Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Selling the Snowy: The Snowy Mountains Scheme and National Mythmaking

Grahame Griffin
During the 1950s and ’60s, the Snowy Mountains Scheme played a key role in national mythmaking as an icon of technological, economic and agricultural progress, and as a place of assimilation for non-British immigrants. Following its completion in 1974, it went through a relatively dormant period in the popular imagination until the 1990s, when it re-emerged alongside the immigration debate. At this time the scheme began to receive media coverage as a model of the successful integration of economic and national development with an expanded migrant intake.1 This re-emergence of interest ...
Click here to read more.

Network Review of Books

The Best Australian Poetry 2003 (2003)

Reviewed by Mark Mahemoff in the March 2004 issue.
It's good to see this kind of book being published, not because it is necessarily an anthology of the best Australian poetry, whatever that actually means, but because it will provide an annual forum for critically appraising a variety of contemporary poetry being written in Australia today. It appears to be modelled on The Best American Poetry anthology series edited by David Lehman, which uses a celebrated poet as guest editor for each annual anthology. The differences between the American and Australian editions, at least in this first offering, are apparent in the size and production ... read more.

Alas, for the Pelicans! Flinders, Baudin and Beyond (2003)

Reviewed by Katrina Gulliver in the October 2003 issue.
The bicentenary of Matthew Flinders' circumnavigation of Australia----and his encounter with the French captain, Nicolas Baudin----saw the release of a flurry of books and articles about him and the voyage. Alas, for the Pelicans! is one such book, and its editors take an interesting approach to the Flinders and Baudin expeditions, and their famous crossed paths. It contains narrative history, poetry, and essays on topics tangential to the two captains. The title refers to a remark made by Flinders about the pelicans of Kangaroo Island, and their fate in the wake of the arrival of European ... read more.

Growth Fetish (2003)

Reviewed by Sue Bond in the July 2003 issue.
The tragedy of market economics is that if it did in fact accurately reflect the essential motivation of human life ... we would soon find ourselves living a nightmare. (105)� In the early 1990s, I often pondered on the unfortunate necessity of working in a job which I loathed but had to do in order to earn a living. It was a gross waste of time when I thought of what I would prefer to be doing with my life, regardless of the fact it would not provide me with a viable income. This conflict played itself out in my declining physical and mental health, and I was eventually forced to leave. It ... read more.

Malaria Frontline: Australian Army Research During World War II (2003)

Reviewed by Jonathan Richards in the April 2004 issue.
Medical history, while not everyone's 'cup of tea', is nevertheless an interesting and important subject. This book details the development of anti-malarial drugs and regimes by an Australian Army medical unit stationed in Cairns, North Queensland during the Second World War. There are a number of reasons why this book is worth reading, apart from its value as a well-written account of a relatively unknown part of recent Australian history and as a social history of wartime army medical volunteers and staff. Malaria, which is still regarded as the world's most important vector-borne disease, ... read more.

History and Native Title (2003)

Reviewed by Elizabeth Coleman in the March 2004 issue.
Published ten years after the introduction of the Native Title Act, the sixteen essays published in this issue of Studies in Western Australian History present a 'snap-shot' of the outcomes of a legal solution to the moral problems created by colonialism. The essays, written by Aboriginal people and historians involved in the native title process, discuss the possibilities opened up by the Act, and the bitter disappointments and achievements that flowed from it. As such, History and Native Title is an important historical document in its own right. The editors, Christine Choo and Shawn ... read more.

Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva (2003)

Reviewed by Sue Bond in the March 2004 issue.
This book is part of the University of New South Wales Press's Briefings series of inexpensive and accessible works about important issues of our time. Spencer Zifcak ends his short and focused work on Australia's relationship with the United Nations and our government's response to the criticisms of its human rights record with sobering thoughts: 'repudiation of the competence and authority of UN bodies can only be expected to persist and worsen, to the detriment of the international rule of law ----�and ultimately to our common security and our common humanity' (73). The book is impressive ... read more.

Need to Contact Us?