Saturday 24 September 2011

[Tasmaniana Musing] The Ponrabbel

The Ponrabbel operated as a steam 'bucket dredge' in the Tamar River from the 1920s until the 1960s. The Port of Launceston authority was determined that as many ships as possible should berth at wharves close to the city centre. Attempts to move the port further down the river were vigorously resisted as Launcestonians imagined their city as a port – and sometimes as an alternative 'capital'.

It is no accident that the memory of this dredge lives on in the memories and imaginations of so many Launcestonians as the silting of the Tamar persists – and is likely to continue to do so as the estuary is ever likely to continue to silt up. Indeed, the Tamar's silting is a contentious political football that is being flicked between Local, State and Federal Governments against various political backdrops – particularly at election time.

"The Tamar Estuary is a drowned valley formed during a faulting event during the Tertiary period. Tectonic, volcanic and glacial activities have helped shape the Tamar Valley into that which we see today. The Estuary receives three major river systems: the South Esk; the North Esk; and the Meander. These three main catchments form a large drainage basin, which covers approximately 18% of Tasmania's land mass."Parks & Wildlife Service Tasmania – Given the estuary's geography there is little wonder that at the confluence of the Nth & Sth Esk Rivers there might be be silting albeit exasperated by the postcolonial agricultural and forestry exploitation of the Tamar's catchments.

The Ponrabbel was used to dredge the channel near Launceston to facilitate shipping access. As larger ships were brought into the Tamar some strategic rocks in the Tamar were blasted and removed by the Ponrabbel to improve navigation. She was also used in the building of the Bell Bay berthing facilities. Albeit that commercial shipping barely persists in the upper reaches of the Tamar, the silting of the estuary 'interferes' with the waterway's aesthetics and its recreational 'utility' – and is thus seen as tourism detractor and simultaneously as evidence of environmental degradation.

The area around the Tamar Estuary was a placescape occupied by various bands of Aboriginal people, who were later called 'The Northern Midlands Tribe' by the Europeans who had moved into the valley and taken the Aborigines' land. According to contemporary 'authorities', the estuary itself was known by the Aborigines as "kun.er.mur.luk.er", or ["ponrabbel"]. Port Dalrymple was recorded as being called "lor.er.nul.ray.tit.te.yer" and the Port Dalrymple bands known as the "le.ter.re.mair.re.ner" and "py.he.mair.re.me.ner" people – Parks & Wildlife Service Tasmania

In a contemporary context the underlying assumptions attached to the Tasmanian Aboriginal people's 'languages' , and their use in place naming, may be contested in a linguistic and cultural context given the paucity of anthropology and linguistics of the colonial era when Aboriginal vocabularies were collected. Meanings can be found in context and given that the 'palawa' people's cultural realities and belief systems were looked at from the 'perspective of clonisation' 'ponrabbel's palawa' meaning/s is open to contention.

Ships Specifications
  • Type of Vessel: TS Bucket Dredge.
  • Date Built: 1916.
  • Builder: Ferguson Bros. Ltd., Glasgow.
  • Dead Weight: 457 tons.
  • Length: 155ft 3in.
  • Breadth: 34ft 2in.
  • Owner: Marine Board of Launceston, Tasmania.
  • Engines: 2 X 2 cyl 15in & 30in X 21in.
  • Engine Builder: Ferguson Bros Ltd., Glasgow.
The Ponrabbel was built under the supervision of surveyors in accordance with the rules and regulations of Lloyd's Registry of Shipping.

Further Information: Low Head Pilot Station Museum ... CLICK HERE
 CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE


Compiled by Ray Norman, Launceston

Saturday 17 September 2011

SPACE OR PLACE 7250: #1

Watch a space revealed as a place with a full load of CULTURALcargo

PLEASE RETURN SOONISH

Soldiers on rotation: Van Dieman’s Land

These images are designed as a new narrative for a museum/gallery exhibition similar to the exhibition ‘A Mission Too Late’ exhibition, I held at the Cullity Gallery at UWA two years ago.

These images try to capture the physicality of the landscape British troops experienced, during their 20 year rotation around the global British Empire. The dislocation of this military service is reflected in the rotation of troops in the armies of today. The image also tell of an operation now called the Black Line of 1830.

During this operation neatly 2,000 soldiers and convicts swept across Northern van Diemen’s land. Moving West to to east, this posse  attempted to corral all free living Indigenous Tasmanians living on the mainland of the island despite the operation reportedly finding only two Tasmanians in all of this land.

 Dr Adam Newcombe Sept. 2011

CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE



Wednesday 14 September 2011

PROJECT NEWS: Help us erase the U.S.-Mexico border

Erase the Border

A work-in-progress that you can help finish

We need your help to realize this project.

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things is working with Ofelia Rivas and Tohono O'odham youth to erase the U.S.-Mexico border fence through a series of drawings and performances.


The fence divides the Tohono O'odham community, disrupts ceremonial paths, desecrates sacred burial grounds and prevents members from receiving critical health services.

Please consider giving anywhere between $1-$1000 to support a series of drawings designed to erase the border. Special rewards such as sketches, maps and stickers await you, our gracious donors.


Friday 9 September 2011

Introducing 'tni'

PURPOSE: the nudgelbah institute was established to facilitate research and publication relevant to the development of more inclusive 21st Century understandings and imaginings of 'place'.

THE VISION: The vision for the nudgelbah institute is for it to be a network of research networks and researchers – education institutions, museums, cultural orgainisations, heritage networks, cultural producers, galleries, publishers, et al – that is devised to be:

A vehicle through which place oriented scholarship and cultural endeavours can be acknowledged, honoured and promoted;
A research entity that celebrates placedness, placemaking and placemarking;
An agency through which research capital can be built upon and invested in;
A research network via which the network's cultural and scholastic collateral related to 21st C understandings of 'place' can be exploited, built upon and published;
A entity through which new understandings of cultural and social realities can be advanced; and
A research collective that facilitates scholarship and the publication of wide range of research outcomes, including cultural production, that belongs to 'geographies' and places – monographs, novels, anthologies, essays pamphlets, performances, video, exhibitions, websites, podcasts, etc.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE INSTITUTE: Given that in a broad 21st C context there are evolving and new confluences are bringing together scientific, social and cultural discourses that can be variously seen as being at the interface between social innovation, cultural production and social aspirations – science, technology and industry in other contexts. The emerging discourses often find themselves at the cutting edge of social development and cultural change. Against this background, and given the institute's relatively recent evolution into a more cohesive network of researchers, a projected set of goals and objectives for the nudgelbah institute might well be:

1. To engage a network of researchers and cultural producers in a critical discourse that explores the possibilities and parameters of the interfacing concepts that define and determine placedness, a sense of place, in a real world 21st C context;

2. To advocate innovative, sustainable inclusive understandings of place within interdiciplinary discourses and especially so in relation to current communication technologies, social structures and cultural practices;

3. To operate in collaboration, cooperation and alliance with like-minded individuals, institutions and groups and where appropriate under the auspices of one or more established and incorporated groups/institutions that have symbiotic sets of goals and objectives;

4. To investigate the ways in which social and cultural realities in a regional context interface with current technologies, social structures and cultural production – local and international – and the broad spectrum of research can;
  • Relate to changing, and new, understandings of placedness; and
  • Shape and/or reshape cultural and social realities in a 21st Century context relative to place.
5. To be proactive in the initiation of projects that engage researchers, innovators and cultural producers writers, design practitioners et al – with the wider community towards developing new understandings of ‘place’ and one place’s interfaces with others in a 21st Century context;

6. To facilitate the development of new interactive networks towards the promotion of more inclusive and sustainable understandings of place; new/pioneering communication technologies; and inclusive research enterprises informed by current circumstances relevant to evolving 21st C understandings of place;

7. To be proactive in the publication and dissemination of the outcomes of individual, cooperative and collaborative research and cooperative projects relevant to the institute’s raison d’ĂȘtre; and

8. To seek funding and in-kind support for scholarship in a broad context plus projects, conferences, symposiums, seminars and education programs that advance the institute’s research and support its publication outcomes.