Aboriginal Communities are continuing to revitalise Aboriginal Burning to reinstate it in the broader landscape. While Aboriginal Burning Practices and the theoretical frameworks have the potential to assist in the management of bushfire and biodiversity threats, Western Scientists continue to misconstrue these Aboriginal practices and theory.

Using a Theory of Wiradjuri Knowledge (or Aboriginal Science) I apply it to an understanding of how Knowledge is emerged to ngadhuringa ‘Caring for’ the Land through Reciprocal Obligations. Through critically reviewing the concept of Cultural Loss I show how the concept of Cultural Change fits the evidence better. With the general preconception of what is termed ‘Traditional Knowledge’ which does not truly represent what is happening, Aboriginal Mob struggle to present our understandings of Cultural Burning in a way that meets the general template of this ‘traditional Knowledge’ and so is undervalued by land managers and related Scientists.

The three practical and theoretical problems this thesis addresses are: Western Science destabilises Aboriginal knowledge; how Aboriginal Mobs’ Land and Sea Management is impacted by past cultural change; and how cultural ways are required to intellectualise Aboriginal burning practices. In this way our Ancestors, particularly Brush Turkey guides our understandings. I have developed a research approach for creating change within Western models of Aboriginal Burning as an insurgent act of challenging existing paradigms.

From this way of understanding the Cultural Practice of Aboriginal Cultural Burning, I created a model of Aboriginal Cultural burning to inform the debate and inform the practice of Cultural Burning. The model is based on the nature of Aboriginal concepts of the cosmos and how the contributions of the Ancestors, including Brush Turkey, emerged from the landscape, Dhuruwirra.

By reenvisaging Aboriginal Cultural Practice as Aboriginal Science we can empower this Aboriginal Cultural Practice as an Alternative Knowledge Source for management of Country. My approach is that emergent methodologies provide a space for developing these ideas. In Aboriginal Societies, knowledge is emerged out of Country through sharing relationships with Human and NonHuman things.

A currently popular lifestyle television show (Escape from the City) on Australia's national public service broadcaster, the ABC, highlights the limitations of popular cultural representations of life in a regional centre. The program is targeted at viewers interested in relocating to regional Australia. As Raymond Boyle and Lisa Kelly note, popular television is an important entry point into the construction of public knowledge as well as a launching point for viewers as they seek additional information (65). In their capacity to construct popular perceptions of 'reality', televisual texts offer a significant insight into our understandings and expectations of what is going on around us. Similar to the concerns raised by Esther Peeren and Irina Souch in their analysis of the popular TV show Farmer Wants a Wife (a version set in the Netherlands from 2004-present), we worry that these shows "prevent important aspects of contemporary rural life from being seen and understood" (37) by the viewers, and do a disservice to regional communities.
For the purposes of this article, we interrogate the episodes of Escape from the City screened to date in terms of the impact they may have on promoting regional Australia and speculate on how satisfied (or otherwise) we would be should the producers direct their lens onto our regional community-Armidale, in northern NSW. We start with a brief précis of Escape from the City and then, applying an autoethnographic approach (Butz and Besio) focusing on our subjective experiences, we share our reflections on living in Armidale. We blend our academic knowledge and knowledge of everyday life (Klevan et al.) to argue there is greater cultural diversity, complexity, and value in being in the natural landscape in regional areas than is portrayed in these representations of country life that largely focus on cheaper real estate and a five-minute commute.
We employ an autoethnographic approach because it emphasises the socially and politically constituted nature of knowledge claims and allows us to focus on our own lives as a way of understanding larger social phenomena. We recognise there is a vast literature on lifestyle programs and there are many different approaches scholars can take to these. Some focus on the intention of the program, for example "the promotion of neoliberal citizenship through home investment" (White 578), while others focus on the supposed effect on audiences (Tsay-Vogel and Krakowiak). Here we only assert the effects on ourselves. We have chosen to blend our voices (Gilmore et al.) in developing our arguments, highlighting our single voices where our individual experiences are drawn on, as we argue for an alternative representation of regional life than currently portrayed in the regional 'escapes' of this mainstream lifestyle television program.

This paper characterises the composition and activities of our academic writing group. The group consists of five women of disparate disciplinary backgrounds who meet regularly to present current work and receive constructive comment and encouragement, much of which is motivated and informed by a shared feminist consciousness, an appreciation of the role of collaboration and openness to multidisciplinary work. In these respects, our group comprises a creative response to a 'chilly' higher education environment where the pressures increase to publish or perish, at the same time as we face higher teaching loads and more administration. Different contexts will result in different groups. Here, taking the perspective of 'insiders', we reflect on the key characteristics that have contributed to the longevity of the group and enhanced the research productivity of individual members.

Archaeological experimental studies have been conducted on taphonomic and artefact disturbances worldwide. Studies conducted have addressed various disturbance factors such as wind, water, animal activity, and human impact independently of one another. Generally, these studies were on a small scale with regard to the geographic range and environmental contexts covered. Additionally, no mitigation or site extent analyses have been conducted that would facilitate the management of moving and missing artefacts. The experiment was spread out over five locations in the New England Tablelands in NSW. These locations were at Barley Fields, Uralla, Kirby Farm and the University of New England Deer Park Armidale, Big Llangothlin, Llangothlin and Laura Creek west of Guyra. All locations experienced varying degrees of disturbance due to livestock, kangaroos, deer, rabbits, different slope gradient, soil, vegetation and human activity. Movement, breakage, and disappearance were common artefact disturbances in the New England Tablelands within a short six month period. Artefacts that were nor moved or moved up to seven metres experienced some breakage in less than a month, some artefacts had disappeared and some of these reappeared because of animal or human activity and environmental changes. One focus of the study was to investigate the effects of slopes on artefact movements over time. The degree of slope gradient was found not to be as significant to artefact movement as previously thought; rather, movement was due mostly to other post-depositional processes, which are discussed in this thesis. Archaeologists need to consider the potential post-depositional disturbances when determining the extremities of a stone artefact scatter. From a cultural resource management perspective it is more likely that sites recorded without these considerations may be more difficult to locate when the site is revisited for construction.

Introduction: A Scene -'We are standing at the mouth of a sandstone rockshelter in the mountains of central New South Wales in Australia, having just climbed up from the creek below. The floor of the rockshelter is sunny and warm at this time of day. I turn to my archaeologist colleague: “I think this floor is gray because it containsorganic material.” He nods and peers at the sandy floor, which has a little mound at the side of the shelter: “There is a fossick hole here, I can see some kangaroo bone.” We kneel down to look more closely, and sticking out of the surface we can see some knotted fibers and large seeds on the surface of the mounded deposit. “Are these plant remains? What are these seeds?” he asks. Because of my prior knowledge I recognized them as Macrozamia by their shapeand size and the tiny holes in the ends. He says, “They are unusually well preserved, but I guess they are just on the surface and have blown in here, so there isn’t much use in looking further. It would be too hard to use flotation anyway, as the creek is dry at the moment, and they wouldn’t tell us anything much about the microlith industry around here anyway.”'This scene illustrates the three main issues for the archaeological analysis of plant remains. The first of these issues is the question of what plant remains can contribute to archaeology as a whole; the second is the problems associated with the identification and origin of plant remains; and the third is the available methods that can be effectively used to retrieve and analyze plant remains. I will return to the scene in a case study showing how we addressed the issues at this rockshelter but, first, a general introduction to the issues is needed.

Intrasite studies of the spatial arrangements of archaeological materials to interpret structures in activity areas is animportant facet of archaeology. As post-depositional processes move these materials from their original position it is imperative that the effect of these processes are evaluated before interpretations about the use of space by humans living at the site are made. In this study we conclude that most of the sediment starch and charcoal from a sandstone rockshelter in New South Wales derives from a cultural source. An evaluation of the effect of seven physical characteristics of the site on the horizontal distribution of the starch and charcoal remains suggests that, at least at this rockshelter, and unlike their effect on stone artefacts, these characteristics have not obscured the general pattern of original distribution at the site. The distribution pattern can, therefore, be interpreted as representative of past human use of space at the rockshelter.

This study utilises several theoretical perspectives and analytical scales to examine the constructed, conceptualised and socialised landscapes of the Hay Plain, characterised by the mounded cultural deposits, regionally known as 'mounds', 'earth mounds' or 'oven mounds'. Mounds are found in widely separated areas of Australia, with a major concentration on the Hay Plain and adjacent Murray Riverine Plain. Previous archaeological research into mounds has frequently failed to investigate explanatory relationships or investigate the dynamics of human behaviour. This study examines three major themes, each with different approaches and analytical scales.

"It's the only piece of land that was ever left, No man's land" (Tony Perkins 27/12/97 quoted in Murphy et al. 2000:5)At Corindi Beach on the mid-north coast of New South Wales are five twentieth century campsites located on the fringes of the township, beside the town racecourse, an area called by local Aboriginal people 'No man's land'. These campsites are important symbols of the self-sufficient lifestyle followed by the Corindi Beach Indigenous community in the twentieth century and are a physical reminder of cross-cultural relationships between local people over the last hundred years. In a collaborative research project with Yarrawarra Aboriginal Corporation, these places are being documented through studying oral history, the cultural landscape and the material culture left behind at these places. We have found although there are rich oral stories of Indigenous life at the camps, material evidence at the sites is limited. When read as part of the cultural landscape this evidence presents a specific kind of archaeological signature that may be generalised for fringe-dweller camps elsewhere. The documentation of this landscape represents a first step towards a better understanding of the hidden history of these places and towards re-assessing their heritage significance.

Observers of New England know how to read the landscape. Along with other experienced observers, New England archaeologists, through their own fieldwork and experience, have also learnt to heed and make meaning of subtle marks such as the Bora rings. The archaeological meaning of such traces is written mostly as archaeological accounts. The archaeological story of New England, as it has been pieced together since the 1960s, reveals the distinctive character of Aboriginal hunter-gatherer peoples' past inhabitation of the landscape. In this chapter, the author has chosen three common elements of the regional archaeological tales - ceremonies, cold climates and group movement, and focused on their spatial aspects, rather than on their chronology or archaeological artefacts, to build up a picture of archaeologists' evolving construction of the regional cultural landscape. The chapter is in three parts: first a brief description of the New England landscape, its archaeological sites and kinds of societies that shaped them; then a sketch of the regional themes established by the work of archaeologists Isabel McBryde and Luke Godwin, and finally a description of the issues the author considers important for the future of New England archaeology.

Mainland Australia is a round island: there is a large area of land in the interior, far from the ocean. Australia is also an exceptionally old and weathered place, and is therefore very flat, with low likelihood of orographic rainfall. It is the driest inhabited continent on Earth (see for example Wahlqvist, 2008). Surface freshwater is often an intermittent, rather than permanent, feature of the landscape, and indeed is scarce for significant periods of the year (see for example Chartres & Williams, 2006; Wahlqvist, 2008). And rivers - imagined, mapped and worked as reliable features - are often in reality 'chain-a-ponds', long knotted strings of deeper waterholes separated by shallow or dried-out reaches (see for example Eyles, 1977; Selby, 1981). On first seeing the Namoi River in New South Wales, Eric Rolls's wife, Joan, is mightily disappointed: 'Is that the river? ... It just looks like a muddy waterhole' (Rolls, 1974, p. 4). The riverbed may be a permanent feature, although also often indistinct, and flowing water may be transient. Rainfall patterns are unpredictable but evaporation rates and flow regimes reliably extreme. Open plains may transform into vast lakes overnight, while almost equally quickly a shining water-body may disappear into sand and salt. Such conditions challenged settlers and policy-makers alike.