Divisible Governance: Making Gas-fired Futures during Climate Collapse in Northern Australia

Despite widespread acceptance that their emissions accelerate climate change and its disastrous ecological effects, new fossil fuel extraction projects continue apace, further entrenching fossil fuel dependence, and thereby enacting particular climate futures. In this article, we examine how this is occurring in the case of a proposed onshore shale gas “fracking” industry in the remote Northern Territory of Australia, drawing on policy and legal documents and interviews with an enunciatory community of scientists, lawyers, activists, and policy makers to illustrate what we call “divisible governance.” Divisible governance—enacted through technical maneuvers of temporal and jurisdictional risk fragmentation—not only facilitates the piecemeal entrenchment of unsustainable extraction but also sustains ignorance on the part of this enunciatory community and the wider public about the impacts of such extraction and the manner in which it is both facilitated and regulated. Such governance regimes, we suggest, create felicitous conditions for governments to defer, forestall, or eliminate their accountability while regulating their way further and further into catastrophic climate change. Countering divisible governance begins, we suggest, by mapping the connections that it fragments.

How do we distinguish termite stone lines from artefact horizons? A challenge for geoarchaeology in tropical Australia

Can we distinguish stone lines created by termite bioturbation from genuine artefact horizons? This is a challenge for field archaeology and geoarchaeology in northern Australia, where termites are abundant. We review published data to (a) present a model of the evolution of stone lines and (b) develop guidelines for recognizing these bioturbation products in archaeological contexts. In case studies, we examine Madjedbebe and Nauwalabila, two sites in northern Australia. The early occupation levels at these sites are pivotal to ideas about initial human occupation of the Australian landmass but there are claims these are unrecognized stone lines. Our assessment is that neither Madjedbebe nor Nauwalabila contain termite stone lines, although both sites may have complex geomorphic and taphonomic histories.

Geophysical investigations at the Anuru Bay trepang site: A new approach to locating Macassan archaeological sites in Northern Australia

This paper presents the results of a magnetometer survey and initial archaeological excavations of Macassan and Indigenous features conducted at the Anuru Bay Macassan trepang processing site. The archaeology of this area is complex, containing both material reflecting the Indigenous utilisation of coastal resources and the periodic visits of the Macassan trepangers from Indonesia. Despite a history of archaeological investigations on Macassan period sites (i.e. Clarke 1994; McKnight 1976; Mitchell 1994), geophysical survey has not previously been applied as part of these investigations. While Macassan sites may contain features amenable to conventional archaeological geophysics (such as iron trepang processing pots), additional potential exists for the application of magnetometry to locate features created through burning, as has been applied to Australian Indigenous sites (Bonhomme & Stanley 1985; Fanning et al. 2009; Moffat et al. 2008 & 2010; Stanley & Green 1976; Wallis et al. 2008) and international Indigenous sites (Abbot & Frederick 1990; Batt & Dockrill 1998; Jones & Munson 2005). The results of this study demonstrate that this approach is equally applicable to Macassan sites, opening up a new and potentially fruitful avenue for exploring the archaeology of this trade system.

Determining the age of paintings at JSARN-113/23, Jawoyn Country, central-western Arnhem Land plateau

Western Arnhem Land in northern Australia has the rare distinction, both at national and global scales, of containing a vast landscape of many thousands of rockshelters richly decorated with art, some of which was probably made tens of thousands of years ago, others as recently as a few decades ago. Yet the challenge remains as to how to date this art, how to find out how old it is. While relative dating methods have been commonly applied, in particular patterns of superimposition and changing faunal themes supposedly signalling changing environmental conditions, we still lack a clear understanding of the age of almost all the region’s art styles or conventions.Other chapters in this volume report direct dates for Arnhem Land art using radiocarbon determinations on beeswax figures with the likelihood that the ‘art event’, the time when a beeswax figure was made, is at most a few years different from the ‘carbon event’, the time of the last biological capture of atmospheric carbon, which is the actual date measured by radiocarbon. But many, in fact most, sites have no beeswax figures or other ways directly to date the art. Sometimes, as again reported in this volume, there is some indication of date when a radiocarbon determination is obtained on, for instance, charcoal in an archaeological deposit that can be related to the art. Often that route is also blocked: many a painted surface without beeswax figures is in no close relation to a deposit that might so be dated. What can be done then? Here we present results of investigations at a small rockshelter in Jawoyn Country, in the centralwestern part of the Arnhem Land plateau. Since its art cannot be directly dated, we follow a different path. In the first instance, we aim to understand the history, and antiquity, of the decorated rock surfaces, since the exposed surfaces of the boulder have undergone repeated transformations over a long time. Determining when now-decorated rock surfaces were formed can give us maximum possible ages for the art, since we can date when the surface first was available. Taken with related archaeological evidence from deposits, such as ochre fragments with signs of use, we can arrive at some indications for the age of the art, or at least how the range of possible dates is constrained. This approach is akin to that used at other sites in Jawoyn Country (see Chapters 11 and 15)

An Interesting Case of Melioidosis

Melioidosis also termed as Whitmore’s disease is an infectious disease which is caused by bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei.Southeast Asia and northern Australia are endemic to this diseases which is predominantly transmitted in tropical climates.The coarse of disease involves multiple system involvement most common being lungs and it is mistaken as tuberculosis in many times.the other system involved are musculoskeletal and abscess over internal organs in spleen ,liver.This is a case report of 20 year old male presented with history of fever, swelling over multiple sites of the body, reddish discharge from the swelling, with history of planting trees in the past. Routine investigation showed leucocytosis and multiple abscess in liver and spleen .Blood culture showed positive for burkholderia pseudomallei .started treatment with meropenam and linezolid for 2 weeks and patient resolved from symptoms completely and discharged. Here we discuss about an clinical coarse and treatment response to bacteria burkholderia pseudomallei.

Australian Melolonthini (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae): a sixth species of Pseudholophylla Blackburn, 1911, and notes on the other known species

The genus Pseudholophylla Blackburn, 1911 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae: Melolonthini) is reviewed and males of a sixth species, P. hurai new species, are described and differentiated from males of the remaining species. The only known female, of P. lepidoptera Blackburn, 1912, is described and illustrated. The genus occurs across northern Australia in areas of savanna, hot semi-arid or hot desert and specimens are collected rarely.

First records of Trichoptera from Timor-Leste, including seven newly described species

Several collections of adults of the caddisfly order Trichoptera were studied from Timor-Leste, the nation-state comprising the eastern region of the island of Timor. The specimens represent ten families: Hydrobiosidae (2 species), Glossosomatidae (1 species), Hydroptilidae (3 species), Philopotamidae (5 species), Hydropsychidae (3 species), Polycentropodidae (1 species), Psychomyiidae (3 species), Xiphocentronidae (1 species), Lepidostomatidae (1 species), Leptoceridae (3 species). Among the 24 species listed, 16 were identified as established Southeast Asian species. Among these are two very widespread species, one extending further east to New Guinea, northern Australia, and New Caledonia and another that was described from Fiji. An additional seven species are newly described here: Ulmerochorema hatubuilico sp. nov., Hydroptila bellisi sp. nov. and H. aileuensis sp. nov., Chimarra lawaliu sp. nov., C. multidentata sp. nov., C. sameana sp. nov. and C. timorensis sp. nov. Hitherto, the genus Ulmerochorema Mosely was believed to be an Australian endemic. A xiphocentronid specimen could be identified to genus Drepanocentron only.