Nancy Cushing

Platypus diplomacy: animal gifts in international relations

Abstract Making use of government archives, media coverage and family biography, this paper examines a little studied aspect of human-animal relations: the use of live native fauna as gifts for diplomatic purposes. Gifts of platypuses from the Australian government to their British and American allies in 1943 and 1947 reflect the status then enjoyed by iconic Australian fauna as a resource to be exploited in the national interest. The great scientific and popular interest generated by the platypuss distinctive characteristics imbued these animals with the cachet required to serve as a powerful statement of international goodwill. However, these same qualities made the platypus difficult to keep in captivity and its export a great challenge. This article examines the motives for platypus diplomacy, the process through which it was conducted and its significance for human-animal relations in Australia. Subsequent legislation has increased the protection of the platypus such that no further platypus diplomacy has been attempted and none have been exported for half a century. The use of the platypus to enhance Australias standing with other nations marked a transitional stage in the evolution of attitudes to Australian native fauna.

The serpent's stare meets the tourist's gaze: strategies of display at the Australian Reptile Park

This article explores approaches to the display and subsequent viewing of reptiles, a group of animals that simultaneously fascinate and repulse, through a case study of a wildlife attraction, the Australian Reptile Park (ARP), established in 1959 by charismatic naturalist Eric Worrell. From its inception, Worrell explicitly situated the parks activities within the domains of research, education and conservation. The park also provides venom from snake and spider species for the development of antivenom, positioning the park within the additional domain of public health. Today, the park assertively markets itself as a nationally significant tourist attraction. Through analysis of archival material spanning the parks 50-year history, interviews with former and current staff and associates, and ethnography of visitor experiences, this article provides an analysis of the strategies used to exhibit, interpret and make meaning of the captive animals at the ARP within shifting frameworks of presentation from modern to postmodern. Underpinning this analysis is a critical focus on the way the park has negotiated tensions between entertainment and education in the context of its role as a visitor attraction.

The “killer of the cane fields”: The social construction of the Australian coastal taipan

ABSTRACT This paper makes an original contribution to human–animal studies through the application of social construction theory to an iconic species of Australian snake, the coastal taipan. Little research attention using this approach has been focused on reptiles, and this study addresses this gap in the literature. The taipan has achieved a high level of notoriety in Australia. This paper seeks to understand why and how this has occurred. Drawing on a range of data derived from analysis of newspaper articles, popular magazines and books, and the scientific literature, four dominant narratives are identified: the taipan as an object of science and natural history, as social problem, as object quest and as celebrity. The insights gained from this study support the contention that the meanings made of Australias fauna are fluid, historically contextualised and socially constructed. In the specific case of the taipan, key individuals, including scientists, popular natural historians and snake men contributed greatly to the species’ construction, as did popular cultural forms such as newspapers and natural history books.

The interspecies entanglements of eating kangaroo, 1788–1850

Abstract The practise of eating kangaroo meat lay at the heart of a complex set of relationships amongst humans and other animals in the early colonial period in Australia. An exploration of this eco-cultural network demonstrates the often overlooked role of Australian native animals in the colonial project. The affordances offered by the members of this network to one another established relationships marked by differing degrees of dependence. It is argued that the meat of kangaroos played an important role in the establishment and expansion of the Australian colonies up to 1850, by which time colonial authorities had begun self-consciously to distance themselves from living kangaroos, maintaining a role only for captive and symbolic animals. This article has been peer reviewed.

No Vacancy: History and Meaning of Contemporary Ruins in a Regional Australian City

This study seeks to determine the value and use of contemporary ruins in the centre of Gosford, a regional city of New South Wales, Australia, where aspirations to progress are offset by stories and physical traces of abandonment and decay produced as a consequence of urban decline. In Gosford, local public sentiment typically positions decay as hindrance to progress, and representative of broader perceptions of the city’s stagnation. Yet these dilapidated structures are spaces of unconventional and transient historical significance. The condemned buildings occupy an uneasy space between commercial or civic functions, and rejuvenation or demolition, and are frequented by urban explorers, street artists and the city’s youth. This study will form the groundwork for an interactive audio geography tour in the public sphere.

“The Bird was a Valuable One”: Keeping Australian Native Animals, 1803–1939

Australian native, nonhuman animals at first intrigued and then disappointed newcomers as Australia was colonized by the British in the late eighteenth century. They were disparaged as unproductive and unpalatable oddities, killed as competitors to introduced species, or harvested as a source of fur and feathers for export. Focusing on the period 1803 to 1939, this paper examines one exception to this general pattern: the keeping of native animals as “pets.” Contemporary newspaper articles and advertisements are drawn upon to demonstrate that the Australian native fauna kept as pets were highly valued both emotionally by their “owners” and economically in the commercial trade and the courts. This valuation had few direct benefits to species overall because it remained focused on individual pets and was not shared with free-living animals, but it did keep alive an interest in native animals that greatly expanded in the mid-twentieth century.

The mysterious disappearance of maize: food compulsion and food choice in colonial New South Wales

Abstract Maize, one of the worlds most widely grown and eaten grains, is also one of its most controversial. Originating in Central America, its reception in other parts of the world was mixed—with some regional cultures embracing it as a staple while others reviled it as an inferior and even dangerous food. In the British penal colony of New South Wales, maize was readily grown and was incorporated into the rations issued to most colonists during the first decades of settlement but, over time, it came to be reserved for the worst of the convicts. With the ending of convict transportation in 1840, maize disappeared from the diet. Despite the suitability of the crop to local growing conditions, the loyal colonists sought to continue the foodways known in Britain. Indeed they were reluctant to incorporate what was still to them an identifiably foreign food, especially as maize retained connotations of the savage, the convict and the American. Potential variety, nutrition and efficiency in food production were sacrificed but the larger goal of perpetuating the best of Britain in the Antipodes was advanced.