Exploiting South Australia’s coast: past decisions, future visions

South Australia’s coasts and marine environments are dynamic places with contested, sometimes forgotten, histories. In this lecture, environmental historian Alessandro Antonello will explore the case of seagrass extraction and protection in South Australia from the early twentieth century to the present. Showcasing documents and images from the state collections, the lecture explores extraction in the Upper Spencer Gulf, pollution and degradation in Gulf St Vincent, and contemporary restoration at many points of the state’s coastline.

This lecture coincides with Crosscurrents, a Flinders University Museum of Art exhibition presenting newly commissioned works by Brad Darkson, Chris De Rosa, Honor Freeman, Michael Kutschbach, Sonya Rankine, and Mary-Jean Richardson—artists whose practices are deeply connected to the coastal edges of Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna, and Narungga waters, from Encounter Bay to Moonta.

Alessandro Antonello is associate professor of environmental history at the University of Tasmania. From 2020 to 2024 he was senior research fellow at Flinders University. His current research explores the history of seagrass extraction and protection in Australia since the early twentieth century. This research builds on his previous work on environmental histories of Antarctica and oceans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is the author of The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment (Oxford University Press, 2019).

This event is held in the Flinders City Campus, Level 3, Room 306. Click here for more information on location, map and transport.

Photo caption: Unloading seagrass from Spencer Gulf at Port Broughton, 1913. State Library of South Australia (PRG280/1/16/77)