Macassan/Indigenous Australian ‘sites of memory’ in the National Museum of Australia and Australian National Maritime Museum

For over two centuries people from Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came to northern Australia with the onset of the northeast monsoon winds. They came in search of trepang that, with the help of Indigenous Australians, they collected and traded on to China. Their impact on the Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land was considerable. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, they built relationships, many ongoing, that are celebrated in Yolngu art, song and stories. These stories of contact are well known to many archaeologists and anthropologists but for many Australians the only place where they come into contact with these stories is in a museum display. In this paper I examine the ways in which these stories are disseminated by two national museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. As important ‘lieux de mémoire’ or ‘sites of memory’, they tell of Macassan visits to northern Australia as part of Australian history. In both cases not only are the stories situated in the past but both Macassan and Indigenous Australian voices are largely absent.     

Spatial variation of cone tip resistance for the clay site at Texas A&M University

The cone tip resistance data available for the clay site at Texas A&M University, USA (one of the National Geotechnical Experimentation Sites) are used to show how the spatial variation of a soil property can be quantified. It is suggested that the first step in quantifying the spatial variation of a soil property should be the identification or selection of the statistically homogeneous soil layers. A new simple procedure is suggested to identify statistically homogeneous layers in a soil profile. Through examples it is shown that the procedure works extremely well in identifying the statistically homogeneous layers. For the chosen statistically homogeneous layers, the spatial variation of cone tip resistance with depth is quantified in terms of a constant mean or a mean trend, variance/standard deviation/coefficient of variation or a variance around the mean trend, and a correlation or variogram function. Correlation distances in the depth direction were found to be between 0.1 and 0.5m for the two soil layers investigated. It was shown that the correlation distance decreases in the presence of a global mean trend for the soil property. In such cases, it is important to note that a part of the correlation is automatically included in the mean trend function.     

Use of the Spectrometric Sum Parameter for Aromatic Amines in the Monitoring of a Former Ammunition Plant

Aromatic amines are important metabolites of nitroaromatic explosives, hence monitoring of aromatic amines’ content at former ammunition plants is necessary. Twenty years ago, a threshold limit value of 0.1 μg/L for the sum of diazotizable aromatic amines in water distributed from the waterworks at the former ammunition plant in Stadtallendorf/Hesse was established. This value is still measured with a spectrometric sum parameter, in which diazotization and a subsequent azo coupling of the analytes are utilized. The sum parameter is well suited for the long‐term monitoring of filter installations, and it allows very quick measurements and a non‐target screening of aniline contents, both of which are important in research. Nevertheless, as several problems are associated with this parameter, we developed analytical methods suitable for the determination of the most important single compounds contributing to the overall sum. Initial results of these methods show that amphoteric anilines are of considerable importance in ammunition waste but have been neglected up to now in official monitoring schemes. The summation of single compound contents in ammunition wastewater generally gives 3 to 6 times higher values than the spectrometrically determined sum, which is mainly due to the choice of the reference substance 4‐nitroaniline in the sum parameter.     

Off-line and On-line Extraction of Explosives and Related Compounds from Aqueous Samples Using Solid Sorbents

Explosives belonging to the group of nitrotoluenes may be readily extracted with C18 adsorbent in the off-line mode and also in on-line coupling of the extraction unit to HPLC, while polar explosives like hexyl, HMX, and RDX show a substantial breakthrough and low recoveries. However, these compounds are quantitatively extracted using a new polymeric phase, LiChrolut EN, in the off-line mode. Preliminary results show that this new adsorbent may in principle also be used in the on-line mode for explosives. In this case, the cartridges have to be eluted in the backflush mode. Method detection limits of ? 0.1 μg/L are achieved for on-line extraction of explosives and related compounds with water samples as small as 10…30 mL.