Although the restorative benefits of nature are widely acknowledged, there is a limited understanding of the attributes of natural environments that are fundamental to restorative experiences. Faced with growing human populations and a greater awareness of the wellbeing benefits natural environments provide, park agencies and planners are increasingly challenged with balancing human and ecological outcomes in natural areas. This study examines the physical and experiential qualities of natural environments people referred to when describing their connection to their most valued natural environments in an online questionnaire. Recruited primarily via a public radio program, respondents were asked to identify their favorite places and explain what they loved about those places. Favorite places are considered exemplars of restorative environments and were classified based on an existing park typology. Reasons people liked particular sites were classified into three domains: setting, activity, or benefit. Content analysis was used to identify the attributes most commonly associated with favorite places. These attributes were then related to the four components of restorative environments according to Attention Restoration Theory. In contrast to previous research, we found that “fascination” was the most important component of favorite places. Possible reasons for this contrast, namely, respondents' median age, and the likelihood of a high degree of ecological literacy amongst the study population are discussed. South Australians' favorite environments comprise primarily hilly, wooded nature parks, and botanical gardens, in stark contrast to the vast arid areas that dominate the state. Micro-variables such as birds, plants, wildlife, native species, and biodiversity appear particularly important elements used to explain people's love of these sites. We discuss the implications of these findings and their potential value as an anchor for marketing campaigns seeking to encourage contact with nature, as well as education programs designed to improve people's understanding of important but intangible concepts such as biodiversity. The findings have clear, practical implications for park managers given the modifiable nature of many of the attributes identified as being most important to our respondents, and we believe attention to such elements has the potential to simultaneously enhance people's nature experiences, optimize restorative outcomes, and improve environmental stewardship.

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This article discusses a recent art project created by the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathon Jones, which was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the revitalized Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney in early 2020. Jones’ work involves a dramatic installation of red and white crushed stones laid throughout the grounds of the barracks, merging the image of the emu footprint with that of the English broad convict arrow to ‘consider Australia’s layered history and contemporary cultural relations’. This work was accompanied by a ‘specially-curated programme’ of performances, workshops, storytelling and Artist Talks. Together, these elements were designed to unpack how certain ‘stories determine the ways we came together as a nation’. As one of the speakers of the Artist Talk’s programme, I had a unique opportunity to experiment with what colleagues and I have been calling ‘Creative histories’ in reference to the way some artists and historians are choosing to communicate their research about the past in ways that experiment with form and function and push disciplinary or generic boundaries. This article reflects upon how these two distinct creative history projects – one visual art, the other performative – renegotiate the complex and contested pasts of the Hyde Park Barracks. I suggest that both examples speak to the role of memory and creativity in shaping cultural responses to Australia’s colonial past, while Jones' programme illustrates how Indigenous artists and academics are making a profound intervention into contemporary understandings of how history is ‘done’ in Australia.

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Chapter 20 "Resourceful Reinvention": Speculative Biography as Public History?"Only Connect!" That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910What is speculative biography and how might it constitute a form of public history that enlivens the way we make histories in the twenty-first century? I am something of a hybrid-historian, trained by the academy but with roots that draw their sustenance from the subversive waters of literature. I am interested in writing, how we bring the past alive and make it enjoyable for general readers. For me, the answer lies in great stories that convey their arguments, as Peter Cochrane once suggested, in narrative, "by stealth" (Cochrane 2007, np). I am excited by the relatively new subgenre of speculative biography for a range of reasons, all of which relate directly to the imperative issued by Margaret Schlegal, the fictional heroine of Forster's Howards End.In this chapter I want to tease out how speculative biography can encourage ways of writing the past that might connect us to that which is not at our fingertips nor the forefront of our consciousness. In the process, I will also reflect upon how the motivations and methods associated with writing speculative biography blur the boundaries between so-called expert and amateur historian in ways that are aligned with the more capacious understanding of public history being explored in this book.First, however, I would like to respond to an invitation offered by Hilda Kean in her 2010 article History: Demystifying the Process of History Making, where she suggests that if we are to create more expansive and egalitarian conceptions of what public history might be in the twenty-first century we should begin by weaving personal pasts into our thinking about public pasts (Kean 2010, 31). In so doing, these new conceptions of public history can be predicated, she hopes, upon the common "need to share, participate and engage", not so much as "experts" in "history", but as "people with an interest in the relationship between the past and the present". Kean's ideas speak to a formative moment from my childhood that has shaped my own practice. Recounting this personal past therefore seems a fitting beginning to my exploration about what speculative biography can bring to the contemporary history making.