The physical Endeavour: how a wooden ship shaped Cook's first circumnavigation

This article examines the role of his vessel in James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. The Endeavour strongly influenced what Cook was able to attempt and its limitations directed the course of the voyage. A close reading of the journals of Cook and Joseph Banks reveals the ways in which the physical conditions of the vessel influenced the voyage and casts fresh light on the Endeavour’s voyage around the world

Meet North Queensland First, the party that wants to kill crocs and form a new state

This article analyses the ways in which Queensland politicians use crocodiles to attract attention to their policies. It notes that political platforms that include increased crocodile killing also tend to support north Queensland separatism

Croc safari: why selling licences to rich hunters isn’t fair

[Extract] Crocodiles are protected in Australia. These impressive, if dangerous, animals are icons of the north. But it wasn’t always so. Crocodiles used to be hunted freely in northern Australia, an activity that led to their decline and eventual protection. There have been calls to cull crocodiles to improve safety, but experts argue that this will make little difference to the risk. Besides, crocodiles are already sustainably farmed for leather products. However, there are also calls – for instance, from federal MP Bob Katter – to allow crocodiles to be shot for safari. Selling hunting licences worth thousands of dollars to rich shooters, the argument goes, could provide vital income. But this ignores Australia’s history of crocodile hunting

Australia's Northern Safari

[Extract] Filmed during a 1955 family trip from Perth to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Keith Adams’s Northern Safari showed to packed houses across Australia, and in some overseas locations, across three decades. Essentially a home movie, initially accompanied by live commentary and subsequently by a homemade sound track, it tapped into audiences’ sense of Australia’s north as a place of adventure. In the film Adams interacts with the animals of northern Australia (often by killing them), and while by 1971 the violence apparent in the film was attracting criticism in letters to newspapers, the film remained popular through to the mid-1980s, and was later shown on television in Australia and the United States (Cowan 2; Adams, Crocodile Safari Man 261). A DVD is at present available for purchase from the website of the same name (Northern Safari). Adams and his supporters credited the film’s success to the rugged and adventurous landscape of northern Australia (Northeast vii), characterised by dangerous animals, including venomous spiders, sharks and crocodiles (see Adams, “Aussie”; “Crocodile”). The notion of Australia’s north as a place of rugged adventure was not born with Adams’s film, and that film was certainly not the last production to exploit the region and its wildlife as a source of excitement. Rather, Northern Safari belongs to a long list of adventure narratives whose hunting exploits have helped define the north of Australian as a distinct region and contrast it with the temperate south where most Australians make their lives. This article explores the connection between adventure in Australia’s north and the large animals of the region. Adams’s film capitalised on popular interest in natural history, but his film is only one link in a chain of representations of the Australian north as a place of dangerous and charismatic megafauna. While over time interest shifted from being largely concentrated on the presence of buffalo in the Northern Territory to a fascination with the saltwater crocodiles found more widely in northern Australia that interest in dangerous prey animals is significant to Australia’s northern imaginary

Synthesis and characterisation of mononuclear and dinuclear rhenium carbonyl complexes

Chapter One serves as an introduction to the Thesis. Chapter Two describes the synthesis and characterisation of a series of 3-(pyridin-2-yl)-l,2,4-triazole ligands and the corresponding rhenium(I) tricarbonyl. The structure of the complexes have been determined using NMR and IR spectroscopy. The complexes underwent [Re—>7t*(pyridyl-triazole)] transitions in the 295 - 360 nm region of the absorption spectrum. Emission was observed from all the complexes at 298 K and at 77 K. The absorption and emission properties of the pyridyl-triazole complexes were found to be pH dependent. The complexes underwent an irreversible Re(I)/Re(II) oxidation. The a-donor nature of the triazole ligand results in a blue shift of both the absorption and emission spectra when compared to [Re(CO)3(bpy)Cl]. Chapter Three is discusses the synthesis of the rhenium(I) tricarbonyl complexes of 3-(pyrazin-2-yl)-l,2,4-triazoles, analogous to those described in Chapter Two. The complexes were characterised by NMR and IR spectroscopy. The carbonyl bands are observed at higher frequency compared to the corresponding pyridyltriazole complexes. The UV/vis spectra exhibit [Re—mi* (pyrazyl-triazole)] transitions between 390 and 410 nm. The protonated pyrazyl-triazole complexes are weak emitters at 298 K while emission was detected at room temperature from all of the deprotonated pyrazyl-triazole complexes. Emission was detected from all complexes at 77 K. The strongly 7r-accepting pyrazine results in a red shift of both the absorption and emission spectra when compared to the corresponding pyridyl-triazole complexes. Again, spectroscopic and clcctrochemical studies display a strong pH dependency. Chapter Four describes the synthesis and characterisation of the homo-nuclear rhenium(I) dimer and the hetero-nuclear ruthenium(H)-rhenium(I) dinuclear complexes bridged by the triazole ligand Hbpt (3,5-bis(pyridin-2-yl)-l,2,4- triazole). The complexes have been studied using UV-vis and emission spectroscopy, lifetime studies and electrochemical measurements. For the ruthenium(II)-rhenium(I) complex, the absorption and emission properties indicate intercomponent energy transfer from the rhenium(I) metal centre to the ruthenium(II) metal centre. Chapter Five discusses the methylation of the ruthenium(II) bipyridyl complex [Ru(bpy)2phpztr]+, (phpztr = 3-(pyrazin-2-yl)-5-phenyl-l,2,4-triazole). Selective deuteriation of the bipyridyl ligands and the triazole ligand was also employed. The photophysical and electrochemical properties of all complexes were also examined. Methylation of the pyrazyl-triazole ligand was found to quench emission from [Ru(bpy)2phpztr]+. Wavelength dependent ground-state resonace Raman measurements were also carried out in order to elucidate the electronic transitions in the absorption spectra. Chapter Six gives an overview of the experimental conditions used. Chapter Seven summaries results of the work undertaken with suggestions on further possible research directions

Tropical cattle: the Brahman

[Extract] Queensland is home to nearly half of Australia’s beef cattle, and the vast majority of those beasts contain at least some Brahman blood. As a result the Queensland cattle industry has come to depend on beasts whose origins lie outside Europe and which are better able to cope with the local environment. While today humped cattle are a common sight in Queensland, their adoption took place relatively recently and they were firmly rejected at first. The rise of the Brahman in tropical Queensland dates from the 1960s and occurred only after a concerted campaign on the part of government agricultural researchers. By 2001 that shift was estimated to have benefited the Queensland cattle industry by $8.1 billion

Tropical cattle: the Brahman

[Extract] Queensland is home to nearly half of Australia’s beef cattle, and the vast majority of those beasts contain at least some Brahman blood. As a result the Queensland cattle industry has come to depend on beasts whose origins lie outside Europe and which are better able to cope with the local environment. While today humped cattle are a common sight in Queensland, their adoption took place relatively recently and they were firmly rejected at first. The rise of the Brahman in tropical Queensland dates from the 1960s and occurred only after a concerted campaign on the part of government agricultural researchers. By 2001 that shift was estimated to have benefited the Queensland cattle industry by $8.1 billion

Lessons from history point to local councils’ role in Australia’s recovery

[Extract] Australia’s local governments breathed new life into embattled regional communities after the second world war. Today, this history reminds us of the role local councils and communities should play in plans to power the national recovery from the COVID-19 shutdown. Australia’s experience of this pandemic has opened a door to the past. The Spanish flu pandemic led to emergency powers, border closures and authority contests between state and federal governments

Unprecedented? Pandemic memory and responses to Covid-19 in Australia and New Zealand

The 1918-1920 global influenza pandemic and the global coronavirus pandemic which began in 2019 are separated by almost exactly a century, but in Australia and New Zealand there have been eerie similarities in the way they have unfolded, and in the responses used to combat them. Despite these similarities, early in the covid-19 crisis the virus and its impacts were widely described as ‘unprecedented’. This chapter explores the common collective amnesia that surrounds pandemics, and compares the level of collective memory of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Australia and New Zealand before the arrival of covid-19. It examines government statements and actions while preparing for and responding to pandemics, the nurturing of historical knowledge among medical experts, and the actions of groups of citizens. Additionally, this chapter analyzes the significance of collective memory in devising effective responses to covid-19 in these two countries. In neither country has history been allowed to repeat itself exactly, but in New Zealand, action has been taken in the present with the intention of avoiding a reoccurrence of the events of the past