Poor governance sickens the Arts : we have the cure, Kenneth Myer Lecture for the George Fairfax Fellowship

We need to know more about governance in cultural nonprofit organisations (NPOs). Can good governance prevent financial crises in arts organisations? A vast research project has helped find the answers. Lack of artistic success is not the main cause of financial distress. NPOs in financial distress often have weak governing processes. Their board members need to know more about the problems leading to the crisis. We propose a governance framework to better monitor NPOs’ external and internal environments. Then we present the reactions to this governance framework from interviews with NPO managers. Finally, we report results from arts organisation consultancy and reconcile these findings with the ones collected through interviews.

Defending friends : Robert Codrington, George Sarawia and Edward Wogale

Friendship between nineteenth century missionary anthropologists and their converted cultural mentors was central to the gathering of cultural and linguistic information. This chapter traces the friendship between Anglican missionary/anthropologist, Robert Codrington, and brothers George Sarawia - first Melanesian priest - and Edward Wogale - deacon. Codrington's theological perspective on Melanesians and his close friendships with the pupils of the Melanesian Mission School at Norfolk Island allowed him to resist the increasing racialism of Atlantic science in the late nineteenth century and to challenge the evolutionist anthropology of the 1870s and 1880s. The chapter is based, in part, on a cache of letters from Wogale and Sarawia to Codrington written in Mota, the lingua franca of the Anglican Mission.

Empire in British girls' literature and culture: imperial girls, 1880-1915

While the gender and age of the girl may seem to remove her from any significant contribution to empire, this book provides both a new perspective on familiar girls' literature, and the first detailed examination of lesser-known fiction relating the emergence of fictional girl adventurers, castaways and 'ripping' schoolgirls to the British Empire.

The demise of Bicycle George : a life of crime

This short piece looks at the life of a murderer, George Blunderfield (alias Arthur Oldring), who was hanged in Melbourne in 1918. Melburnians, or visitors to the city, may have seen his image on the wall at the Old Melbourne Gaol. Blunderfield's life started out normally
enough, and then descended into horrific crime. His story includes bicycle racing, escape from an island prison, and then recruitment for service with the Australian Imperial Forces in wartime Victoria. In the last years of his life, Blunderfield wreaked havoc from the western to the eastern coasts of Australia. This in turn had a dramatic effect on his immediate family, which is also detailed here. This story draws on the archives at PROV as well as on State Records Office of Western Australia material, with help from Ms Jean
Bellamy, a distant relative of George Blunderfield.

Feeding ecology of King George whiting Sillaginodes punctatus (Perciformes) recruits in seagrass and unvegetated habitats. Does diet reflect habitat utilization?

This study investigated the feeding ecology of King George whiting Sillaginodes punctatus recruits to determine how diet composition varies between habitat types (seagrass and unvegetated habitats), and between sites separated by distance. Broad-scale sampling of seagrass and unvegetated habitats at nine sites in Port Phillip Bay (Australia) indicated the diet composition varied more by distance into the bay than by habitat. Near the entrance to the bay the diet was dominated by harpacticoids and gammarid amphipods, in the middle reaches of the bay the diet was completely dominated by harpacticoids, while at sites furthest into the bay, mysids and crab zoea were also important. Abundances of prey in guts was significantly higher between 1000 and 2200 hours compared with other times, indicating diurnal feeding. Laboratory determined gut evacuation rate (based on an exponential model) was estimated to be -0·54. Daily rations were highly variable among sites and habitat types. Sillaginodes punctatus recruits consumed much higher quantities of prey on unvegetated habitat than seagrass habitat at some middle reach sites; with prey consumption of harpacticoid copepods on unvegetated habitat approaching 3000 individuals per day at one site. The results of this study provide insight into why habitat associations of S. punctatus recruits within mosaics of seagrass and unvegetated habitat show high spatial variation.