The Trans-Australian Railway (TAR)
Up until the first part of the 20th century, communications across the Australian continent were relatively undeveloped. Perth, the capital of Western Australia, remained isolated from Australia’s eastern states until the Trans-Australian Railway (TAR) was built across the arid area known as the Nullarbor (“No Trees”) Plain. During the 19th century, the only form of transport between the west coast and the eastern cities was a long and often rough sea voyage across the Great Australian Bight, while the first east–west crossing of the Nullarbor Plain on foot was achieved by the English explorer Edward Eyre and his Indigenous Australian guide, Wylie, in 1841. In 1877, a telegraph line was built across the plain, and it was this man-made structure that a mining engineer called Arthur Richardson followed when he set out in 1896 to become the first person to ride a bicycle around the Australian continent.
The first railway in Western Australia had opened in 1871, and by 1896 there was a 313-mile line going eastwards through the inhospitable landscape as far as Kalgoorlie. This line was built alongside a pipeline carrying drinking water to the arid goldfields around Kalgoorlie. Meanwhile, in the south-east of the continent, a railway line from Port Augusta to Oodnadatta had opened in 1891. These early railways in both the east and the west were built to the narrow gauge of 3 ft 6 in.
In 1901, the self-governing colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia got together to form a federation. One of the incentives held out to Western Australia to become a member had been the promise of a transcontinental railway linking Perth with the eastern cities. A survey of the route across the featureless Nullarbor Plain was completed in 1909, and construction started to join the two existing railways at each end in 1912. Despite the onset of the First World War, work progressed until the two lines finally converged at a site in an area of desert in 1917. The railway’s claim to fame is that its route includes the longest stretch—297 miles—of straight track in the world. Although the existing railways at each end had been built to the narrow gauge, the new 1,052-mile stretch was built to the standard gauge of 4 ft 8½ in. These two breaks of gauge meant that a true transcontinental service did not exist until 1970.
Water supplies for steam engines on the TAR route were non-existent, as the railway did not cross a permanent watercourse along its entire length. To overcome this, the TAR line’s original chief engineer had requested diesel engines, but his request was not granted, so steam haulage had to be supported by extra water tankers carried on each train. Australian-built diesel-electric engines eventually replaced steam haulage in 1951.
As well as being an important freight route, the new line saw the introduction of the Trans-Australian Express, a service which commenced running in 1917 to serve isolated communities and settlements along its route. For much of its long-running life, this twice-weekly train consisted solely of sleeping cars; seated accommodation was included only from 1981 until the service terminated ten years later. The route of the train was extended following the conversion to standard gauge of its narrow-gauge sections in 1970, but, facing increased competition from air travel, it last ran in June 1991.
One long-lived curiosity of the trans-Australian network was the Tea and Sugar Train, which also started running in 1917. The train brought communities along the route not only the necessities of everyday life but also a butcher’s shop, medical facilities and a cinema. It last ran in 1996.
Despite the withdrawal of the Trans-Australian Express between Adelaide and Perth in 1991, the Indian Pacific service has operated between Sydney on the east coast and Perth since 1970, following the complete conversion of the TAR route to standard gauge. This service is operated by Great Southern Rail. It runs twice a week between Adelaide and Perth, and once a week between Sydney and Perth. The journey time for the complete 2,704-mile journey is approximately 66½ hours westbound and 71¼ hours eastbound.
The Indian Pacific service calls at the isolated outback railway settlements of Pimba, which has a population of around fifty; Kingoonya, which has only a hotel; and Tarcoola, which has a population of around forty and is a junction for the south–north line to Darwin. It then travels to Cook, which, despite having a population of fewer than ten, is a scheduled stop. The train subsequently crosses the Nullarbor Plain in a dead-straight line for 297 miles to Loongana, an uninhabited request stop, before continuing to Rawlinna, another request stop serving Australia’s largest sheep station. Civilisation is eventually reached at Kalgoorlie before the last leg of the journey westwards to East Perth Station. The train has carriages with seating, sleeping cars, a restaurant car and wagons conveying passengers’ motor cars.
The gender gap in New Zealand’s high school examination results
Results from New Zealand’s new national examinations for secondary schools are giving that country some cause for concern.
A The issue is the difference in pass rates between the sexes: at each level of the examination and across all school types, the difference is about 10 percentage points. Girls are doing better in every subject, and those in girls-only schools are taking top honours. The results are not a surprise: high school girls have been outperforming boys academically for more than a decade. It is an international phenomenon and was the subject of much debate and controversy in Australia. Within New Zealand, back in the 1980s, there was a concerted campaign called ‘Girls Can Do Anything’, which was aimed at lifting girls’ participation rates, achievement levels and aspirations. This was so successful that the pendulum has now swung to the other extreme. Views differ on how worried people should be. After all, for much of history, girls were excluded from any form of education, and this new phenomenon could be seen as a temporary over-correction before the balance is righted.
B However, the New Zealand State Ministry of Education says it is taking the issue seriously. It is working with a reference group on boys’ education, which has been set up, and it has commissioned an Australian academic to report on interventions that have been found to work for boys, drawing particularly on Australia’s experience. But some, such as former prison manager Celia Lashlie, the author of a book for parents of teenage boys, believe there is still resistance within the Education Ministry towards doing anything about the problem.
C Education Ministry learning policy manager Steve Benson says that the National Certificate in Educational Achievement, or NCEA, as New Zealand’s high school exams are called, is useful to employers and universities because it provides a fine-grained picture of pupils’ performance in every aspect of a subject, rather than just a pass or fail in an overall area. ‘In most parts of the curriculum, for example in maths, there isn’t really a gender gap. But literacy is a different matter. Even boys who are good at writing tend not to write so much. There’s actually a quantity issue.’
D The discrepancy in reading and writing skills between males and females shows up as early as preschool, and the difference is clear by the time these children enter high school. Not being good at literacy was not such a problem in the old days, when many students left school for manual jobs after Year 11. But nowadays, many more stay on to higher education, and almost all jobs require literacy skills. Roger Moses, the headmaster of Wellington College, says that the written content of NCEA papers is more demanding than that of the previous system of secondary-school qualifications in New Zealand, even in subjects such as statistics and accounting.
E New Zealand 15-year-olds do very well in international reading tests, but beneath this average lies a wide variance, with New Zealand European girls most represented at the top and New Zealand Pacific Island boys at the bottom. Yet some European girls drop out, and some Pacific Island boys excel. In other words, the range in performance within each gender group is much greater than the gender differences. Ethnic differences, and differences in socio-economic status, may be more significant than the simple boy/girl explanation.
F This makes the Education Ministry nervous about pushing solutions that emphasise stereotyped gender differences, rather than looking at underachievement as a whole. Rob Burroughs, principal of Linwood High School in Christchurch, agrees. For three years, his school ran separate boys’ classes to try to address the disparity in performance before abandoning them. The research showed that the boys did better in their own class than in the co-educational environment. But when he looked at which teachers they had, and how well those teachers’ other classes did, it became clear that the difference was instead due to the quality of instruction.
G At Onslow College, Dr Stuart Martin would do away with the NCEA Level 1 exam if he could. He says that in Year 11, at the age of 15, boys are simply not mature enough to cope. ‘They tend to think that just passing is enough, and that it’s not necessary to work hard for a Merit or an Excellence grade. Often, they are busy with other activities and part-time jobs. Boys’ competitive instinct tends to come out later in their schooling years, especially if there is money attached or other tangible rewards. By 17, boys are catching up academically with the girls, and by the end of Year 13, boys are again winning the top prizes.’
H Boys in single-sex schools do better in NCEA across all levels, something economist Brian Easton reported after analysing data from the first year of NCEA’s implementation. He said the results were valid, even when socio-economic status was taken into account. Dr Paul Baker, head of Waitaki Boys’ High School in Oamaru, agrees. He thinks that although it is possible for all schools to do more to boost boys’ performance, it is easier in a boys’ school, where activities cannot be ‘captured by girls’.
Australia’s Megafauna Controversy
Just how long did humans live side by side with megafauna in Australia? Barry Brook, Richard Gillespie and Paul Martin dispute previous claims of a lengthy coexistence.
Over the past 50 millennia, Australia has witnessed the extinction of many species of large animals, including a rhinoceros-sized wombat and goannas the size of crocodiles. Debate about the possible cause of these extinctions has continued for more than 150 years, and one of the crucial questions raised is how long humans and megafauna coexisted in Australia. We need to know the overlap in time to make an informed choice between the two main theories regarding the causes of these extinctions. If humans and megafauna coexisted for a protracted period, then climate change is the more likely cause. However, if the megafauna became extinct shortly after the arrival of humans, then humans are the likely culprits.
The archaeological site at Cuddie Springs in eastern Australia appears to be well preserved. This dusty claypan holds within its sediments a rich cache of flaked stone and seed-grinding tools, and side by side with these clear signals of human culture are the bones of a dozen or more species of megafauna. Drs Judith Field and Stephen Wroe of the University of Sydney, who excavated the site, claim that it provides unequivocal evidence of a long overlap of humans and megafauna, and conclude that aridity leading up to the last Ice Age brought about their eventual demise. In the long-standing explanation of this site, artefacts such as stone tools and extinct animal remains were deposited over many thousands of years in an ephemeral lake—a body of water existing for a relatively short time—and remained in place and undisturbed until the present day.
There is no disputing the close association of bones and stones at Cuddie Springs, as both are found 1 to 1.7 metres below the modern surface. The dating of these layers is accurate: ages for the sediments were obtained through radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments and luminescence dating of sand grains from the same levels, revealing when a sample was last exposed to sunlight. Intriguingly, some of the stone tools show surface features indicating their use for processing plants, and a few even have well-preserved blood and hair residues suggesting that they were used in butchering animals.
But is the case proposed by Field and Wroe clear-cut? We carried out a reanalysis of the scientific data from Cuddie Springs that calls their conclusions into question. The amount of anthropological evidence found at the site is remarkable: we estimate that there are more than 3 tonnes of charcoal and more than 300 tonnes of stone buried there. Field and Wroe estimate that there are approximately 20 million artefacts. This plethora of tools is hard to reconcile with a site that was only available for occupation when the lake was dry. Furthermore, no cultural features such as oven pits have been discovered. If the sediment layers have remained undisturbed since being laid down, as Field and Wroe contend, then the ages of those sediments should increase with depth. However, our analysis revealed a number of inconsistencies.
First, the charcoal samples are all roughly 36,000 years old. Second, sand in the two upper levels is considerably younger than charcoal from the same levels. Third, Field and Wroe say that the tools and seed-grinding stones used for plant and animal processing are ancient, yet they are very similar to implements found elsewhere that were in use only a few thousand years ago. Also of interest is the fact that a deep drill core made a mere 60 metres from the site recovered no stone artefacts or fossil bones whatsoever. These points strongly suggest that the sediments have been moved about and that some of the old charcoal has been redeposited in younger layers. Indeed, one sample of cow bone found 1 metre below the surface came from sediments where charcoal dated at 6,000 and 23,000 years old was mixed with 17,000-year-old sand. The megafauna bones themselves have not yet been dated, although new technological developments may make this possible in the near future.
We propose that the archaeologists have actually been sampling debris carried by ancient flood channels beneath the site, including charcoal transported from bushfires that intermittently occurred within the catchment. Flood events are more likely to explain the accumulation of megafauna remains and could have mixed old bones with fresh deposits. European graziers also disturbed the site in 1876 by constructing a well to provide water for their cattle. Given the expense of well-digging, we speculate that the graziers made sure it was protected from damage caused by cattle hooves by lining the surface with small stones collected from further afield, including prehistoric quarries. This idea is consistent with the thin layer of stones spread over a large area, with cattle occasionally breaking through the gravel surface and forcing the stones and even cattle bones deeper into the waterlogged soil.
The lack of conclusive evidence that humans and megafauna coexisted for a lengthy period casts doubt on Field and Wroe’s assertion that climate change was responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna. However, we do not suggest that newly arrived, well-armed hunters systematically slaughtered all the large beasts they encountered. Recent studies based on the biology of modern-day large mammals, combined with observations of people who still practise a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, reveal an unexpected paradox and suggest a further possible explanation of what happened. Using a mathematical model, it was found that a group of 10 people killing only one juvenile Diprotodon each year would be sufficient to bring about the extinction of that species within 1,000 years. This suggests that here, as in other parts of the world, the arrival of humans in lands previously inhabited only by animals created a volatile combination in which large animals fared badly.
Note: The Diprotodon—a rhinoceros-sized wombat—is an example of Australia’s now-extinct megafauna.