The southern humpback whale migration is in full swing. Tens of thousands of whales are now making their journey from warm Australian waters in the north to their cold feeding grounds in Antarctica.

But snacking along the way provides much welcome replenishment.

In a new study, published in Marine Mammal Science, we have investigated feeding behaviour of humpback whales on the east coast of Australia using information from citizen science and social media. We found that mid-latitude feeding is a common and widespread strategy amongst humpback whales.

This discovery challenges a long-held assumption about where and when whales feed. And it could help us better protect these magnificent animals.

Feast or famine?

For many years, humpback whales have been described as “capital breeders”.

This theory suggests that the whales spend summer feeding on krill in Antarctica to build up fat reserves, then travel thousands of kilometers to low-latitude breeding grounds to mate and give birth. Warm tropical waters are nutrient poor, offering little opportunity to feed.

Historically, whaling and stranding records also supported this “feast or famine” theory, with the vast majority of humpback whales caught during mid-latitude migration in Australian waters having empty stomachs.

It was widely assumed that they relied solely on their fat stores to sustain their migration, mating, and the intense energetic demands of nursing newborn calves.

Screening the digital world for information

Conducting long-term, large-scale systematic research surveys across thousands of kilometres of the Australian coastline isn’t feasible due to the huge cost involved.

Instead, like other researchers turning to public photos and footage, we sourced information about feeding events from social media.

We searched platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for public posts from whale-watching companies, drone pilots, and dedicated whale enthusiasts. Only posts featuring clear visual evidence of defined feeding behaviour were included.

This included whales opening their mouths, lunging through the water column with expanded ventral pleats (the accordion-like grooves that cover a whale’s underside), bubble-net feeding, or surfacing directly through dense schools of baitfish.

Our search resulted in 199 distinct feeding observations, representing an estimated 1,417 individual humpback whales documented feeding in Australian waters between 2013 and 2024.

Major feeding hotspots included the NSW south coast – in particular, near Eden, Merimbula and Bermagui – which accounted for 45% of all verified feeding events. Other hotspots included eastern and southern Tasmania, and the Victorian coast, which accounted for 28% and 12% of the records, respectively.

Importantly, our study also highlighted feeding regions that were previously underrepresented in records. These included coastal areas near Phillip Island in Victoria and across northern Tasmania. We found that observations increased between August and October each year, coinciding with the southbound migration of humpback whales.

This is a time when the whales’ energy reserves are at their lowest.

Driven by nutrient-rich coastal upwellings generated by the East Australian Current, these hotspots provide temporary krill and baitfish bonanzas. On 16 occasions, we verified massive “super-groups” of 20 to over 150 individual whales feeding in the same area.

Why these observations matter for whale protection

Understanding whale behaviour, and how it may shift over time, is critical to protecting them. Migratory corridors aren’t just highways from one place to another; they are critical habitats.

Unfortunately, these coastal feeding hotspots overlap with intense human activities.

Commercial fishing means humpback whales feeding and staying for prolonged time face a high risk of fishing gear entanglements.

Additionally, vessel strikes from commercial shipping lanes and acoustic disturbances from expanding offshore developments pose threats along the coasts.

We need to adapt whale protection management strategies.

This could mean implementing seasonal and mobile management areas with voluntary or mandatory ship speed reduction during peak feeding months. It could also mean changes to seasonal fishing regulations to reduce gear density and gear type.

Our research shows that such areas are dynamic but localised, with feeding intensity limited to only a few weeks each year.

As the humpback whale population continues its recovery from whaling, more eyes on the water will help us track how these magnificent creatures adapt to a fast-changing environment.

Olaf Meynecke, Research Fellow in Marine Science and Manager Whales & Climate Program, Griffith University and Sarah Mcculloch, PhD Candidate, Marine Science, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch this weekend aboard a SpaceX rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. When it becomes operational early next year, it will transform our view of the universe.

With a mirror the same size as the one in the Hubble Space Telescope but a field of view over 100 times larger, NASA’s newest tool is designed to survey vast swaths of sky quickly. It will hunt for dark energy’s fingerprints and detect perhaps 100,000 exoplanets.

In August 2018, just four months before she died on December 25, I had the great fortune to fly from Sydney to Washington DC to interview the woman this telescope is named after. She was 93-years-old and over the hours we spent talking, she shared with me her remarkable life story.

A childhood passion for the stars

Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16 1925, in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up captivated by the night sky. Her mother, Georgia Frances Smith Roman, encouraged this early curiosity, walking with her young daughter to point out constellations and the aurora borealis.

By age eleven, Nancy Grace – never Nancy! – had already organised an astronomy club among her classmates in Reno, Nevada, where the family briefly lived. By high school she had decided, against the advice of nearly everyone around her, that she wanted to become a professional astronomer.

That ambition ran headlong into the sexism of 20th century academia. When Nancy Grace asked her high school guidance counsellor for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of yet more Latin, the counsellor reportedly asked her, “What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?” She took the maths anyway. She went on to Swarthmore College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in astronomy in 1946, and then to the University of Chicago, where she completed a PhD in astronomy in 1949.

Her doctoral research focused on stellar dynamics and the motions of stars in the Milky Way, work that would foreshadow her lifelong interest in stellar populations and galactic structure.

After earning her doctorate, Nancy Grace remained at the University of Chicago and worked at the Yerkes Observatory, where she conducted research on stellar spectroscopy. This is the technique of spreading a star’s light into a rainbow and then analysing faint features in the spectrum.

She made a name for herself with a landmark 1955 paper demonstrating a correlation between a star’s motion through the Milky Way and its chemical composition. Younger, metal-rich stars tend to move in more circular orbits, while older, metal-poor stars follow more eccentric ones.

This finding provided important evidence for how galaxies like the Milky Way evolve over time. Despite this success, she recognised that as a woman in academic astronomy, she faced a ceiling on promotion and tenure that her male colleagues did not. So she began looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Taking on an extraordinary responsibility

In 1955, Nancy Grace took a position at the Naval Research Laboratory, where she worked on radio astronomy, a field still in its infancy. It was there that she gained a reputation not just as a skilled researcher but as an effective administrator and communicator of science. These skills would soon define the second, more consequential half of her career.

In 1959, Nancy Grace was recruited by the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration to help build its space science program essentially from scratch. She became NASA’s first chief of astronomy, the first woman to hold an executive position at the agency.

It was an extraordinary responsibility. NASA had no established framework for space-based astronomy, and Nancy Grace was tasked with defining what such a program should even look like.

Nancy Grace’s most enduring legacy grew out of an idea she championed for decades (along with American astronomer Lyman Spitzer) before it became reality: a large space telescope that could observe the universe without the blurring and light pollution imposed by Earth’s atmosphere.

The project she nurtured through its most difficult years became the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. Because of her foundational role in conceiving, justifying, and organising the mission decades before it flew, Nancy Grace became widely known as the “Mother of Hubble”.

An extraordinary legacy

Beyond Hubble, Nancy Grace also helped establish several other NASA astronomy missions. These included the Orbiting Solar Observatory series and the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, precursors that helped prove the value and feasibility of space-based observation.

She retired from NASA in 1979. She received numerous honours over her lifetime, including election to the National Women’s Hall of Fame and an asteroid, 2516 Roman, named in her honour.

In May 2020, NASA announced that its next-generation flagship observatory would be named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making her one of the very few scientists honoured with a major space telescope named after them.

Nancy Grace’s career stands as a testament to persistence against institutional barriers and to the outsized impact that scientific vision can have. All astronomers continue to benefit from her extraordinary legacy.

Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Laureate Professor, Director of Sydney Institute for Astronomy, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Last weekend, Lucas Herrington made his debut for Hull City in the English Premier League (EPL) after breaking the transfer record paid for an Australian soccer player.

The 18-year-old signed a five-year deal with the transfer fee estimated to be A$33 million. It shattered the $26 million fee Leicester City paid for Harry Souttar’s move from Stoke City in 2023.

Herrington’s signing wasn’t the only recent mega-money deal for the 2026 Socceroos World Cup squad:

• just days after Herrington’s move, Alessandro Circati signed with Portuguese powerhouse Benfica, equalling Herrington’s $33 million transfer fee
• Nestory Irankunda agreed a deal with Portuguese giants Sporting for around $25 million
• goalkeeper Patrick Beach signed for an undisclosed fee with French club Troyes.

But does Australian soccer, and the A-League, benefit from these massive transfer fees?

A fast rise and an eye-popping opportunity

In September 2024, Herrington signed a three-year contract with Brisbane Roar. But in August 2025, he transferred to US Major League Soccer (MLS) side Colorado Rapids on a contract running until 2029. Colorado paid Brisbane $800,000 for Herrington.

After Herrington’s breakout World Cup performance, Hull targeted him, and on August 12 he signed a deal that broke the Rapids’ transfer fee record.

These transfer fees flow from club to club, with the athlete also having to agree on a salary with their new club.

Transfer fees are regularly made public but salaries are usually not disclosed.

How the money flows

Generally speaking, clubs can generate revenue from player transfers through three main mechanisms: direct transfer fees, sell-on clauses and FIFA training awards.

A direct transfer fee is the initial payment made from the acquiring club to the selling club.

A sell-on clause allows the former club to receive a percentage of any future transfer fee if the player is subsequently transferred.

FIFA training awards provide two forms of financial recognition for clubs involved in a player’s development: training compensation and solidarity contribution.

Training compensation is intended to reimburse clubs for the costs associated with developing a player. Solidarity contributions provide eligible training clubs with a share of certain international transfer fees based on the period they contributed to the player’s development.

In Herrington’s case, while Hull City paid about $33 million to acquire him, Brisbane Roar only received the award fee set by FIFA: $500,000.

Brisbane missed out on the other fees, having sold their sell-on percentage to the Colorado Rapids ahead of the Hull offer.

It is perhaps one of the greatest blunders in Australian soccer transfer history.

But the lack of financial stability in the A-League competitions, both men’s and women’s, may have played a part in the Roar’s decision: they may have been keen for an immediate cash injection.

However, the failure of Australian clubs to capture the full financial value of their players is not inevitable.

One club showing the way

Sydney FC provides an alternative model. Over the past two years, the club has generated more than $5 million from the transfers of academy graduates Patrick Yazbek, Jake Girdwood-Reich, Hayden Matthews and Adrian Segecic, who were developed in the club’s academy from a young age. All moved to European clubs except for Girdwood-Reich, who signed with St Louis in the MLS.

Sydney FC has openly identified player development and overseas transfers as part of its broader financial strategy.

In this sense, the club appears to have recognised something with which Australian soccer has historically struggled. That is, developing talented players is only half the challenge – the other half is ensuring the clubs responsible for their development retain enough of the financial value generated when those players enter the global transfer market.

Timing is crucial – the selling club has to act before the player’s contract expires if they want to maximise value from the player. If their contract expires, they can leave without a transfer fee.

Sydney FC’s strategy is built around creating a cycle in which academy investment produces talented players who then generate transfer income that be reinvested into developing the next generation.

The pros and cons

The success of Australian players overseas may encourage greater international interest in the local game, with overseas clubs, scouts and investors increasingly looking towards Australia as a source of talented players.

That is undoubtedly a positive for the sport locally. But in most transfer cases, little money flows down to the local game.

Meanwhile, A-League clubs that develop but then sell players to generate income can be hamstrung because a player who might otherwise help them in their pursuit of a successful season is suddenly gone.

The league can also suffer if its best players head overseas.

So while there are many obvious benefits when an Australian soccer player signs a big contract to play overseas, there can be real disruption to A-League clubs, academies and institutions that develop young talent.

Steve Georgakis, Senior Lecturer of Pedagogy and Sports Studies, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Weaving is an ancient craft that is still practised as a hobby by many people around the world. In recent years, it has found new life as more people have returned to hands-on making as a way to slow down, reconnect with materials and step away from screens.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people turned to crafts and DIY hobbies — including sewing, baking and gardening — to support their well-being. I remember trying to buy a sewing machine in 2021 and finding none available in stores.

More recently, textile crafts have become popular among Gen Z, with so-called “grandma hobbies” such as crochet, knitting and quilting seeing a resurgence. These slow, tactile, screen-free pastimes have become a form of digital detox from screen burnout.

It has also become a social media trend to share handmade projects through #WIP (“work in progress”) posts as part of the cozy “grandmacore” lifestyle aesthetic.

What most hobbyist weavers may not realize, however, is that their craft helped shape modern computing. Today, makers are once again using textiles to imagine the future of technology.

Hobbies can bring joy, wellbeing and focus to our busy lives, but so many of us don’t have one. If you’re ready to replace scrolling with stitching, or hustle with horticulture, The Hobby Starter Kit (a new series from Quarter Life) will help you get going.

The invention of the jacquard loom

In 1804, a French weaver named Joseph-Marie Jacquard patented a loom that could weave intricate patterns using punch cards — paper cards with encoded holes.

Once they pass through the loom, the presence or absence of a hole tells the loom which warp thread to raise or lower, acting as the earliest form of binary code programming. Weaving that once required a master weaver and an assistant could now be done by craft hobbyists.

This same concept later influenced early computers, inspiring us on how such a craft can be a source of a technical revolution. In the 1830s, Charles Babbage drew directly on Jacquard’s punch-card mechanism by realizing he could apply the same concept to algebric patterns, instead of textiles, to program his Analytical Engine.

Mathematician Ada Lovelace advanced his work beyond maths to envision programming any information represented by symbols, including musical notes or graphic designs. By doing this, she brilliantly split the logical instructions or software (punch-cards) from the hardware (physical machine) for the first time.

User interfaces in websites and mobile apps (also known as graphical user interfaces) evolved from command-line interfaces, which in turn, was a revolution over its predecessor: the punch cards.

My mother-in-law told me stories about how, as an undergrad in electrical engineering in the 1960s, she used to write programs’ code by punching stacks of cards. I teach undergraduates today the history of user interfaces, and how we went full circle to have digital looms now that create smart e-textiles.

Weaving is still shaping technology

Weaving and other textile crafts are still influencing how people build technology today, often through hobbyists and makers as well as trained engineers.

As a professor of physical computing and e-textiles, I lead a research group that uses a computational weaving machine to create smart fabric using both natural and conductive yarns, in what we call hybrid craft. We prototype future wearables and soft furnishing that have sensing and electronic capabilities literally woven as threads within.

Some of our designs aim to cut down on e-waste using hybrid crafts and digital fabrication. Our most recent work uses computational looms and knitting machines to build fabric-based electronic breadboards designed by and for women in e-textiles. Another recent study used hybrid crafting to make prototyping more inclusive, with a focus on women and people with physical disabilities.

When we run workshops in our community, people are excited to stitch their own e-textile circuits using needles and conductive thread. These experiences show how hands-on STEM outreach and maker culture can bring diverse individuals into technology and give them a role in shaping its future.

Why this matters for crafters

This kind of work is part of a wider shift. Open-source tools such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the BBC micro:bit have lowered the cost of entry to physical computing, while makerspaces and fablabs have opened technology development to people who do not see themselves as programmers or engineers.

The same spirit that draws people to textile hobbies — experimenting with materials, learning through making and adapting designs through trial and error — is also transforming how we create technology.

Craft knowledge, open-ended experimentation and lived experiences can all become sources of innovation. This approach also gives people who are often excluded from mainstream technology a greater voice in creating it.

A Newcastle University project called Empowering Hacks is one example: two co-researchers who identify as disabled worked with the university’s Open Lab to design a set of 3D-printed handles for powered wheelchairs.

Another project at Queen’s University experimented with 3D-printing on textiles and invented Fabric-Lego for assistive wearables to customize and personalize the medical aesthetics of finger braces and arm slings.

The same way weaving looms paved the way for modern computers, other hybrid crafts can inspire innovation and practical inventions. So the next time you pick up a weaving, crochet, knitting or sewing project, you are not just making something — you are experimenting, problem-solving and creating the possibilities for new ideas.

Sara Nabil, Associate Professor of Human-Centered Computing, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The world has lost a music legend in Dolly Parton, who has died at 80 after a “brief battle” with cancer. She’s remembered for her twanging country vocals, decades of hit recordings, Grammys, Emmys and a liberal splash of acting.

But the biggest legacy Parton leaves is her songwriting, and three songs define her more than any others.

Jolene, I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5 are not just memorable Parton songs – they are integral to popular music history. They show a skilful musician who knew how to blend the story of lyrics with the drama of music.

Like many songwriters, Parton had things to say. What makes her contribution notable was when her lyrics told a story, and her music matched it.

Jolene

In Jolene, released in 1974, Parton’s lyrics capture the torment of watching your lover flirt with someone else.

It’s a powerful human experience – particularly for women despairing over how easily the next pretty young thing grabs male attention. Parton’s desperate begging for Jolene not to take her man “even though you can” is comfortingly raw and honest.

The song’s lyrics are a startling contrast to the common songwriting themes of the time about finding or losing love – such as The Carpenters’ Close to You (1970), Stevie Wonder’s You are the Sunshine of My Life (1972) and Carole King’s It’s Too Late (1971).

Instead, Jolene sits on the precipice of change, telling a vivid story of how seeing a stunning young woman can make another woman insecure.

Musically, the chords pound out an appropriately bleak minor key, ascending to higher chords with each dramatic call of the name “Jolene”. Accompanying the vocals sits an intriguing, rapid-fire, finger-picking guitar, performed in the recording studio by session musician Chip Young. It keeps an incessant motion that not only adds tension but draws admiration for skilful playing.

I Will Always Love You

I Will Always Love You was also released in 1974 and – remarkably – possibly was written on the same day as Jolene.

This song shows Parton’s ability to once again blend story and music in an excellent pairing. The fear pumping through Jolene is replaced by the grief of farewelling a deep love because, while love endures, it is not always enough of a reason to remain in a relationship.

Again, Parton captures a more sophisticated theme than the excitement and wonder of love. She knows that love can mean letting go.

The lyrics are sparse and the story of “bittersweet memories” is sketchy, but Parton once again nails the essence of human experience. We don’t need the details of what happened to relate with our own painful farewells.

The elongated singing of the word “I” translates almost as a cry of agony in Whitney Houston’s extraordinary cover version.

The chord progression Parton chose to underpin the chorus is one of the most familiar, hit-producing patterns in popular music history. It appears in songs ranging from Stand By Me (1961), Blue Moon (1934), Crocodile Rock (1973) and Every Breath You Take (1983).

But Parton’s usage is unique: the melody and lyrics don’t move with the progression. Instead, the melody holds one single note (with a few embellishments) and lets the chords do the work.

9 to 5

Parton wrote the song 9 to 5 for the movie of the same name in 1980, in which she starred alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It needed to match the vibe to describe the bustle of a working week.

To achieve this, Parton swapped her previously drawn out lyrics of love for the relentless patter describing the morning routine. Here Parton uses clever imperfect rhymes such as matching “kitchen” and “ambition” to sell the story.

The melody in the verse rises with each cluster of words, building the energy like the start of the day she describes. The chorus nails the hook by changing the rhythm, to let the phrase “9 to 5” ring out.

In 9 to 5, Parton moved away from love songs to a feminist theme that belted out the injustices of working tirelessly in a work place like any other employee yet not able to get a “fair promotion”. The description of the “rich man’s game” and how “they never give you credit” highlights workplace inequalities that are sadly still prevalent today.

Wendy Hargreaves, Academic in the School of Education and Creative Arts, University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

My copy of Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow was given to me by my mother in 1982, when I was 14 – the same age as the novel’s protagonist, Abigail Kirk. A sticker inside shows that my mother bought it at the Feminist Bookshop in Balmain, a shop I remember visiting with her more than once. The shop is long gone, and the Sydney where my mother bought the book has constantly been altered.

“In the first place, Abigail Kirk was not Abigail at all” is the novel’s striking opening sentence. Immediately, Park gives us a girl who feels out of place. It turns out she is not at home in her name or her family. Soon, her home city of Sydney will become strange to her too.

Almost half a century after its first publication in 1980, Playing Beatie Bow (also a 1986 film) has never gone away. It remains in print, with a new hardback edition appearing next month in Penguin’s Modern Australian Classics series. It is an Australian children’s classic whose great subject is time.

The books we read as children can shape us forever – as readers and people.

In this series, we ask experts to reflect on some of Australia’s most beloved children’s classics, spanning the 19th century to the new millennium.

A time-slip novel

Playing Beatie Bow is a time-slip novel: it takes a girl living in Sydney in 1980 and makes the city’s past a physical reality to her. Time operates here at several scales. Abigail is 14, poised between childhood and adulthood; the Sydney she inhabits, including The Rocks, is being remade.

At the novel’s opening, Abigail is already caught between past and future. Her father, Weyland Kirk, has left the family for another woman. Angry at his departure, Abigail rejects Lynette, the name by which he knew her, and renames herself Abigail – a name associated with witches, fictional and historical.

She and her mother live in a high-rise designed by her father’s architectural firm, a “glistening spike of steel and glass” rising among the “tiny meek cottages and old bond stores” of The Rocks.

When Abigail learns that her parents plan to reunite, she is appalled. How could a woman as capable and independent as her mother allow herself to be treated like a “worn-out glove”? Abigail is “outraged” that she could be “so … so – female”. It is at this moment that she is transported into another moment in the life of her city.

The way into the past has itself travelled through time. Abigail watches children playing an old game called Beatie Bow, circling a girl chosen by a counting-out rhyme:

Oh, Mudda, what’s that, what can it be?
The wind in the chimney, that’s all, that’s all.

The past also survives as an object. Abigail finds a discarded yoke from an old garment, its embroidered flowers faded almost beyond recognition, and sews it onto a bottle-green dress. Wearing it, she follows the strange child who has been watching the game – and finds herself in The Rocks in 1873.

There she meets Beatie and the Bows and Talliskers, immigrants from the Orkney Islands, who take her in. The living Rocks she encounters is recognisable, but utterly strange, a working community where sickness and death remain close at hand.

Sydney history made strange

Park had already immersed herself in Sydney’s history, most notably in her magisterial The Companion Guide to Sydney (1973). Another past comes into view in its opening chapter. Among the female convicts aboard the Lady Penrhyn was a “thirteen year old”; the women were “milliners, lace-weavers, stay-makers, glove-makers, barrow women and servants”.

From the ship’s rails, they saw Sydney’s “low hills”, “tawny blonde with summer”. Park also describes “a thirty-foot depth of bleached white shells left behind after thousands of years of Aboriginal picnics on this bountiful shore” – a shell midden, though she does not call it one. The sentence briefly opens a much deeper measure of Sydney time.

In Playing Beatie Bow, Park makes the city’s history strange again, seen through the eyes of a girl who has pursued another girl into the past.

Almost immediately, readers saw that Playing Beatie Bow looked both ways in time. The novel won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year Award in 1981, followed by the US Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction in 1982.

The Australian judges praised Park’s recreation of “the sights, sounds and smells” of The Rocks in 1873, but historical reconstruction was not an end in itself. They singled out her use of the past “to foreshadow and illuminate the present and future” – a striking description of a novel in which time is never simply a matter of then and now.

‘You can’t write down to kids’

Park also trusted the imaginative capacities of young readers. She was writing at a moment when “young adult” was becoming a new publishing category, whose possibilities intrigued her. In journals, letters and interviews, she repeatedly stated that children’s writers should write for children, not to impress other children’s writers.

“You can’t write down to kids,” she said after winning the award. “Kids have an intuitive feeling about motivation. They can always detect insincerity.”

That principle is at the heart of Playing Beatie Bow. Park asks Abigail – and her readers – to imagine themselves elsewhere. In 1873, Abigail falls in love with Beatie’s older brother Judah Bow, only to discover that he is promised to Dovey Tallisker, his cousin and a member of the Bow household. Abigail, who had condemned her father for desiring another woman and her mother for taking him back, now finds herself in the place of the one who wants what she cannot have.

Time travel has displaced her in more ways than one. The Sydney to which she will return is itself changing. Park had been writing about that city since The Harp in the South (1948), her famous novel of working-class Surry Hills, and had watched its inner neighbourhoods change around her.

By the late 1970s, The Rocks was undergoing redevelopment and gentrification, as buildings were demolished, preserved or restored and the colonial precinct was remade as heritage.

Park makes that transformation visible from the opening pages, with Abigail’s “glistening spike of steel and glass” among the old cottages and bond stores. In the decade leading to the bicentenary of 1988, when Australians were reflecting on how the past should be remembered, Playing Beatie Bow offered its own answer.

History of ordinary lives

As in The Companion Guide, with its oysters, mussels and Aboriginal picnics, Park looks for the past in what lies close to hand. History resides not only in restored buildings and official commemorations, but in games, stories and ordinary things.

At one point, Abigail understands why her mother’s secondhand shop contains no working-class Victorian clothes: they had been “worn out by unceasing labour a hundred years before.” The past survives unevenly. Some lives leave fewer things behind.

Such attention to what survives — and what is easily overlooked – is one reason the novel still speaks to readers. Park brings the working-class and immigrant Rocks vividly into view: the Bows and Talliskers, Chinese workers, sailors and “high-steppers” or prostitutes.

Her history is crowded with ordinary lives, vivid precisely where the record grows faint. Sometimes, as with those 30 feet of shells marking thousands of years before European settlement, what remains measures time differently.

What remains as people, families and cities change? The novel asks how objects can carry one time into another. Which brings me back to the book my mother bought at that bookshop in Balmain. In 1982, it was an almost new book about a girl my own age travelling into Sydney’s past. Forty-four years later, the book carries its own past.

Monique Rooney, Senior lecturer in literature, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.