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IN THE late 1940s, George Orwell wrote his nightmarish novel 1984, depicting a future world where an all-seeing but unseen tyrant, Big Brother, ruled over his citizens by watching their every move. In this paranoid dystopia, surveillance was purely a ''top-down'' affair, a government tool for controlling the hapless masses: privacy was a crime, the Thought Police punished dissent and history was rewritten daily for political ends.

More than half a century later, it is worth considering how Orwell's fictional prediction weighs up against reality. If Big Brother's gaze dominated that imagined future, who's watching over us now?

"Knowing history is how a society knows itself. If you just pluck out the pretty elements of the story and ignore the darker side, that’s a perversion of history. There’s a reason why those buildings were built that way, and if we as a society have the strength of character to accept all those elements, that’s a good thing.” - David Nichols, University of Melbourne.

Melbourne’s famed laneways are becoming contested territory, with the city’s growing number of rough sleepers being depicted as a threat to tourism and business interests. Following the recent evictions of people sleeping in ‘homeless camps’ in Enterprize Park and City Square, the street art precinct of Hosier Lane has emerged as a particular flashpoint.

Opinion piece published in The Age (print and online) and Sydney Morning Herald (online only), 23/24 August 2016.

The Finished People is a thought-provoking, unusual and unsettling film. It follows a group of dispossessed young people struggling to survive on Cabramatta’s tough streets; they are living homelessness in its most raw form, sleeping rough and existing from day to day.

In Australia, the AEC is currently looking at how voting can be made more accessible for people experiencing homelessness, and says it plans to consult with the homelessness sector on this issue. It is important to ensure already stretched homelessness services are not lumped with extra work they are not resourced to do.

The Columbine High School massacre lasted sixteen minutes and left a total of fi fteen people dead. For a stunned America, denied the chance to seek an explanation from the boys who had pulled the trigger, one question resounded in the vacuum: why?

In an awkward clash of cliché and fact, I grew up on a sheep farm in New Zealand, in a house owned by a former All Black. In this steep green place, where the melodic peals of bellbirds rang out from ferny valleys and the lambs shat in your gumboots if you left them out overnight, I met my first poet. His name is Sam Hunt, and I owe him an apology.

“More regulation won’t do anything except cause increased hardship,” says Jenny Smith, CEO of the Council of Homeless Persons (CHP). “It won’t help traders, the community or rough sleepers, who will face fines and possible jail, with no housing outcomes, then be back on the streets. That cycle is costly to them, and terribly expensive to the community."

In an abrupt about-face that has shocked homeless services, last Thursday Lord Mayor Robert Doyle proposed new laws making it illegal to sleep on Melbourne's streets. "I welcome any move by police to bring an end to what has become a blight on our city," he said. Yet the day before, he'd sensibly said the opposite: "There are cities around the world where they simply bundle homeless people up and ship them out. I'd hate to think that we were ever that sort of city."

What's behind his sudden change of heart? Signs point to intense pressure from senior police, disgruntled city traders and tabloid media, who've been vocal about Melbourne's visible homelessness problem.

Just before dawn on Saturday 19 March, two opposing groups will wade into a muddy wetland somewhere in country Victoria to await the official start of duck-shooting season. When the first shot rings out, this peaceful site will transform into a warzone: dead and maimed native waterbirds dropping from the sky, rescuers ferrying injured ducks to the on-site vets, hunters whooping as their helpless targets flap away in panic (18 March 2016)).

Places are both sustained and shaped by the stories we tell about them. In turn, stories of place are influenced by cultural, political, and socioeconomic forces. A form of 'unplanned' urban architecture, over almost two centuries Melbourne's inner-city laneways have been inscribed with multiple layers of narrative. This paper tracks the unfolding tensions around these evolving urban spaces, from Melbourne's founding up until the present day. Drawing upon site visits, theorists of place, narrative and memory, and analysis of select historical and contemporary texts, the articles explores how the uses of Melbourne's back lanes have changed over time, and how these changes have been both reflected in, and influenced by, narratives of place. From their genesis as makeshift service lanes, to their early reputation as sites of moral disorder; from shanty towns to celebrated tourist destinations; from public health risks to sites of urban renewal and cultural memorialisation-the transformation of these atmospheric passageways illustrates the fluid and contested nature of place, and its intrinsic yet unstable relationship with narrative. In considering how narrative has been deployed to stake or negate claims to the laneways, the article traces the role and impact of various actors: government, social reformers, slum residents, novelists, journalists and media outlets, business interests, street artists, and people experiencing homelessness. Melbourne's inner-urban back lanes emerge as liminal sites where questions of spatial exclusion, cultural capital, and belonging are navigated in complex and shifting ways.

This paper examines the how of literary wheres. As makers of literary works, creative writers are tasked with evoking place on the page. While the nexus of place and literature is increasingly recognised as fertile scholarly ground, the specifics of how writers actually “make” literary places remain opaque and under-researched. I seek to address this gap by exploring how literary place is constituted through creative practice. Focusing on the work of Australian writer Tony Birch, I document a range of generative tools creative writers may use to produce what I call “literary sense of place”. Drawing on interview-based case studies and key concepts from human geography, I analyse how these practitioners harness various “off-page” modes of enquiry to evoke place compellingly in textual form. While my main focus is creative practice, I also examine the resultant literary texts to help illuminate how process manifests in content. By profiling a range of “place-oriented experiential techniques (POETs)” – including site visits, memory, direct encounters, sensory attentiveness, “vicarious emplacement”, socio-cultural understandings, and happenstance – I present a fine-grained account of literary place-making from a practitioners’ perspective. I conclude that producing literary place is a generative, cumulative and associative process, in which writers mobilise a rich array of lived sensations, emotions, memories, understandings and actions. In foregrounding these “backstage” modes of creative labour, this paper helps clarify how writers deploy both personal and shared experiences to render literary place in resonant ways.

Book chapter/essay published in a New Zealand anthology about the climate crisis. Explores the lived experience of parenting during Australia's Black Summer bushfires from a trans-Tasman perspective, and discusses the broader social and political significance of this catastrophe in the context of the global climate emergency.

Citation: Mundell, Meg (2020). "The Burning World." In: "Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices From Aotearoa", editor Tom Doig, Bridget Williams Books.

Link: https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/living-climate-crisis/

Places are both sustained and shaped by the stories we tell about them. In turn, stories of place are influenced by cultural, political, and socioeconomic forces. A form of 'unplanned' urban architecture, over almost two centuries Melbourne's inner-city laneways have been inscribed with multiple layers of narrative. This paper tracks the unfolding tensions around these evolving urban spaces, from Melbourne's founding up until the present day. Drawing upon site visits, theorists of place, narrative and memory, and analysis of select historical and contemporary texts, the articles explores how the uses of Melbourne's back lanes have changed over time, and how these changes have been both reflected in, and influenced by, narratives of place. From their genesis as makeshift service lanes, to their early reputation as sites of moral disorder; from shanty towns to celebrated tourist destinations; from public health risks to sites of urban renewal and cultural memorialisation-the transformation of these atmospheric passageways illustrates the fluid and contested nature of place, and its intrinsic yet unstable relationship with narrative. In considering how narrative has been deployed to stake or negate claims to the laneways, the article traces the role and impact of various actors: government, social reformers, slum residents, novelists, journalists and media outlets, business interests, street artists, and people experiencing homelessness. Melbourne's inner-urban back lanes emerge as liminal sites where questions of spatial exclusion, cultural capital, and belonging are navigated in complex and shifting ways.

This article explores community responses to 'Golden Head', a guerrilla artwork that was installed covertly in a Melbourne park in early 2020 by unknown persons. Focusing on local residents' reactions to this mysterious, unsanctioned statue, we document an ongoing array of playful speculations, creative responses and imaginative interactions that unfolded both in situ and via social media. We argue that in eliciting an outpouring of jokes, memes, stories, photographs and other creative rejoinders, this enigmatic object has strengthened and renewed a collective sense of place. We also consider Golden Head's reception in light of recent challenges to the legitimacy of many traditional memorial statues, and as a response to the increasingly over-regulated city. We conclude that this outpouring of imaginative local reactions to Golden Head constitutes a playful form of collective place-making that implicitly critiques the grandiose ambitions of official statues and affirms the oft-neglected ludic potential of urban space. Objetos enigmáticos y provocaciones lúdicas: el misterioso caso de Golden Head RESUMEN Este artículo explora las respuestas de la comunidad a 'Golden Head', una obra de arte de guerrilla que fue instalada de forma encubierta en un parque de Melbourne a principios de 2020 por personas desconocidas. Centrándonos en las reacciones de los residentes locales ante esta estatua misteriosa y no autorizada, documentamos una serie continua de especulaciones divertidas, respuestas creativas e interacciones imaginativas que se desarrollaron tanto in situ como a través de las redes sociales. Argumentamos que al provocar una avalancha de bromas, memes, historias, fotografías y otras réplicas creativas, este objeto enigmático ha fortalecido y renovado un sentido colectivo de lugar. También consideramos la recepción de Golden Head a la luz de los recientes desafíos a la legitimidad de muchas estatuas conmemorativas tradicionales y como una respuesta a la ciudad cada vez más sobrerregulada. Concluimos que este torrente de reacciones locales ARTICLE HISTORY

Telstra ln today's world, being connected is now an integral part of life, and Australians increasingly spend a large proportion of their time online. Yet even as digital technologies play an increasingly central and empowering role in our lives, there remains a significant gap between those who are connected and those who are not. ln order to drive a deeper understanding of this complex social issue, Telstra has commissioned the Australian Digital lnclusion lndex (ADII). Ultimately, we hope this will mean more Australians are able to participate in the digital age. Created in partnership with the Swinburne Institute of Social Research, and the Centre for Social lmpact Swinburne, and using Roy Morgan Research data, the lndex benchmarks Australia's current rates of digital inclusion. It will also help us set an informed and insightful course for where we want to be in the future. Key Findings Digital inclusion is about social and economic participation Australians go online to access a growing range of education, information, government and community services. But some people are missing out on the benefits of connection. Digital inclusion is based on the premise that everyone should be able to make full use of digital technologies-to manage their health and wellbeing, access education and services, organise their finances, and connect with family, friends and the world beyond. Our most detailed picture yet of digital Methodology in brief Digital inclusion is a complex, multi-faceted issue that includes such elements as access, affordability, usage, skills, and relevance. To inform the design of the ADII, a Discussion Paper was publicly released in September 2015, and responses sought. Wider input was encouraged via a website, Twitter account and hash tag. Feedback showed a clear desire for highly detailed geographic and demographic data. In response, we have worked with Roy Morgan Research to obtain a wide range of relevant data from their ongoing, weekly Single Source survey of 50,000 Australians. In these extensive face-to-face interviews, Roy Morgan collects data on internet and technology products owned, internet services used, personal attitudes, and demographics. This rich, ongoing data source will allow the ADII to publish a wide range of relevant social and demographic information, and enable comparisons over time. For more detail on the Single Source survey, please see the Methodology (Appendix) section.