This booklet of songs and poems has been prepared as a souvenir for the National Railway Heritage Conference - Thinking Rail: Lessons from the Past, the Way of the Future,Tamworth, 28-30 September 2005.The conference was held as part of events associated with the 150th anniversary of the beginning of steam railways in NSW and immediately preceded the official opening of the Australian Railway Monument and Rail Journeys Museum, newly established at Werris Creek Railway Station. The material chosen draws attention to the rich contribution railways have made to Australian writing, music, photoqraphy, art and culture in general.

Today, what does 'New England' mean? The 2005 telephone directory lists nearly a hundred enterprises using the name, from 'New England Embroidery' to 'New England Tractors'. Half of them are in or around Armidale, but others are scattered through Uralla, Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Inverell and Moree, and as far south as Tamworth, Quirindi and Gunnedah. Obviously, the name has a living significance. It offers a sense of place reaching beyond any one town or district, which to the enterprising mind also means reaching an extended market. On the other hand, it has geographical limits. In the north, there is the Queensland border. On the western slopes the pleasant reaches of the Gwydir River throw up some feeble terminological competition. So we find 'Gwydir Glass', 'Gwydir Olives' and 'Gwydir Air'. There is no 'New England' beyond Moree. To the east, across the escarpment, the name is no use at all. There, the coastal rivers, the beaches and the ocean provide a sens of place for which the name is totally irrelevant. But within certain boundaries, 'New England' reigns supreme. It has a real existence in local imagination.

"There was also a very non-descript sort of a person, who, on enquiry I found to be one of the 'old gentlemen' for whose use and pleasure the schooner is more constantly employed than she should be; for it appears there are a number of these 'old gentlemen' who are called invalids, and for whom the country provides very comfortable quarters; amusement and food, and a free passage to and fro whenever they feel disposed to pay a visit to their friends or having some money, feel that they would like a little more extended recreation than they can obtain at their marine residence. The 'old gentleman' under notice may be thus described: - He was of low stature, very repulsive looking, dressed in an old swallow-tail coat that had no doubt at one time adorned a very genteel person, but which, under the present circumstances appeared very much out of place. His head was covered with an old cloth cap, and his feet were not covered with a very dilapidated couple (not pair) of shoes. He, too, had provided for himself, for under his arm was a bundle containing sundry scraps, the result very likely of the previous day's begging. This sketch will convey a very inadequate idea of this 'old gentleman', whose restlessness and imbecility were such to give one an idea of a wild animal confined within the limits of a few yards. The whole of the voyage down he scarcely remained stationary five minutes together." ('Mercury', 24 March 1870, p. 3.) ... This impression, made by a visitor to the Port Arthur Penal Establishment In 1870, refers to an emancipist pauper, an individual from the group forming the principal component of colonial Tasmania's aged-poor population, and the virtually exclusive component of that convict settlement's invalid depot. It is also representative of a group ideology, a 'mentalité', which defined the aged poor emancipist as undeserving of society's succour. While such thinking dominated post-transportation Van Diemen's Land, the management and perception of pauper invalids nevertheless underwent a profound transformation in this period. By 1901, in stark contrast to much of the preceding half century, invalid paupers were accepted and treated as a deserving part of Tasmanian society. Charitable institutions, once a cog in a repressive carcereal regime, became an integral element in a comprehensive health management system for the aged-poor. Many mechanisms played a role in this transformation. While the whole story is beyond the scope of this article, one facet, resistance to incarceration, contributed considerably to the process of social change.

As early as the 1870s and 80s it was common throughout parts of Australia for settlers to collect Aboriginal artefacts and curiosities of natural history -- stone axes, snake-skins, unusual feathers, egg-shells and so on -- bringing them home and putting them away in cabinets or drawers. Some collectors were highly discriminating and even created small private museums. Teachers also encouraged children to help in building up museums for their schools, hoping thereby to give them an intelligent grasp of their environment. This was an effort in keeping up with contemporary educational theory. Many colonists of that generation showed a newfound interest in knowing more about the Australian countryside and especially their own corner of it.

This special issue of Historic Environment contains nine papers from the National Railway Heritage Conference: Thinking rail, lessons from the past, the way of the future , held at Tamworth, in northern New South Wales, between 28-30 September 2005. The conference, organised by tile University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre, was part of celebrations of tile sesquicentenary of railways in New South Wales. A steam-powered engine and carriages conveyed their first passengers along twenty-two kilometres of track, between Sydney and Parramatta, on 26 September 1855. Thereafter the railway system in New South Wales, like those elsewhere in Australia, developed into a principal driver of colonial, and then state industry, as well as a facilitator of nation building, with a network in excess of 11,000 kilometres. In recent times though, tile role of rail in modern transport and logistics has been devalued. Rail has been all but eliminated from the lives of many, with the closure of numerous rural and regional lines, the heightened share of road haulage in moving freight and the inadequacies in many metropolitan rail systems (most notably in Greater Sydney).

Modern Australia has inherited many colonial period tales of alleged early victims of injustice, involving both exile and disinheritance. Many of them, like the Tichborne affair, were deliberate fabrications created to claim estates in the 'Home Country'. Touristic Tasmania still boasts such an instance in the publicity associated with the island's north. Yet the truth of this particular tale is that it was a convenient, if startling, screen for predatory behaviour rather than a poignant attempt to inherit one's proper wealth and station.

Chinese market gardeners were widely dispersed across rural areas of Australia and New Zealand by the late-nineteenth century and could be found in the most marginal areas for agriculture, from the rugged ranges of Central Otago to the deserts of Australia. Adapting practices they brought with them from China, particularly their skills in water management and intensive cultivation, and adopting developments in European technology, they successfully turned the challenges of life in such environments to their advantage. This thesis explores the history of Chinese market gardens and market gardeners in Australia and New Zealand from the 1860s to the 1960s. It interprets that history through the use and adaptation of some key theoretical and conceptual approaches in the social sciences: technology transfer and the diffusion of innovation, transnationalism and social capital. Applying these conceptual approaches, this study positions Chinese market gardeners and the agricultural practices they brought to new lands within the particular environmental, economic and social contexts they encountered and explores how the history of Chinese market gardening in Australia and New Zealand was shaped by such factors as political and legal institutions as well as organisational structures. It places this history within the context of longer term processes of social, economic, environmental and technological change. This study also interprets the history of Chinese market gardening as a process of ongoing interactions between different knowledge systems - indigenous, European and Chinese horticultural traditions. The study reveals remarkable continuity in traditional Chinese horticultural methods and how, at the same time, Chinese market gardening underwent technological change and adaptation in new environments.

The Sunshine Coast Region of South East Queensland formally came into being in March 2008, when three local government areas - Maroochy Shire, Noosa Shire and Caloundra City - were amalgamated into one unit. This thesis examines twenty memorials which existed within the boundaries of the Sunshine Coast region before the amalgamation. It investigates how the history of the region to that time has been documented and evidenced by these memorials, and how these memorials have reflected that history. Memorials are canvases on which stories are written and rewritten, not frozen in time by the materials of which they are constructed or societal conventions and ideologies at the time of their construction. An individual memorial can relate not only the story of the subject of its commemoration but also the story of those who chose to commemorate it. Responses to a memorial may change over time, and the reflections of those changes may portray more about society than about the memorial subject. Many different aspects of the history of the Sunshine Coast region have been revealed through the twenty memorials used as case studies. These memorials not only exemplify the history of the region, they are an expression of that history. Through them the history of the Sunshine Coast is expressed by those who erected the memorials and those who have viewed them. Some memorials have lost their ability to tell their intended story through physical or social changes that have occurred over time. Some draw us in to become part of their story despite age or physical condition. They are part of a living regional history which is not bound by facts and figures but which encompasses the lives of those who made the Sunshine Coast region what it is today, and they provide an alternative 'text' for those who wish to investigate that regional history.

This special issue of 'Historic Environment' contains nine papers from the National Railway Heritage Conference: 'Thinking rail, lessons from the past, the way of the future', held at Tamworth, in northern New South Wales, between 28-30 September 2005. The conference, organised by the University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre, was part of celebrations of the sesquientenary of railways in New South Wales. A steam-powered engine and carriages conveyed their first passengers along twenty-two kilometres of track, between Sydney and Parramatta, on 26 September 1885. Thereafter the railway system in New South Wales, like those elsewhere in Australia, developed into a principal driver of colonial, and then state industry, as well as a facilitator of nation building, with a network in excess of 11,000 kilometres. In recent times though, the role of rail in modern transport and logistics has been devalued. Rail has been all but eliminated from the lives of many, with the closure of numerous rural and regional lines, the heightened share of road haulage in moving freight and the inadequacies in many metropolitan rail systems (most notably in Greater Sydney).