South Australia is a good place to consider anew the geographies of Australian wheat as it provides the setting for Meinig’s classic work On the Margins of the Good Earth: the South Australian wheat frontier 1869-1884. This presentation will provide an overview of research in which we approach wheat with an additional set of spatial lenses; culture/nature, mobility/friction and transformation. Most of the examples come from New South Wales but, as will be demonstrated, the scale of this analysis is simultaneously molecular and global.
This seminar is co-hosted by NIRRA and the Hawke Research Institute.
Speaker Bio
Professor Lesley Head is an Australian Laureate Fellow and the Director of the Australian Centre for Cultural Environment Research at the University of Wollongong. Her research interests focus on long term changes in the Australian landscape and the interactions of both prehistoric and contemporary peoples with these environments. Professor Head is the author of numerous publications including Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Change (Arnold, London, 2000) and Second Nature. The history and implications of Australia as Aboriginal landscape. (Syracuse University Press, New York, 2000).
