Nicholas Gill HomePage
Nicholas Gill is a human geographer with interests in environmental management, rural cultures, outback mythology, Aboriginal land use and cultural history, and cultural geography. In the past he has worked in the environment movement on wilderness issues and the development of legislation, and as a curator at the National Museum of Australia. At the NMA he collected and documented material culture from the inland pastoral industry.
His research focuses on rural areas, particularly on cultural and social aspects of land management, land use and environmental conflict. Past research has focussed on the responses of rural people to social and economic change, especially the contemporary environmental and Aboriginal land rights movements.
Using qualitative, ethnographic and historical methods, this research has examined the relationship of farmers and pastoralists (non-indigenous and indigenous) to land, rural nature and identities, Landcare, and perceptions of landscape processes. For the last five years his research has been in arid pastoral lands around Alice Springs. Some of this research forms the basis of his PhD thesis, Outback or At Home? Environment, Social Change and Pastoralism in Central Australia, completed in 2000.
Current Research
Landuse Practices of ‘Seachangers’ in Rural NSW: Natural Resource Management in Fragmenting Landscapes
This project complements existing demographic research on so-called sea changers to examine in detail their land use practices, motivations, and conceptions of land and rural life. Through interviews, collaborative mapping, and interpretation of land cover change, the project will examine some of the outcomes on the ground as the new landowners purchase subdivided farmland. More generally the research aims to contribute to understanding so-called ‘new rural landscapes’ in Australia and their implications for a range of land and environmental management issues. There are two case studies for this pilot research, Jamberoo Valley in the Illawarra, and the Windellama area, east of Goulburn.
The 1958-65 Drought in Central Australia
This project examines official perceptions of, and reactions to, a prolonged dry period in the Alice Springs pastoral district. This drought occurred at a time when the modern conservation movement was gaining strength and pastoralism came under considerable criticism. It remains a significant point of reference in current debates over land use in Central Australia. It is funded by a NT Archives Service History Award.
Tenant Creek Area
This project, At Home and on the Murranji, is based in and near the Murchison Ranges near Tennant Creek in the NT. This project is funded by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the UOW. It is being conducted in conjunction with Murphy Japanangka Kennedy and Dr Alistair Paterson of the Centre for Archaeology at the University of WA. This project is a detailed, site-based examination of Aboriginal work histories in the pastoral industry and, to a lesser extent, in the mining industry, using site surveys, oral history and archival sources.
Murphy Japanangka Kennedy and Al Paterson discuss Murphy's work on nearby cattle stations sat Nguyarmini Outstation, June 2000
Bronco yard and panel in the Murchison Ranges. Not only is the design of this yard unusual for a surviving wooden yard, the stories associated with such sites can tell us much about relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the recent past. Very often, though not always, it is only elderly Aboriginal people who remain in the area to tell such stories.
