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Congratulations on the publication of your new book, Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual. As an archaeologist, how did you come to specialise in photogrammetry modelling?

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Madeline: I actually learnt how to do photogrammetry underwater first! It’s been a really interesting journey over many years, starting as an undergraduate student at the University of լ�е��� doing a double degree in archaeology and marine science. During this, I undertook an intensive maritime archaeology course at Flinders University where, under the instruction of Dr Kōtarō Yamafune, I was first introduced to photogrammetry. As part of the course, we endeavoured to model the wreck of an early 1900s oyster cutter, the��Caprice, in Mount Dutton Bay, SA. Upon my return to studying at the University, I quickly joined one of the marine sciences labs as a volunteer under the guidance of Professor Will Figueira and Dr Gus Porter. My role involved processing thousands of images of the Great Barrier Reef to create accurate photogrammetry models for ongoing scientific assessments. With this foundation, I was then able to confidently move on to designing an honours research project modelling the Neolithic temples of Malta. This led me to further photogrammetry fieldwork in Sri Lanka with Professor Barbara Helwing, modelling first millennium BCE stupas and archaeological objects. Soon after, I was brought on as a research assistant to Professor Peter Hiscock, where I modelled hundreds of lithic artefacts from around Australia and trained students in Australia and overseas. It was through this experience that was able to hone my method of modelling small objects for archaeological analysis.��In the five years since, I have become the Discipline of Archaeology’s photogrammetry specialist and worked on a variety of projects, including creating a digital catalogue of objects for the Chau Chak Wing Museum and teaching photogrammetry to undergraduate and postgraduate students. As a result of these experiences, I decided to compile this manual for students, hoping it will assist them in their photogrammetry endeavours.

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Can you briefly describe what photogrammetry modelling is, and how it might be useful for archaeologists?

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Madeline:��Photogrammetry modelling is the process of creating digital three-dimensional models of objects, features or landscapes using well-exposed, overlapping two-dimensional photographs. All you need is a camera! By creating digital models of your research subject material, you open up new and varied ways to analyse your archaeological material. For example, you can obtain precise measurements of any areas or cross-sections of your subject, assess volume and surface area, and even strip back the texture so you can analyse the raw morphology, even of areas that are not visible to the naked eye. Photogrammetry can also be used to understand production methods, structural variations across a number of specimens, and create archival records, as digital 3D models are immune to time and degradation. You can even map landscapes and create digital elevation models that can be further used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

For archaeologists, photogrammetry is particularly useful as it offers a non-invasive way to capture a 3D snapshot of cultural material or landscapes that can be analysed and re-analysed over and over again without damaging the subject. Models can be sent anywhere in the world and are incredibly useful educational tools, even if the original object is locked away in a museum somewhere. This helps promote public accessibility to cultural heritage – all you need is a screen!��

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Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual is an easy-to-follow introduction and guide to photogrammetry. Is this a resource you wish had been available when you first started 3D modelling?

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Madeline:��Absolutely! With this manual in my hands, I would have saved a huge amount of time working out the best techniques and approaches in both the shooting and processing stages of photogrammetry. It is a common assumption that photogrammetry is easy – which it can be, but only if making accurate and successful models is not a high priority! It takes time and understanding to set up your camera accurately, to position the camera and the lights, to know how many camera angles are required and how to work in an uncontrolled environment where your only light source is the sun. There is so much essential knowledge to understand before jumping in. Knowing how to process a basic model is also pretty simple; however, once you scratch the surface and delve deeper into the software, there is a lot to learn which can get confusing. Through countless hours of working with , I have discovered a variety of tools, functions and methods that really help the processing stage. Through trial and error, I tested a lot of the software’s features. This is why I wanted to write this manual, so I could share all the things I have learnt along the way and make the learning curve easier for beginners, so they don’t have to go through the stress of finding the answers to their problems by themselves – it’s all in the book!

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How might these case studies help develop an understanding of how to approach different photogrammetry projects?

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Madeline:��These case studies were specifically chosen to cover a range of different shapes, material types and colours, each presenting its own unique challenge and solution. They span from very small objects (a microlith) to shiny objects (a coin), long and thin material (bone fragment), and triangular and black stone tools. The intention here is to demonstrate examples of effective methods in both the shooting and processing stages that produce successful models. This introduces the reader to a variety of approaches and allows them to pick the best methods for their own projects. I have tried to cover the most common archaeological objects (like stone tools, bone fragments, coins and pottery) so readers can simply follow what I have outlined in the manual, however it is very likely other objects will be modelled, so this will set them on the right track! Unfortunately, in photogrammetry modelling there is no standard, one-size-fits-all approach, so introducing the readers to the range of choices not only in the shooting stage, but also in choosing equipment and in processing, will hopefully show them how to best design their own methodology.

Although this manual primarily focuses on modelling archaeological objects, I have also included three case studies on how to approach modelling excavation pits, landscape features and walled structures. It is highly likely that at some point an archaeologist photogrammetrist will encounter the need to model these in their career, so I have included them just in case!

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Madeline:��The methodology here is absolutely not exclusive to archaeologists, as anyone in the fields of zoology, palaeontology, geology, marine and medical sciences, and art and architecture (to name a few) will be able to use the techniques. Any discipline that requires high-resolution photogrammetry models for use in research, analysis or education will find this manual highly useful! This guide aims to provide a foundation for researchers to create accurate and successful models; archaeology is merely the lens through which photogrammetry is explored.��

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You have worked at a number of archaeological sites, both here in Australia and abroad. What have been some of your most memorable experiences from working at these sites?

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Madeline:��It is really difficult for me to name just one memorable moment as I have worked in some amazing places – from mustatils in Saudi Arabia to Aboriginal rock art sites in Australia. I think one of the most prominent projects that really stands out for me is modelling the oldest stone axe fragment in Australia, currently housed in the Western Australian Museum. This was an incredibly difficult object to model as it is so small, but to see and work with it was just a really humbling experience, knowing someone made it tens of thousands of years ago, and here I was taking photos of it. The other project would have to be modelling the Neolithic temples in Malta. This was the first project where I got to take the reins and navigate the modelling process. After months of research and preparation, being able to explore the temples and analyse their engineering and architecture and recreate it in digital space was really exciting. Walking through them again using a VR headset was an additional highlight! Those weeks when I was exploring the rooms and capturing every detail of the temple walls, envisioning what the temples were originally like and what they were used for, are a memory I won’t forget easily.��

I also want to add that the other experiences that I am particularly grateful for in my photogrammetry career are all the friendships I have made. Through teaching and collaborating on projects I have met some of the most inspiring and driven people, for whom I am deeply thankful. Specialising in photogrammetry has opened up many doors for me, offering new experiences and challenges each year, and I’m genuinely excited for what the future will bring.��

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Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual is available now. Order your copy here.

Myfany Turpin is an Australian Research Council fellow at the լ�е��� Conservatorium of Music, the University of լ�е���.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Yuupurnju: A Warlpiri song cycle! Tell us a bit about how this project began.

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The project began in Lajamanu community in 2013 when Henry Jakamarra asked me to record him singing traditional songs. I was happy to do that, although I didn’t realise at first that he would sing a whole song cycle, or what kind of language documentation work we would be able to do. He came to the place where I was staying more or less every day for three weeks, and sang for between 1 and 3 hours at a time. He was already in his nineties then, but his voice is strong and clear in the recordings. He said that the songs were important, and that anyone could listen to them; he wanted to write them down and keep them safe, and give them out to places that would keep them safe for people to learn in the future. In between each verse he would often give some information about the songs and the story they accompany.

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I’ve been privileged to witness several Warlpiri ceremonies being performed, but I haven’t witnessed this specific one, because it hasn’t been performed for many years. That is one of the reasons the Warlpiri Elders wanted to document it – so that it can be re-learned. It is a traditional Jukurrpa, or Dreaming, ceremony marking male maturity, and it is also important for women. Typically in these ceremonies men sit on the ground and sing and play clapsticks or boomerangs, which are the traditional Warlpiri percussion instruments. Women dance nearby, and the singing and dancing are performed all night, until dawn. The older people know the songs, and the younger people learn them by participating in the ceremonies. These ceremonies are important because they maintain highly valued long-standing traditions.

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For this book, the Yuupurnju song cycle was sung by Warlpiri Elder Henry Cooke Anderson Jakamarra, and documented, translated and interpreted by both Warlpiri and non-Warlpiri co-authors. What was this collaboration process like?

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After the songs were recorded I asked Jerry Patrick Jangala and Steven Patrick Jampijinpa to help write down the words. Steven Dixon Japanangka heard about the process and offered to help with some parts too. We would play a verse, then Jangala and Jakamarra would repeat the words slowly so that I could hear the sounds in the words and write them. We would do this several times, with me repeating them back until the men were confident that I had represented them correctly. They would also tell me the meanings of the verses and of the words. I would write them down too, asking questions to help my understanding. We went through versions of this process several times over the years, and then checked and re-checked what we had done, to be as accurate as we could be. Musicologist Myfany Turpin undertook the rhythmic annotation, and transcribed the syllables as sung. Syllables, and in particular vowels, are often pronounced differently when sung compared to when spoken. ��For example in Song 3, yulu ‘stance, or gait’ is sung ‘�⾱������’. And when ‘u’ and ‘i' are set to a long note they are sung as ‘ay’, as in English ‘day’. This helps to provide a full picture of the musical aspects of the verses – the rhythms and the words are both important.

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Having the audio easily available is critical for Warlpiri people to learn the songs. It also helps to bring the song cycle to life when they hear the voice of Jakamarra, who many would recognise and who they would have known well, and respected as a very knowledgeable senior man. Warlpiri people are more likely to learn the song cycle by listening and singing the verses repeatedly than by reading the written words. The QR codes are an easy way to access to the songs.

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We think that the images will help people to remember the details of the songs, because they might relate to the images easily and this multi-sensory experience might help with retaining new knowledge. The images also show the relationship the songs have with things in the physical world, such as places and plants. They also make the book attractive, which we hope will draw people in to read through it completely.

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Other books in the լ�е��� Indigenous Music, Language and Performing Arts series provide valuable information from a range of perspective on Indigenous songs and music. For example ‘The Old Songs Are Always New’ about the music of Tiwi people, and the suite of books on Wangga songs from West Arnhem land. Specifically for Warlpiri, the new book Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs is a fabulous source of information. There is more and more Indigenous music available in the media, too.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, After Alexander! The title refers to the historical periods following the death of Alexander the Great. As an archaeologist, what first drew you to this era of history?

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John: Thank you. At school I studied Ancient Greek and Latin, and at university I continued with Latin as well as archaeology, ancient history and fine arts – so initially I was drawn to the world of Classical Greece and Rome. (Naturally, I still have a great interest in these areas as they form an important aspect of Seleucid and Roman culture in the Middle East.)

However, in second year archaeology, the late Dr Anthony McNicoll – one of the two co-directors of the University of լ�е��� excavations at Pella in Jordan – gave a wonderful course on ancient trade that concentrated mainly on the Seleucid (the period following Alexander in much of the Middle East) and Early Roman periods. I was hooked! As a result, I joined the Pella excavation team and, following McNicoll’s tragically early death in 1985, I took over his work in the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods there.

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After Alexander catalogues hundreds of line drawings and photographs of unearthed pottery fragments from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods at Pella in Jordan. How important are these visual representations for bringing the written catalogue to life?

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John: There are several reasons why these visual representations are important. Perhaps the most fundamental is that for the relatively later periods, such as the post-Alexander and Early Roman eras, the pottery recovered from undisturbed strata still provides the most reliable guide to the chronology of the levels we are uncovering, as the pottery shapes change with time. This means, of course, that the strata must be excavated with care (often more difficult than one thinks), and the pottery fragments described, photographed and drawn. This careful recording allows scholars working at other sites in Jordan and elsewhere to get a more certain idea for dating their own sites.

Moreover, the type of clay and style of decoration used can often tell us where the pot was made, helping to identify the trading links that Pella had with both neighbouring and more distant towns and cities during the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.

Additionally, the pottery fragments – especially the “fine wares” – can be individually very attractive (as seen in this book’s photographs) and certainly help to enliven a work such as this where text is such an important element.

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What can these artefacts tell us about Hellenistic and Early Roman society and culture at Pella?

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John: The artefacts we have recovered at Pella demonstrate the ebb and flow of its fortunes during these periods. During the third century BCE, historical documents suggested that the southern Levant was under the control of the Ptolemies of Egypt rather than the Seleucids. At first, we had no archaeological proof of this until our excavations uncovered pottery and coins consistent with a garrison (part of this Ptolemaic control) on the highest and most defensible part of the site.

Ancient historians suggest that the Ptolemies were defeated and that Pella fell into Seleucid hands during the second century – and this is exactly what our excavations have demonstrated, with widespread settlement across the site and a marked increase in the quality of the pottery and other artefacts.

We now also have strong archaeological evidence, with the presence of a thick destruction level containing datable pottery and coins, that Pella was destroyed in the early first century BCE by the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus, with only limited resettlement in the following Early Roman period. Ancient literature and many modern scholars had been ambivalent as to whether this destruction took place and largely silent as to the question of Early Roman settlement there. Our excavations at Pella have now confirmed both this destruction and the limited resettlement that followed.

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What kind of audience do you hope to reach with this book?

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John: I am hoping to reach an audience of both archaeologists and non-archaeologists. Until now, the post-Alexander (Hellenistic) and Early Roman periods in modern Jordan have been less studied and published than the same periods in Israel, Syria and elsewhere. This book, therefore, with both a detailed description of the excavations and the recovered pottery, along with an interpretation and discussion of these findings at Pella, will help fill a gap for scholars working on these periods in the southern Levant but needing more information about the situation in Jordan during these periods.

Furthermore, the description of the excavations at Pella and the pottery recovered from these levels are well enhanced by photographs, demonstrating to scholars and lovers of history and archaeology alike what a prosperous, fertile and beautiful site Pella in Jordan is.

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Throughout your career, you have also conducted excavations in Syria, Greece and Cyprus. What have been some of your most exciting discoveries or experiences during these excavations?

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John: I have certainly had numerous exciting finds over the period that I have worked on these excavations, including: from Pella, an extremely rare gold Roman coin which (as gold doesn’t tarnish) looked as though it was minted the day before it was found; in Greece, a beautifully painted and perfectly preserved large Hellenistic vase from Macedonia; and, in Syria, the columns, altars, and architectural members of a temple built during the rule of Alexander’s general Seleucus, along with its larger-than-life-size cult statue (perhaps Zeus) in translucent marble that was transported all the way from the island of Paros in Greece.��

These finds, and others I have not the space to mention, are obviously wonderful, but just as thrilling to me is the painstaking detective work in the ��removal of soil and other debris over a number of excavation seasons to reveal more and more of the structures – be they houses, temples, tombs or fortifications – that have been buried (along with the associated pottery, coins and other artefacts) for some two millennia or more.

Just as rewarding are the strong bonds we form with those local villagers who make up a large proportion of our excavation teams. Many of them will work alongside us for a decade or more, and as a result we get to know both them and their families very well indeed. While this is generally a source of joy, sometimes this can result in much sadness for our team members, as we often wonder what has happened to our village workers and friends over time – as in Syria, where the country has undergone wars and, more recently, devastating earthquakes.

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What other resources might you recommend for readers who wish to learn more about the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods in the Middle East and the Mediterranean?

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John: For many decades the Hellenistic period (in particular) was largely ignored by historians and archaeologists who tended to concentrate their efforts on the earlier powerful Bronze Age (second millennium BCE) or the later Roman empires in the Middle East. The conquests of Alexander the Great, of course, have always been popular with historians, and this has now led to a much greater focus, both historically and archaeologically, on the kingdoms formed after his death, such as that of the Seleucids in the Middle East or the Ptolemies in Egypt. This focus has now demonstrated that, while some areas conquered by Alexander readily adopted Greek language and customs, other regions remained relatively impervious to these new influences. Indeed, it is this piecemeal and uneven response to the imported culture of the Macedonian armies of Alexander and his generals, demonstrated by the pottery and other artefacts at Pella, that provides one of the most fascinating areas for research in the Hellenistic east. This can be seen in the now increasingly numerous books on the history and art of the Hellenistic world, including A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Erskine 2005) and Art in the Hellenistic World (Stewart 2014).

Gay Hawkins is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western լ�е��� University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of environmental humanities, STS and the politics of materials.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Making Animals Public: Inside the ABC’s Natural History Archive. What inspired you to start this project?

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G&B: The initial interest came from wondering about the role of the ABC in attuning audiences to animals and how it developed a distinctly Australian form of natural history TV. While Australians now take natural history animals on their screens for granted, getting them onto television in the 1960s involved a lot of technical and cultural intervention. Once they got there, these animals rapidly became very popular with audiences and had significant impacts on them. They also developed a life of their own! We were interested in exploring both those dynamics: how animals were made informative and entertaining, and how natural history programs have shaped public interest in nature, conservation, the environment and science. Natural history television is now a huge global production industry and format. The ABC has been the key institution for developing this genre in Australia. It has played a very significant role in documenting myriad natural environments as well as many rare and elusive Australian animals – and showing these to audiences for the first time. While there have been lots of analyses of the evolution of the ABC as a major cultural force in Australia, these have focused on genres like drama, comedy and current affairs. Natural history television remained relatively unexamined.

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Making Animals Public��examines the evolution of natural history television on the ABC, through a combination of disciplines – screen studies, critical animal studies, and science and technology studies. How important was this interdisciplinary approach to your analysis of this archive?

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G&B: An interdisciplinary approach was important because the material demanded it. The book is not an institutional history; it is an exploration of what is distinct about screen animals, how they are made televisual. Hence the need to draw on media and screen studies accounts of mediation and representation. It is also a study of what natural history animals say, more broadly, about the place of animals in society and animal–human relations. How are audiences invited to look at natural history animals: as superior to humans or as companions in a complex multispecies world? Finally, we were interested in concepts from science and technology studies that foreground how science is shaped by cultural dynamics. Scientific knowledge has a huge influence in defining what is natural, what is factual and what threatens us. Natural history television is a major force in communicating science and making scientific knowledge accessible and popular.

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In the book, you state that televised animals are “enacted and staged rather than found and documented”. Can you expand on this briefly?

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G&B: In recent years, natural history television has been criticised for creating televisual “Edens”. The accusation is that these programs protect audiences from the realities of ecological crisis by showing animals in pristine environments doing remarkable things. Related to this is concern about the use of domesticated animals and an array of other production techniques in order to simulate animals in the wild. While these critiques are compelling, the claim that natural history animals aren’t really that natural after all is misplaced. It implicitly endorses the idea of an “authentic animal” and fuels concern about mediation as distorting. In the rush to critique what the media “does” to animals, we can lose sight of how natural history animals are crafted and composed in complex and myriad ways. In order for animals to be able to inhabit television, they needed to be staged and enacted rather than simply documented. Camera angles, narration, soundtracks, edits, etc. all work to craft a natural history animal that will engage viewers. The issue we explore is not how these techniques obscure the real animal but how they reveal what has come to count as a natural history animal and how this has changed over time. The ABC has made huge shifts in screening animals over the last 15 years and foregrounding human–animal interactions – from the politics of feral animal management to living with sharks. They have also explored major conservation issues such as extinctions and environmental destruction. This undermines the idea of pristine, untouched nature.

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How do you think ABC documentaries about Australia’s natural flora and fauna, from the 1950s to now, have contributed to Australian identity and environmental awareness?

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G&B: The public broadcaster has played a key role in framing the biota of the Australian continent as central to national identity, and also as unique, fragile and valuable. It has been central in building environmental awareness in audiences: this is a reflection of the institution’s charter to inform, educate and entertain a national public. This reached its apogee with the series Nature of Australia (ABC 1988) which was made for the bicentenary. During the period that our book focuses on – from the 1950s to the 2000s – we trace a growing disquiet about the trajectory of Australia’s modernization and its ecological cost. This is a trajectory in which “nature” moves from an exploited and neglected backdrop to the nation’s growth and development, to center stage as “the environment” and a matter of public interest and concern. More recently, planetary concerns have become a focus, with programs investigating climate change and its threat to all life on earth.

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What do you expect or hope for the future of natural history programs?

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G&B: There have been significant shifts in how animals and nature are explored on the ABC. The final chapter of the book explores the Your Planet series that screened in 2020. This series examined planetary forces shaping the environment. After the Fires and Big Weather: And How to Survive It, for example, investigated the impacts of climate change and showed the devastating effects of catastrophic weather events on humans and animals. This was definitely not easy viewing! The key shift in these programs was that they challenged the idea that nature would always go on, that it was resilient and would recover. In abandoning this premise, they could be described as “post-natural history” shows. Situating nature and wildlife in a planetary framework is important; it doesn’t deny the local but it gives it a bigger context. This is politically significant because it disrupts a focus on singular issues or species and foregrounds the forces that all humans and animals are facing.��

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Within the ABC’s oeuvre, what natural history programs might you recommend to readers of your book?

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• After the Fires
• Nature of Australia: A Portrait of the Island Continent
• Back to Nature
• A Dog’s World with Tony Armstrong

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Paul Eggert FAHA is Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Chicago and the University of New South Wales. He is a scholarly editor, book historian and editorial theorist.

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Tell us a bit about how your interest in the poetry and life of Charles Harpur began.��

Paul Eggert (PE): I became immersed in colonial and later prose, poetry and plays when serving as general editor of the Academy Editions of Australian Literature project. This project encompassed ten fat volumes published by the University of Queensland Press from 1996 to 2007. We had hoped to include Harpur’s poetry but the problems involved in capturing and documenting it all were monumental and had to wait. As a preliminary step in 2019, we were able to encompass online the 2,700 versions of his 700 poems in the Charles Harpur Critical Archive (CHCA: charles-harpur.org). The editorial work of digesting the meanings of what has been documented (together with its seemingly endless textual variation) was required, we soon saw, before we could get on with an edition of the poetry and of the letters that we had discovered along the way. Only thus would there be a reliable biographical backbone on which to plot not just Harpur’s life in detail but his poetry and prose as it emerged and was revised, year by year, from the 1830s when he began to write until his death in 1868.��

Chris Vening (CV):�� My interest came via the CHCA and Trove. Some years back I joined the people who trawl through the pages of the newspapers digitised on the National Library’s Trove website, correcting the often-garbled machine-readable text that makes it possible to search millions of pages. I was drawn to the colonial newspaper verse – not just the greats like Harpur and Kendall, but also the oddities and eccentrics, and Trove has a wealth of them, usually hiding behind pseudonyms. I wrote papers on a couple of the more obscure ones; Paul saw these and invited me to help out with CHCA. We live a few doors apart in Canberra, so liaison was no problem day to day, though most of our work – including with Desmond Schmidt in Brisbane – was via email, which as it turned out was a boon during COVID. I started by helping with transcription of the letters and chasing biographical material, mainly at the Mitchell Library and NSW State Archives. My main interest was in Harpur’s life and the colonial cultural context, so the next step was to build the Harpur biographical timeline on CHCA, which is annotated with hundreds of live links to newspapers, manuscripts and websites like the Australian Dictionary of Biography. From there it was a short step to the much more extensive footnotes needed for The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle and the forthcoming Supplementary Letters.����������

The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle is the first collection of Harpur’s letters to be published, including correspondence from his peers. What do the letters from Harpur’s contemporaries contribute to this portrait of the poet’s life?��

PE: There has been only one biography of Harpur, by J. Normington Rawling in 1962. Much editorial and then online archival work of the last 60 years has gradually opened up his manifold contributions, both poetic and political, to colonial culture, especially of the 1830s to the 1860s. The moment to reassess the long-held celebratory view that he was the most important nature poet of the period has arrived. The letters show a much more various and intriguing figure than had been guessed, often revealed at his best in correspondence with fellow colonial poets, Henry Kendall first among them. Harpur was also a deeply committed practitioner-poet, endlessly revising his poems as they proceeded to publication in various forms in colonial newspapers (at least 900 appearances) and towards their anticipated collection in book form, one that would never come during his lifetime. The posthumously-edited collection of 1883 called Poems, which abridged and altered the texts of his poems at will to suit emerging tastes – a process captured in detail in the edition of The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle – is a fascinating indicator of how distinctive and potentially disturbing Harpur’s style and thinking actually were.��

CV: Much of the correspondence between Harpur and Kendall deals with technical verse-making, with Kendall’s labours to publish Harpur in լ�е���, and with his admiration (or otherwise) for English contemporaries like Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne. Kendall was an unqualified admirer of Harpur, describing the older man as the national poet to the rising generation and often expressing his belief in Harpur’s greatness. But in Kendall’s comments and responses we read Harpur’s own doubts and fears about his future reputation, his “keen discontent” with his isolation – personal and cultural – in the goldfields, his contempt for the newspapers and newspaper people he relied on to publish his verse, his resentment of injury by those he considered his intellectual inferiors, and the growing frustration and melancholy that would affect his last years.����

From Harpur’s widow Mary, whose letters describe her struggles to realise his ambition to publish his verse, we glimpse the poet’s anger and frustration at the marring of his work by careless printers (“I have so often seen poor Chas stamping mad at such calamities”) and, even worse, with those like newspaper editor W.A. Duncan who dared interfere with a Harpur poem – a fate which, ironically, would befall his own posthumous Poems of 1883. From Mary, too, we get hints of Harpur’s hopes of lasting recognition (he “knew not all and expected too much”), as well as his private opinion (never articulated in his own letters) that Kendall was not the “great poet” he would come to be considered in Kendall’s own lifetime. Henry Parkes reveals his doubts about Harpur’s character earlier in their friendship than we might expect; Joseph Jehoshaphat Harpur, despite their estrangement, emphasises his brother’s generous disposition (his “faults were faults of temper”); while Harpur’s daughter Mary Araluen defends her father from the charge of intemperance, and describes his long-lasting admiration and affection for his wife.��

In the book, you describe Harpur as “witheringly satirical” and “always witty”. Are there any particular poems or letter excerpts that, to your mind, best embody these traits?��

PE: “The ‘Nevers’ of Poetry” is the outstanding example, one of many poems. It grew and grew as the years went by and as Harpur settled scores with his political and other opponents. Newspaper poetry was the principal vehicle for poetry in the colonial period when local book publication had otherwise to be paid for in advance. Such poems sat cheek-by-jowl with news reports on the very figures Harpur was attacking. Readers held poetry in high cultural esteem, so this phenomenon gave poetry a special edge and advantage. Harpur could wield the knife of satire to great effect even though most readers today think of him on the basis of his anthology appearances as solely a nature poet.��

CV: The editor of the posthumous Poems deliberately avoided Harpur’s satirical and comedic material – whether from the loss of topicality or the risk of offending the still-powerful is not clear. For this we go to manuscripts and newspapers. “The Temple of Infamy” (whose designated ID in the CHCA is�� h580c) was Harpur’s Dunciad, “the first step”, he called it, “in an attempt to expose, and root up if possible, the ‘thousand and one’ Infamies that are everywhere depraving the morals and debasing the intellects of the rising generation of this Colonial Public.” His anonymous “Squatter Songs” in Duncan’s newspaper are full of indignation beneath the ironic humour – for example “The Beautiful Squatter” (h560a). His diatribes against W.C. Wentworth in verse (like h713c) and prose; his letters of outraged indignation against critics like Hastings Elwin (Letters 10 and 11 in The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle); his bitter recriminations against editor Samuel Bennett (Letter 126) who had brushed aside Harpur’s offer to contribute articles, all gave play to his sardonic wit, whether impelled by rage or humour or both. As an example, read this passage from Letter 37 to The Empire of 1853, blasting the nominee NSW Legislative Council and proposing various tests Governor FitzRoy might apply in selecting his nominees to it:��

But the final test … is a much mightier thing, I can tell you, than it looks to be, and is by no means to be sneezed at. In short, it is a thumping great nose! a round, robustious, broad-backed, elephantine, Wellingtonian, dodolike upper mandible! Be this your test, Sir Charles. Pack our Nominee Chamber with noses of such amplitude, and consequently of such a roaring sternutational power, that one-and-twenty of them, well provided with �ʰ����Գ���’s mixture, might even discharge (if need were) on the anniversary of a coronation, or what not, a very satisfactory and right royal salute, to the public saving of much excellent gunpowder. Yes, Sir Charles, stick to this nose test. It will not only give us the shadow, but something of the substance, such as it is, of a genuine House of Lords. For a nose of the size and fashion here meant, when surmounted with a forehead so far recedent as to be incapable of the corrective of deep thinking, is indicative of intense sensualism, selfishness extreme, and a brute obstinacy; and constitutes (thus surmounted) the upper facial type of the great mass of the British aristocracy. And if it be right for us to copy this same aristocracy in its legislative functions, it can hardly be wrong, even for the look of the thing, to copy it also as far as we can in this, the most marked, of its featural idiosyncracies.��

What insights into 19th century Australian society and literature have you gleaned from Harpur’s letters and/or poetry?��

PE: Our work on the letters gave colonial culture a density and presence neither of us had experienced in quite this way before. Its idealism, especially of the 1840s and early 1850s, comes fully into focus in The Letters edition as the forms that representative government would take were battled out in the public arena. The idealism needs further study as it acts as a counterweight to accounts that stress the (undeniable) violence towards Aboriginal peoples on the shifting colonial frontier. How did idealists such as Harpur ride the seeming contradiction? The Letters edition makes its contribution to that urgently needed debate.����

The other principal insight for me was recognising the contemporaneity of colonial culture, its surprising up-to-dateness with what was happening in the literary world centred in London. Focussing on the letters of a single poet and those of his circle has brought alive, by forcing us to understand, the relevant facts of book history that allowed this to happen.����

Harpur was the son of two former convicts who went on to become pillars of their local community. How did his family background inform his writing and political views?��

PE: Harpur grew up in a family where his ex-convict father was also the local school teacher at Windsor, NSW, where his brother would also become a poet, even if only a minor one, and where Harpur himself seems to have had access to some good private library, perhaps that of the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Cheap reprinted literature was also readily available in the colony, and Harpur took full advantage of it, even though a poor man for most of his life. Of Emancipist (ex-convict) stock, Harpur was the natural enemy of the Exclusivists who separated themselves from those with the convict taint. Harpur took particular delight in skewering the pretensions of the large landholding squatters as well as his political opponents, especially in the 1850s.����

CV: Harpur was indeed a “natural enemy of the Exclusivists”, and delighted in skewering the pretensions of the great squatter landholders and politicians. That said, his convict connections don’t figure prominently in his verse or letters. He opposed the re-introduction of transportation, but so did most other progressives of the day. His obituary lines for his emancipist father (h297c) make only brief and discreet reference (“I stand in thought beside my Father’s Grave: / The grave of one who, in his old age, died / Too late, perhaps, since he endured so much / Of corporal anguish, sweating bloody sweat…”); and even his play The Bushrangers makes very slight reference to convict origins of the protagonists. Harpur’s consciousness of a convict heritage was overlaid by a passionate belief in the destiny of his generation of Australians to create a new society – egalitarian, democratic – out of the stuff of the old, and this informed his radicalism of the 1840s–1850s.��

What other resources would you recommend for readers interested in learning more about early colonial literary culture in Australia?��

Online resources:��

The Charles Harpur Critical Archive. ed. Paul Eggert (լ�е���: լ�е���, 2019): online archival resource at charles-harpur.org��

AustLit database: online bibliographical resource at austlit.edu.au��

Trove: online colonial-era newspapers in facsimile and transcription: trove.nla.gov.au��

J. Normington-Rawling. Charles Harpur: An Australian (լ�е���: Angus and Robertson, 1962) (the only biography of Harpur).��

Literary-historical works:��

Jennifer Alison, Doing Something for Australia: George Robertson and the Early Years of Angus & Robertson, Publishers 1888–1900 (Melbourne: BSANZ, 2009)����

Katherine Bode, Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field (London: Anthem, 2012)����

The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, ed. David Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)��

The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry, ed. Philip Mead and Ann Vickery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024��

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What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

The single greatest privilege of academic life for me has always been that you are encouraged to write and get a salary to allow you to do lots of it. Along with music and great conversation, writing has always been a huge passion of mine. If I’m not writing something each day, or researching in preparation for doing so, I feel a gnawing hunger to get behind a keyboard. So, the overarching inspiration for the book was my almost visceral need to write.

This book has been percolating for almost 40 years since I first wrote about how most smokers quit in a polemical piece in I have always been an instinctively sceptical person and was beyond delighted to be named Australian Skeptic of the Year in 2013. It was my scepticism that locked onto the bizarre neglect in the tobacco control field about the overwhelming way that most ex-smokers quit (by doing it cold turkey) and the ambition of many of my colleagues and the pharmaceutical industry to try and erode this by convincing as many smokers as possible to do anything but try to quit alone.��

How would you describe your writing process?

The idea for a book foments in a cauldron of influences. For me, these have been research experiences I’ve had, where a strong sense emerges that I want to go far deeper into a topic than you can ever do within the limits of a few academic papers. I always write a detailed introductory chapter first. I set out why I’m writing the book, what fascinates me about its focus and a summary of what’s to come. I often manicure this as the rest of the book is written. The meat of the book is the assembled almost like the way a jigsaw in completed. There are many sections that can be quite quickly and early written around the bones of each chapter. Then there are sections which take much longer, detailed work. I’m a morning person and always throw myself at the writing early in the day. In the afternoons, I typically research arguments I’m making, find references and look at the quality of the evidence before weaving new material into the draft text in the following days. I polish and rearrange sections of chapters when they start reaching penultimate status.

What is the most valuable piece of advice you've been given about writing?

If you can’t easily describe why you have written a book, what it’s about and what the most important ‘take-homes’ of your argument are, you are nowhere near ready to write it. Journalists are often very useful in helping you focus your thoughts on these things, as are good friends with no specialised understanding of the issues.

What message do you want this book to convey and what do you hope readers will take away from it?

As an experiment, try asking people you meet if they ever smoked, and if so, how they quit. You will quickly discover that up to three quarters of all ex-smokers quit without assistance, and many found it surprisingly easy, despite the enduring narrative about it being very hard. This book dives deep into why this information has been long hidden in plain sight. I hope readers will finish it knowing they have read a huge myth-busting book.

What did you find surprising during your research, is there something that stands out?

In the year or so that I was writing the book, I found a staggering amount of evidence for the case I was making. Often this was tucked away in tables where researchers had tried to spin different emphases from their data. Most quit smoking aids have quite abysmal track records of helping smokers quit, while paradoxically there have never been more ex-smokers in the population than there are today. Reconciling these two takes you to the heresy that most ex-smokers finally succeed with no thanks to drugs, vaping or any sort of professional ‘laying on of hands’. My growing surprise was at the immense neglect of the implications of this and how we should approach the task of maximising smoking cessation in whole populations.

What did you edit out of this book?

I have a large collection of material I’ve filed over the years where those who will loathe this book have vented their spleens about my work on this topic. I took the decision to not mine my files for some of the often truly vicious abuse I have seen on social media, in emails forwarded to me by others, and leaked posts to closed discussion groups by those doing all they can to denigrate unassisted quitting.

What in your view are your career highlights?

It’s pretty hard to go past two things: the advocacy I did with others in the 1990s for tough gun control policy in Australia. This primed the great majority of politicians across most parties and over 90% of public opinion measured in polls, to support law reform. This happened swiftly after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre where 35 were murdered. There had been 13 mass shootings in Australia in the 18 years before the law reforms. We then went 22 years without a single massacre. We calculated the odds of that occurring by chance were about 200,000 to one. Gun control works.

I also played a prominent role in advocating for plain tobacco packaging, introduced in 2012. Australia was the first nation to do that and since then another 16 nations have implemented or legislated plain packs. Many more will follow. This is the first time the packaging for any commodity has been totally prescribed by legislation.

Despite all the research into its harmful effects, in your opinion, why do people continue to smoke?

The reasons people take up smoking and continue to smoke are quite different. You start smoking because when you are young and very impressionable, you quickly realise that the whole gesturing display and rituals that are intrinsic to smoking are thick with signification about how you want others to see you. Smoking is a way of presenting yourself to those whose approval you worry about. It’s very uncommon for people to take up smoking after 20, so young people who take up smoking (and these days also vaping) hope that others who see them blowing smoke will inhabit the same understandings as them: that it’s richly cool and edgy.

What is your response to those who argue that vaping is less harmful than smoking and can be used as an effective tool for quitting smoking?

When smoking first skyrocketed with the availability of cheap cigarettes from mechanised production from late in the nineteenth century, lung cancer was a rare disease for several decades afterwards. From the 1930s onward occasional cases of lung cancer rapidly accelerated to the point that lung cancer became the world’s most prevalent cause of cancer death. And that’s before we even add other cancers caused by smoking, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases and fires.

Just ten to fifteen years after vaping entered the stage, people with little to no understanding of the slow burn way that chronic diseases like cancer develop are declaring vaping to be all but risk free. This is weapons-grade irresponsible stupidity. We made every conceivable mistake with the failure to regulate tobacco. We should not repeat that with vaping. We allow prescription access to life saving drugs and to powerfully addictive drugs like codeine and methadone. That’s the way we should travel with vaping rather than treat it like a grocery item. Quitting smoking by vaping of course occurs for some, but there is a strong case that it keeps more in smoking than it tips out of it.

Have you ever had concerns about speaking out against the tobacco industry?

In the very early days of my career in the 1970s and 80s, there was the occasional lame attempt to muzzle me. But for at least 30 years, the pro-smoking lobby has had almost zero credibility. Ninety percent of smokers regret they ever started and it’s a political death wish to be cosy with Big Tobacco. Tobacco control is the poster child of modern chronic disease control and those working in areas like obesity, injury prevention and alcohol abuse prevention dream of achieving all the policy gains we have made. Across 50 years, every policy battle the tobacco industry has fought they have lost. Most people who work in the tobacco industry realise they are working for a pariah industry.

Do you believe it is possible that smoking will be phased out completely in Australia?

'Phasing out' is an easy thing to roll off the tongue but there’s lots of devil in the detail when the policy intent rubber meets the road. The key to it will be to remind politicians and the community that there is no product on sale that kills two in three of its long-term users and that tobacco needs to be treated like the peerless killer that it is.

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Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction is��out 1 July 2022, order your copy��here.

Made in Chinatown was published in March this year. The book delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. We caught up with��Peter to ask him a few questions about his motivations for writing the book, its significance and his writing process.

What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

I was inspired by the activities and lives of the people in the book, which I thought deserved greater publicity and recognition than I could offer through a PhD thesis, on which the book is based. I chose to look at this topic largely by accident, having found a large collection of old insolvency and bankruptcy files.

What were your influences?

Other than the book’s subjects, I was influenced by accomplished and diligent scholars, especially my main dissertation supervisor Julia Martínez at the University of Wollongong and my friend Huang Zhong at Wuhan University. In addition, a number of people within the Chinese communities of Wollongong and լ�е���, and more recently Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, have been positive influences regarding the writing process.

Do you have personal links or ties to the history described in the book?

I collected and scrutinised all of the primary sources and used them to write the thesis over five years and spent another two years rewriting the thesis into a book, so I do indeed feel very close to the history. The research was also partly an exercise in diplomacy. Since my Chinese is poor, I needed some help with Chinese-language materials, so I reached out to native speakers, and together we have forged lasting friendships.

What did you find surprising during your research, is there something that stands out?

I was surprised to find such a vast amount of historical source material on this subject, enough for a book, yet I had heard so very little about it previously in Australian history.��

What was the most interesting?

I found the courtroom testimonies and financial records of ordinary Chinese factory workers, which make up a large part of the book, the most interesting. I think that’s because workers in general tend to leave behind little evidence of their lives, and so are commonly left out of historical writing.

How would you describe your writing process?

It was gruelling, with round after round of feedback and changes, but ultimately rewarding.

What did you edit out of this book?

The book is based on a doctoral thesis, which I revised heavily with much assistance from լ�е���. It is shorter and lighter with a different structure, reflecting the different intended audiences, that is, thesis examiners versus general readers.

Why is this book important, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

The book is important, I think, in terms of increasing the diversity of Australian history, which has for a long time sidelined Chinese migrants and their descendants. I hope readers find some interest in the activities of these furniture manufacturers and workers, as I have, and recognise that they were there and that they mattered.

Is there anything that you would have done differently?

I would have taken high-quality photos of materials like work contracts and factory invoices, which I think would have made nice additions to the book. Sadly, I only took rough photos for my own reference, not expecting to need them for publication.

Made in Chinatown is part of the China and the West in the Modern World series published by լ�е���. The focus of this series is how ideas, beliefs and cultural practices in China and Western nations are understood – or sometimes misunderstood by both parties. Other books in this series are South Flows the Pearl and the Poison of Polygamy.

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How influential was White’s work on Australian theatre? Would Australian theatrical modernism have looked different without White?��

From the early 1960s and pre-dating the New Wave of Australian theatre that took hold a decade later, White’s plays took an anti-realist approach to plot and character, and featured non-naturalist staging in heightened, often satirical, representations of Australian place, language, and social class. He was a singular playwright ahead of his time and place, driven by a fascination with and deep love of theatre. He was modernist but also eclectic, weaving vaudeville and gothic humour into his works.

By the 1970s and 80s, when the early plays were revived by a new generation of theatre directors (Jim Sharman, Neil Armfield), the plays were presented as a challenge to public tastes and the atmosphere was more receptive.

Australian theatrical modernism might have been far more earnest and humourless without White’s satirical wit and playful theatricality.

Was it difficult to analyse White’s theatre without assigning too much importance to his personal life and beliefs?

Not at all. The book includes biographical references and considerations of White’s beliefs, but these are considered formative but not determinants of the works. The approach I took was to analyse the words on the page and the theatre on the stage. Theatre is a collaborative art form. Even the published play text, which might be considered a literary work, was often written after the first performances and so was guided by performers, directors and designers by the time it reached the page. Once the works entered the theatre then there is the director, the performers, the designers, the audience, the press. There’s a whole system and many people who influence works of theatre. So the book would accord for example more importance to Jim Sharman’s directorial style then to Patrick White’s personal life and beliefs. Besides, he wasn’t always a reliable narrator.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first performance of The Ham Funeral by the University of Adelaide in 1961. Do you think the rejection of the play by the Adelaide Festival of the Arts the following year continues to affect his reputation as a playwright today?

No, I don’t think it does affect his reputation as a playwright today. This is because most people don’t realise and can’t imagine that the plays would be rejected by a festival that has now established a reputation as a promoter of innovative and experimental theatre as well as other media. But people are interested when they hear about the story of how a well-known literary figure was rejected by a group of powerful men because the play did not conform to their, let’s face it, colonial view of taste and propriety. But it is also a warning to us that we should not take liberal cultures for granted, that there are always those who will try to shut down the creative arts and curtail artistic experimentation.

Fortunately we are not facing such censorship now. But it was a struggle to achieve the freedoms we have today. Patrick White gave up writing plays in 1964 and returned to writing novels, where he had more artistic control and an international reputation. He only returned to writing plays in the late 1970s after Jim Sharman revived the early plays and reminded him of how much he enjoyed the theatre.

If White’s theatre was meant to reflect the zeitgeist of the time or incite change, how does his work remain relevant or influential in today’s climate?��

Patrick White’s plays remain relevant today because they represent outsider figures who continue to be marginalised today. While I was working on the 1963 play A Cheery Soul, featuring the annoying do-gooder Miss Docker, I was struck by how she represented the epidemic of loneliness that we find in the Western world today. We also see in the female characters the terrible waste of women’s lives in the pre-feminist era and even into the 1980s. In plays like Netherwood from the 1980s, we see gender fluidity and diversity��in conflict with repressive sections of society.

Does a particular staging of White’s plays stand out for you as most memorable?

Benedict Andrews’ production of The Season at Sarsaparilla for the լ�е��� Theatre Company in 2007 was brilliant. It was a stunning revelation of the potential of White’s theatre to capture modern Australian suburbia. The co-location of the three iconic suburban houses in the one brick veneer on a revolving stage with webcams inside the house projected onto a screen for audiences to see was brilliant. It was a wonderful example of the importance of returning to classic works and remaking them for the contemporary era.

Sadly, most Australian plays only ever have one production. I should also note Kip Williams’ revival of A Cheery Soul in 2018 for the STC,��which made panoramic use of contemporary stage design and technology. I also really liked Michael Kantor’s 2000 and 2005 productions of The Ham Funeral, which drew out the psychological aspects of the play as well as heightening its theatrical potential.

You can read an extract from��Patrick White’s Theatre��.��

Melissa Kennedy is a Research Associate at the University of Western Australia for the Project Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She is the editor of A Land in Between: The Orontes Valley in the Early Urban Age, a book which��documents the material culture and socio-political relationships of the Orontes Valley and its neighbours from the fourth through to the second millennium BCE (photo from the author archives).

Why is the Orontes Valley in the Northern Levant often described as a ‘land between’?

Most research has focused on the large riverine valleys and the coast, with everything in between generally an afterthought, perhaps as many of the sites in this area were not as large as those on the rivers and coast. It is partly because of this that the region has largely been viewed as a ‘land between’ rather than a connector.

Much work has been done on the coast and along the Euphrates and the Khabur river corridors, but with the exception of sites like Ebla, Qatna and Hama comparatively little research has focused on this area. Why is that?

Again, I think this is mainly due to the smaller size of many of the sites, they have not been seen as important as their larger neighbours but we know that is not the case.

What has sparked your interest in the archaeology of this part of the world?

I had the privilege to go to Pella, Jordan for my first archaeological experience. This made me fall in love with the Levant. The people who worked at Pella were also instrumental in developing my love and scholarly pursuit of this important region.

What first got you interested in archaeology?

As a child I used to live in London, as my dad worked at UCL Hospital, my mum would take my brother and myself down the road to the British Museum. I grew to love the ancient world through this, and the fact that both my parents are really interested in ancient history and archaeology and they nurtured this interest.

What are you currently working on?

I am now working on the Neolithic and “Early Bronze Age” of Saudi Arabia. In comparison to the rest of the Middle East, very little is known about these periods in this region. So it is all very exciting to be at the forefront of academic research into this amazing region.

If you could go back in time, when and where would you go?

I think the 3^rd millennium BC, I’d love to see if what I think may have happened, actually did. Also, this is such a crucial/pivotal period in history, it would be amazing to see these fantastic sites in all their glory.

You mention in the book the idea of an ‘Animal Turn’. What was the genesis of your interest in animals?

It’s almost too far back to remember. And I can only think of it as a matter of stages. As a boy scout in the 1960s, hiking in the Brindabellas, coming home with the skull of a ram, the discarded skin of a snake. Animals, but only the relics of them, on the periphery of consciousness. And as a high school student, for a year in the US, our biology teacher taking us to see a bald eagle’s nest, high in a tree, deep in a national park. Or in the early 1980s when, back from years studying in Canada, I developed a fascination with Australian birds. But all of that, for decades, subordinated to other impulses. Then, in the early 2000s, late, past the middle of my life, I seemed to wake up somehow, almost snapped awake. As I write about in The Grass Library. If there was a turn then it was then. I became vegetarian, then vegan, began to think about non-human animals, realise their awful predicament in the face and the mind of humans. I remember one magical afternoon not long afterward when my wife and I visited Edgar’s Mission, a farm animal sanctuary in Victoria, the happiness and curiosity of those animals, the intensity of their being, and little laminated quotations someone had put up around the place, from authors I admire, about animals, like messages: Get going. You are wasting your life …

The essays in Animal Dreams explore the various ways in which humans have thought, dreamt and written about animals. Can you identify a specific trend in the way this thinking has shifted in recent years? Or are we as a species still wildly inconsistent in the way we think about other animals?��

Short answer: yes, we are still wildly inconsistent in the way we think about other animals. The book explores some of that inconsistency. But I should approach this differently.

First and foremost, I think, these essays are about the deep tangle of the human mind and how non-human animals are trapped in it: how this tangle sustains – how it has evolved and exists to sustain – a belief that humans are superior to other animals, that humans themselves are not animals, and that animals are here for human use, entertainment and disposal. The essays pick at that tangle, that prison. They try on the one hand to establish just how tangled it is – how that prison of thought works – and the depth and extent of the predicament of the non-humans caught in it. They argue that this tangle – the denial of our animal being and the rupture in our relations with other animals – is a deep wound in our psyche. Some of them explore that wound, and try to suggest ways we might reduce that tangle, or at least understand better and start to reduce our role in it.

As to trends, I don’t know. I can only speak for myself, and the roots of this thinking are almost lost in time: the ‘liberation’ movements of the sixties and early seventies – the black power movement, my early reading of Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, etc., Paul Ehrlich on the environment, Herbert Marcuse on repressive tolerance, and my later engagements with women’s liberation and attempts to track the deep and insidious roots of patriarchy in my own psyche and the culture it extends. I think these movements and ways of thinking, and the way, a bit later, structuralism and deconstruction served as catalysts in our thinking about such things and their ‘others’, have ultimately provided a platform for thinking about animals, allowed that thinking to begin to claw its way out of that tangle. But I say begin. I don’t think we’ve got all that far as yet.

There were people advocating for animals through all of that. Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation came out in 1975 and there were already people on that track before him. But they struggled a long time in the wilderness. Their time was a long while arriving. In the last twenty years or so – quite rapidly in the last few – there’s been an increasing consciousness of non-human animals, and the suffering of non-human animals, as if a critical mass has been reached. That’s very encouraging, but in the field of public policy the war against animals goes on regardless. We’re making some small dents in the juggernaut, but it remains a juggernaut.

In one of your essays, you highlight the dissonance between loving horses and loving horseracing. Some would argue that the people working in the racing industry love and care for horses more than anyone else. Do you think this is naïve? And do you see the racing industry continuing to thrive in Australia for decades to come?

The Melbourne Cup is called ‘the race that stops the nation’. I’d love to think of us as the Nation that Stops the Race, but yes, I do think that’ll be a long while coming. Meanwhile every time it runs I wait for the announcement that such and such a horse has been injured on the track and been put down.

Horseracing is a pretty lethal pursuit, and the races themselves are only a part of it. Not every horse gets to be a racehorse. A great many are bred but few are chosen. A huge number of horses are killed in Australia – in most countries – every year because they don’t have what it takes to be a racehorse. One could say that ‘behind’ every horse that gets to be a racehorse there are the ghosts of several who have not got there. And not every horse that races will be successful. While some of the unsuccessful ones go on to have afterlives, a significant percentage is, again, put down.

I don’t dispute that a great many racehorse owners love their horses. I’m sure they do. But that ‘love’ is a very complicated and compromised thing. If we treated our children like we treat our racehorses we’d find ourselves in prison very quickly. And isn’t there, wherever money, winnings, gambling are at stake, something fundamentally transactional about the relationship? Is it the horse or the money he/she might bring us that we love? Is it entirely possible to separate the two? Lovers of horses will tell us that their horses love them back. Again, I don’t necessarily dispute that, but how can we know? And what choice do they have? Without going into the matter of abused children and how they, too, often ‘love’, for a time, the person who abuses them, isn’t there a matter of power relation here? Stockholm syndrome? And even this – these things – are part of larger and even more complicated issues.

Horses – and those who truly love horses, and care for their wellbeing – are in a real predicament. We humans – very dangerous creatures – have come to dominate the environment so much. Allowed to roam in the open, live their horse lives in the open – in as much as there are ‘opens’ – horses would be very much at risk. But paddocked, stabled, as it seems they have to be, their lives are more like half-lives, significantly deprived of physical and intellectual stimulus. If they were given the option of a working life, albeit a life working for humans, one can imagine they might take it. Some might even enjoy racing, were they given any choice about it. But horseracing as we know it? I don’t know. There are wild horses of course – our brumbies, for example – and that might be as close as horses can now come to fulfilment of their horse potential, but here in New South Wales the government – yet another of its broken promises – has just determined to slaughter most of them.

But enough. I’ve already written an essay about ‘The Man from Snowy River’ from the horses’ point of view. A lot of this is implicit there.

While veganism is becoming more accepted, it still cops plenty of cynicism (and sniggers) from many circles. How do you think vegans should – for lack of a better word – market veganism better so that the wider public recognises it for its benefits instead of some kind of hippie subculture?

I don’t think vegans need to worry about this quite as much as they did even three or four years ago. One has to be cautious about these matters but I wonder whether, in ‘developed’ countries (a vaguer and vaguer notion these days), we might, in this regard also, be reaching a sort of critical mass. Vegan restaurants are multiplying almost exponentially in major cities, popping up in more and more country towns. McDonald’s and Burger King feature vegan burgers. Bill Gates has announced that plant-based ‘meats’ are the future. Five years ago, I would have said this kind of thing was still decades away, yet here it is. I don’t think we can entirely dismiss the possibility that in a few decades’ time the ‘hippies’ might be those who are still, weirdly, anachronistically eating meat.

But that’s not quite what you’ve asked. The marketing of veganism is a huge topic. I’ll just make a couple of notes. When I became vegan I was rather zealous about it. I actually think a gentler approach is more effective. Lead by example, not from the pulpit. For me, the most astonishing and persuasive thing about being vegan is that, just by not doing something – not eating animal products – you’re saving lives. But people don’t seem to be much persuaded by such arguments. Perhaps, now that they’re beginning to panic (as well they might) about climate change, it won’t be too long before they accept the simple truth that one of the most powerful things they can do for the climate is to choose what they will not put on their plates.

There are a multitude of tensions that you examine in Animal Dreams, one of the most interesting being the tension between conservationists who advocate culling and animal rights advocates who believe that each animal’s life is precious. How can these two groups meet in the middle? Should they?��

I think both sides – those who practise conservation killing, and those, many of them, who advocate more compassionate processes – would agree that we must somehow reduce the numbers of the feral creatures who are wreaking havoc on our native fauna and flora. But must we kill to do so? Is wholesale slaughter our only option? At the heart of conservation killing, for example, there’s a very troublesome contradiction. The most devastating animal on the planet, to itself, to other animals, and to the planet, is the human animal, homo omnicidens, killer of everything, and yet it would be a very, very brave soul who’d advocate culling ourselves. Humans, the greatest danger to the environment, are once again out of the question, off the table. And once again, it seems, non-humans are the scapegoats, made to die for the sins, blunders and greed of humans.��

Am I advocating the culling of humans? Hardly. I’m against the culling of animals, full stop. There are other ways of reducing populations than wholesale slaughter. But they require four things: first and foremost, the most careful interrogation of the reasons those populations are determined to be excessive in the first place (an inconvenience to humans? not good enough!), and then, should their reduction be found to be desirable, will, intelligent application, and money. We are the creatures who just put an exploratory landing vehicle on Mars. We are the creatures who, in record time, just devised a whole range of vaccines against a deadly disease. What we want to do, it seems, we have a pretty good record of doing. Give us a problem we want to solve and we’ll throw billions at it. But – amongst other things, and there are other things – we choose to ‘manage’ feral animals, and ‘manage’ our wildlife, only by the cheapest and nastiest of means, which is to say poison or the bullet. This is lazy science, if it can be called science at all. And although we have, apparently, the world’s highest extinction rate, and although (say) our slaughter of kangaroos is purportedly the world’s largest annual slaughter of wildlife, I am not writing here only of Australia. This problem is pretty much worldwide. We mouth good will and good intentions toward animals – look at all the promises made by our governments after the mind-boggling loss of non-human animals in the 2019–20 fires (and think of how many have already been broken or deferred) – but it seems we will not put our money where our mouths are. We could have a more compassionate form of conservation but we would have to pay for it, and it seems we won’t. The greatest violence toward animals is budgetary.

What is it about essay writing that you most enjoy as opposed to poetry and fiction?

There’s no ‘as opposed’. I’ve loved poetry for much of my life. I once might have said – did say – that poetry was my life (whatever I meant by that), and I certainly won’t say no to a good poem if it comes along and says ‘write me’. The writing of stories and longer fictions, too, gives me great pleasure. I have a few such things lined up and am waiting for a chance to work on them. But non-human animals are suffering, all the time; their case is urgent. It seems a little indulgent to be prioritising my own creative pleasure while there is advocacy work to do. So at this point in time it gets priority and that’s that. And it seems the arguing and advocacy that have to be done have to be done in prose, and largely in essay form, because, as I see it, the essay form forces me to think more clearly, and explain more clearly, and there is, as far as animals are concerned, so much thinking and explaining to be done. I should also say that it’s a field in which I seem always to be learning, and that I enjoy that and think it’s important.

Teya Brooks Pribac, PhD, is an independent scholar and multidisciplinary artist. In Enter the Animal, she examines academic and popular discourse on animals’ experiences of grief and spirituality. (Photo of Teya and Orpheus-Pumpkin from the author's archives).

What inspired your interest in nonhuman animal grief and spirituality?

Both topics were somewhat accidental. I wanted to learn more about the phenomenon of speciesism (oppression based on one’s species) and consequent calls for nonhuman animal liberation. I figured a formal research project would give me both the necessary focus and amplitude, and that hopefully at the end of it I would have attained more structured knowledge and a better understanding of the issues involved. I enrolled in a PhD program and settled on grief.

Then one day sitting in the paddock with my rescued sheep I found myself wondering whether they too encounter phenomena that their brains can’t automatically assimilate using existing mental patterns. I had been reading about this topic in relation to humans and the experience of awe. We normally process sensory stimuli quite automatically and ascribe it to a known category. For example, if you’re walking through a forest your brain will automatically recognise those tall things left and right as trees; you don’t have to stop and evaluate them to work out what they are. Sometimes we encounter things that don’t fit any known pattern, and that’s when we may experience awe. Given that other animals’ brains work in a similar way, as research suggests, it made sense to think that they can find themselves in situations that may lead to the experience of awe. So I started to think in that direction (not as part of my research initially).����

The��central��focus��of��Enter the Animal��is that��nonhuman animals��can experience��grief��and other abstract ‘human’ emotions. How did you come to this conclusion and��what implications does it have for society moving forward?��

I found the whole thing a bit intimidating at first. Most of our (Western) thought-history is based on separation from other animals. Even when trying to work out whether other animals have something that we have (for example, basic consciousness or grief experiences) we have tended to begin with a focus on (assumed) differences. Added to this is the expectation, in academia, that one will know what anyone else has ever said on the topic, which is fair enough, but in most cases they too would have prioritised differences, or started with those, and then gotten lost a lot of the time, just like you are in danger of becoming lost in that world of abstraction and division – ‘reading yourself stupid’, as my partner would say, citing Schopenhauer – and of forgetting that what you’d set off to do is look for commonalities.

I was fortunate that by the time I began my research the wind of change had started to blow. In the past 10 years in particular, a lot has been done across disciplines to dismantle the myth of human exclusivism. For grief specifically, familiarising myself with attachment theory was critical. Attachment theory applies across species, and once we understand the potency of attachment relations we learn to appreciate the potential psycho-biological impact of loss for humans but also for other animals, certainly all mammals and birds, and probably more widely. This is the level that researchers of human grief are also trying to get to. We’ve been pulled too much into interpretative worlds. Human-style considerations can certainly add nuances to the experience, but the experience itself – grief and other subjective experiences – are possible because of organismic properties that we share with other animals, in short: because we are animals, not in spite of the fact that we are animals.

Implications for our human society? First, we all breathe a deep sigh of relief. Certainly it couldn’t have been pleasant for people to have to pretend that nonhuman animals are not sentient or that they didn’t know whether they were sentient. Failure to do so could have cost them jobs and reputations. Now that we are free of that burden we can at last turn to active explorations of ways of living that will minimise our impact on the rest of life, because, as , a medical doctor working with victims of violence, reminds us: if we tolerate violence towards any sentient being, none of us is safe. I think deep inside we all know this.

In Chapter 1 you mention the system justification theory��in relation to the treatment of nonhuman animals,��specifically within the meat industry.��That��because��of the emergence of the ‘pasture to plate’��ethos,��the continued��physical and mental suffering��of��farmed��animals can be��glossed over and��ignored.��Do you think it’s possible to eat and enjoy meat��while��also��truly caring��about��the wellbeing of nonhuman��animals?��

I think we can get pretty close, but no, never quite there.

We live in a complex world; it is impossible for us to trace the impact of every single choice we make. We simply have to trust others to various extents. So we make compromises and try to minimise the risk of our trust being abused by remaining alert and informed. We can get a bit annoyed when someone points out that, for example, some brand we like is involved in unethical conduct. We’d prefer not to know – our first inclination may be to shoot the messenger – but what this person or group is really doing is helping us preserve our right to ‘not be a perpetrator’. This is a powerful concept that highlight and that we perhaps don’t think about often enough.

I believe that most of us are good people, we think of ourselves as moral, and we’d like to do the right thing. When it comes to doing the right thing in relation to other-than-human animals we have to overcome a major obstacle: we’ve been conditioned to think of them as inferior and as food, and our considerations of their wellbeing tend to reflect this bias. We rarely, for example, question our right to take their life.

Now that slaughter has been removed from public view, and we have the luxury to avoid witnessing it, we also rarely stop to consider what actually goes on at the slaughterhouse. We tend to think that things are regulated, that all is right. Thinking otherwise could hurt and make us feel powerless, but we are not powerless and things are not alright – they are not alright for the nonhumans killed and they are not alright for the human killers either; mounting evidence shows the huge psychological impact on these individuals and their entire communities. Taking the life of a sentient being is not as easy as taking a package containing their body parts off a supermarket shelf.��

Generally speaking, so-called animal husbandry (be it for meat, milk, eggs, wool, skins or other products) is first and foremost a business, it operates for profit. When animal wellbeing and profit clash (which is inevitable), profit will be prioritised.

We could envision an ‘ideal’ setting where animals would have plenty of space to roam free, enjoy good food, veterinary care and meaningful friendships with others. Surely, the animals would be happier here than on a typical contemporary farm, but we still end up killing them and killing is a violent act towards the individual killed and those who are left behind in grief. If we take nonhuman animals’ emotions seriously – and we should, because they are no less intense than ours – then no, there’s no way we can simultaneously care and kill. It’s also elitist and selfish. This practice would yield a very small amount of flesh and only a fraction of the human population would be able to afford it. In our world, where hunger and malnutrition run rampant and where clean water and air have become a privilege, we should concentrate our efforts on genuine, all-level sustainability, which is what true visionaries are already doing, and which normally excludes animal products.

Others have suggested that we should start hunting and consuming wild animals, that this would be more ethical. In this case too we’d have to find a way of justifying the emotional pain (grief etc.) our actions would cause, and given the number of wild animal left in the world, we’d probably eat them up within a day or so. that most humans are unaware of, but of all the birds on the planet, only a third are wild birds, the rest are farmed (chickens, turkeys, etc.), and of all mammals living today only 5 percent are wild, 36 percent are human and 59 percent are farmed mammals (pigs, cows, sheep, etc.).

These are disturbing figures. We need a new master narrative.��

Another major takeaway from��Enter the Animal��is the concept that nonhuman animals are capable of spirituality.��How do you define spirituality, and what is the value of recognising that nonhuman animals are/can be spiritual beings?����

I make a distinction between religion and spirituality. Religion includes a strong cognitive closure or interpretative component, whereas I view spirituality as an affective opening. It’s the capacity to communicate with agencies in our environment, where agent refers to anything that is able to ‘speak’ to us, that affects us, regardless of whether this thing has independent agency or not.

This is a more immediate, direct level of experience, of relating, that I believe comes very naturally to us animals because we are intrinsically relational creatures. We may not spend much time thinking about it but our bodies are in continuous communication with perceived agencies. From conception (and way before we are able to analyse any of this) we interact with them – the womb is not a vacuum, it’s full of sounds and other (organic and less organic) nutrients that will influence if and how we grow. Later on we develop the ability to think, imagine, contextualise and other cognitive manoeuvres, but despite all this we retain the capacity to be in the world and communicate with it on this implicit, immediate level.

I’m starting to believe that it’s a propensity, perhaps even a need, rather than just a capacity, that it has significant value for our psycho-physical wellbeing, and that forcing a sensory desert onto animals (either by confining them as we often do in captivity or by destroying the habitat of free-living animals) may be causing a lot more pain and damage than we realise.

When considering the��ability��of nonhuman animals to experience grief and spirituality, are all animals equal?��And more broadly within animal rights, do you think��some nonhuman animals do/should hold a privileged position over others? For example,��should we care more about��the wellbeing of��dogs and��chickens��instead of��spiders��and��bats?������

The term animal encompasses an array of species with a variety of capacities, most of which we are still learning about. What we have been discovering about plant life may also pose a challenge to this arbitrariness, but I don’t really see any of this as a problem, and I certainly see no reason to use it as an excuse to continue to consume everyone, as some humans are trying to do.

Life is fluid and there will always be liminal cases. One of the most amazing things about plants is their capacity for regeneration. There is regeneration in the animal world too, we all have that capacity – think of your skin – and in some animals this capacity is very pronounced: some can regenerate whole limbs and even heads, but that’s clearly not the case for those animals we consume and otherwise systematically exploit on a large scale.

Veganism is sometimes criticised for being too radical. Veganism and the entire animal rights movement in the West were a response to what humans were experiencing before the whole animal agriculture operation was removed from public view. There was a strong animal welfare movement in the 19^th century here in Australia, the US and Europe, sprung out of compassion for pigs and hens and others that are very similar to humans in all sorts of ways and that were exploited specifically for human need and greed. Having a blanket ‘prohibition’ on the use of animals made more sense for what they were trying to achieve compared to sorting species into categories of (presumed) levels of sentience. The contemporary movement has inherited this framework and I still think it makes sense for practical reasons, but we’re also discovering amazing things about other animals, including invertebrates. Bees, for example, can be pessimistic or optimistic: when they are stressed, they are more likely to judge a neutral stimulus negatively and vice versa, just like we are.

In relation to grief and spirituality, I believe that the type of embodied spirituality that I talk about applies across animal species. Grief as the experience of loss in an intersubjective context may be more limited but we just don’t know. For a long time we considered reptiles as solitary, love-less, instinct-driven machines but now it turns out that they too make friends, look after each other’s children, etc. A lot of animals are very social creatures. I have no idea what goes on in an ant colony on a personal level (do Mary Ant and Jane Ant like each other or do they hang out together just because ...?), but why assume that nothing does?

I think we could do with a change of attitude for starters. We tend to view care and caring as a type of sacrifice and then set unnecessary limitations for ourselves and worry that the world is going to consume us if we open up to it a little bit more than some ‘authority’ at some point told us it was safe to do. In reality, caring is a gift we give to ourselves (along with the target receiver), and when we stop caring about the limits of caring, we may realise that we are not as poor as we’d thought we were.

Could you tell us about Henry, and your other non-human family members?

Henry from the book cover is the oldest of our four rescued sheep; he’s about 11 years old. He’s always been very easy-going and playful but tends to get a little blue and pensive when it rains. That portrait was taken on a rainy day.

They all like eating leaves from trees and bushes; the other three sheep stand on their hind legs and compete to see who can reach higher. Henry has never mastered the technique of standing on two legs, but he’s developed his own tricks. For example, when he manages to grab the tip of a branch with his mouth (sometimes because someone else has pulled the branch down), he then very carefully slides it under his chin, and then starts moving his head slowly up the branch, eating the leaves on the way. Others eventually learnt this strategy from him and seem to really appreciate it, especially now that they are getting older, and while the spirit of adventure is still well and alive, the body is starting to lag behind.

These are currently the only (domestic) non-human animals living with us on a permanent basis. Charlie, our dog, passed away just over a year ago. You can learn more about all of us in . There is quite a bit of wildlife living here too: there’s a family of magpies, there’s a rabbit that comes to play with the sheep every day – the rabbit and Jason, one of our sheep, have a particularly close relationship; there are several generations of wood ducks, many of whom grew up here around our pond; a black snake residing in the swamp, among others. Then there’s the occasional temporary resident. The latest was , an orphaned baby goat a լ�е��� family found abandoned on their trip through the outback in the first week of the new year. We looked after him for a few days, then a sanctuary offered him a permanent home. It was incredibly hard to let him go but in the long run it was the best thing for him.

Peter Li is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston-Downtown. In��Animal Welfare in China: Culture, Politics and Crisis he draws on decades of fieldwork and research to offer a wide-ranging analysis of the animal welfare challenges facing China now, as well as vital historical, cultural and political context. (Photo credit: VShine)

How did you come to be interested in animal welfare?

My interest in animal welfare issues was in one sense an accident. Like most mainland Chinese college students in the 1980s, I paid absolutely no attention to issues related to human–animal relations. As a political science major, I dreamed of becoming a diplomat or an expert on the so-called “high politics” issues of international security, nuclear disarmament or the like. My experience as a foreign student in the US opened my eyes to human–animal relations as a public policy issue. Seeing happy and fearless squirrels on my first day on campus and learning that apples were kept on trees for birds to survive the winter, I realised that how we treated nonhuman animals could make the world a better place. I decided to include human–animal relations as part of my research agenda.

Looking back, however, my interest in animal welfare subjects was to some extent pre-determined. I grew up in Mao’s China and witnessed human suffering on a massive scale. But mine was a loving and caring family. My parents protected me well. My mother never said no to people in need of help. It was my mother who told me that mother birds were like humans who would be heartbroken if their babies were missing from their nests. ��At 11, I was terribly “hurt” when my mother refused to allow me to have a puppy. Her explanation was that dogs were like family and people would suffer when their dogs were lost or died. My mother was in fact talking about her own heartbreaking experience. Before I was born, my family had a dog. The dog’s disappearance during China’s Great Famine (1959–62) sent the family into sadness for a long time. My mother vowed never to experience this mental agony again.��

In your book, you describe how the experience of war, famine and political violence shaped human–animal relations in China for much of the 20th century. But Western commentators often talk vaguely about “traditional culture” as an explanation for animal welfare issues in China. Do you think we forget China’s more recent history, or underestimate its ongoing effects?

My childhood experience was shared by many who grew up in Mao’s China. The bond between humans and dogs is in fact not Western, not country or culture specific. It is universal. Compassion and kindness, as moral values passed down from the Chinese ancestors, were still there, even though the country during Mao’s era was devastatingly poor.��

Animal Welfare in China introduces human–animal relations in ancient and pre-reform China in an effort to scrutinise these relations in the contemporary era. The book calls for attention to China’s cultural traditions but warns against a culturally deterministic approach. I believe it is not fair to lay the blame of questionable contemporary behaviours at the doorstep of a country’s past. Modern states are not the pawns of traditional culture. China’s party-state is a powerful, culture-shaping political institution. It would not allow the country’s traditions to define its course of action. Its building a modern Leninist state was not the result of the influence of tradition Chinese culture. Its massive adoption of a Western modernisation model as part of a concerted national economic catch-up was not triggered by China’s traditional culture, either.

China’s animal welfare crisis is more a side-effect of its contemporary politics of economic modernisation. Never in China’s history did such a staggering number of nonhuman animals live such miserable lives as in the contemporary era. China is the world’s biggest livestock and wildlife farming nation. Billions of animals are farmed in concentrated animal feeding operations. A Western farming model has been enthusiastically embraced by Chinese producers and Western farming tools and practices such as battery cages, gestation crates, debeaking, early weaning and other methods have been adopted in farms of all sizes. The SARS and COVID-19 pandemics, believed to be linked to wildlife exploitation, should be blamed on the modern mode of production, in which a large number of wild animals are farmed, transported and slaughtered in crowded conditions. Wildlife farming on this scale never existed in the country’s dynastic past.

Most of your manuscript was written before the outbreak of COVID-19, but since the pandemic the questions you ask seem more pressing than ever. Did the pandemic challenge and/or confirm any of your ideas?��

Written long before the outbreak of COVID-19, this book answers quite a few questions regarding why China’s wildlife industry, which was intended to contribute to poverty reduction, is in fact a public health risk. The outbreak of SARS, COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases in China can be linked to the country’s animal welfare crisis. China in the last four decades has seen the expansion of a wildlife farming operation and wild animal meat consumption. China also has the world’s biggest wildlife breeding operation for use in traditional Chinese medicine, for use in clothing, in entertainment and display, and for laboratory use. Like the country’s livestock production, the wildlife farming industry is a concentrated animal feeding operation. What makes the industry a potential breeding ground for pandemics is the fact that captive-bred and wild-caught animals are often mixed together in great numbers on the farm, during transport, in wet markets and in restaurants. Each component of the industry is an ideal environment for viral transmission and mutation. Looking back, the outbreak of SARS in 2002 in China was not a surprise. Wuhan’s being the epicenter of the COVID-19 should not be a surprise either, although much is yet to be done to ascertain how the pandemic broke out in this mega-city in central China.

China’s wildlife farming operation has no historical precedent. It never existed in China’s past. Today, similar modes of production, i.e., concentrated animal feeding operations, exist not only in China but across the world. Pandemics can happen in any country where animals are massively farmed in concentrated operations. It is not Chinese tradition that is to blame for the pandemic; it is the mode of production that keeps a large number of animals in concentrated operations that is the public health threat.

In your research trips back to China, you have rescued a number of animals that you found for sale in markets. Can you tell us more about this? How did you come to find them and where are they now?

The book has benefitted from many of my field trips, meetings with wildlife traders, visits to slaughterhouses, and unplanned rescue operations. I was in Yulin many times and once tried to comfort those trembling and mentally destroyed dogs who had just witnessed slaughter. In that now globally infamous city, I sat down with dog meat traders and dog butchers and heard their personal stories. At China’s biggest bear farm, I went inside the bear shed and witnessed rows of caged bears rocking their heads in untold boredom and mental meltdown. I went to live animal markets and was shocked to see hairless dogs who suffered from skin diseases waiting to be sold to dog meat restaurants.

On these field trips, I was thrown into a situation where I felt I could not leave without bringing animals who would otherwise be slaughtered home with me. Koby and Scout were puppies when I heard them in a marketplace in Yulin. I took them back to the US. I caught sight of Huru and Yulu inside a slaughterhouse also in Yulin. Both Huru and Yulu (now TingTing) are living the most happy lives they so much deserve. I helped rescue Lily, a dog who we found looking absolutely miserable and desperate outside a dog meat store in Northeast China. Lily came to the US two months after we rescued her. She is living a fear-free life. She even met Santa days after she arrived in the US.

��

You end your book on an optimistic note, suggesting that young people in China today have the resources, the will, and the cultural inheritance to make big changes. Can you tell us more about this?

China presents a comprehensive challenge for animal protection. The animal welfare crisis cannot and should not be attributed to China’s cultural traditions. In fact, as the book introduces, ancient China had state policies for conservation, and for compassion for nonhuman animals in the form of slaughter suspension, mercy release and vegetarianism. Dog meat consumption was considered despicable in ancient China. Chinese emperors twice tried to outlaw dog meat consumption. China’s animal welfare crisis is a byproduct of the contemporary politics of economic modernisation.

I see hope in China’s evolving into a more humane society. China’s young generations are a different species compared with their parents and grandparents.�� Growing up in a materially much improved society and having no recollection of food deprivation, people born in the 1990s and 2000s are less tolerant of injustice to others, including nonhuman animals. Many grew up with pets. The Chinese government has stopped policies that see pet keeping as an undesirable bourgeois lifestyle. On the contrary, the Chinese government acknowledged dogs as companion animals, perhaps the first time anywhere in the world a Communist government has done so. In the last three decades, animal advocacy and rescue operations have expanded across the Chinese mainland. In fact, the animal protection movement in mainland China has become more robust and prominent than in neighboring countries. This movement is still evolving. Its long-term effectiveness depends on how members of the movement can be more professionalised and, whether the authorities can see the movement as a helper rather than a nuisance.

I am so glad that Animal Welfare in China is soon to be published. I owe thanks to լ�е��� and Denise O’Dea and Agata Mrva-Montoya in particular for their tireless work and valuable feedback that have made the book much more presentable. The book is the result of years of research. It does not pretend to be a complete overview of all the animal welfare challenges in contemporary China. Neither was it written to expose, demonise or shame China. It sets out to understand the welfare crisis impacting nonhuman animals in China, which is a side-effect of the country’s economic modernisation. The book argues against sweeping claims that blame Chinese culture for the problems of the contemporary era. It acknowledges the need to address China’s animal welfare issues while pursuing economic modernisation.

��

Animal Welfare in China��is published this month in our Animal Publics series.��

You can read more about the rescue of Lily��.����

Your book opens with a very intriguing, very moving account of your meeting with “Bold”, a young dingo you met on a K’gari (Fraser Island) beach. (Readers can find an extract .) What did you know about dingoes before that trip? What had sparked your interest in them? Did your encounter with Bold change how you thought about dingoes, or what questions you wanted to ask about them?

Before I met Bold or started writing about dingoes, I was interested in my dog Zefa’s perceptions and consciousness. She was a kelpie cattle dog who was a much-loved and really co-operative member of our family. Writing about dingoes was a way of thinking about Zefa’s family history.

By the time I met Bold on the beach on K’gari I knew dingoes were considered pests across much of Australia and I knew about the campaigns to eradicate them. Over the years I’d had some fleeting encounters with dingoes when I was camping – hearing them howl at night, lying in a tent and watching a dingo walk by. I’d grown up with the Azaria Chamberlain case – and the jokes, which, with hindsight, were so insensitive to what the Chamberlain family were going through. There were probably several reasons for the jokes and the public vilification of Lindy Chamberlain (including a misogynistic and bigoted legal profession and media), but I also think the jokes were a mechanism for people to try and deal with something that was truly mysterious and awe-full. Making jokes might have been a way of trying to take control and put some distance between ourselves and our ignorance – about this country and its inhabitants, including Aboriginal people and their knowledge of dingoes.

When I was growing up my family had blue cattle dogs, who are related to dingoes. At that time cattle dogs had a bit of a reputation for being vicious but we didn’t think our dogs were vicious – to us they were loyal and affectionate. They were individuals, intelligent with different interests – one could jump unbelievable heights, another liked nuzzling the sweet flesh off watermelon rinds. Our dog Possum gave birth to a couple of litters of pups when I was about 11 or 12. Around that time I read a book written by Frank Dalby Davison in the 1940s called Dusty, about a dingo-kelpie cross. Early in the story Dusty’s dingo mother and all his siblings are killed by a man. I found that scene incredibly sad, and, looking back now, I was outraged by this terrible one-sided violence. The woman who bred Possum also bred dingoes, which was a daring and unconventional thing to do in the 1970s on the outskirts of լ�е��� because dingoes were classified as a noxious animal in NSW then and you couldn’t keep one as a pet (that legislation has since changed in NSW). So dingoes were enigmatic, and also illicit. I think one of the things about them that appeals to some people and appalls others is how they are impervious to human control.

Meeting Bold.

I was excited and scared when I met Bold on the beach. The fear was a really involuntary, primal feeling, partly related, probably, to the sense of control humans are used to having. Bold had so much agency. He decided to approach me; he decided when to leave. He was clearly young, only 10 months old, but I could see his jaws were big and powerful. Our encounter was uneventful but it did complicate the situation for me. How would you visit K’gari with young children? How could rangers keep dingoes away from people? How do you ‘manage’ people and dingoes?

The year 2020 was difficult for K’gari, with catastrophic bushfires as well as the pandemic. What are the biggest challenges facing dingoes and their human supporters in 2021?

Yes, catastrophic fires burnt the northern half of K’gari from mid October to mid December 2020. Now the challenge for dingoes, and other animals and plants on the island, is to survive. Animals that escaped the fires – it’s much harder to escape on a long, narrow island like K’gari – face possible injuries and hunger. Now only 50 per cent of the island provides habitat and food for all the surviving animals – including invertebrates and herbivorous insects as well as larger animals such as echidnas, wallabies and dingoes.

The immediate challenge for the Queensland government’s review of the effectiveness of preparedness activities and the response to the fire, due by 31 March 2021, is to provide answers about the failure to contain the fire, which was only extinguished with the help of rain. Accommodation providers welcomed the quick reopening of the island to tourists, and tourism bodies and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service claimed that the island would bounce back, that it was already starting to regenerate and that its main drawcards (Lake McKenzie and Central Station) had not been affected, but the island’s ecology has been devastated by the fires.

So the ongoing challenge is to assess priorities for K’gari, which is many things: a unique island with a World Heritage listing because of the geological and biological processes that take place there, a tourist resort, a home to dingoes and other animals, and the traditional country of the Butchulla Aboriginal people. What are the limits for industries such as tourism? Can we humans think non-anthropocentrically about the places we share with other animals and plants? How do we enact Butchulla Law, which says ‘what’s good for the land comes first’?

The way the presence and actions of humans are affecting plants’ and animals’ habitats in a negative way on K’gari is a microcosm of what is happening across Australia and worldwide. No one wants to hear it, or think about it, but 2020 is a harbinger of the new normal: catastrophic wildfires (and other severe weather) and the spread of zoonotic diseases, which may be more contagious and lethal than Covid-19. The challenges that K’gari faces are also global and national challenges. So US President Joe Biden’s Executive Order Tackling the Climate Crisis, is a positive move. He has put environmental justice and protection of the environment, including conservation of lands, waters and biodiversity, at the centre of his administration’s policy agenda. The goal is to conserve at least 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

In Australia, Graeme Samuel’s 2020 review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act recommends that a new set of national environmental standards should be adopted and implemented to overcome the failures of the current piecemeal approach to environmental protections. Under the current EPBC Act, Samuel found, Australia’s animals, plants and habitats are in unsustainable decline. But I doubt his recommendation to set up an Office of Compliance and Enforcement, which would have ‘regulatory powers and tools’, within the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment will result in good outcomes for Australia’s animals, plants and biodiversity. Australia is a world leader in land clearing, and the majority of it has been cleared for agriculture. Habitat loss and land clearing are the biggest threats to threatened species. Though I despair at politicians’ failure to put a stop to Australia’s terrible environmental degradation and tackle the climate catastrophe, we must keep putting pressure on parliamentarians to legislate responsibly for this country and future generations.

While the challenges on K’gari are global and national, the island is also unique. In addition to Queensland state legislation, which classifies dingoes in most of the state as pests, the dingoes on K’gari fall under the jurisdiction of the Fraser Island Dingo Conservation and Risk Management Strategy (FIDCRMS). This strategy aims to be scientific but a couple of the prominent architects of the plan, who continue to advise the island’s managers, gained their expertise as dingo eradicators whose research is driven by agricultural interests. Although the most recent review of the FIDCRMS in 2012 did not recommend any major changes, dingo supporters managed to convince authorities to restrict the practice of ear tagging to dingoes who are over 10 kg in weight. All these steps toward more humane relations with dingoes are important. Public calls for accountability, openness and policy honesty around dingoes are vital.

Your book weaves together extensive research with personal experiences and memoir. It’s a delicate balance to get right but when it works (as it does in your book) it gives the reader a wonderful combination of first-person insight and a broader historical view. Did you set out knowing how to strike this balance, or does the right mix emerge as you write?

When I’m reading non-fiction, I often find myself sitting up and taking more interest when I hit the first ‘I’ – as though a piece starts there, now the writer has some skin in the game. When I was writing Dingo Bold the balance between first-person insight and a broader historical view emerged slowly through drafting and redrafting and cutting and redrafting. I wrote this book as part of a doctorate of creative arts and I was really lucky to have Debra Adelaide as my main supervisor. While I was following my interests down another rabbit-hole or into bigger picture history or reflections on science, she would ask, ‘What’s the story you are telling? What’s the emotional truth of this piece of writing?’ If the material I had included was not part of the story it either had to go (and so far I’ve never regretted anything I’ve cut) or be reworked so it was part of the story – even if its relationship to the whole emerges later in the narrative. But the writing process itself involved my fanatically following the threads of historical events and scientific arguments and then asking myself, what’s important here? Where is the emotional energy? And, why is that important to me?

You are an experienced editor as well as an author. Do you think having been an editor affects how you approach writing a book? Do you edit as you write, or do you write first and edit later?

I do both, that is, edit as I write and write and come back and edit later. Allowing some time, some breathing space, between drafts really helps me to see how a thread might develop and how one thing relates to another. Sometimes being an editor can be a distraction because you can always be rephrasing things in an effort to make the writing more succinct or more elegant, or whatever it is you’re going for, and sometimes you’re better off to just get it down and by getting it down you’re working out what you think. Although I do believe that form and content are in some ways inseparable. When I take off my editor’s hat (it comes off pretty easily in the right context), I enjoy writing for myself, without consequences or expectations, or the notion of an audience. I write longhand in my diary, I scribble notes – these forms feel more unmediated. On the whole, though, I value my editing experience because it’s given me the opportunity to read lots of texts and to learn how to articulate my responses to them. These skills have been really useful in research and non-fiction writing because I’m articulating responses not just to texts but to interviews, events, animals, landscapes, and so on.

We have loved seeing Dingo Bold travelling around Australia and the world via your Instagram account (). Do you have any social media tips for writers? Do you think social media is changing how we find and engage with books?

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed seeing Dingo Bold’s travels. I still have so much to learn regarding social media! My social media tip for writers (of my generation) is to ask the younger people in your life for ideas about content and how to put it out there. Social media is great, and it does change how we find and engage with books, because you’re not bound by national borders or the tyranny of distance. I can be in touch instantaneously with friends who don’t live in Australia or in լ�е���. I can find out about amazing books, and read online reviews, essays and stories from all sorts of places. I find out about things on social media that I wouldn’t know about otherwise. So far my social media strategy for Dingo Bold is to enjoy posting and to keep it simple so that I can keep on posting.

How has the pandemic affected your researching and writing life? What are you looking forward to in 2021?

I miss going places to research. I miss live events. I find it hard to concentrate on Zoom – my diary turns into a miasma. Luckily I can still read and write, when I can concentrate. I’m grateful for the companionship of my family (though that mightn’t always be evident to them). Our dog Zefa died just after Christmas 2019 so 2020 was dog-less, which was a very strange way to be. I’m looking forward to a puppy coming into our lives at some stage. Looking forward to continuing to talk about Dingo Bold with anyone who will listen. Looking forward to working on my next book ...

What have you read and loved recently (or not so recently)? For readers looking for their next book, what would you recommend?

I’m so glad you asked because I want to tell everyone about a novel by Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, called Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, which is ��– despite the title – a funny book with a brilliant narratorial voice. For something shorter by her, she’s got an excellent essay in a recent Paris Review, ‘’.

Barry Lopez’s magisterial book Of Wolves and Men was a big inspiration for me when I started researching dingoes. Lopez died on Christmas Day 2020. I recommend also his beautiful essay ‘Apologia’, about animals killed on the road.

Laura Jean McKay’s novel The Animals in that Country, which recently won the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, is, presciently, about a pandemic and one of its main characters is a dingo called Sue. It had me dreaming about dingoes.