Tourism and Foreign Investment in Australia: Trends,Prospects and Policy Implications

Processes of internationalisation and structural economic change have had profound impacts on the pattern of regional economic activity in Australia. The 1980s was a decade of rapid growth in foreign investment, reoriented to the property and services sector, including tourism. It was also a boom time for international tourism, which emerged as the nation's leading export industry. In addition to the national gateway city of Sydney, the rapidly growing coastal cities of Gold Coast and Cairns in Queensland emerged as major international tourism destinations underpinned by significant levels of foreign investment, particularly from Japan. The 1980s boom years for tourism and foreign investment are revised and raises policy implications raised for the longer-term development of tourism and the role of foreign investment.     

EUROPEAN PALAEOLITHIC ART - TYPICAL OR EXCEPTIONAL?

Summary: The recent discovery of the first Palaeolithic art object from China is discussed in the context of relevant Chinese and other Asian evidence, and considered within the framework of current models of very early art evolution as they pertain to Eurasia. It appears that these are biased in favour of selective evidence from western Europe, by ignoring that in most regions where Pleistocene art exists it is largely, if not entirely, non-figurative. It is also argued that any present distributional, statistical and compositional characteristics of the surviving evidence must not be considered to have cultural significance, unless there is clear evidence to that effect.     

Deep Regolith Weathering on the Summit Surface of the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges,South Australia: a Contribution to the ‘Laterite’ Debate

Chemical and mineralogical analyses of samples from a 102 m deep borehole and from road cuts on the summit surface of the Mount Lofty Ranges near Willunga Hill, are used to assess critically the view that the regolith here developed as a result of tropical, so‐called ‘lateritic’ weathering processes that developed a standard ‘laterite’ profile of great antiquity. There is no evidence of a former surface crust that comprises the upper part of a ‘standard laterite profile’. Moreover, there is no dramatic variation in chemical composition down the profile, with largely in situ localised weathering transformations explaining mineralogical variability. The presence of 2:1 layer silicates and the absence of gibbsite do not favour the operation of former intense tropical weathering, but the possible presence of chloritised smectite may have inhibited gibbsite formation. An iron‐depleted pallid zone does not occur at depth in the profile, but is present on the plateau margin. Many of the weathering features exposed in the road cuts can be explained in terms of modifications and developments under environmental conditions similar to those of the present, arguing against the view that the summit surface and its associated weathering mantle have been preserved in pristine form since the Mesozoic.