Lairds of suburbia: Scottish migrant settlement and housing in Australian cities, 1880-1930

Drawing on decennial population statistics from 1881 to 1933, this article evaluates the settlement patterns of Scottish migrants in Australian cities. It considers the urban nature of Scottish settlement, and argues that settlement patterns were associated with employment opportunities for working-class Scots, along with various housing, lifestyle, and religious preferences, often grounded in pre-migration experiences of city living. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that Scottish migrants in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century largely belonged to an urban industrial working class, and provides a useful correction to the traditional images of Scots in Australia as mostly rural, well-off, and conservative migrants.

Life history influences how fire affects genetic diversity in two lizard species

'Fire mosaics' are often maintained in landscapes to promote successional diversity in vegetation with little understanding of how this will affect ecological processes in animal populations such as dispersal, social organization and re-establishment. To investigate these processes, we conducted a replicated, spatiotemporal landscape genetics study of two Australian woodland lizard species [Amphibolurus norrisi (Agamidae) and Ctenotus atlas (Scincidae)]. Agamids have a more complex social and territory structure than skinks, so fire might have a greater impact on their population structure and thus genetic diversity. Genetic diversity increased with time since fire in C. atlas and decreased with time since fire in A. norrisi. For C. atlas, this might reflect its increasing population size after fire, but we could not detect increased gene flow that would reduce the loss of genetic diversity through genetic drift. Using landscape resistance analyses, we found no evidence that postfire habitat succession or topography affected gene flow in either species and we were unable to distinguish between survival and immigration as modes of postfire re-establishment. In A. norrisi, we detected female-biased dispersal, likely reflecting its territorial social structure and polygynous mating system. The increased genetic diversity in A. norrisi in recently burnt habitat might reflect a temporary disruption of its territoriality and increased male dispersal, a hypothesis that was supported with a simulation experiment. Our results suggest that the effects of disturbance on genetic diversity will be stronger for species with territorial social organization.

The prevalence, age distribution and comorbidity of personality disorders in Australian women

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to describe the prevalence and age distribution of personality disorders and their comorbidity with other psychiatric disorders in an age-stratified sample of Australian women aged ⩾25 years. METHODS: Individual personality disorders (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive), lifetime mood, anxiety, eating and substance misuse disorders were diagnosed utilising validated semi-structured clinical interviews (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders, Research Version, Non-patient Edition and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders). The prevalence of personality disorders and Clusters were determined from the study population (n = 768), and standardised to the Australian population using the 2011 Australian Bureau of Statistics census data. Prevalence by age and the association with mood, anxiety, eating and substance misuse disorders was also examined. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of personality disorders in women was 21.8% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 18.7, 24.9). Cluster C personality disorders (17.5%, 95% CI: 16.0, 18.9) were more common than Cluster A (5.3%, 95% CI: 3.5, 7.0) and Cluster B personality disorders (3.2%, 95% CI: 1.8, 4.6). Of the individual personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive (10.3%, 95% CI: 8.0, 12.6), avoidant (9.3%, 95% CI: 7.1, 11.5), paranoid (3.9%, 95% CI: 3.1, 4.7) and borderline (2.7%, 95% CI: 1.4, 4.0) were among the most prevalent. The prevalence of other personality disorders was low (⩽1.7%). Being younger (25-34 years) was predictive of having any personality disorder (odds ratio: 2.36, 95% CI: 1.18, 4.74), as was being middle-aged (odds ratio: 2.41, 95% CI: 1.23, 4.72). Among the strongest predictors of having any personality disorder was having a lifetime history of psychiatric disorders (odds ratio: 4.29, 95% CI: 2.90, 6.33). Mood and anxiety disorders were the most common comorbid lifetime psychiatric disorders. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately one in five women was identified with a personality disorder, emphasising that personality disorders are relatively common in the population. A more thorough understanding of the distribution of personality disorders and psychiatric comorbidity in the general population is crucial to assist allocation of health care resources to individuals living with these disorders.

A 'slow pace of life' in Australian old-endemic passerine birds is not accompanied by low basal metabolic rates

Life history theory suggests that species experiencing high extrinsic mortality rates allocate more resources toward reproduction relative to self-maintenance and reach maturity earlier ('fast pace of life') than those having greater life expectancy and reproducing at a lower rate ('slow pace of life'). Among birds, many studies have shown that tropical species have a slower pace of life than temperate-breeding species. The pace of life has been hypothesized to affect metabolism and, as predicted, tropical birds have lower basal metabolic rates (BMR) than temperate-breeding birds. However, many temperate-breeding Australian passerines belong to lineages that evolved in Australia and share 'slow' life-history traits that are typical of tropical birds. We obtained BMR from 30 of these 'old-endemics' and ten sympatric species of more recently arrived passerine lineages (derived from Afro-Asian origins or introduced by Europeans) with 'faster' life histories. The BMR of 'slow' temperate-breeding old-endemics was indistinguishable from that of new-arrivals and was not lower than the BMR of 'fast' temperate-breeding non-Australian passerines. Old-endemics had substantially smaller clutches and longer maximal life spans in the wild than new arrivals, but neither clutch size nor maximum life span was correlated with BMR. Our results suggest that low BMR in tropical birds is not functionally linked to their 'slow pace of life' and instead may be a consequence of differences in annual thermal conditions experienced by tropical versus temperate species.

Expanding the Australian empire?: the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches, the Menzies Government and the New Hebrides in the late 1950s

In the late 1950s the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches (AC-WCC) inspired primarily by the Presbyterian Church, undertook a concerted campaign to pressure the Australian government to assume a greater role in the affairs of the New Hebrides. The AC-WCC wanted the Australian government to take over the United Kingdom's role in the administration of the Anglo-French Condominium. It was motivated to undertake this campaign by the dismal social and economic conditions in the islands, the neglect of the British and French colonial authorities, and their failure to offer the indigenous people a way forward to self-government. The high point of the campaign was a meeting between Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister and a delegation from the AC-WCC in early 1958. As a result of this meeting Australian ministers and officials, for the final time, gave extended consideration to expanding Australia's empire in the South Pacific to include the New Hebrides. This article examines the AC-WCC's campaign, explores the Australian government's response, and analyses the outcome of this important episode in Australia's involvement in the colonial territories of the South Pacific.

'A chart for further exploration and a kind of rallying call': James Moffett and english curriculum history in Victoria

Both James Britton and James Moffett were keynote speakers at the Sydney International Federation for the Teaching of English conference in 1980 - a fact reflective of the wide recognition and acceptance of their work and influence throughout Australia by that time. In Victoria, Moffett's writings became known initially through teacher education, in particular at the University of Melbourne and the State College of Victoria, Rusden, then through the visits and writing of figures from the London Institute and others, and through the State and national English teaching association, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. In the 1970s, Moffett's influence in Victoria came rather through the mix of his vision and writing, both theoretical and practical, in conjunction with others in Australia and elsewhere. This paper takes two separate but related sites or moments in English education in the 1970s in the Australian city of Melbourne, Victoria, as instances of the permeating influence of Moffett's work - in conjunction with leading figures from the London School associated with the 'New' English' - on education discourses and practice in that State's English curriculum history. It concludes with a consideration of the ways in which Moffett's work might still act as a 'rallying call' today.

Dirk de Bruyn: Australian master + Q&A

Dirk de Bruyn is one of Australia’s most successful and acclaimed abstract animators. It may be too soon to truly call this program a ‘retrospective’ but de Bruyn’s career none-the-less spans a significant portion of the history of abstract and experimental animation in Australia. His films are as addictive as they are bold and uncompromising examples of the genre. He displays a remarkable ability to learn the lessons gifted us by earlier greats and yet produce a flowing, beautifully realised river of imagery that is all his own. His film contain, in many instances, the spirit and ghost-narratives of his own life. MIAF is thrilled to be able to present this program and the chance to have him discuss these works in person will be one of the festival highlights.

Identity, belonging and cultural diversity in Australian museums

 Karen studied the ways that objects have mediated relationships between people from culturally diverse backgrounds in Australian history and society. She focused on the ways museums, through their collection and display of particular objects, have played a role in supporting processes of inclusion and exclusion in Australian society over time.

Book review: Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist

Stanley Melbourne Bruce was at the centre of Imperial politics for more than two decades from the early 1920s until the end of the Second World War. This new biography presents Bruce as a consistent internationalist. Educated in Melbourne and Cambridge, Bruce, as a businessman, was alive to the importance of international commerce, and particularly Anglo-Australian trade. This lay at the core of his internationalism, which took the form in the 1920s of encouraging the political and economic integration of the British Empire. Bruce's punitive treatment of militant Australian trade unionists and his upholding of constitutionalism and law and order in the 1920s was part of an effort to defend one form of internationalism, commitment to the British Empire, against the competing international ideology of communism. While continuing to support a unified British Empire acting as a progressive force in world affairs, Bruce championed stronger international collaboration through the League of Nations and the United Nations and through cooperation between the Empire and the United States.

Book review: Review of 'John Connor, Anzac and Empire: George Foster Pearce and the Foundations of Australian Defence' (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), 2011. ISBN10 1107009502 (Hb) pp. 248. $59.95, cloth.

Anzac and Empire is the remarkable story of George Foster Pearce – a carpenter who became one Australia's most influential politicians, and the man central to how Australia planned for, and fought in, World War I. The nation's longest-serving defence minister – holding the portfolio before, during and after the Great War – Pearce saw no contradiction in being both a fierce Australian nationalist, and also a loyal subject of the British Empire.Anzac and Empire is the first full-length biography of this extraordinary Australian. Written by one of Australia's leading military historians, this book shows that to understand Australia in the Great War, you must understand the man behind it.

Whose hometown? Reception of Bruce Springsteen as an index of Australian national identities

Focusing on the cultural landscape of the mid-1980s, this paper explores the Australian experience of Bruce Springsteen. Australian author Peter Carey’s short story collection, The Fat Man in History, anticipates two phases of Australia’s relationship to the United States, phases expressed by responses to Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. (1984) and the 1986 blockbuster Crocodile Dundee. Springsteen’s album was received by an Australian audience who wanted to be like Americans; Crocodile Dundee, on the other hand, provided a representation of what Australians thought Americans wanted Australians to be. This paper argues that the first phase was driven by emergent technologies, in particular the Walkman, which allowed for personal and private listening practices. However, technological changes in the 1990s facilitated a more marked shift in listening space towards individualization, a change reflected in Springsteen’s lyrics.

On an ordinary suburban street: a brief history of Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre

The Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC) in Melbourne Australia, set well away from the sites of European atrocity, became one of the first permanent museums dedicated to the Holocaust in the Jewish Diaspora when it opened in March 1984. It was the response to the imminent passing of the survivor generation. You can enter this past from the present through an ordinary, nondescript door, opening from a suburban street. You walk up a short flight of carpeted stairs, as you might in your own house, but there waiting for you is something other than the faces of your children or parents. (Harry Redner).Upstairs in Leo Fink House, the original location for Melbourne's first permanent Holocaust exhibition, where thousands of school students now listen each year to the testimonies of Melbourne's dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, an unremarkable white door shows the original entrance. Before the changes to the location of the exhibition, and the building of the Hadasa and Szymon Rosenbaum Research Centre, the first visitors to the museum would have entered Leo Fink House from the street through Redner's 'nondescript door', past a brass plaque with words in English, Yiddish and Hebrew, and would have climbed the stairs to enter through a white door to view the intimate exhibition.These traces of the former configuration of the JHC reveal changes to the institution as it responded to different priorities, opportunities and a growth in visitor numbers during its 30-year history. The concept of biography helps us think through these changes, but also points to a longer historical focus.