Cirrus@Austlit

'This article explores an orientation to nature in fin de siècle Tasmania. I argue that this orientation drew upon a romantic tradition to support a sympathetic environmental consciousness among settlers. This consciousness was apprehended through the public work of wilderness photographers like John Watt Beattie. The explication of such a culture of sympathetic environmental consciousness through the archive of Beattie himself offers an alternative to existing accounts of the development of conservation ideology and environmentalism in the Australian colonies in the late nineteenth century.' (Publication abstract)

'A rich life story well-told can be one of the most effective ways of reflecting on a particular period. This book is precisely that. In the life story of Fred Rose, Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt offer a rich account of intersecting themes in modern Australian history,including the appeal and growth of communism during the interwar years to a climax in the mid–late 1940s, prior to its suppression and division in the 1950s; the emergence of the discipline of anthropology in Australia, and the patterns of politics and intellectual assumptions surrounding early studies of Aboriginal groups; relations of race and colonial power, including in the frontier town of Darwin before the Second World War; the rise of Canberra during the Second World War and its extending power over the states through war and Cold War; and the inescapable international currents of ideology of the twentieth century in Australian politics and culture.' (Introduction)