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The Australian economy has changed dramatically over the past quarter of a century. The combination of neoliberal reform, increasing dependence on natural resources, the rise of the services economy and the restructuring of the nation’s manufacturing sector has collectively transformed the national spatial economy. The publication of Fagan and Webber’s Global Restructuring: The Australian Experience in 1994 provided an overview of the shifting geographies of the nation’s economy as the country transitioned from relative stability during the ‘long boom’ after the Second World War into a period of rapid economic and policy change during the 1980s and 1990s. Despite the changes, Antipodean economic geography has, arguably, yet to gain new methodological or theoretical footing. The collection of papers in this special issue attempts to meet the challenge of a new direction to economic geography, reflecting on how this transition played out across different spatial and sectoral contexts, primarily in Australia. Papers documenting structural changes in the agricultural, automotive, creative industries, and energy sectors provide an understanding of how the convergence of political discourses, structural forces, and macroeconomic trends have interfaced with broad global shifts. Tying these together in the collection is a sustained focus on financialisation, particularly through globalised capital flows mediated through Australia’s major cities. Thus the collection of papers in this special issue moves beyond Global Restructuring’s roots in structural political economy to a more globally nuanced perspective on industrial transformation. This editorial concludes by making the case for a direction in economic geography that emerges beyond a methodological Antipodean focus towards a more relational and practice-driven approach.

This paper examines the experiences of Chinese settlers in the Cairns district of northern Queensland, Australia, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a potential early expression of a ‘rural cosmopolitanism’ that has more recently been associated in the geographical literature with contemporary international migration. In contrast to other parts of Australia, where Chinese immigration was associated with mining and with racial tensions and segregation, Chinese settlers around Cairns tended to be farmers and store-keepers, and contemporary accounts hint at a degree of tolerance and cross-community interaction that suggests an early form of rural cosmopolitanism. Moreover, the mobilities and aspirations of the Chinese migrants prefigure those of present-day ‘cosmopolitan’ migrants, whilst the discourses of anti-Chinese agitators are echoed in the concerns, fears and prejudices of current anti-immigration sentiments. Drawing on in-depth archival research, the paper documents the ...

This paper examines two key dimensions of the impact of immigration for Australia and related policy aspects. One is sub-national and the other is national. They are, first, the regional location aspects of immigration and, second, the aggregate unemployment implications of immigration. These are chosen so as to focus on two important issues that condition public attitudes towards immigration. In relation to the first, there is a common positive view that channelling migration towards regional areas assists regional development and reduces pressure on metropolitan areas. The paper reviews regional concepts embodied in Australian immigration policy and the ways in which visa arrangements have implemented policies geared towards the regional dispersal of immigrants. Using official data, it discusses the demographic impacts of these policies and, in particular, considers the extent to which immigrants to regional Australia remain there over the longer term. In relation to unemployment, a common conce...

Scholarship on ‘climate migration’ has traditionally focussed on the forced movement of people caused by the environmental impacts of climate change. However, this is only one part of the nexus between human movement and climate change. Consequently, researchers drawing on the ‘mobilities paradigm’, particularly those examining the topic of ‘mobility justice’, have sought to develop more encompassing conceptualisations of ‘climate mobilities’. In synthesising the different trajectories of this work, this paper identifies four key themes emerging within early ‘climate (im)mobilities’ scholarship. First, research on the way climate-related movement and stasis are represented and imagined. Second, examination of climate change’s impact on existing and ontologically significant (im)mobility practices. Third, analysis of the power relations that are enacted through climate (im)mobilities. And fourth, study of the inter-scalar nature of climate change-based (im)mobilities connecting disparate local mobility practices through their relationship to climate change. Research findings based on these themes are providing holistic accounts of the relationship between climate change and movement, and thus laying the groundwork for informed justice-based interventions in climate (im)mobility systems. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Complex intersecting social, economic and environmental dilemmas in Australia's Cape York Peninsula present a number of challenges for planners seeking to develop and implement land use and natural resource management (NRM) plans. There have been five different attempts at land use and NRM planning in Cape York Peninsula over the last 20 years. These processes have (to greater or lesser extents) failed to deliver community-owned and government-supported plans to guide development and/or the management of the region's natural resources. The region is remote, sparsely populated, and home to a significant Indigenous population. Much of the contestation within the region surrounds the access, use and ownership of the region's internationally valuable natural resources. This paper reviews, from the literature, the relevancy and applicability of criteria for best practice planning and governance. A range of identified best practice governance and planning principles are applied to assess the governance arrangements for planning in the Peninsula. The paper finds that decision-making arrangements for land use and NRM planning in the Peninsula are still in their infancy and are inadequate to support effective outcomes. The paper concludes that broader attention to best practice principles in governance for planning is needed to improve planning outcomes.

Recent neo-liberal policy frameworks in Australia advocate economic development opportunities for Aboriginal Australians as a viable strategy to redress the marginalisation and social disadvantage that appear to characterise many Aboriginal communities. In New South Wales (NSW), Aboriginal peoples are currently negotiating with industry for the chance to participate in coal seam gas (CSG) development opportunities. Based upon research focusing on CSG development in the Northern NSW region, this paper argues that certain constructions of Aboriginality inhibit successful Aboriginal engagement with the economic opportunities provided by CSG. This paper illuminates the role of the media in facilitating dominant discourse about Aboriginality and the implications of those constructions for Aboriginal engagement with the mainstream economy. Findings demonstrate that the media are complicit in constructing Aboriginal peoples in a way that could prejudice their attempts to engage in economic opportunities ...

International examples of interactions between Indigenous peoples and the new conservation paradigm come mainly from developing countries and suggest divisions over priorities. As a Western settler society, Australia is at a critical time in conservation and Indigenous peoples' rights. Innovative approaches to conservation are promoted. The role and influence of non-governmental organisations is increasing. Indigenous peoples' rights to land are recognised and Indigenous involvement in conservation is growing. Yet, despite Australia being considered a leader in these arenas, particularly the latter, there has been little analysis of the relationship between innovative approaches to conservation and Indigenous Australians under the new paradigm. This paper describes how the spatial manifestations of approaches under the new conservation paradigm and Indigenous land in Australia are creating new geographies. We identify geographies of overlap, dichotomy and absence. The paper identifies research nee...

This paper reports on the authors’ ongoing research with agricultural extension services, customary landowners and migrant farmers to develop a template for a Land Usage Agreement (LUA) that seeks to reconcile customary landowners’ and migrants’ differing interpretations of the moral basis of land rights. The LUA shows a way forward for land reform that builds on customary tenure while strengthening the temporary use rights of migrants to enable them to generate viable and relatively secure livelihoods. The paper concludes that land tenure reform should draw on what is already happening on the ground, rather than impose external models that do not accord with local cultural mores about the inalienability of customary land and its enduring social and cultural significance for customary landowning groups.

River catchments have been the dominant form of regionalisation for natural-resource management in many countries since the 1980s. Local governments play a considerable role in planning with ever-increasing responsibilities for sustainable environmental management, planning and development controls. There has also been an increasing emphasis on community participation in resource management, which emphasises the need to re-examine the requirements for spatial definition of resource governance regions. This paper proposes three principles. First, the nature and reach of environmental externalities of resource use should determine the size and nesting of resource management regions. Second, the boundaries of resource governance regions should enclose areas of greatest interest and importance to local residents. Third, the biophysical characteristics of a resource governance region should be as homogenous as possible, which provides resource planning and management efficiencies. The paper describes ...

Throughout the last decade, the Australian economy has experienced its second longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in recorded history. The paper argues that this prosperity is sourced from an extraordinary surge in finance-based economic activity along Australia's eastern seaboard, especially in the Sydney region. Population growth in the Sydney basin has further fuelled the region's economic growth. The spatialised nature of this prosperity has produced a major shift in distributional outcomes across Australian regions and among households. Sydney-based households, especially those in inner 'global Sydney' neighbourhoods, have had access to high rates of job creation and sustained increases in income and house values. On the other hand, non-metropolitan households away from Sydney--those in regional and rural Australia--have experienced largely negative consequences as historical inter-sectoral and spatial redistribution mechanisms have been dismantled. The paper shows how divergent experiences of...

The growing of tobacco was one of the most tightly regulated industries in Australia, until deregulation in 1995. Commonwealth regulations controlled the area cultivated with tobacco, the number of growers (ie quota holders) and marketing arrangements for tobacco leaf. This paper begins by outlining the nature and historical development of controls in the tobacco growing industry, and discusses how the Commonwealth government removed the industry’s regulatory and protective framework in 1995. The third part of the paper examines how deregulation has impacted upon the Mareeba-Dimbulah Irrigation Area, Far North Queensland, where small farmers produced sixty per cent of Australia’s tobacco in 1995. The discussion will show that the agricultural landscape once dominated by tobacco has been transformed, as local farmers abandoned growing tobacco in favour of sugar cane, avocadoes, mangoes, macadamia nuts and other small vegetable crops (eg navy beans, pumpkins). Tobacco, once promoted by the Queensland government as a crop to facilitate closer settlement in the Mareeba-Dimbulah Irrigation Area, will have almost vanished from the landscape by 2002.

Over the past century the cultural and physical landscape of the Shire of Denmark on the south coast of Western Australia has been transformed by successive waves of in-migrants. The paper examines the period since the early 1970s when alternative lifestylers and early retirees, attracted by the district' s natural beauty and low land prices, began moving in and acquiring former Group Settlement holdings. The activities of these and subsequent ' alternatives' and ' cashed out' early retirees settling in the district have raised the marketability of the Shire' s cultural capital. These changes have occurred in association with broader processes of rural restructuring and changing notions of ' rurality' . Increasingly, Denmark' s cultural and physical landscape has become a highly marketable product for consumption by Perth' s afe uent middle classes. In recent years land prices have risen rapidly as speculators and e nanciers seek to ' cash in' on the ' cashed out' society. The paper explores these issues and relates them to broader processes of economic and social change occurring at the national and international levels.

This paper discusses the pathways to agri-food sustainability in the context of the historical broadacre farming region of Mid North South Australia. Using notions of sustainable agriculture and mu...

‘[The revolution] you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’1 Let us sit with the idea, for a moment, that we have lost. For every #metoo there is a chorus of anxious neck-tie-clutching about how things have gone too far, and the deeply misogynistic and bloodied claims of ‘incels’ are receiving mainstream thinkpiece consideration. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are disproportionately criminalised (Australian Law Reform Commission 2017), and significant and devastating health gaps remain (Holland 2018). The ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ and the Makarrata Commission it proposed offered a pathway to more substantive forms of justice (Delegates at the Referendum Convention at Uluru 2017), but was rejected by the Turnbull government (Gordon 2017). Indeed, we live in a time when papers justifying, even promoting, colonialism are published and defended (Sultana 2018). The reinvigorated alt-right is reinforcing white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism. Palestine. Manus Island. Let us not discuss the White House, or the eager adoption of Australian-style border enforcement. Our cities are increasingly inequitable and precarious places. Climate change is here. The Great Barrier Reef is dying. We’ve already lost untold, uncounted species to extinctions, and for many more the ‘slow unraveling’ (Van Dooren 2014, 12) is underway. It’s time for some of us, at least, to be ‘thinking systematically about worst-case scenarios’ (Head 2016, 3).

Globalisation has impacted both the balance of economic power between cities as well as the distribution of economic activities within them. Studies focusing on the impacts of globalisation often investigate one or the other, but rarely tie the two together. In Australian cities, central business districts (CBDs) and inner suburbs since the 1980s have become revalorised as strategic sites for multinational firm activities, complementing an already robust agglomeration of commodities-oriented firms, domestic manufacturing, and state-led industries. This paper compares the spatial organisation of Australian firm activity across Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. It first focuses on how the firms of each of these cities extend overseas through global branch office operations, and then shifts to the distribution of firms within each capital city region. Data are drawn from a complete set of 2196 listed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) firms with operations in more than 100 countries. We find t...

Bird-watching is an increasingly popular leisure activity. Previous research has taken for granted the identity of people who watch birds, often categorised by their level of skilled practice as ‘dude’, ‘birder’ or ‘twitcher’. Feminist geographers encourage us to explore identity work as an outcome of the reciprocal relationships between practices and place. Our feminist approach illustrates that the practices of bird-watching are always much more than categorising birds as species. This paper illustrates how the practices of bird-watching are integral to the making and remaking of sense of place as ‘home’ and ‘away’, to sustain identities beyond accepted categories of ‘dude’, ‘birder’ and ‘twitcher’. The creation and application of different types of ‘bird-lists’ helps to explain the ways in which practices of bird-watching facilitate making sense of place as simultaneously ‘home’, ‘away’ and habitat, as well as the identity work of home-maker, citizen-scientist and tourist. Our insights into the...

The outstanding natural and cultural values of Cape York have been acknowledged for decades, but those decades have been characterised by deep conflict. Non-government organisation intervention in local politics has seen a forceful push for nominating some or all of the Cape York Peninsula as a World Heritage Site. We illuminate the authorised heritage discourse at work in heritage-making, and highlight contested issues of ownership, governance, authenticity, and value. These themes contribute to the possibility of marginalising the voices of local people who wish to contribute to heritage-making in Cape York. Politics infuses all aspects of heritage-making in Cape York, and the specific experiences on Cape York reflect larger political processes occurring in World Heritage discourse. The paper draws on interviews undertaken in May and June 2012.

Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclu...

Although there have been numerous studies of the meanings ascribed to terrestrial places, their applicability or otherwise to coastal and marine places has received limited attention. Through the process of photo-elicitation, the meanings ascribed to a remote coastal camping environment are examined, with the coastline of Ningaloo Marine Park in north-western Australia the focus for this study. Thirty participants were provided with digital cameras and the ascribed place meanings were explored when their photographs were discussed in subsequent in-depth interviews. Key meanings related to the physical environment providing opportunities for escape, participating in multiple marine-based activities, bonding with family and like-minded people, and offering a rewarding experience that makes everybody happy. This emergent meaning of ‘everybody's happy’ progresses the understanding of the affective elements of place, especially those realised by families and groups of friends. The paper traces importa...

Population–environment debates in Australia are at an impasse. While the ability of this continent to sustain more migrants has attracted persistent scrutiny, nuanced explorations of diverse migrant cultures and their engagements with Australian landscapes have scarcely begun. Yet as we face the challenges of a climate changing world we would undoubtedly benefit from the most varied knowledges we can muster. This paper brings together three arenas of environmental debate circulating in Australia—the immigration/carrying capacity debate, comparisons between Indigenous and Anglo-European modes of environmental interaction, and research on household sustainability dilemmas—to demonstrate the exclusionary tendencies of each. We then attempt to reorient them in productive ways, by attending to the complexity of environmental sustainability in a context of immense ethnic diversity. Attentiveness to ethnic diversity offers three important insights: (1) Anglo-European Australian understandings of nature ...

Animal tagging and tracking has been a fundamental tool in the quest to increase our knowledge and understanding of biogeography and ecology for about 50 years. Monitoring animal populations is also necessary for conservation purposes and to limit negative effects on the human population, particularly in an era of human expansion into traditional animal habitats. The use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology has been responsible for significant advances in this field by providing the ability to obtain accurate, regular and frequent estimates of the changing distributions of many rare animal species. Employing conventional GNSS-based animal tracking methods to study drop bears is extremely difficult due to their habitat. The dense tree canopy regularly causes extended periods of complete GNSS signal loss, and sensors are often damaged during attacks on prey. This paper proposes an indirect, GNSS-based method for tracking drop bears. This involves tracking the prey rather than the predator in order to map the population of drop bears in a particular area. The method can be used to effectively estimate the number of drop bears in the study area. Analysis of the collected data provides valuable insights into the hunting behaviour of drop bears and has implications for a better understanding of the geographical distribution of other rare species, including hoop snakes and bunyips.

This paper considers the issues of research ‘relevance’ and ‘use’ to reflect upon a cultural geography research project on bushfire that did not begin with any specific aim of being useful to policy makers but which has garnered considerable and ongoing interest from a broad audience. It provides an example of how the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods and data can enhance research into cultural aspects of natural hazards whilst simultaneously playing a key role in ensuring that the research results are of interest to a wide range of groups. Using a mixed-methods research approach was found to provide insight into complex factors that influence attitudes and actions towards bushfire amongst diverse landholders in rural–urban interface areas in south-east Australia. We argue that mixed-methods research is a powerful tool in building and enhancing a cultural geography that has policy relevance, retains analytical depth, and is acceptable to risk managers. The ability of cu...

The ABS 2006 Post-Enumeration Survey was extended to include a sample of localities from the whole of Australia, thereby providing an estimate of census net undercount reflective of the enumeration in remote Indigenous settlements for the first time. The results revealed substantial undercounting of the Indigenous population in certain jurisdictions. At the same time, census counts in many locations were substantially higher than demographic factors could account for. The analytical and policy issues that arise from this revolve around a simple question: what credence can we give to observed spatial patterns of Indigenous population change? This paper seeks to provide an answer by establishing the spatial relationship between population change and net migration at the small area level. This reveals the detailed geography of census undercount and ‘overcount’ with the former common in remote areas and the latter most evident in regional towns and cities. The findings raise important policy issues a...

This paper focuses on a case study of local postcard production in a rural community in Western Australia. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key producers of these postcards, the analysis presented explores perceptions of and contexts for the emergence of this production, in turn examining the notion of ‘creativity’ articulated and privileged by this cultural work. Connections are identified between the making of postcards, the broader historical field of local cultural work and the construction of community. This, in turn, forms the basis for consideration of the role and relativity of ‘marginality’.

© 2009 Geographical Society of New South Wales Inc. Residential gardens will continue to dominate as important elements of Australian suburbs in the timeframe available for adapting to climate change. In this paper, we analyse and compare the morphologies and sustainability potential of residential suburbs and their gardens in two case studies: Traditional-suburban and Modern-suburban in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Spatial distributions of land-cover patterns were estimated using Geographic Information Systems (ArcGIS). The four sustainability parameters measured were: roof rain water collection; local food (vegetable) production; energy and CO2 emission savings from clothes lines; and carbon benefits of onsite tree canopy cover. Outcomes suggest that land cover such as tree canopy cover and other permeable and impermeable surfaces in garden spaces can significantly impact on sustainability. Impermeable surface cover is higher in the Modern-suburban compared to the Traditional-suburban development. Traditional-suburban is more capable of supporting environmental and ecological functions through better connectivity of green spaces and availability of onsite land areas for local food production. Modern-suburban has more capacity for roof rainwater collection due to larger building roof sizes, provided there is planning for sufficient tank spaces in the design phases. These results identify specific characteristics of two suburban forms which could make positive contributions to suburban sustainability. However, changes in behaviour would be essential to utilise these capabilities of suburban environments.

In this paper, we examine the role that hotels play in the urban economies of central business districts (CBDs). To illustrate this, we explore the biography of the Sydney Hilton, an iconic modernist building which opened in 1975 and was recently totally refurbished and rebranded. We argue that hotels can be understood as civic landmarks, where localised business elites and the local state coalesce to ensure their successful construction, and where commercial activity is understood within an ideology of civic pride. Within this context, however, the design and appearance of hotels is driven by both their use value and exchange value. We trace a biography of the Sydney Hilton through three phases of its operation, considering its place within the backdrop of the reconstitution of Sydney's CBD, and the broader urban economy. We conclude that the refurbishment of the Hilton can thus only be understood by considering wider issues of corporate brand, asset ownership and the requirements of the local s...

International trends in airport privatisation and commercialisation have prompted claims that changes to aviation business disrupt local place attachments, social and economic activities, and planning regimes. This paper reflects on such matters with reference to a proposal for major commercial development at Hobart International Airport in Tasmania. First, we outline provisions under the Australian Government's Airports Act 1996 that exempt airport land from State and municipal planning systems, and summarise some of the criticisms levelled against the legislation. Our purpose in doing so is to highlight the point that such critique tends to divert attention from an apparent reluctance by state and local governments to embrace regional planning regimes that might have better prepared them for airport privatisation and commercialisation, and their effects on social and economic activity in adjacent areas. That discussion is then illustrated by reference to Hobart International Airport and Hansard...

The Antarctic climate system involves many complex interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and ice and is sensitive to variations in these components. Ice shelves represent the ice–ocean–atmosphere interface of the Antarctic continent and are therefore very important indicators of climate change in the region. The Amery Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in East Antarctica and has been the focus of many scientific research projects over the past 50 years. This paper presents a history of the use of spatial science techniques from basic survey equipment to satellite systems in Australian research projects based on the Amery Ice Shelf (and surrounding glaciers) since 1955. The application of these spatial data to projects based primarily in the fields of geodesy, glaciology, climatology, and oceanography has allowed the measurement and monitoring of the physical, dynamic and environmental characteristics of this large and remote region. This new information provides scientists with a better und...

‘Environmental values’ form an increasingly important component of natural resource management, but use of the term ‘value’ is dominated by a narrow and limiting utility-based definition. In this paper I consider theories of value and practices of valuing water in the arid and semi-arid Lake Eyre Basin, central Australia. While value is the subject of diverse meanings—both within a range of academic disciplines and as understood by people in specific places—methods of valuing water in natural resource management are limited by reductionism, anthropocentrism and cultural specificity. This conceptualisation of value does not adequately capture what people in the Lake Eyre Basin value about water. I propose valuing variability as a new framework for valuing water that embraces diversity, change and complexity, and emphasises interconnections between water, humans and the non-human world. While physical variability is gaining acceptance in both the academy and management, the variability of social, c...

Episodic high rainfall has been proposed as an important factor in perennial species recruitment but flooding based on rainfall at a distance from the site has received little attention. Although such flood events in arid Australia are rare, studies of the ephemeral Olary Creek indicate that occasional floods can also have a high impact on the vegetation and landscape. During February 1997, a high-rainfall event caused flooding in the Olary Creek. One branch of the creek created a terminal lake within mallee vegetation on Nagaela Station in far-western New South Wales. The flood path of Olary Creek and this terminal lake allow study of the importance of rainfall-driven flood events in shaping vegetation in arid environments. This paper reports (i) the response of arid land plant species to high-rainfall-driven episodic flood events and (ii) how grazing pressure from native and introduced herbivores can impact on native species response. A systematic study was conducted to understand the botanical...

Population estimates are rarely constructed for ecological regions. The recent establishment of a Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) generates a need for such estimates. This paper obliges by presenting Indigenous and total population projections for the Australian desert to 2016. The desert is found to be a region of relatively low population growth in national terms, contrary to the experience of many other parts of non-metropolitan Australia where population decline is prevalent. Also noted is the markedly different growth observed for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous components of the desert population, with the former projected to increase much more rapidly over time. It is likely that virtually all of the increase in the desert population over the next 15 years will arise from natural increase among Indigenous peoples. As a consequence, the Indigenous share of the regional population is projected to rise from 20 per cent in 2001 to 24 per cent by 2016, with attendant consequences fo...

The role of planning in Sydney's economic development since the mid-1970s is explored, focusing on its role in reducing spatial disparities across the region. Planning policies during the period of each State government--Labor (1976-88), Liberal-National (1988-95) and Labor (1995-present)--are reviewed. The paper analyses a hierarchy of factors underlying the relative failure of policies to lessen disparities, notably intra-government failure to produce effective policies, the influence of prevailing ideology, local institutions and political culture, and the wider context of globalisation and the mode of capitalist accumulation. Each of these has been significant in limiting planning's role in addressing uneven development across the region.

Wetlands in the Upper South East (USE) of South Australia yield a range of values to their owners and to the wider community. One such value is that generated by duck hunting in the region. Wetland owners receive private benefits from hunting fees, while hunters gain a non-monetary consumers' surplus. These non-monetary benefits received by duck hunters through their enjoyment of hunting in wetlands are the primary focus of this paper. In order to estimate these values, a 'travel cost' survey of duck hunters participating in an organised shoot held by Wetlands and Wildlife in February 2000 was undertaken. The extent of the private recreation benefits so estimated is assessed in terms of their potential to stimulate the provision of wetlands for both private and social benefits.

Population decline at the last fin de siecle produced considerable debate among scholars, bureaucrats, and politicians. Material about this issue in the popular press of the day is also significant, allowing reflection on colonial attitudes toward the feminine, the home, and nature. Some commentators argued that these three were enduringly interconnected, and were critical to understanding both population decline and the decline of the population. Others challenged such positions. In this paper, I set out a preliminary exploration of such views by analysing excerpts from the Australian Women's Sphere for their treatment of the feminine, the home, and nature. I refer also to their differentially placed constitution in the urban and the rural, the private and the public, and the nation.