Environmental Crisis in Australia and its Region
UndergraduateMUR-HIS3042025
Course information for 2025 intake
Enrol today with instant approval and no entry requirements
- Study method
- 100% online
- Assessments
- 100% online
- Enrol by
- 16 Feb 2025
- Entry requirements
- No ATAR needed, No prior study
- Duration
- 12 weeks
- Start dates
- 24 Feb 2025
- Price from
- $2,125
- Upfront cost
- $0
- Loan available
- HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP available
Environmental Crisis in Australia and its Region
About this subject
On successful completion of the subject, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of key ideologies, cultures and factors that shape relationships between people and environments, including their enduring significance.
- Identify, interpret and use appropriate primary and secondary sources in the completion of a research project.
- Critically analyse historical evidence and scholarship, demonstrating an awareness of different conceptual approaches and how interpretations of the past might differ.
- Demonstrate articulate communication skills by constructing evidence-based arguments in an audio, digital, oral and/or written form.
- Demonstrate technical proficiency in the conventions of the discipline.
- The Continent and First Contact
- Indigenous Land Management: Firestick Farming
- Second Contact: Exploring ‘Wilderness’
- Pastoralism and Feral Animals
- Mining: Extraction and Exploitation
- National Parks and Green Space: Utility and Colonialism Assessment
- Fighting in the Franklin: The Tasmanian Dams Case
- Whaling: Fisheries, Tourism and Conservation
- The Murray-Darling: Water in a Dry Land
- Kyoto Protocol: Climate Crisis in the Region
- The Pacific Dumping Ground: Nuclear Testing and Garbage
- The Great Barrier Reef: Who Owns It?
The environment and environmental crises have had a profound impact on the history of the Australian people and their politics. This subject traces the relationship between people and the environment in Australia from pre-European times to the present-day climate-change crisis. We consider the ways in which Australians have sought to manage, tame and develop the natural environment. We measure the costs of hubris, the lack of ecological humility, and failures in recognising nature’s limits. The subject also considers Australia’s response to environmental issues in its region, where it has oscillated between being a trusted regional partner and crisis responder, to an ecological delinquent. Students will understand how Australia's response to environmental issues and crises has shaped its politics, economy and society – and that it will continue to do so.
Please Note: All students studying at Murdoch University will need to complete the compulsory unit, Murdoch Academic Passport (MAP100), which only takes 2-3 hours to complete online. Find out more: http://goto.murdoch.edu.au/MurdochAcademicPassport.
- Participation (20%)
- Environmental Case Study (30%)
- Major Research Project (50%)
For textbook details check your university's handbook, website or learning management system (LMS).
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Entry requirements
No entry requirements
Study load
- 0.125 EFTSL
- This is in the range of 10 to 12 hours of study each week.
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What to study next?
Once you’ve completed this subject it can be credited towards one of the following courses
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Bachelor of Arts (Community Development)
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