencies and others.

‘In Australia, many people tend to ignore Mexico, not realising that with a population of 105 million it is the second

largest country of Latin America, after Brazil,’ Dr Carr said.

Dr Carr, who has visited Mexico more than 30 times in the last three decades, said that many issues that Australia has faced, Mexico has also encountered. These include its relations with the global economy and especially with that of the USA, immigration, national security, debt, defence, immigration, and cultural identity.

He said the book will focus mainly on three areas, national development, relations between Mexico and the USA, and the views of those Mexicans who were often not heard in national histories – often dissidents. Such people include students, trade unionists, peasant leaders, dissident writers and others.

The book will cover Mexico from World War II until the present, dealing with both national and local development.

Chapters will include regional snapshots, for example the re-invention of the sleepy fishing port of Acapulco into an international holiday resort in the 1940’s and 1950s; development of Maquiladoras – border duty-free manufacturing zones – which attracted millions of workers in the 1960s and 1970s; and the Zapatista peasant rebellion in the Chiapas region in the 1990s and 2000s.

Dr Carr said the rebellion transformed Mexican politics. While the nation presented a facade of prosperity to the outside world, the rebellion revealed the blatant social and economic injustice suffered by some of the nation’s poorest citizens.

The CDs will contain collections of documents, photographs too voluminous to include in the printed work, plus music and other material.

Work on the website is well underway, initially financed by a 2003 La Trobe University Central Grant. It will be a comprehensive guide to modern Mexico, containing texts about many aspects of Mexican life

The site will be updated regularly with contributions from people Drs Carr and Niblo invite to describe new developments.

Dr Carr said the project reflects La Trobe’s long association with Mexican studies, in which there is a minor boom with a number of postgraduate students from several countries studying under the auspices of the University’s Institute for Latin American Studies. •

PeopleTwo La Trobe University Faculty Deans – Professor Stephen Duckett from Health Sciences and Professor Roger Wales from Humanities and Social Sciences – have been elected Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia – as has historian and author, Dr David Day.

Professor Martin Chanock, Head of the School of Law, has been elected to a Smuts Visiting Fellowship in Commonwealth Studies at Cambridge University. The fellowships, for scholars in disciplines relevant to Commonwealth studies, have been held by many distinguished scholars and political leaders.

Professor Chanock, who did his doctoral studies at Cambridge, will consider how, in a world of highly diverse cultures, the repertoire of international law in areas ranging from constitutionalism and rights to property, has been shrinking dramatically – and how the capacities of states to work with these laws continues to deteriorate.

Professor of English, Richard Freadman, has been awarded the George Watson Fellowship at the University of Queensland. The award is offered to distinguished academics in English and cultural studies. Professor Freadman will give seminars and be available for consultation by academic staff and students in the area of life-writing.

Mr Adam Van Lohuizen, a Bachelor of Commerce student from La Trobe University’s School of Business, has won the Institute of Chartered Accountants’ Global Achiever Award for Victoria. The award provides a short-term international work placements to help students make deci-sions about their careers. •

All you’ve ever wanted to know about

Modern Mexico

BOOKS

12 La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

Manchester University Press has launched a new book on veteran British film and television

director, Roy Ward Baker, by Dr Geoffrey Mayer, Head of Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.

Simply titled Roy Ward Baker, the book covers the career of the man who started in films in 1934 – and was still directing British TV programs in the 1990s.

It also provides a history of the ups and downs of the British film industry from the 1930s until the 1980s. Baker’s career was directly affected by the fluctuations of the industry during this period.

‘He is one of the great survivors of the industry,’ says Dr Mayer whose research includes classical Hollywood cinema plus Australian and British cinema, melodrama and film noir.

Dr Mayer has written a number of books including Oxford Companion to Australian Cinema, Classical Hollywood Cinema and New Hollywood Cinema and Guide to British Cinema.

‘During his long career Ward Baker directed A Night to Remember (1958), the best version of the Titanic disaster which provided the basis for the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster, as well as Marilyn Monroe’s breakthrough film, Don’t Bother to Knock.

‘He also directed many of Rank’s best films in the 1950s and when Rank stopped film production he moved to television and directed many episodes of The Avengers, The Saint, and Minder, Dr Mayer said.

‘Then, late in his career, he reinvented himself as a director of horror and fantasy films for Hammer and Amicus. In many ways his career reflects the ups and downs of the British film industry in the 20th century,’ Dr Mayer added.

Dr Mayer interviewed Baker in London in September 2000 and, after spending time at the British Film Institute, wrote the book over the past three years. •

Television in Australia will be 50 years old next year – but many still question its cultural credibility.

A group of ‘televisionophiles’ comprising arts journalists, writers and academics – including three

from La Trobe University – are seeking recognition for television as part of our spectrum of cultural achievements.

A recently published book, Lounge Critic: The Couch Theorist’s Companion, co-edited by Dr Terrie Waddell of La Trobe University’s Media Studies Program, challenges what she describes as naive assumptions about the nature of television.

Annabel Rattigan, formerly Screen Events Coordinator with the Australian

Centre of the Moving Image, ACMI, is the other co-editor.

Dr Waddell, left, says that because we watch television privately in the home rather than in public, like the cinema for example, it is often regarded as a domestic activity, unworthy of ‘serious public consideration’.

‘Yet despite all the negative baggage, this is a medium that allows for collective engagement on a number of emotional, creative and intellectual levels.’

Each of the thirteen contributors to Lounge Critic are passionate about the role television plays, not only in their working and private lives, but also in the lives of their students, colleagues and readers.

Dr Sue Turnbull, senior lecturer in Media Studies and a well known media commentator, contributed two chapters, one on the US series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the other on the Australian comedy Kath and Kim. Lecturer Anna Dzenis from Cinema Studies, discusses the cult and cultural appeal of the multi award winning Sopranos.

The book covers a range of genres and issues from queer representation, ‘high end’ drama, the BritAsian experience, chat shows, sexual tension and reality programming, to the possible directions television may take in the future.

The idea for the publication was developed from the monthly ACMI ‘Lounge Critic Sessions’ organised by

Ms Rattigan in which journalists, academics, writers, television producers, postgraduate students and critics discuss their favourite TV programs. Fans and armchair theorists debate points of interest with the guest speakers.

‘Sometimes television is seen as an ephemeral medium. But with the advent of DVD packages that lay out entire series from beginning to end, many of our best loved shows are preserved for further scrutiny,’ Dr Waddell said.

Lounge Critic: The Couch Theorist’s Companion is published by the ACMI in association with La Trobe University, with financial contribution from the Australian Film Commission. •

The films of Roy Ward Baker

SPACE FOR TELEVISION ON THE CULTURAL SHELF

BOOKS

La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005 13

Australia has Medicare which provides universal health care to

all Australians. The USA has a Medicare too which funds health care for Americans aged 65 and over and younger people with disabilities, about 14 per cent of the population.

There are some features of Australia’s Medicare system that the USA might look to imitate and conversely, Medicare USA also contains features that could be relevant in Australia.

These are among the conclusions that Dr Joan Stieber, a senior policy analyst with the Office of Legislation, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, US Department of Health and Human Services, has reached since arriving in Australia last year.

Dr Stieber was based in the School of Public Health at La Trobe University, spending eight months in Australia as a 2004-2005 Packer Policy Fellow. The Fellowship grant enabled her to make a comparative analysis of preventative health services in Australia and the USA.

Her study included two major areas of enquiry. The first covered prevention funding and delivery systems and how well they meet prevention policy goals and how they could be improved.

The second covered efforts to evaluate the clinical

and cost effectiveness of preventative health care initiatives in each country.

Dr Stieber explained that while American Medicare covers primarily the elderly, there are other public health insurance programs for low income

people, and most Americans have private health insurance. However, there are still an estimated 45 million people without health benefits.

One of the features of American Medicare is that it covers most aspects of health care, including hospitals, outpatient care and ambulance services, under a single federal program. Conversely, while Australian health care has greater equity of access, it tends to be fragmented, with State Governments

responsible for such services as hospitals and ambulances while the Federal Government pays for doctors and nursing homes.

The Australian system, apart from being universal, has other innovative features such

as a national breast

cancer screening program

and initiatives to encourage general practitioners to become more involved in preventative medicine.

Dr Stieber said that the Australian political system’s adherence to the Westminster System, whereby the party with a majority in the lower house forms the government, has enabled Australian governments to enact big changes in health care – and in other fields as well – quite rapidly. In contrast, the

American system is often characterized by legislative gridlock in Congress.

She said Australia, unlike the US, also had a well established process for assessing the cost-effectiveness of new medical services and pharmaceuticals for the purpose of insurance coverage.

Dr Stieber is one of two Americans who recently

completed Packer Policy Fellowships in

Australia funded by Australian media magnate, Mr Kerry Packer. The other is Ms Kate Vanden Broek from Boise, Idaho who conducted research in the Private Health Insurance

Branch of the Australian

Government Department of

Health and Ageing in Canberra.

For a number of years, Australians have travelled to the USA on Harkness Fellowships to study aspects of American health care.

‘Ms Vanden Broek and I are the first Americans on “reverse” Harkness Fellowships to have come to Australia to examine aspects of Australian health care.

‘In addition to our research projects, an important goal of the Fellowship is to establish on-going communication and resource sharing links between the two countries,’ Dr Stieber said. •

There’s Medicare – and then there’s Medicare

VISITORS

14 La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

Question: When somebody describes something you hold dear as a ‘phoenicuckoo hybrid’, what is he describing?

Hint: This particular ‘phoenicuckoo hybrid’ is used daily by most of the 6.8 million citizens of Israel.

Answer: It is the language described variously as Israeli, Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, or Hebrew – and it is most certainly a ‘phoenicuckoo hybrid’, according to La Trobe University Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Dr Ghil‘ad Zuckermann.

Dr Zuckermann, a world renowned linguist and specialist on the origins and workings of this language, is based at La Trobe’s Research Centre for Linguistic Typology.

He says that Israeli, his term for so-called ‘Modern Hebrew’ – which has been a spoken tongue for only 100 years – is a hybrid because both Hebrew and Yiddish act equally as its primary contributors, accompanied by many secondary

contributors which include Polish, Russian, German, Arabic, English and Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino.

Because of these many influences, he believes ‘Israeli’ is a far more appropriate title for the language than ‘Israeli Hebrew’, let alone ‘Modern Hebrew’ or just plain ‘Hebrew’.

Israeli emerged among Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Palestine at the end of the 19th century. During the past 50 years, it has become the official language of Israel, the primary mode of communication in all state and local institutions and in all areas of public and private life.

Dr Zuckermann shows that the ‘genetic classification’ of Israeli has preoccupied linguists for a century. ‘The still prevalent, traditional school of thought suggests that Israeli is Semitic, a revival of Biblical or Mishnaic Hebrew. ‘I call this theory the “phoenix model” as in the phoenix rising from the ashes,’ Dr Zuckermann says.

‘Jews spoke Hebrew after the so-called conquest of Israel around the 13th century BC but the language ceased to be spoken by the Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in 132-5 AD. In a

period of repression which followed, the Jewish population in Judea was largely exterminated through massacres, religious persecution, slavery and forced relocation.

‘For more than 1,700 years thereafter, Hebrew was comatose. It served as a liturgical and literary language and occasionally also as a lingua franca for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a mother tongue. As a vernacular, it was a “walking dead” or, to put it more optimistically, a “sleeping beauty”.

‘Another school of thought, by contrast, defines Israeli as Indo-European – a kind of “relexified” Yiddish. Yiddish is the “substratum”, whilst Hebrew is only a “superstratum”, providing the vocabulary and lexicalized morphology. I call this the “cuckoo model”, as the cuckoo lays eggs in the nest of another bird.

‘However, my own mosaic, rather than Mosaic, view is that Israeli is simultaneously Semitic and Indo-European. The contribution of Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue was not intentional, hence the term “semi-engineered” can be applied. Yiddish, with Hebrew, acts as a primary contributor rather than as a “substratum” so Israeli falls into a mixed category of its own, as a “phoenicuckoo hybrid”.

‘As a result of a number of distinctive characteristics – including the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from Hebrew to Israeli – Israeli presents the linguist with a unique laboratory in which to test problems concerning language genesis and evolution,’ he says.

Dr Zuckermann, who holds doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, has published in English, Israeli, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, German and Russian. His most recent book, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2003. A new book, Hebrew as Myth, is scheduled to be published this year, and he is preparing a further volume entitled Mosaic or mosaic?: The Genesis of the Israeli Language. •

SPEAKING ISRAELI Language on hybrid wings

Photo: Dr Zuckermann on a hill overlooking East Jerusalem.

VISITORS

15La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005

What went on in Kew Cottages, Australia’s best

known institution for people with intellectual disability, since its foundation in 1887?

A research team from La Trobe University will spend between now and 2007, when Kew Residential Services – as Kew Cottages are now known – finally closes, providing answers to this question.

‘It will certainly be a telling revelation of how our attitudes to people with intellectual disability have changed over 130 years,’ says historian Dr Lee-Ann Monk who, as an Australian Post-Doctoral Fellow, will research the history of the institution.

La Trobe University, with Kew Residential Services (KRS), has won a three-year, $730,542 Australian Research Council Linkage grant to conduct the research.

The multi-disciplinary team – comprising Dr Monk, fellow historians Drs Richard Broome, Christine Dew and Katie Holmes; Dr Christine Bigby from Social Work, who has expertise in the field of intellectual disability; communication specialist Hilary Johnson from Communication Sciences; and Dr John Tebbutt from Media Studies – will work closely

with KRS manager, Ms Alma Adams, and her staff.

The researchers will explore archives for a scholarly history to be published in book form; conduct an oral history involving those who have lived, worked or been associated with the institution; and work with residents to document their memories and experiences through images and sound recordings.

A volume of oral histories will be produced and the collaborative research with residents will be exhibited in an on-site installation at KRS. Dr Monk says the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in documenting their own history is a first for Australia. It will also produce a radio documentary, a web site, and a photographic archive.

‘KRS is the largest and longest surviving institution of its kind in Australia. Consequently, its history encompasses the broad shifts in intellectual disability policy and practice,’ says Dr Monk.

‘When it was established in 1887 it was the first specialised institution for people with intellectual disability in Australia and a symbol of the contemporary belief that those with intellectual disability possessed the potential to be

educated. But in the context of a community concerned with eugenics and racial superiority, attitudes to people with intellectual disability changed and they came to be seen as incurable and a danger to the Australian nation. The institution became a means to isolate them from the community and fell into a neglected state, reaching its lowest ebb during the first half of the 20th century.

‘Our project is a study of these changing attitudes and practices because how we have conducted Kew Cottages reflects how we have coped with difference in our society.

‘Over the years many Melbourne people, although they may have had no connection with the institution, knew about Kew Cottages and its purpose, but in the main had no concept of what went on there.

‘People travelling along Princes Street, Kew, could see Willesmere, the large imposing building that housed the psychiatric hospital, and the Cottages built in its grounds.

‘But what was happening there mirrored the changing conscience and ideas the community held about how to treat people who were different.

‘There were occasions when

there was intense community interest in the institution, particularly after World War Two and after the fire in 1996,’ Dr Monk added.

‘The 430 residents will be “deinstitutionalised” by 2007 although about 100 of them will be integrated into the new residential community that will be established on the 27 acre site. Thus contemplating its history is timely,’ she said.

People who have worked or lived at KRS, or have been involved in other ways, are invited to offer information, photographs or expressions of interest in being interviewed. They can contact Dr Monk on tel: (03) 9479 2366 or email: L.Monk@latrobe.edu.au. •

How we have coped with difference in our society

130 years of change at Kew Cottages

16 La Trobe University BULLETIN March 2005