Day-to-day variations in nearshore bar patterns on a small sandy beach through a lunar tidal cycle

Nearshore water circulation and bar patterns at Coledale, New South Wales, were surveyed daily over thirty-six consecutive days, from 3 November to 8 December 1978, to identify sequences of changes that might occur in response to spring-to-spring tide cycles of fourteen days, changing barometric and wind conditions associated with the passage of anticyclonic weather systems across the coast, and day to day variation in the nearshore wave regime. During the survey the bar patterns tended to vary from transverse bars, through a composite arrangement incorporating longshore and transverse bars, to a longshore bar pattern as the tide changed from its spring to neap tide phase. However, this sequence was too brief to unequivocally establish variations in nearshore bar pattern that might be attributed to the fourteen day, spring-to-spring tide cycle. Nevertheless, morphologic changes occurring in response to wave regime fluctuation at Coledale were broadly in accord with studies from elsewhere by Dolan et al. (1979, 1982), and Clarke and Eliot (1982, 1983) in that bars and rips were systematically distributed along the beach. At Coledale, bars tended to relocate approximately 0.4 and 0.75 of the distance along the beach from its southern end. The preferred bar spacing closely matches hypothetical standing waves trapped between the headlands of the Coledale embayment. Temporally, the nearshore morphology is highly responsive to wave regime changes such that, as primary breaker heights decrease and remain below H_max=1.0m, the bar pattern changes from longshore through mixed to transverse bar patterns within three to five days. On one occasion the bar pattern switched from a longshore to a transverse bar pattern within twenty-four hours.     

London-Bahrain Archaeological Expedition: 1994 and 1995 excavations at Saar, Bahrain

The long-term aim of the project is to excavate the entire central area of the Dilmun settlement. During the 1994 and 1995 seasons a further twelve buildings were excavated, most of them located along the main arteries of the settlement. A resistivity survey, followed by selective excavation, determined the size and extent of the site. A well excavated on the eastern flank provided valuable information about the level of Bahrain's aquifers in the Early Dilmun period.     

NATO expansion: ‘a policy error of historic importance’

European security depends on the effective collaboration of the five major powers; it will be undermined by the extension of NATO, a policy driven by US domestic politics. The main threats to security are: the breakdown of political and economic stability; unintended nuclear proliferation and/or failure of the START process; Russia's evolving political and territorial aspirations. All three will remain marginal as long as Russia is constructively engaged with the West. NATO expansion threatens that engagement. It is seen by all strands of Russian opinion as violating the bargain struck in 1990 and will likely lead to the withdrawal of cooperation. Invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic cannot be rescinded, but the consequences can be mitigated by refraining from integrating them into NATO's military structure, by ceasing to insist that NATO membership is open to all, and by perpetuating the de facto nuclear‐weapons‐free zone that presently exists in Central and Eastern Europe. Britain's stance could be pivotal.     

In Loving Memory of Mary Belshaw,May McRidge,and the Nyungar People of the Badjaling Mission, 1930–1954

Using examples from his family and religious history, Patrick O’Farrell analysed the transition from Irish emigrant to assimilated colonial in what was perceived as vacant land. Like O’Farrell, this article will also use family history to address the issues of memory, religion, and assimilation. The Irish weaver Mary Belshaw (1879–1960) came to Australia in 1913 and was instrumental in the emigration of her family to Australia during the 1920s. She worked as a Protestant missionary among Aboriginal Australians from 1915, until her retirement in 1953. Although the grave she shares with her co‐worker May McRidge (1882–1943) bears the words “Ever remembered by what she has done,” her story was largely forgotten by her family. In 1986, the Nyungar people erected a memorial stone to Belshaw and McRidge and the thirty‐nine Nyungar families who lived at the Badjaling Mission in Western Australia from 1930 to 1954. This article will address the wider issues in twentieth‐century Australia which contributed to the neglect of the story by Belshaw's Irish Australian family and then led to its recovery. It will reveal how an Irish heritage was rediscovered because the story lived within a Nyungar community who had survived terra nullius and assimilation policies to return to their land at Badjaling.     

Australian Coastal Management and Climate Change

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised public awareness of the need to consider climate change in coastal management and gained international recognition when it received a joint award of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The raised awareness of climate change surrounding the work of the IPCC was in large part responsible for the focus of the recent Australian national inquiry into coastal management in the context of potential climate change impacts on the coast, conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts. In the same year the then Minister of Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong, and the Department of Climate Change released a major government report Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coast and set up a national Coasts and Climate Change Council to provide advice to the government. This paper provides a review and analysis of the extent to which climate change issues, within the context of the broader global change debate, have influenced Australian coastal management through its legislation, policies and practice. In particular, the paper focuses on the impact of recent national reports and state government legislative and policy changes and draws conclusions on future directions for Australian coastal management.