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Charles Tucker Musson was a highly respected teacher at Hawkesbury Agricultural College from 1891 to 1919 and a prolific contributor of articles to scientific and other journals in New South Wales. In addition, he became a strong advocate of Nature Study, a subject widely discussed as it was introduced to schools throughout the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century but since fallen into obscurity within historical research. Musson's understandings of ecology and adaptation promoted a holistic study of nature. For him any action that affected the natural environment had wider implications that needed to be understood. He came to believe that environmental understanding required more than factual scientific investigation and thus embraced the additional appeal to emotional attachment and aesthetic appreciation that Nature Study endorsed. A study of his life and writing thus provides insight into the particular ideology of Nature Study as it was introduced into New South Wales schools and its wider connection with conservationist and preservationist thought.

Dickens penned the simile, "Like a wicked Noah's ark", in his vivid description of the prison hulk observed by young Pip in Great Expectations. Sarah Luke begins her history of the 19th-century industrial school ship, the Vernon (later replaced by the Sobraon), moored in Sydney Harbour with changing cohorts of young boys on board, by asking if it was "a floating hell".Using an extensive range of sources, Luke takes the reader into daily life on board the ships, introducing a large cast of characters including the captains, crew, teachers and boys. She examines the aims of politicians and social reformers in setting up industrial schools, along with other institutions to deal with child poverty, homelessness and crime. The Vernon was never a gaol and boys were not sent there to serve sentences. A boy might have already served time in an adult gaol for petty crime such as thieving, and upon release had no responsible family to care for him. Or he might have been found homeless on the streets and charged with having no means of support.The book is presented in three parts, one for each captain in charge of the institution:

Purpose The paper is a study of Clarice McNamara, née Irwin (1901–1990), an educator who advocated for reform in the interwar period in Australia. Clarice is known for her role within the New Education Fellowship in Australia, 1940s–1960s; however, the purpose of this paper is to investigate her activism in an earlier period, including contributions made to the journal Education from 1925 to 1938 to ask how she addressed conditions of schooling, curriculum reform, and a range of other educational, social, political and economic issues, and to what effect. Design/methodology/approach Primary source material includes the previously ignored contributions to Education and a substantial unpublished autobiography. Used in conjunction, the sources allow a biographical, rhetorical and contextual study to stress a dynamic relationship between writing, attitudes, and the formation and activity of organisations. Findings McNamara was an unconventional thinker whose writing urged the case for radical change. She kept visions of reformed education alive for educators and brought transnational progressive literature to the attention of Australian educators in an overall reactionary period. Her writing was part of a wider activism that embraced schooling, leftist ideologies, and feminist issues. Originality/value There has been little scholarly attention to the life and work of McNamara, particularly in the 1920s–1930s. The paper indicates her relevance for histories of progressive education in Australia and its transnational networks, the Teachers Federation and feminist activism between the wars.

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