Les Heathcote, Visiting Scholar

Contact Address

Postal Address:

School of Geography, Population and Environmental Management
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide SA 5001
Australia

Telephone: (08) 8201 2640 (in Australia); (618) 8201 2640 (outside Australia)

Fax: (08) 8201 3521 (in Australia); (618) 8201 3521 (outside Australia)

E-mail: les.heathcote@flinders.edu.au

Recent Publications

Heathcote, R.L. (2002) Price, Sir Archibald Grenfell (1892-1977), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 16, 1940-1980, Melbourne University Press.

Heathcote, R.L. (1999) "Drought Impacts and Management" in D.E. Alexander and R.W. Fairbridge (eds) Encyclopaedia of Environmental Science, Klawer Academic, Dordrecht, pp. 137-139.

Heathcote, R.L. (1999) "Developing the Australian Deserts: past, present and future" in I.R. Traylor, H. Dregne and K. Mathis (eds) Desert Development: The Endless Frontier, Texas Technical University, Lubbock, pp. 95-105.

Heathcote, R.L. (1995) "From natural hazards to natural disaster reduction: Twenty Years of concern", Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 10(2): 9-11.

Heathcote, R. L. (1994) "Australia" in M.H. Glantz (ed.) Drought follows the Plow, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 91-102.

Heathcote, R. L. (1994) Australia, Harlow, U.K., Longman Scientific and Technical, 2nd ed.

Heathcote, R. L. (1994) "Human response to slow-onset environmental changes: some Australian experiences", Workshop Report on Creeping Environmental Phenomena, Colorado, National Centre for Atmosphere Research. 155-168.

Heathcote, R. L. (1994) "Manifest destiny, mirage and Mabo: contemporary images of the rangelands", Rangeland Journal, 16(2): 155-166.

Teaching Experience

Graduate Assistant, University of Nebraska, 1957-59; Lecturer, University College London, 1962-66; Senior Lecturer then Reader in Geography, Flinders University of South Australia, 1966 to date; Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Winter Quarter 1968; Visiting Professor at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., March to April 1970; Visiting Professor at the University of Nebraska, January to June 1978.

Administrative Experience

(a) Corporal, British Army, 1956-57.

(b) Member of Organising Committee for the International Geographical Congress in London, 1964.

(c) Acting Head of Geography Discipline during absence of Professor McCaskill on study leave during academic years 1971 and 1979.

(d) Chairman, Organising Committee for the Symposium on Natural Hazards in Australia, 1976, sponsored by the Academy of Science, the Institute of Australian Geographers, and the Academy of Social Sciences.

(e) Various university committees including Study Leave Committee and Overseas Conference Leave Committee 1979-1981; Vice-Chairman Research Committee 1984-1987; Chairman of the University Scholarships Committee 1984-1987.

(f) One of five Flinders University representatives on the South Australian Public Examinations Board 1968-1979.

(g) Member of Council, the Institute of Australian Geographers 1973-1975 and 1983-1989.

(h) Member of Australian Academy of Sciences National Committee for Geography, 1972-1980.

(i) Member of Australian Academy of Sciences National Committee for SCOPE (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment), 1975-1978.

(j) Member of Australian Academy of Sciences National Committee for the Environment, 1979-1981.

(k) Membership of editorial boards: Journal of Historical Geography 1977-1981; Great Plains Quarterly 1979-1985; Environmental Management 1985 to date; Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Series on Desert Research, 1990 to date; Forest Conservation History (formerly Journal of Forest History) 1989 to date.

(l) Representative of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia on the Academy of Sciences National Committee for Geography, from March 1991.

(m) Member of the Board of the South Australian Centre for Settlement Studies, Adelaide, 1981-1991.

(n) Chairman of the National Committee for Geography of the Australian Academy of Science, 1993-97.

Honours

1957-59 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nebraska.

1960-62 Research Scholar at the Australian National University, Canberra.

1972-73 President Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (South Australian Branch) Inc.

1981 Elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

1984-85 President of the Institute of Australian Geographers

1989 Honours Award of the Association of American Geographers for "sustained perceptive study of arid and semi-arid lands, including their environmental perception, especially in Australia and the United States".

Consultancies

1970-72 Collaborated at the invitation of Professor G.F. White (USA) and colleagues in the international research into human adjustments to natural hazards, by field studies in the Murray Mallee of South Australia. This contact continued throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

1986 At the invitation of the Arabian Gulf University Bahrain, I was a member of an international panel which helped design the Postgraduate Program of Desert and Arid Zone Sciences for the newly opened university.

1987 At the invitation of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, I was invited to join Professor Eric Colhoun (University of Newcastle) in reviewing the Department of Geography on the retirement of the Foundation Professor Martyn Webb. Our review recommended the continuation of the chair.

1988 At the invitation of Professor Mike Burns (Economics, Flinders), I collaborated with him and Dr Damania on the research into the Environmental Impacts of Tourism for the Commonwealth Industries Assistance Commission. This was published in 1989.

Review of Research Activities

The decision to join Flinders University in 1966 was in part the result of the opportunity it provided for me to develop two broad research themes, which are still basic to my research interests.

The first was an interest in the historical geography of European land settlement in the "new lands" of the Americas and Australia, particularly where that settlement brought the invaders into the relatively novel arid and semi-arid environments. Confronted by these unfamiliar environments, the traditional processes of resource allocation and management had to be modified and the resultant learning process was and continues to be a central theme in my research. My PhD thesis at the ANU considered pastoral settlement in eastern Australia and was published (1965) and subsequent papers have compared Australian with American experience (1969) and reviewed the system of pastoral resource use which has evolved (1977, 1987). Traditional land tenure systems had to be modified (1969, 1974) and exploitive "opportune use" resource management strategies seemed to pay off (1980, 1981, 1986).

From teaching and research activities on these topics two books resulted, one on the Australian landscape (1975) and another on the global arid lands and their management (1983). More recently contributions were made to the Australian Bicentennial History Project (1987) and two national studies have been edited, one for an International Geographical Congress held in Australia in 1988 (1988), the other as part of a review of Australian social science disciplines for the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1988).

The second major research interest has been into the study of environmental perception, i.e. the process by which human information about the physical environment is acquired and used as the basis for environmental management. This has taken various tracks:

i) Interest in resource management in the stressful arid environments led somewhat logically into a concern for perceptions of the environment as hazard. Initially the concern was (and still is in part) for drought and societal responses to its impacts. Research showed that hazard definitions tended to be relative and Australian responses to drought ambivalent (1969, 1973, 1974, 1974, 1986, 1988). I chaired the Organizing Committee for the first national review of natural hazards in Australia held at the Academy of Science in 1976 and edited the proceedings with Thom (1979). The conference produced recommendations which were forwarded to government, but which proved too much for the politicians and bureaucracy to handle and led me to publish the sorry story which resulted (1980). A review of changing attitudes to and management of the Australian arid zone formed a Presidential Address to the Institute of Australian Geographers (1987).

ii) A parallel theme was study of the perception of land degradation/desertification and two of my students provided materials from South Australian and Sri Lanka to which I was able to add a study of the American Dust Bowl and the South Australian Mallee (1980).

iii) A collaborative study funded by the ARGC with colleagues from history and asian studies into the causes of famine was reported in 1984 and 1986.

iv) More recently a global review of the impacts of extreme events was invited and published (1985).

v) An interest in the changing perceptions of the Australian environment as a whole, as derived from both literary and landscape painting sources has been a "hobby" for my wife and myself (1972, 1972, 1983).

vi) Finally, most recently ARC support has enabled me to begin a study of drought relief policies in South Australia in the context of some evidence of climatic change and with specific reference to the administration of those policies on the Eyre Peninsula.