Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart's 2014 photographic exhibition Speaking About Place: The Nocturne Project sought to capture a sense of place in regional towns throughout Queensland. Incorporating both the physical landscape and the virtual space of social media, the project spoke to themes of regional art, identity and digital connectedness, in order to understand how a sense of place is developed and continually renegotiated through individual experience. Within the context of understanding regional identity and place promotion, this article considers whether regional-based art is able to highlight a shifting sense of place, facilitate social cohesion and contribute to the development and enrichment of local cultural spaces.

Almost 5,000 Italians were interned in Australia during World War II, a high proportion of them Queensland residents. Internment was a pivotal experience for the Italian community, both locally and nationally, complicating Italian Australians’ sense of belonging to their adopted country. Through an examination of two migrant autobiographical narratives of internment, Osvaldo Bonutto's A Migrant's Story and Peter Dalseno's Sugar, Tears and Eyeties, this article explores the impact of internment on the experience and articulation of cultural and civic belonging to Australian society. It finds that internment was a ‘trial’ or ‘transitional’ phase for these internees’ personal and civic identities, and that the articulation of these identities and sense of belonging is historically contingent, influenced by the shift from assimilation to multiculturalism in settlement ideology, as well as Italian Australians’ changing place in Australian society throughout the twentieth century.

Congratulations to the organisers of the ‘Unmasking Whiteness’ conference for their courage in putting on the first ever conference dealing specifically with Whiteness in Australia. It does indeed take courage given that whiteness is, I have found, a disturbing and perturbing topic, not only to white people but also, I believe, to people of colour.

I'd therefore like to preface my paper by stating that I am speaking about my experience only, my life only, my interpretation only. I speak only for myself. I definitely am not speaking on behalf of others, especially other Aboriginal people. I state this up front, for just as whites who question their whiteness are often considered traitors to their race, I have found the same reaction when I have said to certain Aboriginal people who misunderstand my point and my pain: ‘I'd really like to be white, for a change’. Such a statement has been seen as a betrayal and a violation of Aboriginality when in fact it is a cry from the heart which has been ravaged by racism.

Thus should anybody, black or white, be offended by my remarks, I take no responsibility for your interpretation, only for my intention, which is to share rather than to offend. I would also like to say that my paper is not an academic one, for which I make no apologies.

Brisbane is the kind of city that if it did not exist would have to be invented — and indeed it has by many of its writers. Its history of settlement and its political conservatism of the slash, burn and bulldoze variety has urged writers like Sam Watson in his novel The Kadaitcha Sung to depict it as a place of punishment, violence, racism and red-necked parochialism. The same sense of oppression informs David Malouf's mixed nostalgic references to the city as a place of beauty and boredom, a city you can love and hate in Johnno. In similar vein, Jessica Anderson in Tirra Lirra by the River, Angelika Fremd in The Glass Inferno and Janette Turner Hospital in both short stories and novels, depict Brisbane as a place one needs to leave but also a place where epiphanies are possible, and where the past haunts the present with a ferocious insistence. For novelists Rosie Scott, Janette Turner Hospital and Venero Armanno, Brisbane is simultaneously Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Many writers depict Brisbane as a great place to grow up in but you wouldn't want to live there — unless you are Hugh Lunn. Brisbane has been, and arguably still is by some writers, seen both favourably and unfavourably as a provincial backwater, unsophisticated and straight — still a frontier town in the popular and literary imagination if not in reality, a place where it is likely that you will know somebody who knows somebody you know. This is pointed out repeatedly by John Birmingham, author of the whimsical He Died With a Felafel in his Hand, by way of a distinguishing feature of flat life in Brisbane in contrast to other (Southern) capitals. In Brisbane, Birmingham writes:

In 1921, Jack Lindsay wrote from Brisbane of Nietzsche's assertion ‘that the academic virtue is sleep, i.e., narcotisation’. A common academic and non-academic indulgence in remembering Brisbane is the narcotic of Queensland's extreme difference: a state of exceptional boredom and brutality. It is widely assumed that, for most of its history, Queensland was a sleepy backwater; its capital the country town described by a late nineteenth century visitor: ‘Brisbane is quite a pretty town, to be sure, but it bores you to death.’ Dismissive characterisations of Queensland coarsened as a result of Bjelke-Petersen's ascendency. If you were not bored to death by its cultural wastelands, you could be beaten close to it in the boorish badlands patrolled by his pigs. The crazed Dane fed the chooks while watching cranes rise over this animal farm, apparently untouchable in his Elsinore:

What follows is an edited transcript of a panel session entitled ‘Reading and Writing the War’, which was held at the Warana Writers' Festival at the Old Customs House, Brisbane, in September 1995. The moderator was Patrick Buckridge (PB), then Director of the Queensland Studies Centre, and the panellists were Estelle Runcie Pinney (ERP), Don Munro (DM), Val Vallis (VV), and David Rowbotham (DR).

Every year, over 30,000 international students study in regional Australia, in urban centres that lack the intercultural resources and cross-cultural literacies of metropolitan cities. The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) supports and brings together over 26,000 students studying both on campus and online, including a diverse international student population of 7,000 students. The university's enrolment of international on-campus students is the second highest in the Regional Universities Network, of which USQ is a member. This article analyses the experiences of international students as they encounter an unfamiliar Australian culture in the context of studying in Toowoomba, the regional city where USQ has its main campus. These students’ experiences of engaging, becoming familiar with and mastering new and unfamiliar cultural practices and academic literacies provides insight into the processes of acculturation that students undergo as they make their transition to life in regional Australia, both at university and in Queensland communities.

No matter how excellent a framework for a new program is or how great it looks on paper, the challenge is how to ‘translate’ it into practice in such a way that it is an asset to the paid staff, volunteers and children involved. In this article, experiences of program development and delivery at Criss Cross Consultancy (CCC), where programs to empower vulnerable people are designed, are shared. With reference to the Good Practice Framework, the article draws on extensive program management experience to explore how good communication can support the effective design, implementation and delivery of programs. It illustrates the link between practice, meaningful communication and inclusion. Meaningful communication enables program content to be designed and adjusted to meet the needs of staff and children; shared decision-making to build co-ownership; recognition of expertise and matching people to roles; and effective top-down and bottom-up communication practices that engage with everyone. These communication outcomes are explored and examples are provided to illustrate how meaningful communication underpins the success of translating a program idea into a reality.

An account of cultural policy-making in Queensland since the election of the Goss Labor government in 1989 requires revisiting the rise and fall of what Stevenson (2000) has called the ‘cultural policy moment’ in Australia.

This period, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, was characterised by political and scholarly interest in the civic and symbolic utility of culture, and in the outcomes achieved through its management. The cultural policy moment was produced simultaneously within government, the cultural sector and the academy. Within government, it was characterised by a new and highly visible interest in managing culture and (through it) the citizenry (O'Regan 2002). Within the academy, the cultural policy project was raised by Tim Rowse in Arguing the Arts (1985) and developed by the Institute for Cultural Policy Studies at Griffith University through the work of Ian Hunter, Tony Bennett, Toby Miller, Colin Mercer, Jenny Craik, Tom O'Regan and Gay Hawkins in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Stuart Cunningham's Framing Culture (1992) focused existing debate within Australian cultural studies over the place of policy-based approaches within the discipline.

An increase in the incidence of leprosy among North Queensland Aboriginal people in the late 1930s gave rise to fears that the disease might spread and threaten the white population. This concern resulted in an uninhabited offshore island being selected as a leper colony that was exclusively for blacks: it became a place to which Indigenous people suffering from leprosy were forcibly transported, isolated and treated. Queensland's right to take such action was enshrined in law by the Leprosy Act of 1892 and subsequently by the Public Health Act of 1937 which, while repealing the Leprosy Act, retained the main elements of the earlier legislation.

English common law was applied in the New South Wales penal colony when it was founded by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788. Phillip’s second commission granted him sole authority to appoint coroners and justices of the peace within the colony. The first paid city coroner was appointed in 1810 and only five coroners served the expanding territory of New South Wales by 1821. To relieve the burden on coroners, justices of the peace were authorised to conduct magisterial inquiries as an alternative to inquests. When the Moreton Bay settlement was established, and land was opened up to free settlers, justices were relocated from New South Wales to the far northern colony. Nonetheless, the administration of justice, along with the function of the coroner, was hindered by issues of isolation, geography and poor administration by a government far removed from the evolving settlement. This article is about death investigation and the role of the coroner in Moreton Bay. By examining a number of case studies, it looks at the constraints faced by coroners, deaths due to interracial violence and deaths not investigated. It concludes that not all violent and unexplained deaths were investigated in accordance with coronial law due to a paucity of legally qualified magistrates, the physical limitations of local conditions and the denial of justice to Aborigines as subjects of the Crown.

The Queensland Emergency Services Cadets Program (ESCP) is a unique experiential education program that engages with young people aged from twelve to seventeen years, the majority of whom face the particular challenges of living in rural, remote and urban disadvantaged communities. The ESCP aims to build capacity and resilience in individuals, families and communities by providing young people with opportunities to develop skills, increase confidence, foster greater connection and belonging to community, and provide a sense of purpose through emergency preparedness. This article explores how ESCP positively impacts on cadets’ lives by delivering a capacity-building program that teaches disaster response and emergency management skills; allows all participants to enter on an even platform; draws on the cooperation and support of multiple emergency services, local councils, schools, businesses, community resources and dedicated volunteers; and is provided at no cost to participants. By positioning young people as capable and competent, and supporting them to learn and demonstrate their skills and knowledge within their community, the article argues the ESCP delivers specific and tangible developmental outcomes for young people and their communities. Specific outcomes discussed include the empowerment of cadets to become self-determining, the strengthening of the community's collective knowledge and the promotion of a positive image of young people within their community.

The paper takes as its point of departure the proposition that for the Liberals to return as a significant electoral force in Queensland state politics they need to be far more successful in metropolitan electorates than in the 1983–92 period.

The extent of the electoral advancement in the greater metropolitan area in 1995 is examined by a classification of seat types and by voting patterns in the recent past. It is found that such success was variable, heavily dependent upon the legacy of the National urban vote (1989–92) and the propensity of erstwhile ALP voters to opt for Others, rather than the Liberals when registering their primary vote.

The terms of reference for the SEQ 2001 Project were to come up with policies and processes for managing the region. The author's assignment as Director of the SEQ 2001 Project was completed in July 1993 with the release for comment of a set of policy reports including a report on institutional arrangements.

We women of the twenty-first century owe the early women seekers of female franchise a considerable debt. Without their intellectual and sometimes physical bravery, we would not have the range of privileges we now take for granted as our right.

Since the education explosion in mid-nineteenth century England, when astute publishers began to capitalise upon a newly created and burgeoning market, Australia has always featured prominently in fiction aimed at children and adolescents. Those British children who initially made up the bulk of the reading audience for books set in Australia were eager to read episodic stories set in exciting countries far from home, and an Australian setting offered a glamorous backdrop for tales of high adventure. Moreover, it appears that while the nineteenth-century British reading public perceived Australia as an exotic place, then Queensland was quintessentially so. A disproportionate number of early tales about life in Australia is set in this colony, most often in the outback regions, but also in the vicinity of the coastal tropics. Nineteenth-century Queensland was viewed by the British, as well as by many Australians, as a remote outpost of Great Britain; it was commonly thought of as the least urbanised, the least “civilised”, the least industrialised and perhaps the most remote of all the regions of Australia. It was widely seen as an area of great and diverse (if also mysterious and desolate) natural beauty, of rural innocence as yet unpolluted by dark, satanic mills (even Brisbane was a sleepy, sprawling country town in picturesque contrast to the bustling southern cities of Sydney and Melbourne). Children's novelists capitalised on the mystique of Queensland, archetypal frontier colony, by creating a cluster of tales showing what it was like to be a Queensland kid.

In the 1830s and 40s, in the absence of any real law enforcement body, uncontained conflict between settlers and Aborigines in what was to become southern Queensland resulted in a spiral of violence that was at times gratuitous. Some whites killed blacks out-of-hand. For their part, Aborigines retaliated when and how they could. One settler, for example, told how in a little over two years fifteen of his shepherds had been murdered and whole herds of his animals had been butchered simply for the fat their kidneys contained.

The dangerous uncertainties and complications of George Speight's coup in Fiji have been partly formed by his association with white-collar crime in Queensland. Speight's involvement in at least one fraudulent financial scheme in Brisbane helped to shape the events leading up to his seizure of parliament and kidnapping of the elected government of Fiji on 19 May 2000. This parody ofa coup, led by Speight (a failed businessman with no military experience) and a small contingent of ascetic SAS-styled soldiers, soon to be joined by a gaggle of rustics and Suva's lumpenproletariat, was a spectacle of the unexpected. Speight's adventurism today imposes immense costs on the people of Fiji. His financial schemes when he was living in Brisbane left a number of victims in Queensland.