Patterns of Temporary Mobility in Australia: Evidence from the 1991 Census

While Census data are generally employed to examine permanent migration, they also provide a unique window on temporary population movements, a phenomenon largely neglected in Australia. Building on the work of Zelinsky, this paper outlines a conceptual framework for analysis of temporary mobility and reviews the strengths and limitations of the Census as a source of information. Data from the 1991 Australian Census are then used to analyse the incidence of temporary movements, the characteristics of temporary movers, and their spatial distribution. It is shown that temporary mobility is selective of certain groups and that there are substantial concentrations of temporary movers in both coastal and inland locations. By combining analysis of their origins with the attributes of their destinations, a preliminary typology of temporary population movement is proposed. The concluding section considers the implications of this form of mobility and identifies some avenues for further research.     

A Permian Barycrinus? Wachsmuth (Crinoidea,Cladida) from Timor

Donovan, S.K. &; Webster, G.D. December 2015. A Permian Barycrinus? Wachsmuth (Crinoidea, Cladida) from Timor. Alcheringa 40, 216–218. ISSN 0311-5518.

A crinoid pluricolumnal from Noil Simaam, Timor, is identified as Barycrinus? sp., the youngest member of this otherwise Mississippian genus. Identifying features of this robust specimen include a moderately broad, pentastellate lumen and pentamerism. Although likely a new species, preservation is too poor to warrant erection of a nominal taxon. The only coeval barycrinid, probably also Barycrinus?, was described from the Carnavon Basin, Western Australia.

Stephen K. Donovan [steve.donovan@naturalis.nl], Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Postbus 9517, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands; Gary D. Webster [webster@wsu.edu], School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2812, USA.     

‘Shrouded in Some Mystery’: The Governor General's Invitation and the 1983 Grenada Intervention

On 25 October 1983 the United States, supported by several Caribbean states, intervened militarily in the commonwealth Caribbean island of Grenada. Operation Urgent Fury followed the implosion of the Marxist-Leninist People's Revolutionary Government and execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several colleagues. This article examines the alleged request for external assistance made by the Grenadian governor general, Sir Paul Scoon. It will examine the discrepancies between Scoon's memoir account of the episode and the official record to reveal that Scoon made no such request. The origins of the request emerged from discussions between Caribbean and US officials and it was brought to fruition by the Barbadian prime minister, Tom Adams.     

SEPARATION,RETALIATION AND SUICIDE: MOURNING AND THE CONFLICTS OF YOUNG TIWI MEN

This paper describes some Tiwi conceptions of death, linking an important myth of the origins of death to an interpretation of the dynamics of Tiwi mourning. It argues that one part of the myth describes the psychological dangers of human responses to loss, in particular the dangers of destructive rage and self-destructive withdrawal, suicide. The mourning ceremonies facilitate the overcoming of these dangers and the re-integration of the individual into collective life in the course of a drawn-out process, a patterned dramatization of reactions to grief in collective action. The collective process of mourning is central to processes of psychological and social integration in Tiwi life. The paper then discusses a case of pathological mourning which led to the suicide of a young man, and sketches the impact of this death on a number of the younger male kinsmen of the deceased. The suicide was followed by a number of suicide attempts by these men. These attempts can be seen partly as manifestations of individuals' conflict with their surroundings, but also as manifestations of the collective process of adjustment to the death, in a sense as the culmination of the history of mourning in a family-group extending over more than twenty years. In conclusion, the paper briefly summarizes recent changes in Tiwi social life which have contributed to the precariousness of integration of young men, and to the emergence of the historically new pathological forms implied by the contemporary rise in the number of instances of suicide.