A Chance Encounter with Tenzin

It was a pure coincidence. On October 5th, 2013, we were on our way from Shigatse to Mt Qomolangma Base Camp for the spectacular view of the top of the world.Unfortunately, the weather was horrible： in early October, it was supposed to be clear and fair in the area around Mt. Qomolangma, but in that couple of days it was all stormy.     

The Snub: Robert Menzies and the Melbourne Club

Bart Ziino’s scholarship illuminated some of the complex reasons behind thousands of Australian men’s failure to enlist for military service in the First World War. This article explores the corresponding complexity of the establishment’s response to non-enlistment. It focuses on the case of the barrister and politician Robert Menzies and the Melbourne Club, to investigate how elite gentlemen’s clubs used the concept of ‘fitness for membership’ to punish young, able-bodied non-enlistees by excluding and/or publicly criticising them. It shows that clubs’ treatment of such cases was inconsistent and internally contested, and argues that the apparently honourable discourse of loyalty that was such a fixture of elite groups in the 1920s and 1930s often masked arcane, less honourable agendas. It suggests that the establishment was more likely to punish men like Menzies who had offended doubly: not only by failing to enlist, but also by directly challenging establishment values and power.     

The Foundation of the Melbourne College of Divinity

This article provides the first substantial account of the foundation of the Melbourne College of Divinity in 1910. It reveals the ecclesiastical, academic, and civic perceptions of theology in Australia in the first decade of the twentieth century. The article sets the establishment of the College against the background of the modernisation of higher education, especially secularism and the exclusion of the teaching of divinity at the University of Melbourne. It demonstrates the roles played by several churches in the formation of the College, and traces its origin to early Protestant interdenominational cooperation. Although the College's architects failed in their aim of having divinity accepted within the University of Melbourne, and thereby ensuring theology was in constant dialogue with the wider academy, they succeeded in establishing high academic standards in theological education and facilitating ministerial formation in an Australian context.     

The Nunawading Messiah: James Fisher and Popular Millenarianism in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne

James Fisher (1832-1913), known as the "Nunawading Messiah," was the leader of a millenarian sect now virtually forgotten. This article describes the beliefs and practices of the sect, the Church of the Firstborn, which he led for nearly fifty years, first in Nunawading (Vic.) and later Wickepin (W.A.). From limited sources, the development of the sect is outlined, noting the eighteenth-century English background from which it drew inspiration and the Christian Israelite traditions which it followed to some degree. Fisher's attempt to succeed Wroe as an Angelic Messenger is detailed as is the public controversy of 1871 concerning Fisher's prophetic claims and alleged polygamy. An analysis of the reasons why Fisher was able to attract a following and retain it for so long is included. The final years of his life as the leader of a communal settlement in Western Australia is followed by a discus-sion of his place in the millenarian tradition in Australia and his sect is compared with millenarian behaviour generally.     

Gentrification in inner Melbourne: problems of analysis

Measurement and analysis of survey data for the period 1961–76 show that the concept of ‘gentrification’, borrowed from the British inner housing scene by local media and social scientists, does not capture the most salient features of the recent inner Melbourne experience. Serious inadequacies are revealed in the census data and alternative data sources are tapped. Positivist methods say nothing about the ‘meaning’ of inner city social changes, leaving room for interpretation based on the socio-political stance of the observer. This is seen in the attribution of motives for the ‘gentry's’ entry into inner Melbourne and for their environmental and political activities.