“Soldier Struck”: Public Discourses, Women and American Servicemen in World War II South Australia

Robert Bedford (1874–1951), based in the isolated community of Kyancutta in South Australia, was a unique contributor to world geology, specifically in the field of meteorites and fossil archaeocyatha. Born Robert Arthur Buddicom in Shropshire, UK, he was an Oxford graduate who worked as a scientist in Freiberg, Naples, Birmingham and Shrewsbury as well as with the Natural History Museum, Kensington and the Plymouth Museum in the United Kingdom. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, 1899–1910. In 1915, Buddicom changed his surname to Bedford and relocated to South Australia. During the 1920s, Bedford expanded his geological interests with the establishment of a public museum in Kyancutta in 1929. This included material previously collected and stored in the United Kingdom before being sent to Australia. Bedford was very successful in collecting material from the distant Henbury meteorite craters in Australia's Northern Territory, during three separate trips in 1931–1933. He became an authority on meteorites with much Henbury material being sent to the British Museum in London. However, Bedford's work on, and collecting of, meteorites resulted in a serious rift with the South Australian scientific establishment. Bedford is best known amongst geologists for his five taxonomic papers on the superbly preserved lower Cambrian archaeocyath fossils from the Ajax Mine near Beltana in South Australia's Flinders Ranges with field work commencing in about 1932 and extending until World War II. This research, describing thirty new genera and ninety-nine new species, was published in the Memoirs of the Kyancutta Museum, a journal that Bedford personally established and financed in 1934. These papers are regularly referenced today in international research dealing with archaeocyaths.

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“Armed with Glamour and Collection Tins”: Femininity and Voluntary Work in Wartime South Australia, 1939–45

Labour History ◽

10.3828/jlh.2019.20 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 117 (1) ◽

pp. 109-134

Author(s):

Rachel Harris

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

South Australia ◽

Economic Benefits ◽

Home Front ◽

World War ◽

Voluntary Work ◽

The Social ◽

Close Relationship ◽

Voluntary Organisations ◽

Paid And Unpaid Work

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 500 voluntary organisations operated across South Australia, the largest with a membership of more than 30,000 women. Focusing on the voluntary activities of these South Australian women – which ranged from providing material comforts for servicemen to fundraising as participants in beauty and pin-up competitions – this article reveals that female voluntarism was a highly visible and ubiquitous part of the home front experience in Australia during World War II. Oral histories, press reports and archival sources show that female voluntary work was considered crucial to the upkeep of male morale, and thus functioned to ease concerns regarding the war’s impact on traditional gender relations. In practice, however, the close relationship between paid and unpaid work meant voluntarism did not necessarily limit the wartime gains of South Australian women. Instead the rhetoric used to describe women’s voluntary work obscured the social and economic benefits it often provided.

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A review of the subfamily Eliminiinae (Cirripedia: Thoracica: Austrobalanidae), including a new genus, Protelminius nov., from the Oligocene of New Zealand

Zootaxa ◽

10.11646/zootaxa.2349.1.3 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 2349 (1) ◽

pp. 39 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

JOHN S. BUCKERIDGE ◽

WILLIAM A. NEWMAN

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

New Zealand ◽

New Genus ◽

South Australia ◽

World War ◽

Phylogenetic Studies ◽

The Family ◽

The Status ◽

Restricted Region ◽

The Antarctic

The Elminiinae, comprising the four-plated taxa Elminius Leach, 1825 (one species), Austrominius Buckeridge, 1983 (six species), †Matellionius Buckeridge, 1983 (one species), a new Oligocene genus, †Protelminius (one species), plus the six-plated Hexaminius Foster, 1982a (two species), is reviewed and current geographic distributions of its species updated. While originally restricted to southern Australia, New Zealand and southernmost South America, one species, A. modestus (Darwin, 1854), was introduced to England during World War II and is now more widely distributed in Europe. The status of four questionable species of Austrominius, currently attributed to a restricted region within South Australia, is discussed. A re-evaluation of the subfamily’s morphology, triggered by recent phylogenetic studies, suggests it be removed from the lower Balanoidea and placed closest to the lower Tetraclitoidea, i.e. to a position envisaged for Elminius s.l. in Darwin (1854). The fossil record of the revised Austrobalanidae is re-evaluated in light of palaeogeography, indicating that the family may have originated during the Eocene in waters off what is now the Antarctic Peninsula.

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