Kimberley Women : Their Experiences of Making a Remote Locality Home

In previous histories of Western Australia, pre-dominantly written from a male Eurocentric viewpoint, scant attention has been drawn to the everyday lives of country women. The study described in this dissertation explores the responses of women to the challenges of relocation and settlement within a remote locality in the Kimberley region of Western Australia

How do you like it? Student Perspectives On Remote E-Learning

Edith Cowan University (ECU) is embracing e-learning as its preferred mode of distance education. E-learning has changed the mode, pedagogy and style of learning for distance education students. The convenience of studying online has provided numerous opportunities for remote learners but what is the reality of their educational experience via e-learning? This paper reports on a smallscale research project that examined e-learning from the student‘s perspective. The views of ECU distance education students in Singapore, Thailand, and remote parts of Australia were analysed in order to learn how to better support their needs

Jimmy Chi: Hybridity and Healing

This thesis examines the notion that Jimmy Chi's two musical plays, 'Bran Nue Dae' (1990) and 'Corrugation Road' (1996) offer new ways of thinking about Indigenous identities. The works are discussed in terms of the physical context in which they were created, namely the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley region of north Western Australia, and the historical events which occurred in that area during the process of invasion and colonisation. They are also placed within the development of Indigenous Theatre in Australia, against a framework of post-colonial theory. My research methodology included immersion in the cross-cultural Kimberley culture by living and working there for two years, as well as re-enacting the journeys undertaken in the two plays. I also conducted many formal and informal interviews with the creators of the works, including Jimmy Chi, Stephen Pigram, Michael Manolis and Stephen 'Baamba' Albert. The backbone of this project is the detailed contextual annotation of the two plays, using information gained from the interviews, primary sources and from anecdotal evidence from other Broome locals. This material is then compared to the critical literature. My conclusion is that Jimmy Chi's work offers a departure from previous models of Indigenous theatre, including the 'documentary realism' school. Jimmy Chi's appropriation of the musical form and road trip genre paved the way for younger artists to experiment with form and structure, and to move on from representation of Indigenous characters as powerless victims. Jimmy Chi himself stresses the importance of the songs to the productions, and it is true that the songs cover an extraordinary range of styles, subjects and even philosophies. Jimmy Chi's envisioning of 'a gentler society', outlined in his song 'Streets of Your City' (1996), accords with the great post-colonial theorist Edward Said's contention that 'There is the possibility of a more generous and pluralistic vision of the world' (Said 1993: 277, in Gandhi 1998: 124)

Development and organization of polarity-specific segregation of primary vestibular afferent fibers in mice

A striking feature of vestibular hair cells is the polarized arrangement of their stereocilia as the basis for their directional sensitivity. In mammals, each of the vestibular end organs is characterized by a distinct distribution of these polarized cells. We utilized the technique of post-fixation transganglionic neuronal tracing with fluorescent lipid soluble dyes in embryonic and postnatal mice to investigate whether these polarity characteristics correlate with the pattern of connections between the endorgans and their central targets; the vestibular nuclei and cerebellum. We found that the cerebellar and brainstem projections develop independently from each other and have a non-overlapping distribution of neurons and afferents from E11.5 on. In addition, we show that the vestibular fibers projecting to the cerebellum originate preferentially from the lateral half of the utricular macula and the medial half of the saccular macula. In contrast, the brainstem vestibular afferents originate primarily from the medial half of the utricular macula and the lateral half of the saccular macula. This indicates that the line of hair cell polarity reversal within the striola region segregates almost mutually exclusive central projections. A possible interpretation of this feature is that this macular organization provides an inhibitory side-loop through the cerebellum to produce synergistic tuning effects in the vestibular nuclei. The canal cristae project to the brainstem vestibular nuclei and cerebellum, but the projection to the vestibulocerebellum originates preferentially from the superior half of each of the cristae. The reason for this pattern is not clear, but it may compensate for unequal activation of crista hair cells or may be an evolutionary atavism reflecting a different polarity organization in ancestral vertebrate ears