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Australian Local Government and Community Development: From Colonial Times to the 21^st Century by Frank Hornby. Melbourne, Arcadia 2012. Pp.xxi+371 AUD$25 Paper.

Local government is admired for being ‘close to the people’. Respect from communities extends naturally to those institutions that claim to represent or serve them, as many local governments do. The centralised mass media blitz means citizens are better informed about issues and actors on the national stage than those local and so it is that the third tier of government in this country is unregarded. It may be that the public’s expectations of local governments have not been high, as well as not being particularly well informed. In which case this wide-ranging study coming as it does from an experienced practitioner, Frank Hornby, promises much, especially as he claims to offer us an historical and a national account.

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Canvas Documentaries: Panoramic Entertainments in Nineteenth-Century Australia and New Zealand By Mimi Colligan Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002. Cloth Pp.xvi+240. $59.95 rrp.

So much in thrall are we with imaging technology’s spectacular and converging internet, television and the cinema applications that we are sometimes forgetful of its history. Media history, let alone media pre-history, gets scant attention these days. This is a pity because Mimi Colligan’s Canvas Documentaries is fascinating on pre-cinematic forms and popular culture in Australia and New Zealand.

Continue reading Panoramic Entertainments in the Nineteenth Century