The dying town syndrome : a survey of urban development in the Western District of Victoria,1890-1930

The experience of urban settlement in the Western District of Victoria suggests that the pattern of growth and decline in small towns is tied to the pattern of land use. This, in turn, is determined by the economic and technological factors which influence farm management and practices. At times, these factors have encouraged urban development and small towns have flourished. For the most part, however, these forces have not been conducive to sustaining long-term growth and prosperity and small towns, have been trapped in a cycle of growth and decline.

Voluntarism, salvation, and rescue : British juvenile migration to Australia and Canada, 1890-1939

This article explores the relationships between governments and selected voluntary organisations involved in British migration to Australia and Canada from the 1890s to the Second World War. Prior to the Great War, there was considerable ill feeling by Dominion governments, especially Australian, towards philanthropic organisations, which appeared to undermine official immigration schemes through their attempts to reclaim and transplant the unwanted. Although voluntary associations were later subsidised by the British government and came under the group nomination schemes of the 1922 Empire Settlement Act, they were still viewed with suspicion. Organisations focusing on 'salvation', 'redemption' and 'rescue' in their migration work, however, provide us with an alternative ideology to the idea of building up 'fit populations' in the Dominions, where the notion of 'fitness' was perceived in a number of ways, not least in terms of class.

Unionism on the waterfront in the Port of Geelong 1886-1890

The thesis looks at three areas: the formation of the Port of Geelong, the rise of waterfront unionism within the port of Geelong and the impact of the great maritime strike of 1890 on waterfront unionism within Geelong.

Enlistment and non-enlistment in wartime Australia : responses to the 1916 call to arms appeal

This article examines men’s responses to the 1916 ‘Call to Arms’ appeal, in which Australia’s federal government questioned military-aged male citizens on their willingness to enlist voluntarily in the armed forces for service at the front. It argues that the appeal illuminated men’s difficult negotiation of choice, in which they weighed their personal sense of obligation to the state at war, to their families, and to themselves. It shows how men not only confronted their decision, but measured their responsibilities against others’, producing a subjective order of sacrifice that paralysed recruiting. In the absence of conscription, that private decision-making was critical to the nature of Australia’s commitment to the war, as men assessed and re-assessed the limits of obligation for themselves.

Where memory failed, journalism prevailed: Anzac Day in three Victorian country newspapers 1916-1925

This article explores how three Victorian country newspapers shaped and reinforced the collective memory of Anzac Day in its first decade, from 1916 to 1925. It draws on a sample of 300 articles, and looks to scholarship on journalism and memory to generate understandings of these newspapers' important role as co-creators and protectors of Anzac Day commemoration. The sample provides evidence that Anzac Day coverage was thematically consistent from the start. The analysis highlights journalists' roles as patriotic cheerleaders for a new, national identity; as collaborators with other social institutions in establishing the commemoration tradition; and as boundary riders, who patrolled less than acceptable Anzac Day behaviour. This role is most striking when communities failed to mark Anzac Day in the early days, as this article reveals.