Amy Clarke

This open-access dataset documents sports house systems in Queensland public and private high schools in 1969 and 2023. Developed to support historical and sociocultural analysis of school sporting traditions, it examines how house naming practices reflect broader shifts in social values, educational cultures, and commemorative practices over time. By capturing house names across two benchmark years, the dataset enables longitudinal comparison of institutional identities and changing patterns of representation within Queensland secondary education and society (Clarke and Kirby, 2024).

The dataset was compiled through historical and archival research using a range of primary and secondary sources. Data for 1969 came from digitised newspapers and John Oxley Library holdings, including school yearbooks, annual reports, magazines, newsletters, and other institutional ephemera. Data for 2023 were sourced from official school websites and publicly available social media accounts. Where records were incomplete or unclear, the researchers contacted schools directly to confirm house names and historical details. The dataset identifies sports houses for 173 of 262 Queensland public and private high schools operating in 1969 (626 unique houses) and 489 of 506 schools operating in 2023 (1,880 unique houses). Data were standardised to support comparative analysis across historical periods and educational sectors.

The dataset underpinned the 2024 research article High School Sports Houses as Identity Primers: Constructing Queensland and Australian Identities (Clarke and Kirby, 2024) and was later repurposed for an interactive component of the Sunshine Coast Council exhibition Around the Track, presented at Landsborough Museum from 10 April to 30 August 2026.

The Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Paralympics signal a shift from mega-city hosts to a more regional and sustainable approach to staging the Games. Uniquely in a Summer Olympic bid, Brisbane’s application was based on the hosts being from the broader Australian region of south-east Queensland. In appointing Brisbane, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach outlined the importance of sustainability and economic responsibility, and recognised the long-term regional and national strategies around development in Australia. In this changing global sports ecosystem, this paper examines the legacies of Atlanta 1996, a smaller-scale Olympics through media coverage of this edition of the Games, including general and sports reporting. The findings outline areas for the Brisbane 2032 organisers to consider in delivering an Olympics that is sustainable for the hosts. The Games were most effective for fulfilling elements related to sports legacies and the economic focus on making a profit, or not requiring government funding. There are considerable positives in the Olympic stadium still being in use, along with the aquatic centre, and the continued popularity of the public space and broader developments based around the Centennial Olympic Park.

This study investigated the impacts of integrating AI-generated podcasts into counselling education, examining both student and faculty experiences through a qualitatively-driven mixed-methods design. Early review of recent survey responses indicate that while faculty reported significant benefits, including drastic time savings and a positive shift in their role from content creator to curator, the student response was overwhelmingly negative. A qualitative analysis of survey data from eight students and three educators revealed a potential critical disconnect.
Faculty responses suggest that the AI tool improved the efficiency and quality of the pedagogical learning materials. Conversely, student responses suggest that they found the AI-generated voices to be “alienating” and “fake,” thereby hindering their comprehension and engagement. These early qualitative findings appear to corroborate with quantitative institutional data, which showed a marked decline in students’ overall satisfaction and their satisfaction with learning experiences and materials after the introduction of the podcasts. Implications of these findings will be discussed.

Relationships are fundamental to our lives and the living, and key to all forms of existence - ontologically, ethically, and spiritually. They represent a sense of interconnection, belonging, attachment, and kinship. They weave together a tapestry of people, things, and more-than-human connections--networks that are in a mutual relationship with heritage and processes of heritage-making. In this paper, we reflect on the idea of relationships. Taking inspiration from our experiences as co-chairs and presenters of the ICOMOS GA2023 Relationships Theme, we use 'relationships' as a concept to frame and facilitate a deeper understanding of their meanings in our everyday lives and heritage-making processes. We use the concept to explore relationships across three distinct papers presented at the Scientific Symposium. The case studies illuminate the fundamental interconnections among people, places, and 'things', encompassing lost relationships, the significance of nuturing strong relationships, and the value of developing new ones.

Big Things first appeared in Australia in the 1960s, beginning with the Big Scotsman (1962) in Medindie, South Australia, the Big Banana (1964) in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, and the Big Murray Cod (1968) in Tocumwal, NSW.

These structures were inspired by earlier North American examples, such as Lucy the Elephant (1882) in New Jersey, and several big doughnuts in California.

While they differed in subject matter, all aimed to attract the attention of passing motorists: in the 1950s–1960s, private car ownership had soared and highway construction spread.

Towns and regions across Australia, New Zealand and North America used oversized landmarks to get travellers to stop, take a photo and hopefully spend money at local businesses.

The exhibition focuses on ‘aquatic sports’ and features objects and stories from across the Sunshine Coast region. Together with Sunshine Coast Council, curator Hayley Rowan acknowledges with much gratitude, the assistance and generosity of the individuals and clubs who loaned and donated objects and shared their stories. Thanks also to researchers/ writers Kate Kirby and Dr Amy Clark for their contributions to the development of this exhibition.

Sport plays an important role in the conception of Australian national identity. Much of the scholarly work on this topic has concentrated on professional, high-profile sports and athletes. In this article, we draw attention to a highly symbolic aspect of popular sporting culture—school sports houses—and the prominent historical figures and motifs that they project through their team names, mascots and colours. School sports houses are potent examples of banal nationalism, whereby elements of Australianness are reinforced through the tradition of school athletics and swimming carnivals. Here, we highlight the overlap between the school-based agenda of encouraging group identity and the broader notion of the nation as an imagined community. Using a comprehensive dataset of Queensland high school sport houses in 1969 and 2023, we observe several trends, such as the persistence of houses named after colonial explorers and the disparity between houses with women’s and men’s namesakes. We consider the role of school sports houses as “identity primers”, or scripts, that encourage schoolchildren to identify with specific historic figures, landforms, animal totems, character traits and other qualities as indicators of the region and nation in which they live.