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Walter Roth ranks among the most prolific collectors of Aboriginal artefacts from North Queensland, including the Wet Tropics, as well as being one of the leading ethnographers in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australia. He was also one of Queensland's first official Protectors of Aboriginals, appointed immediately after that colony introduced its now-infamous Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897. This paper explores Roth's twin careers as ethnographic collector and Aboriginal Protector, teasing out the connections and commonalities between the two. It was for his achievements in ethnography and collecting, as well as his medical expertise, that he was appointed to the Protectorship. He carried out both his anthropological work and his administrative duties with determination and dedication. Yet his continuing activities as an ethnographer and collector contributed substantially to his downfall as a senior figure in Aboriginal administration. The paper also positions Roth in the historical context of an evolving Australian anthropology, with particular pertinence to North Queensland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores past connections of Aboriginal people within what is now known as the Wet Tropics, a coastal strip of tropical rainforest in northeast Australia. As a result of historical and ethnographic descriptions the rainforest is often defined as a 'cultural zone'. The proclamation of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, based on environmental parameters, has exaggerated the idea of the rainforest as a cultural boundary. We propose that in the past, Aboriginal connections were multifaceted, multifunctional and multidirectional, extending beyond the Wet Tropics boundaries. We use rock art to illustrate connections within and beyond the rainforest. For example, decorated shields, an iconic item of rainforest material culture, are depicted in rock art assemblages south of the rainforest boundary. Are the shield paintings out-of-place or do they illustrate networks of connection? We examine rock art motifs found in rainforest areas and compare them with those found in other rock art regions in North Queensland. We identify, for example, that sites located in the eastern rainforest are dominated by painted anthropomorphs (people) and zoomorphs (animals) in the silhouette style similar to figurative rock art of southeast Cape York Peninsula. We suggest that, like other areas, there were connections between cultural groups within the rainforest but that these same groups had links that went beyond this environmental zone. We further propose that the proclamation of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area has particularly influenced non-Aboriginal understandings of the past within this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1930s Norman Tindale and Joseph Birdsell identified the inhabitants of the North Queensland rainforests as a distinct race of Indigenous Australians. This classification was a keystone of their attempted reconstruction of the deep past of Australia. According to their narrative, the Aboriginal inhabitants of the rainforests were relicts of the first human occupants of Australia, refugees from later waves of Aboriginal invaders who seized all but the most inhospitable parts of the continent. From the outset, Tindale and Birdsell's argument was burdened with serious problems, both in the qualities they attributed to rainforest people and in their representation of the rainforest environment as a 'refuge'. While Tindale and Birdsell's racial theorising and historical speculations drew some supporters, they failed to win general academic acclamation and by the 1970s were quite thoroughly discredited. Yet the category 'rainforest Aboriginal' survived, disengaged from the reconstruction of Australia's past that had inspired it and anchored instead to the distinctive economy of rainforest subsistence, instantiated in a unique material culture. This paper takes Tindale and Birdsell's relict-race representation of rainforest Aboriginal people as the starting point in an exploration of how European people represented the Aboriginal inhabitants of the North Queensland rainforests over roughly a hundred years, from the 1870s to the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest challenges for the juvenile justice system is to successfully reintegrate young offenders back to their communities so that they do not re-offend and return to detention. This challenge is even greater for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth who are over-represented in the Queensland juvenile justice system in terms of interactions with the police, the courts and in detention settings. This paper presents the outcomes of a two-year-longitudinal study which tracked 40 young Indigenous males as they made the transition from detention in North Queensland back to their communities. Over this period the majority of youth arrived at 'undesirable' destinations by re-offending and returning to detention, compared to a smaller cohort who arrived at 'desirable' destinations and desisted from crime. The paper presents qualitative data from the research which focused on gaining the perceptions of these young males by asking them to identify the risks which prevented them from making a successful re-entry back to their communities compared to those who desisted from further offending behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is part of a larger study carried out in North Queensland, Australia, between 1999 and 2001. The original study focused on the perceptions of 15 women who each have (or had) a child who was medically, educationally and socio-culturally constituted as having a disability. Qualitative methods were used for research design and to gather data. Poststructural and feminist perspectives were added to provide additional methods of data analysis. The primary focus in this paper is the spatiality of inclusive education with/in the discursive site of (special) education. It also considers the binary of regular/special education in relation to the spaces of educational discourse through the perspectives of the mothers, covering a temporal frame of 40 years. The mothers' perceptions provide a historical lens on the changes that occurred in special education in North Queensland over this time, while at the same time offer an insight into the spaces disability occupies in education discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kerans, A.J., and Cartwright, N., 2016. Testing versions of the Bruun rule for low energy macro-tidal tropical beaches against a theoretical late Holocene sea-level high-stand and beach ridge evidence of late Holocene beach faces. In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 75, pp. 740-744. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Significant evidence of late Holocene beach faces is presented in beach ridges along the North Queensland coast between Mackay and the Daintree region. The ages of these ridges has in some cases been dated giving confidence that the rearmost ridges are the result of a combination of cyclone activity and a late Holocene sea level high-stand. The height of this high-stand is the subject of debate, however the level may be confidently predicted through careful and extensive measurement of relict oyster beds in the region. Using pre-existing beach ridge research together with existing and new measurements of oyster beds on Magnetic Island, North Queensland a value for the late Holocene sea level high-stand is proposed which can be compared to the position of the coast on certain beaches during this period. These measurements are a good basis to test the applicability of the Bruun rules and some proposed modifications for the low energy beach systems of tropical North Queensland. This paper firstly examined the late Holocene sea level evidence stored in relict oyster beds and from that proposes a sea level to be used in the analysis. This sea level is then used to test the Bruun rule and variants and examine the differences between dated Holocene beach faces and the recession predicted by these models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines invasive animal management institutions, using theories at the interstices of anthropology and geography, to question current approaches to management based on neoclassical and neoliberal economic rationales. I present an analysis of two feral pig management regimes in Far North Queensland, Australia: (i) bounty systems of payment for feral pig control; and (ii) a community-based feral pig trapping program. I show how these management methods reshape important social and cultural processes through their overlapping technological and economic elements. On the basis of this analysis, I propose a conceptual framework for invasive animal management planning that incorporates a beneficiary–benefactor analysis alongside cost–benefit analyses. I argue that ecological-economic theories of pest management may be usefully enhanced by addressing the links between economic and social behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper was to examine risk and protective factors associated with the consequences of card gambling and commercial gambling for Indigenous Australians in north Queensland. With Indigenous Elders' approval and using qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 Indigenous and 48 non-Indigenous Australians in three north Queensland sites. Risk factors associated with both card and commercial gambling consequences were found to be poverty and a reluctance to seek gambling help, while for card gambling only, generational influences was a risk factor. In contrast, protective factors for both card and commercial gambling consequences were reported as positive role models, family relatedness and cultural resilience. Culturally distinctive risk and protective factors, once identified, can be the target of public health strategies to promote responsible gambling awareness among Indigenous gamblers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a larger study, this paper reports on findings into risk and protective factors associated with gambling products and services by Indigenous Australians. Both Indigenous card gambling (traditional or unregulated) and commercial gambling (regulated) were investigated. Permission was granted by Indigenous Elders and by a university ethics committee to conduct this research. Using qualitative methods and purposeful sampling, interviews were conducted with 60 Indigenous and 14 non-Indigenous Australians, 14 non-Indigenous gambling help counsellors and 20 non-Indigenous gaming venue managers. Risk factors include gambling availability and familiarity, the use of non-monetary stakes and traditional exchange systems, venue comfort, social inclusiveness and ignoring cultural relationship restrictions. Protective factors include limiting physical and social access to gambling, self-regulated social group gambling and engagement with collective culture. From a public health stance, inclusive responsible gambling policies designed around access may assist Indigenous gamblers in more appropriate and meaningful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents characteristics of droughts simulated by global climate models (GCMs) under enhanced greenhouse gases conditions. We used a drought index called the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) which takes both rainfall and potential evapotranspiration into account to investigate variations of droughts among 12 regions in Australia. The RDI was applied to simulated climate variables from 14 GCMs performed for the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. The results show a general increase in drought areal extent and/or frequency for most regions. However, the increases are not significant over the North West, North Queensland, Queensland East Coast and Central Queensland. For most regions, the change beyond 2030 is larger than that prior to 2030, but the uncertainty in the projections also increases with time. By 2030, there is a likely (>66% probability) risk of twice or more drought affected area and/or twice as often drought frequency over South West Western Australia. By 2050, this will include the Murray-Darling Basin, South Australia and Victoria, and by 2070 this will extend to New South Wales and Tasmania. For North Queensland such a risk is unlikely (<33% probability) for the next 100 years. This information can be considered indicative in long-term planning focussing on sustainability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper contains a description of a new species of oribatid mite, Birobates hepaticolus sp. nov., from eucalypt woodland and rainforest in North Queensland, Australia. Adults and immatures of B. hepaticolus live completely enclosed within the ventral lobules of the corticolous liverwort Frullania ferdinandi-muelleri Steph. The ventral lobes provide a protected, moisture-buffered microhabitat on tree bark that would otherwise be subject to extremes of wetting and drying. Analysis of gut contents indicates that B. hepaticolus appears to feed on liverwort tissue. To our knowledge this is the first documented example of an association between an oribatid mite and a leafy liverwort based on the provision of food and habitat. The genus Birobates is redefined and diagnosed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines some of the ways early artefact collecting contributed to the definition of the Australian region now known and marketed as the 'World Heritage Wet Tropics'. While others have collected in this region, we focus on the collecting activities of Hermann Klaatsch and the work of Norman Tindale to explore some factors that contributed to their claims that certain artefacts represent a region and its history. We argue that these understandings of region and the past, along with the now widely dispersed artefacts, maintain a lively, albeit transformed, presence in current debates about Aboriginal regional culture, linking assertions of rights to lost and stolen cultural property with notions of large-scale environmental management within the 'Wet Tropics'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper describes my experience as a psychiatric registrar working with indigenous communities in a remote setting in Far North Queensland. Conclusions: Working in a remote environment provided an insight into how to engage culturally diverse Indigenous communities and an invaluable training experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the colonial encapsulation and post-colonial recognition of North Queensland's Aboriginal population have been achieved through legislative demarcation. This paper explores the way such demarcation has extended the influence of the state within local Aboriginal life-worlds, focusing on the State of Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 and the Commonwealth's Native Title Act 1993. Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Central Cape York Peninsula, and recent anthropological theorization of the state, I argue that anthropologists need to seriously consider Aboriginal claims about what Michel-Roiph Trouillot calls 'state effects'. But careful examination of these claims suggests that the state no longer simply imposes its projects on fundamentally distinct Aboriginal life-worlds. Not only is the state now deeply engaged within these life-worlds, it is also deeply interwoven into post-colonial Aboriginal subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dropping out of school has been associated with a student's ethnicity, socioeconomic status, challenging behaviours and low academic achievement. This paper describes research conducted with 1050 students aged 12-15, in three North Queensland urban high schools to investigate issues related to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students at risk of dropping out of school before gaining adequate qualifications. A path-analytic model was developed to assess the influence of socio-demographic, structural family and behavioural factors upon low academic achievement, the strongest predictor of dropping out of school. The specific hypothesis tested was that challenging behaviour, indexed by suspensions, predicts low academic achievement or at-risk status, more strongly than SES or family structure variables. Results indicate that for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, suspensions are a stronger predictor of low achievement than socioeconomic or family factors. Moreover, a model testing low achievement as a precursor to suspensions was not supported. Suggestions for future practice and research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years a growing number of disasters have affected the tourism industry on scales that range from regional to global. Although there have been a number of significant disasters including SARS, the September 11 attack on the US in 2001, coups in Fiji and the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/98 the impacts on the tourism industry in the affected regions and/or countries have been surprisingly short-term. There is still much to learn from how crisis events were managed by the various industry and government authorities involved. This paper focuses on aspects of the impact of Cyclone Larry on the North Queensland tourism industry by examining the impact on visitor flows in the short term and recording the views of visitors who had travelled to the region several months alter the event. The research identifies aspects of visitor behaviours and expectations that may be of use to industry and government to better inform managers and policy makers in their planning and management functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between catchment variables and sediment transport processes in rivers are complex, and sediment transport behaviour during high-flow events is not well documented. This paper presents an investigation into sediment transport processes in a short-duration, high-discharge event in the Burdekin River, a large sand- and gravel-bed river in the monsoon- and cyclone-influenced, semi-arid tropics of north Queensland. The Burdekin's discharge is highly variable and strongly seasonal, with a recorded maximum of 40 400 m3 s−1. Sediment was sampled systematically across an 800 m wide, 12 m deep and straight reach using Helley-Smith bedload and US P-61 suspended sediment samplers over 16 days of a 29-day discharge event in February and March 2000 (peak 11 155 m3 s−1). About 3·7 × 106 tonnes of suspended sediment and 3 × 105 tonnes of bedload are estimated to have been transported past the sample site during the flow event. The sediment load was predominantly supply limited. Wash load included clay, silt and very fine sand. The concentration of suspended bed material (including very coarse sand) varied with bedload transport rate, discharge and height above the bed. Bedload transport rate and changes in channel shape were greatest several days after peak discharge. Comparison between these data and sparse published data from other events on this river shows that the control on sediment load varies between supply limited and hydraulically limited transport, and that antecedent weather is an important control on suspended sediment concentration. Neither the empirical relationships widely used to estimate suspended sediment concentrations and bedload (e.g. Ackers & White, 1973) nor observations of sediment transport characteristics in ephemeral streams (e.g. Reid & Frostick, 1987) are directly applicable to this river. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]