Lecture outline

2. Lecture outline • Karen Visser, Information Literacy Program, on setting up your email • Some “house-keeping” • Assessment issues • Field trip details • Follow up from Andrew’s talk - Australian relationships with the environment

3. Contacting the course Coordinators • Richard Baker – Geographer Richard.Baker@anu.edu.au Contact hours Tuesday 9-12noon, Wednesday 9-10.30am - send me an email if you want to make an appointment to meet me outside these hours • Alastair Greig – Sociologist Alastair.Greig@anu.edu.au Contact hours Thursday 10-12noon

4. Proposed assessment • Constructive contributions to tutorial discussions 10% • Learning Portfolio 30% to include one page preparation for each tut and reflections on learning from from each lecture and tut and 500 word field trip report and annotated map • End of course tutorial presentation 20% • Essay –due noon May 2nd 40% (draft to be submitted with final essay but is not marked) • Please come to the first tut this week with your ideas on this proposed assessment

5. Learning portfolio for last week’s Monday’s lecture • Your definition of learning and that of your partner and a brief comment on the difference between the two • Click here and read Yolngu metaphors for learning it is only four pages long • use it as a starting point to think about what are the keys things you need to do to achieve “Galtha” ie the space/place/state of mind where you learn best • put a few dot points down in learning portfolio on how plan to achieve this state in your study for this course! • bring these ideas to the first tutorial to discuss with your classmates

6. Learning portfolio for last week’s Wednesday’s panel • A few dot points reflecting on Andrew Campbell’s talk - (not a summary of what he said). For example what surprised you most by his presentation? Why? What do you think it will take for us to start living “like Australians”. Also include the question you asked/or would have asked if you could of • Remember we are not looking for a long reflection - some of the best learning portfolios in the past (see course webpage for links) had just 3 or 4 dot points reflections on each lecture/pane/tutorial

8. Field trip • You need to come on either trip one 9:00 am April 11th returning April 13th about 5:00 pm or trip two leaving ANU 9:00 am April 13th returning April 15th about 5:00 pm • Virtual tour of Kioloa on your webpage!

9. Follow up from Andrew’s talk • Australia imagined before it was “discovered” • Australians still unsure of who we are and where we live • Some of the great myths about Australia’s environment

11. Power of Cultural Baggage! Can be a life and death issue

13. An imagined land • Terra Australis Incognita • Imagined before it was seen – lead to some pretty strange expectations • Flinders the first to name Australia • The term Australian first used for Aboriginal Australians – settlers called themselves British and those born here native born • Some awfully strange imagining!

14. New age guys! • In 1676 the Frenchman , Jacques Sadeur who claimed he had just spent 35 years living in la terre Australe described us as an idyllic land with no flies, no dangerous animals and occupied by a peaceful people that made a profession of all being equal where everyone loves everyone else but no one person in particular and where men as well as women could suckle infants see pxi George Seddon Landprints: reflections on place and landscape Cambridge University Press 1997

16. Australians are unsure of who we are and where we live. Are we to use AD Hope’s phrase second-hand Europeans? Australia And her five cities, like five teeming sores, Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state Where second-hand Europeans pullulate* Timidly on the edge of alien shores. * = buds springing up

17. Are we part of Asia? Some Asians think not – the following remark was offered by a senior Asian official in 1978 “Australia’s role in Asia can be likened to an appendix. Its function is not properly understood. It is only noticed when it hurts and no one would miss it if it was removed”

18. A great Australian Paradox • So much of our identity is tied to our landscape and the fauna and flora it supports but we are actually profoundly ignorant of our environment

19. Uluru – seen as a central symbol of Australia but most Australians are profoundly ignorant of both the physical and cultural landscape of Uluru

20. Environment- society relationships in the early European settlement • A new planet • Importing European views of the environment

21. A new planet Early European settlers “could usually estimate pasture, it’s stocking rate and recovery time, but it was beyond human achievement to assess this land correctly. It was more of a new planet than a new continent”. Eric Rolls, more a new planet than a new continent S. Dover’s 1994 Australian Environmental History: essays in cases

22. Strangers in a strange land • European Australians are a transported people who have in many ways translated foreign European values and attitudes to this land • Common still in the 1950s and 1960s for 3rd and 4th generation Australians to refer to Britain as “home” and to discuss the virtues of a trip “home” • 1960s and 1970s coming of age trip was to Earls Court in London • “when are we going to start living as Australians” – Andrew Campbell

23. Looking to other places rather than here has fuelled environmental ignorance "By the end of primary school I knew a lot more about beavers and musk oxen and elephants and tropical birds than I knew about my own local environment” Professor Henry Nix ANU Reporter October 4 1995

24. So much that made no sense to the European mind • Driest inhabited continent • Bizarre fauna and flora • Most variable flow of rivers – around the world the average annual difference from highest and lowest flow is 2-3 times, Amazon 1.5 times – Darling 4,500 times!

25. European settlement in Australia: Has been a great big trial experiment in what happens when a population embarks on Western development of land before we have had more than the most rudimentary grasp of the continents crucial ecological characteristics

26. European invasion was later than in other comparable areas so settlers had at their disposal the full tools of the Industrial Revolution to alter the landscape as their cultural backgrounds has seen them see fit

27. Not only did they have great technological ability to change the environment but they were uniquely ignorant of this environment • this has resulted in drastic changes to our environments and numerous “environmental problems” • Steve Dovers – we are still settling Australia

28. Opposite land! “Because Australia is on the opposite side to the world, the things that happened there are just the opposite from what happens in our country.” D.G Green c1924 Little People of far off lands,No.11 – Our Ireland Cousins, Leeds, Arnold

29. rare conservatory plants were commonplace; the appearance of light green meadows lured squatters into swamps where their sheep contracted rot, trees retained their leaves and shed their bark instead, the more frequent the trees the more sterile soil, the birds did not sing, the swans were black, the eagles white, the bees stingless, some mammals had pockets, others laid eggs, it was warmest on the hills and coolest in the valleys, even the blackberries [wild raspberries] were red, and to crown it all the greatest rogue may be converted into the most useful citizen; such is Terra Australis (Martin 1838: 123)

31. Great myths about the Australian environment • Rain would follow the plough • Advantages of tree clearing • “Australia unlimited”

34. Australia unlimited: population myths Another very good example of myths about the Australian environment and the vilification of those who dared expose this is myths is the story of Australia’s first Professor of Geography Griffith Taylor In the 1920s he had the audacity to question the views that Australia’s population growth was essentially unlimited and was hounded out of the country as a result.

35. Advantages of tree clearance In 1876 the NSW Anglican Minister William Branwhite Clarke condemned the “murderous practice of ring barking”. He whipped up a storm of opposition and had cited at him the beneficial effects of clearing such as the spontaneous appearance of springs and rivulets on ring barked properties as proof of the quick and positive effects of these “improvements”. Such critics did not understood that these were actually the warning signs of dryland salinity

36. Small group exercise • Form a group of 4 or 5 making sure you don’t know anyone else in the group • Discuss the 1926 road rule article on the back of your tut list form in week 1 • Imagine it is the year 2070 and in your old people’s home you are reflecting on the great advances that have occurred to make societies so much better at managing the environment • What is the biggest single new “rule” (akin to the new road rule in 1926 of the white line down the middle that made roads “work”) that has made society-environment relationships “work”?

37. Write in your learning portfolio for this lecture • Your 2070 “road rule” for the environment and the keys required to make this rule actually work

38. Panel this Wednesday What are the key society-environment-resource issues around the world

41. Complex global interactions between resources, environment and societies - egs • What forces are at work in many developing nations that petrol and Coke Cola can be cheaper per litre than safe drinking water?

42. Week 2 Tutorial Your short half page summary needs to very briefly outline: • What do you want out of this course • What do you bring with you to this course • What you think are the key factors for making a good discussion • How do you learn best - how are you going to achieve your personal Galtha? • Your response to the National Museum Exercise • Your thoughts on the proposed assessment

43. Importance of tutorials • Opportunity to develop skills in discussing ideas and learning from each other • Importance of listening - Inuit story on listening being twice as important – reason we have two ears but only one mouth • You need to come to the tuts with an open mind, with an attitude that you can learn something from everyone else in the class, ready to express your ideas without putting anyone else down, • “Minds are like a parachute they only work when they are open”

45. Introductory field trip for SRES students - Saturday 5 March • Join members of Professional Associations (Environment, Foresters, Planners)to discuss plans for catchment restorationafter 18 Jan 2003 fires • Hear how ANU staff & students are working with ACT agencies and community groups • Free transport provided:depart SRES 9.45am, return 4.15pm • Sign up at SRES reception (Bldg 48)by 4 March • Bring: lunch, drinking water, fieldwear,as many questions as you like!