Zinc oxide is a prevalent industrial-age pigment that readily reacts with fatty acids in oil-based paints to form zinc carboxylates. Zinc stearate aggregates are associated with deterioration in late nineteenth and twentieth century paintings. The current study uses both conventional and synchrotron Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) to investigate metal carboxylate composition in a range of naturally aged artists' oil paints and reference paint film draw-downs. The paints contain zinc oxide alone or in combination with lead white, titanium white, and aluminum stearate and are prepared with linseed and safflower oils. Attenuated total reflectance (ATR)-FT-IR using the conventional source identifies marked differences in carboxylate profiles between exposed and protected surfaces in a large number of samples. Synchrotron FT-IR microspectroscopy of thin paint cross-sections maps metal carboxylate distributions at high spatial resolution and resolves broad concentration gradients and micrometer-scale phase separation of carboxylate species. Aluminum stearate, a common paint additive, is found to influence the distribution of zinc carboxylates more strongly than pigment composition or oil type. The presence of aluminum stearate results in higher concentrations and more pronounced separation of saturated C16 and C18 chain zinc carboxylates in the margin of paint nearest the polyester substrate. The presence of aluminum stearate in association with zinc oxide has a clear influence on zinc carboxylate formation and distribution, with potential implications for long term stability of vulnerable paintings.

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Australian sports historiography, in privileging Western, reconstructionist approaches to narrating histories of Aboriginal sport, has overlooked Indigenous research methodologies that privilege Aboriginal voices. This paper adopts the Indigenous research methodology of yarning in a collaborative project with former sportswomen from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement in Queensland. Yarning, as a culturally respectful way of eliciting memories and valuing expression of Indigenous voices, was used to explore their experiences, memories and meanings of competitive marching, a popular sport for young women in mid-twentieth century Australia. The yarning sessions revealed insights into sport that are missing from the empirical, archival record, and allowed the exploration of agency and autonomy, acts of resistance, and complex intersections of nostalgia and trauma. This paper offers specific and broader insights on sport in Australian Indigenous communities and on the entanglement of the sporting past with the histories and politics of race and gender in Queensland. In repositioning researcher and researched in Aboriginal sport history, this paper demonstrates the potential of transformative narratives about the experiences of Indigenous Australians. but sport rarely features in these accounts. 2 One possible explanation for the paucity of sporting voices is that men, who had the longest and most sustained engagement with sport throughout Cherbourg's history, have been slower than women in grappling with their experiences under the Act. 3 It is the women of Cherbourg who have most thoroughly tackled the past. Often, this is done in the spirit of healing, attempting to reconcile the past, with the intent of building a productive and meaningful future. 4 This paper grew from a collaborative research project about sport history in Cherbourg that sought to engage with community memories, meanings and perspectives on the sporting past. 5 During that engagement over several years, female Elders asked us to help them research and tell the history of the Marching Girlsteams of competitive, precision marcherswho were active in the 1950s and 1960s. That project led to an analysis of official rationales for marching, and how the sport furthered assimilationist policy aims of the Queensland government. 6 It did not attempt to explore the women's experiences or their memories of marching, which are warmly recalled in Cherbourg six decades later. Marching memories feature in a sport exhibit at the community's Ration Shed Museum, where a plaque reads: "The marching girls are fondly remembered by the Cherbourg community as a crossover recreational and semi-sporting activity […]". 7 Former participants, typically aged in their sixties and seventies, take an active interest in preserving memories of their activities, including sewing replica marching uniforms for the museum display. 8 These representations of marching provide an ideal opportunity to explore the subjective, lived experiences and memories of Cherbourg women. What di...