Mount Shamrock: A Symbiosis of Mine and Settlement

Mount Shamrock township was one of the earliest gold mining towns in the Upper Burnett district of Queensland, Australia. A study of the township and associated industrial area demonstrates the integration of town and mine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper examines the relative permanence of the mining settlement and reveals a multifaceted landscape influenced not only by miners but by the women, children and other non-mining residents operating within distinct social and administrative frameworks.     

From Sorcery to Laboratory: Pandemics and Yanyuwa Experiences of Viral Vulnerability

The COVID‐19 pandemic has prompted renewed attention among health professionals, Aboriginal community leaders, and social scientists to the need for culturally responsive preventative health measures and strategies. This article, a collaborative effort, involving Yanyuwa families from the remote community of Borroloola and two anthropologists with whom Yanyuwa have long associations, tracks the story of pandemics from the perspective of Aboriginal people in the Gulf region of northern Australia. It specifically orients the discussion of the current predicament of ‘viral vulnerability’ in the wake of COVID‐19, relative to other pandemics, including the Hong Kong flu in 1969 and the Spanish flu decades earlier in 1919. This discussion highlights that culturally nuanced and prescribed responses to illness and threat of illness have a long history for Yanyuwa. Yanyuwa cultural repertoires have assisted in the process of making sense of massive change, in the form of past pandemics and the onset of sickness, the threat of illness with COVID‐19 and the attribution of ‘viral vulnerability’ to this remote Aboriginal community. The aim is to centralise Yanyuwa voices in this story, as an important step in growing understandings of Aboriginal knowledge of pandemics and culturally relevant and controlled health responses and strategies for communal well‐being.     

Coping with inflation: a fourteenth- century example

In England, between 1305 and 1311, all prices rose significantly. Historians have generally assumed that these high prices led to high profits that enabled landlords to enjoy a period of unparalleled prosperity. A detailed study, however, of the manorial and central accounts of Canterbury Cathedral Priory suggets that this traditional view may not be altogether correct.Inflation did bring with it increased revenues and stimulated extensive investment in agriculture and building. But the priory's regular expenses increased as fast, and, at times, even faster than the extra revenues. Consequently the financial situation of the priory slowly deteriorated. Before the inflation set in, the priory had more than one year's revenue in hand. By 1318 this surplus had been wiped out. Financial equilibrium was finally restored only by the massive sale of relics and the high receipts from oblations. Yet, once prices began to fall after 1326 the priory found that, although its receipts dropped, so did its expenses and it was able to keep within its income.     

The farming out of manors: a new look at the evidence from Canterbury cathedral priory

In the mid-thirteenth century the cathedral priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, was still farming out its manors for either a fixed money rent or a composite bundle of goods and money, but using its own monks as farmers. Although Prior Thomas Ringmere stopped this practice at a time of great indebtedness, his main concern was to improve monastic discipline by keeping the monks within the confines of the cloister. The adoption of direct management did not immediately lead to any increase in revenues. After the Black Death, Christ Church, like other monastic houses, was very unsure of what path to take and switched back and forth between farming out its manors and keeping them in hand, before finally moving over to wholesale leasing in the 1390s. As earlier, the form of management, whether direct or leasing, did not make any significant difference to the amount of money available to the central treasurers. What may have finally persuaded the monks of the advantages of leasing was the willingness of some local lords, who served as farmers, to lend the convent money and then repay themselves out of their farm.     

A disconnected journey

Driving is a dynamic human experience. The act of operating a vehicle, our movement across space and time, and the landscapes we pass afford rich sensory experiences. However, an increasingly controlled environment in the car and on roads is diminishing many sensuous encounters of orientation, sound, smell, touch, and even sight. The growing emphasis on transport infrastructure that prioritises speed, safety, comfort and convenience – dual carriageways, bypasses, ring roads, tunnels and sound barriers – is serving to disconnect us from our journeys as emplaced experiences. These changes are leading to starkly homogeneous journeys devoid of character that result in a loss of experience and place. In this paper we examine the sensory engagement and experiences of car journeys across landscapes, considering both urban and rural environments. Using case studies from different regions of Australia, we examine the bodily experiences of modern motoring. We suggest that there is no longer an immediate engagement with the landscape being traversed. With particular consideration of understanding places in an embodied way, we consider how modernised highways are disconnecting us from developing and maintaining meaning in our understanding of roads as a significant form of heritage, and as an important mechanism through which people experience heritage.     

Going Outside Together: Good Practice with Respect to the Inclusion of Disabled Children in Primary School Playgrounds

This paper reports some of the findings of research which has investigated the inclusion of disabled children in six primary school playgrounds in Yorkshire, in England. Initially the paper sets the policy context before moving on to discuss the importance of play for children, especially in a primary school setting and particularly for disabled children in such a setting. The inclusion of disabled children is discussed with respect to a series of social and organisational issues and the good practice identified relating to these issues. The social issues include the relationships the disabled children have with their peers and with the staff. The organisational issues relate to the individual routines, moving to a new school, the benefit of staff experience and training, encouraging activity in physical education lessons which can be translated in to the playground and the benefits of extra time outside for some disabled children. All these aspects can influence whether all the children can go outside together—an important underlying factor for the inclusion of disabled children in primary school playgrounds.