This article stems from a project examining cultural assets in Wollongong – a medium-sized Australian city with a decentralized and linear suburban pattern that challenges orthodox binaries of inner-city bohemia/outer-suburban domesticity. In Wollongong we documented community perceptions of cultural assets across this unusual setting, through a simple public research method. At the city’s largest annual festival we recruited the general public to nominate the city’s most ‘cool’ and ‘creative’ places, by drawing on a map of Wollongong and telling their stories. Hand-drawn maps from 205 participants were combined in a Geographical Information System and 50 hours of stories transcribed for qualitative analysis. Over 2300 places were identified. Among them were some surprising results: although places known for the arts and bohemian creative industries figured prominently, these were not only in the inner-city but in beachside suburbs with unique cultural histories. Also, a range of affective engagements with place, including unconventional forms of creativity, were described in industrial and blue-collar suburbs. Network topology analysis by place of residence also revealed the extent of localism, as well as specializations and aggrandizements among suburbs. Our conclusions are threefold: first, that ‘creativity’ is relationally situated and linked across all parts of the city; second, that decentralized forms of small-scale cultural infrastructure provision are vital for vernacular cultural pursuits; and, third, that ‘creativity’ is a polysemic and contested category – only ever partially revealing the contours of cultural vitality in the suburbs.

[1] Four well-identified tropical cyclones over the past century have been responsible for depositing distinct units of predominantly quartzose sand and gravel to form the most seaward beach ridge at several locations along the wet tropical coast of northeast Queensland, Australia. These units deposited by tropical cyclones display a key sedimentary signature characterized by a sharp basal erosional contact, a coarser grain size than the underlying facies and a coarse-skewed trend toward the base. Coarse-skewed distributions with minimal change in mean grain size also characterize the upper levels of the high-energy deposited units at locations within the zone of maximum onshore winds during the tropical cyclone. These same coarse skew distributions are not apparent in sediments deposited at locations where predominantly offshore winds occurred during the cyclone, which in the case of northeast Australia is north of the eye-crossing location. These sedimentary signatures, along with the geochemical indicators and the degraded nature of the microfossil assemblages, have proven to be useful proxies to identify storm-deposited units within the study site and can also provide useful proxies in older beach ridges where advanced pedogenesis has obscured visual stratigraphic markers. As a consequence, more detailed long-term histories of storms and tropical cyclones can now be developed.

Gulf St Vincent is one of a pair of elongate, triangular, shallow water embayments into the southern coast of continental Australia. From the southern floor of this embayment, within a shallow basin-like depression where present-day water depth is about 40 m, vibracore SV23 recovered c. 4 m of late Quaternary sediments. The uppermost 1.5 m of this core comprises postglacial (Holocene) marine deposits; six radiocarbon ages for the interval 64-130 cm downcore are all around 10 000 cal. yr BP, while two for 18-24 cm are several thousand years younger. Radiocarbon analysis of an oyster shell at 154 cm yielded a minimum age of c. 37 000 cal. yr BP. Well-preserved benthic foraminifera are abundant in all the recovered sediments. The early phase of Holocene marine sedimentation in Gulf St Vincent was marked by the development of a marginal marine, perhaps lacustrine to estuarine environment, as signified by the presence of oogonia, gypsum crystals and the foraminifera Miliolinella labiosa and Elphidium cf. articulatum. Development of seagrass meadows followed; these were inhabited by Nubecularia lucifuga and Discorbis dimidiatus. As the marine transgression proceeded, the environment remained somewhat restricted, as indicated by Ammonia beccarii, but numbers of this species declined giving way to Massilina milletti as conditions began to resemble those of the modern Gulf St Vincent. Culmination of the transgression provided the conditions necessary for the dominance of Ammobaculites reophaciformis and Flintina triquetra. A. reophaciformis and F triquetra therefore record the final episode of the transgression and transition to the modern, deeper water environment. At several lower horizons they also occur as conspicuous spikes, equivalent to their modern abundance. These spikes, which coincide with equivalent decreased numbers of A. beccarii, are interpreted to represent downward bioturbation of the overlying deeper water sediment.