Settlement and land alienation in Western Australia: the shire of Denmark

The pattern of initial settlement in the Shire of Denmark in Western Australia is mapped using land registrations of the date of the first lease and first freehold grant. Settlement started near the main rivers before World War I and accelerated with Group Settlements of the 1920s. However, many Group settlers abandoned their land before 1940. Little development occurred until in-migration during the last 30 years. Local persistence of families was estimated from records of land tenure, rate books, electoral rolls, postal directories and interviews. The rate of persistence of families on each block varied considerably. Geographical expansion of holdings among successive generations of founding families reflects more general processes such as clone colonization in which, by mutual support and intra-family co-operation, families undertake short-distance migration to newly acquired—often abandoned—holdings. In this way, settlers have gradually created a continuously settled landscape in this once densely forested area of south-western Australia. Land alienation has occurred since 1900 in the study area of 217 surveyed lots, or ‘blocks’ which are, on average, 150 acres (70 hectares) in size. The geographical pattern of initial settlement comprised isolated sites, occupied in the wake of early lumbering, rather than a linear frontier.     

Marine geophysical investigation of the inshore coastal waters of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has been subject to significant maritime influences throughout its 9000-year known human history. In 1997 the University of Ulster in partnership with the Environment and Heritage Service (DOE, NI) embarked on a programme of seabed mapping in an attempt to record the submerged and buried archaeological resource using a suite of geophysical equipment including a side-scan sonar, a Chirp sub-bottom profiler and a proton precession magnetometer. The geophysical research programme has successfully imaged 80 19th- and 20th-century wrecks, and 20 targets of further archaeological potential. These data will aid the production of wreck-prediction indices for the coastline of Northern Ireland based on site formation processes and site stability. This information will make valuable additions to both Sites and Monuments Records and to the shipwreck database currently under consideration at the University of Ulster.