Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Homes for Everyone

Caryl Bosman
The Golden Grove Development, situated approximately twenty kilometres north east of the Adelaide CBD, is South Australia’s, and perhaps Australia’s, first largescale fully planned residential development. Initiated in the early 1970s as a state government project, it eventually became a joint venture between the state government and the Delfin Property Group. The development of the Golden Grove site was subject to an indenture ratified by parliament in late 1984. The indenture stipulated ten paramount objectives, which were to ensure that planning, marketing and development ...
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Network Review of Books

On Post-Colonial Futures: Transformations of Colonial Culture (2001)

Reviewed by Chad Habel in the May 2003 issue.
Bill Ashcroft is an Australian theorist who is well-known for his co-authorship of The Empire Writes Back (1989). Since then he has contributed markedly to the field, especially with introductory texts such as The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995) and Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (1998) which are ideal in the context of undergraduate education. His latest offering is the third in the 'Writing Past Colonialism' series, and reads like a critical introduction which covers a wide variety of issues within post-colonial theory. A major strength of this text is the balance Ashcroft ... read more.

Raven Road (2001)

Reviewed by Fiona Allon in the July 2002 issue.
Working with flimsy historical evidence, unreliable witnesses, incomplete or non-existent archives, contradictory sources, and trails that lead nowhere is part and parcel of the daily grind of the historian. This is often accepted as the travail of writing history, as what must be endured and overcome in order to reach the point when, after much hard work, it is finally possible to produce the definitive account or at least a satisfying sense of closure. Yet in Cassandra Pybus' new work, Raven Road, a chronicle of her attempt to uncover the 'truth' about Lillian Alling, the woman who ... read more.

Mission Girls, Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950 (2001)

Reviewed by Barbara Bush in the March 2002 issue.
Christine Choo has worked as a social worker, researcher and historian with Aboriginal peoples since the 1970s and has published widely on race and gender issues. Mission Girls is based on her doctoral thesis and is a valuable addition to existing literature on gender, indigenous women and colonialism. A key aim is to reveal the 'strength and resilience of Aboriginal women and their quiet resistance to the oppressive environments in which they lived' (xix). As a 'non-European woman of Asian background', Choo claims she provides a fresh perspective, differing from those of European and ... read more.

Passions of the First Wave Feminists (2001)

Reviewed by Michelle McFarland in the March 2002 issue.
In the legend of the development of a distinctively Australian culture, the late nineteenth century has loomed large but, as Susan Magarey, Sue Rowley and Susan Sheridan have argued in Debutante Nation (1993), 'assertions of national identity, unity and community are constructed by means of exclusions and repression'. Among the groups that were excluded and repressed in this construction were the first wave Australian feminists, active between the 1880s and the first world war. These women took the opportunity during a period of immense possibility and immense anxiety to try and change the ... read more.

Dark Palace (2001)

Reviewed by Renate Howe in the Dec 2001-Jan 2002 issue.
Oral Sex and the League of Nations: The Genre of Faction in Grand Days and Dark Palace Although the genre is hardly new, the publication of Dark Palace by Frank Moorhouse raises again the issue of 'faction' and the implications for the historian.1 I would argue that the blurring between fiction and history has now moved to a stage where Australian historians need to confront the interpretative issues raised by the popularity of the extensively researched historical novel. The increasing professionalism of fiction writers and the need to publish regularly has encouraged a turn to novels with ... read more.

Running From the Storm: The Development of Climate Change Policy in Australia (2001)

Reviewed by Philip Burgess in the July 2002 issue.
Climate change is the great anxiety of our age. A large body of scientific opinion has it that during the twentieth century the global average surface temperature increased by between 0.4 and 0.8 degree C, though the increase has not been evenly distributed and night-time temperatures have risen more than daytime ones. The most significant contribution to global warming is said to be the emission of carbon dioxide, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels. There is no doubt that CO2 is being emitted at a faster rate than the land or oceans can absorb them. Melting icecaps, rising sea levels, ... read more.

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