Black Caviar

A painting created for the conference Celebrity Aura, hosted by The Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University at Burwood. Exhibited at the Phoenix Gallery as part of this conference.

Catastrophic loss and the law : a comparison between 2009 Victorian Black Saturday fires and 2011 Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi

This article explores insurability relating to loss occasioned by catastrophic events in Australia in the context of the current legal regulatory regime. The analysis includes two case studies, in which we juxtapose the Victorian Black Saturday fires in February 2--9 with the Queensland flooding and Cyclone Yasi (December 2010 - February 2011). We argue that the different responses to, and economic losses stemming from, these events illustrate the urgent need for a national regulatory and insurance regime for the prevention and alleviation of disasters and the management of their consequences.

'Catastrophic failure' theories and disaster journalism : evaluating media explanations of the Black Saturday bushfires

 In recent decades, academic researchers of natural disasters and emergency management have developed a canonical literature on ‘catastrophe failure’ theories such as disaster responses from US emergency management services (Drabek, 2010; Quarantelli, 1998) and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (Perrow, 1999). This article examines six influential theories from this field in an attempt to explore why Victoria’s disaster and emergency management response systems failed during Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires. How well, if at all, are these theories understood by journalists, disaster and emergency management planners, and policy-makers? In examining the Country Fire Authority’s response to the fires, as well as the media’s reportage of them, we use the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires as a theory-testing case study of failures in emergency management, preparation and planning. We conclude that journalists can learn important lessons from academics’ specialist knowledge about disaster and emergency management responses.

Acting alone to act together: diversifying approaches to North Korea

Strategic discussions about North Korea’s proliferation comprise a number of dimensions. The core assumption underlying this article is that the ideational aspects of North Korea’s decision making are important and give rise to a range of strategic considerations. This is not to underplay the strategic, materialist elements in North Korea’s provocative and at times belligerent behaviour. Rather, it is to argue that Australia is well placed to concentrate on the social dimensions of strategic discussions. As a less important middle power, a regional player, yet geographically distant from the threat, Australia is in a position to provide a point of differentiation from other, more entrenched players such as the United States or the Republic of Korea (ROK). A good starting point for developing this sort of engagement is to enhance non-state, track two cooperation between the two countries, which has been stalled since the early 2000s. In this article I will first canvass the ongoing debate taking place in Australian academic and policy circles regarding Australia’s place in the world. Of particular concern, is the question how Australia should balance its most important strategic relationship – that with the United States – with geographic and economic realities. I then sketch some of the limitations of current thinking, concentrating particularly on discourse that portrays North Korea as a rogue state and finish with a discussion of how non-state activity can act as a helpful precursor to more constructive relationships between states, and the types of creative engagement strategies currently taking place in the United States, despite the volatile political environment.

Distance from water, sex and approach direction influence flight distances among habituated black swans

In many animals, response to predators occurs at greater distances the further an individual is from a refuge, but this has rarely been investigated in birds. Here, we test the hypothesis that the further from refuge (i.e. water) a foraging black swan Cygnus atratus is situated, the longer its flight initiation distance (FID) in response to a pedestrian approach on land. As predicted, swans situated farther from water exhibited longer FIDs compared with those closer to the shore. In addition, there was the possibility of an interesting interaction effect (p < 0.061) of sex and direction of approach on FID. Whilst males tended to not alter their response in relation to the angle of approach relative to the water, females tended to respond at longer distances, when approached from the shore than when approached from the land or parallel to the shore. This is one of the first reports of sex differences in FIDs for birds, with sex differences only manifesting themselves under certain approach types. Group size, the order of repeated approaches, and time of day did not influence responses, although starting distance of approach was positively related to FID.

Timing of breeding and diet of the Black-faced cormorant Phalacrocorax fuscescens

Previous anecdotal reports have suggested that Black-faced Cormorant Phalacrocorax fuscescens breeds only in winter in southeastern Australia, but detailed reports confirming this are lacking. Here we examine the timing of breeding in Black-faced Cormorants at Notch Island in northern Bass Strait in 2006. Peak laying occurred during winter (ca 26 July). The diet of Black-faced Cormorants was predominantly fish (97% of identified prey) and varied between breeding and post-breeding periods. Black-faced Cormorants consumed a total of 14 different species with four species having a frequency of occurrence in the diet of ?5% during the breeding season and six species during the post-breeding period. We provide data for the first time on the chronology of breeding of Black-faced Cormorants in one year and give a preliminary description of their diet based on pellet analyses. We propose that late winter breeding may be a strategy to avoid the high ambient temperatures in northern Bass Strait during summer, the associated higher thermoregulatory costs for adults and the increased mortality for chicks.

The Black Side of the Sun: Camus, Theology, and the Problem of Evil

Albert Camus is typically categorized as an atheistic thinker, in the same breath as Sartre. Yet there is a sizable, often sympathetic, theological response to his works, which deal at great length with Christian themes, wrestle with the problem of evil, and are animated by his own avowed desire — in strong contrast with Sartre and other existentialists — to preserve a sense of the sacred without belief in human immortality. This essay reconstructs three components of Camus’s rapport and disagreement with Christian theology, which he approached pre-eminently through the figure of Augustine, central to his early Diplome thesis. First, we recount the young Camus’s neopagan ‘‘religiosity’’ — a sense of the inhuman majesty and beauty of the natural world at the heart of what he termed (and later regretted terming) the ‘‘absurd,’’ and rooted in Camus’s own unitive experiences growing up amidst the sea, sand, and blazing sun of North Africa. Second, we look at Camus’s engagement with the problem of evil, which for Camus — as for many early modern thinkers such as Bayle or Voltaire — represented the decisive immanent tension in later medieval theology, vindicating — in ethical terms — the modern rebellions against altar, pulpit, and throne. The essay closes by rebutting the charge, strongly argued recently by Ronald Srigley, that Camus was (both) anti-modern because anti-Christian. Camus’s aim, we propose, was instead to bring together a neopagan sense of the wonder of the natural world and our participation in it, with the egalitarian components of Christian ethics, severed from secularized eschatological content.