Living with Fire People, Nature and History in Steels Creek by Christine Hansen and Tom Griffiths (CSIRO Publishing, 2012). ISBN: 9780643104792 On 23 November 2012, a new book by Christine Hansen and Tom Griffiths was launched in one of the communities that suffered on Black Saturday.  Entitled Living with Fire: People, nature and history in Steels Creek (CSIRO Publishing), the [...]

Nicolas Rothwell writes about Mike Smith’s forthcoming book, The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts: HALF a decade ago it became clear to Mike Smith, the bright star of Australian desert archaeology  that the time had come for him to pause, to rein in his unending field research in remote and windswept places. It was time for him to retreat [...]

2013 National Museum of Australia Student Prize for History of Australian Science or Australian Environmental History Deadline for Submission: 30 November 2012 The National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science through its National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science invite submissions for the 2013 biennial National Museum of Australia Student Prize [...]

Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System: 50 Years of Influence (UNSW Press), edited by Marcus Haward and Tom Griffiths, has been named a joint winner in the category of Tertiary Scholarly Resource in the Australian Educational Publishing Awards 2012. The co-winner in this category was Australian Poetry Since 1788, edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert [...]

Listen to a radio program on Australian forester E. H. F. Swain. This program is based on the work of John Dargavel, Gregory Barton, Brett Bennett and Keven Frawley. EHF Swain, born 1883, was a forester and an early conservationist. A passionate man who attracted enemies and acolytes in equal measure, he battled the development [...]

Tom Griffiths is the W K Hancock Professor of History at the Australian National University and has written a history of Antarctica entitled Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica. In January this year he joined the centennial voyage to Mawson’s huts in Antarctica. Tom’s books and essays have won prizes in literature, history, science, politics [...]

Lecture series with humanist scholar David Lowenthal 3-19 September 2012 We are recording the lectures and linking to the audio files below as they become available: Monday 3 September, 5-6 pm: Thinking with Islands: An Overview of the Work of David Lowenthal, followed by a small reception. Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, [...]

By Emily O’Gorman Available now: http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/21/pid/6650.htm Flood Country examines changing understandings of the rivers, floods and floodplains of the Murray-Darling Basin since 1850. It examines many tensions, ranging from early exchanges between Aboriginal people and settlers about the dangers of floods, through to long running disputes between graziers and irrigators over damming floodwater, and conflicts [...]