AUSTRALIAN PLACES EXPLORATIONS

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Explorations is the underpinning of Australian Places. Here the individual entries are linked to thematic essays, statistical material,interactive guestbooks, courses and major subsites, such as a number of interconnected virtual galleries. The regions of Gippsland and Imagine the Future, a project relating to the basalt plain to Melbourne's west will form the focus of the first developments in this part of the extended site.

Imagine the Future Stage I is a complex multimedia site about the past, present and sustainable future of Victoria's coastal basalt plain integrated by 18 composite clickable digital images about the past, present and sustainable future of the bio-region. Its in-depth interviews, essays and interpretive materials about social and ecological sustainability utilise the composite digital images as an image linked and symbolic access into a substantial and expandable interactive and informative database about the basalt plain. Imagine the Future-Australian Places collaboration is the prototype demonstrating the richness of Australian Places as a spine to an enriched resource base for teaching and research at all levels. The 100 entries for Australian Places for the Victorian basalt plains will be completed by 30 March 1998 and linked to appropriate aspects of Imagine the Future for teaching and research purposes. Each Imagine the Future place based site will be linked to the relevant entry(s) in Australian Places. Relevant Australian Places data base entries will be linked through content and purpose mediated gateways to relevant Imagine the Future Sites. Map and image based navigation tools will be specifically refined for the purposes of both sites.

Other developments include the commissioning of leading academics in a range of fields including geography and the environmental sciences, the visual arts, Australian studies, history and politics, sociology, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, cultural studies and literary studies to look afresh at Australia, generating insights into well known and lesser known Australia.

The progress through to Sydney Olympic Games and the celebration of the centenary of Federation will receive particular attention. The celebration of previous events in this century in particular has generated records of imagery and objects that have been used to show what is distinctively Australian, and which celebrate the locality which provided their generation. Topographic postcards, including holiday houses and guest houses provide unrivalled insights into the nature and impact of change on a given environment. Many of them provide a visual link into the folk culture and material culture of everyday life of past and present Australia. Australian Places will enable the gathering together of such material, linked by significant thematic, analytic and theoretical interpretation, incorporating a local yet national focus for the understanding of these two pivotal events in Australian life.

An additional interactive elements will be provided by the innovative Student Australian Places Web Site and Community Australian Places Web Site which will enable students and community memberss to paste mediated comments and information about the own environs and local landmarks and history and e-mail individual contributors responsible for entries.