AUSTRALIA  2004

Sydney Harbor

Half-way around the world, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, lies the continent of Australia, a country of fascinating contrasts. From the stark and magical outback of central Australia’s Uluru (sacred to Australian Aboriginal peoples) to the Great Barrier Reef (with its interesting marine life, exotic animals and plants) to the exciting ultra-modern city of Sydney (host to the 2000 Summer Olympics), Australia presents an exciting variety of ideas to explore in some of the world’s most interesting locations. It is a place where the uniqueness of the landscape shapes culture—from 600 million year old landforms, the 40,000-year old culture of the Aboriginal people, to the "beach culture" of modern Australian life—you’ll discover that Australia is like no other country on earth! Through a unique program combining an interdisciplinary social science approach with the integrated natural science sequence course entitled The Dynamic Earth, come and be engaged in a structured exploration of “The Land Down Under”

Sydney Harbor Celebration

Central Australia's  Uluru/Ayers Rock

The Great Barrier Reef

The Program:

This program will explore Australia at three different locations: Sydney, central Australia, and Cairns. While the Sydney Opera House and Uluru are familiar symbols to many, they don’t do justice to the richness of Australia's natural treasures and its cultural diversity. Due to its unique location and development, Australia is a virtual open laboratory for exploring the relationship between the land and contemporary society. The sheer vastness of the land as well as the collision between the ancient land steeped in Aboriginal lore and the European culture being heaped upon it are the factors that shape the contemporary Australian character.

Turn of the century shearers

Didgiridoo Player

Cathy Freeman

After an introduction to Australia in Sydney, we move to central Australia, a place of great geographic and cultural interest. Uluru is a site of deep cultural significance to the local Anangu Aboriginals. The rock rises from the flat earth, smack in the middle of the country. At first the land seems uninhabitable, but a remarkably resilient people having been living "in tune" with the land for over 40,000 years!  Nearby are equally impressive gorges and canyons that allow students to explore the vast geologic record preserved by Australia’s landscape. The relationship between the land and ancient Aboriginal culture is thus the central focus in central Australia.

Uluru The Olgas The Devil's Marbles

Uluru and The Red Center Uluru is the most famous icon of the Australian outback. A pilgrimage to Uluru and the coronary-inducing scramble to the top was an entrenched Australian ritual, but the Aboriginal owners would prefer visitors not to climb the rock and many visitors are now respecting their wishes. The 3.6km (2.2mi) long rock rises a towering 348m (1141 ft) from the pancake-flat surrounding scrub, smack in the middle of the country, and is especially impressive at dawn and sunset when the red rock spectacularly changes hue. There are walks around the base of the rock which pass caves, rock art and sacred Aboriginal sites. Nearby Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), 32km (20mi) west of Uluru, are equally impressive monoliths and Mt Olga is actually much higher than Uluru. The Valley of the Winds is a worthy 6km (4mi) circuit.

We next move to Cairns, the tourist capital of Far North Queensland. Cairns is one of the best bases for exploring the riches of the Great Barrier Reef, the Atherton Tablelands, and the World Heritage Daintree Forest. Here, we will also explore how contemporary Australian society hopes to balance preservation of these natural wonders with the desire for tourist, timber, and agricultural development.

Cairns and The Great Barrier Reef Cairns is now one of Australia's top travel destinations. Not long ago, it was just a sleepy tropical backwater. Much of its allure and tropical languor has vanished amid the rapid growth of tourist infrastructure, but it is still one of the best bases for exploring the riches of the state of Queensland. These changes present us with an excellent opportunity to explore the impact of development on the land and the people who live there.  From Cairns, we will explore the Great Barrier Reef, one of Australia's greatest assets which runs along virtually the entire coast of Queensland. Considered one of the world's natural wonders, it is the most extensive reef system and the biggest structure made by living organisms on earth. It is both fascinating and fragile.  How does society attempt to both enjoy it and preserve it? We also explore the beautiful and geologically fascinating  Atherton Tableland and the spectacular rainforest and coastal scenery of Cape Tribulation and the Daintree River, where those seeking to develop the natural resources clash with environmentalists.

Finally, we return to Sydney.  Sydney is the oldest European settlement in Australia, the economic powerhouse of the nation and the country's most dynamic city. If you watched the 2000 Olympics, you know that Sydney is built on the shores of stunning Port Jackson. It began as a British penal colony in 1788, and for the next 60 years received the unwanted, persecuted and criminal elements of British society. Today, it is a thriving multicultural society of over 4 million energetic and fun-loving people. Sydney thus allows students to explore the interrelationship between the past, the political system, and the environment and the shaping of contemporary urban life.

Sydney Australia's premier city is the economic and cultural powerhouse of the nation and the country's capital in everything but name. It is a stunning combination of dramatic environment and cosmopolitan ambiance.  Built on the shores of spectacular Port Jackson, it's a vital, self-regarding metropolis, exuding both a devil-may-care urbanity and a slavish obsession with global fads. Ferry trips in Sydney are part of everyday, normal commuter transportation for Sydneysiders. You’ll discover that they also allow visitors to explore this beautiful city! The Sydney area was the ancestral home of the Daruk tribe, whose territory extended from Botany Bay to Pittwater. There are some 2000 Aboriginal rock engraving sites in the Sydney area, and many of Sydney's suburbs have Aboriginal names. Although the city of Sydney began life as a penal colony, the city's mixture of pragmatic egalitarianism and plain indifference has transformed it into a thriving multicultural society. Sydney now attracts the majority of Australia's immigrants and the city's predominantly Anglo-Irish heritage has been revitalized by large influxes of Italian, Lebanese, Turkish, Greek, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants. Sydney is thus the exciting combination of environment, history and culture that allows students to fully explore contemporary Australian society.

The  Courses

ASI 399: Introduction to Contemporary Australia (3 credits)

This course is designed to explore this unique multi-cultural society from a comparative, holistic perspective. All countries are a unique reflection of their environment, their history, and their political structures. Each provides unique answers to the questions associated with the Humanities Base theme of what it means to be human. Part of Australia’s cultural uniqueness is related to its unique physical circumstances: its geographic isolation; its vast openness; and aboriginal culture’s view of their relationship to that environment. Australian culture is also a reflection of those who came to the country after 1788 (from English settlers, Irish convicts, and recent immigrants from Asia) and the variety of perspectives they have brought. Finally, Australian society is a reflection of the political structures that shape its politics. Students will learn about Australia through the examination of important issues in contemporary society such as: multi-culturalism, the “stolen generation”, aboriginal land rights and the social welfare system.

SCI 210: The Dynamic Earth: Australia (4 credits)

This course will utilize the unique setting and resources of Australia to explore ideas central to the SCI 210 course, The Dynamic Earth. Australia’s rich natural history will be explored through field trips to a variety of sites on the continent. Field experiences will range from the immense geologic time represented by the landscape of central Australia, the coastal and offshore processes of the Great Barrier Reef region, to the very real challenges of urban sprawl and its impact on the environment in the vicinity of Sydney. At these locations students will be engaged in organized scientific field investigations that will provide them with the opportunity to learn about the landscape and natural setting of Australia while gaining an unparalleled understanding of earth processes.

The Professors

Dr. David W. Ahern is Professor of Political Science and serves as site coordinator for the 2004 Australia program. He teaches courses in political parties, government, and public policy from a comparative perspective. He was a visiting lecturer for a semester at Sydney University, lectured for the US Information Service in Australia, and has traveled extensively in Australia during five separate visits over the past seventeen years.  He and Don Pair led ISSAP Australia’s first experience in 2001.

Dr. Donald Pair is Associate Professor and Chair of Geology and teaches the Dynamic Earth, as well as courses in environmental geology, geomorphology, and hydrogeology. As the Director of the Colorado Field Geology Course, and through various research projects, he has been teaching students "in the field" for over ten years at locations ranging from Colorado to Iceland.

What Do You Know About Australia?

Most people harbour a particular image of Australia, such as the Opera House or Ayers Rock (Uluru), yet these famous icons do scant justice to the richness of Australia's natural treasures and its cultural diversity. Australia offers a wealth of travel experiences, from the drama of the outback and the spectacle of the Great Barrier Reef to the cosmopolitanism of Sydney and arguably the best beaches in the world. Australia is an enormous country, and visitors expecting to see an opera in Sydney one night and meet Crocodile Dundee the next will have to re-think their grasp of geography (see the map below!). It is this sheer vastness, and the friction between the ancient land steeped in Aboriginal lore and the New World culture being heaped upon it, which gives Australia much of its character.

(from Lonely Planet website)

An echidna A koala A frill-necked lizard A wombat

A Unique Land  and A Unique Environment Australia is a vast island continent situated south of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea between the Pacific and Indian oceans. The world's sixth largest country, Australia measures some 4000km east to west and 3200km north to south. Much of the interior of the country is flat, barren and extremely sparsely populated. The bulk of the population lives on the narrow, fertile eastern coastal plain and on the south-eastern coast. The continent-long Great Dividing Range runs north-south down the eastern seaboard, separating the coastal plain from the drier inland areas. The Great Barrier Reef lies between 50-300km offshore and extends 2000km from the Torres Strait to Gladstone. Australia is a unique environment in which to study the diversity of nature. It is estimated that there are 13.6 million species of plants, animals and micro-organisms on earth. Australia has about one million of these, which represents more than 7% of the world's total and is more than twice the number of species in Europe and North America combined. Megadiversity describes countries with very high levels of biodiversity. Twelve of the megadiverse countries, including Australia, contain about 75% of Earth's total biodiversity. Australia is blessed with a fascinating mix of native flora and fauna. Its distinctive plants include the ubiquitous gum tree or eucalypt, of which there are some 700 species. Other common plants are wattle, banksia, waratahs, bottlebrushes, paperbarks and tea trees. Endemic animals include the iconic kangaroo, koala and emu, and the platypus, echidna, possum, wombat and dingo. There are also a number of interesting birds, such as parrots, cockatoos and kookaburras. Fauna to be wary of include Australian spiders (especially the redback and funnel-web), snakes (notably the venomous brown, tiger, death adder, copperhead and red-bellied black varieties) and both salt and freshwater crocodiles. There are more than 500 national parks, incorporating rainforests, deserts, mountain ranges and coastal dunes. Unique Fauna: A bandicoot, some dingoes, and an emu Unique Flora: jacaranda, banksia, and a bottlebrush

The People and the Culture Australia is a multicultural society. Until WW II, Australians were predominantly of British and Irish descent, but that has changed dramatically. Large immigrations from Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Lebanon and Turkey followed the war and have been supplemented by more recent influxes of immigrants from Asia. There are also about 230,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Many Australians speak Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Vietnamese or Turkish as a first language. English-speaking Australians are liable to use a hotchpotch of indigenous slang and shortened words that often makes their speech impenetrable. (Check out the Australian dictionary!). Australia has a rich artistic heritage and a vibrant contemporary art scene. Aboriginal rock carvings and paintings date back at least 30,000 years. European settlers began to produce distinctively Australian art forms towards the end of the 19th century. Australia's mid-20th century artists were world figures (Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Patrick White) and its modern practitioners have excelled in painting (Brett Whiteley, Fred Williams), literature (Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally), opera (Joan Sutherland), film (Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Gillian Armstrong), acting (Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman) comedy (Barry Humphries), dance (Graeme Murphy, Paul Mercurio) and popular music (Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, INXS, Midnight Oil). Modern Aboriginal art has undergone a revival in the last decade as Aboriginal artists have explored ways to both preserve their ancient values and share them with a wider community.

Opposing Views

The two poems below represent the differences in perspective between European Australian and Aboriginal Australian views. Dorothea McKellar's famous poem, first published in 1908, reflects European Australian admiration of Australia's unique natural beauty. Whereas Kevin Gilbert's more recent poem reflects what European "civilization" has done to the natural landscape.

MY COUNTRY By Dorothea MacKellar I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jeweled seas. Her beauty and her terror - The wide brown land for me! Pine Creek near Cairns The Outback King's Canyon

THE NEW TRUE ANTHEM by Kevin Gilbert Despite what Dorothea has said about the sun scorched land you've never really loved her nor sought to make her grand you pollute all her rivers and litter every road your barbaric graffiti cut scars where tall trees grow the beaches and the mountains are covered with your shame injustice rules supremely despite your claims to fame the mud polluted rivers are fenced off from the gaze of travelers and the thirsty for foreign hooves to graze a tyranny now rules your soul to your own image blind a callousness and uncouth ways now hallmarks of your kind Australia oh Australia you could stand proud and free we weep your bitter anguish at your hate and tyranny the scarred black bodies writhing humanity locked in chains land theft and racial murder you boast on of your gains in woodchip and uranium the anguished death you spread will leave the children of the land a heritage that's dead Australia oh Australia you could stand proud and free we weep your bitter anguish at your hate and tyranny

General New South Wales Sydney Visitor's Guide Queensland Cairns

Science Birds Down Under Australian Biodiversity The Atherton Tableland Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens Jenolan Caves Native Plants

Cultural Tjapukai Aboriginal Park Sydney Museums On-line Historic Houses Trust