Coolabah, No.24&25, 2018, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i 

Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de 

Barcelona 

 

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Foreword to Reimagining Australia, Part 1 

 

 

 
Guest Editors: Baden Offord, Thor Kerr, Rob Garbutt, Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, Elfie 

Shiosaki, Misty Farquhar and Dean Chan 

 

 

 

 

The two special issues of Coolabah numbers 24 and 25 were developed from selected 

presentations at Reimagining Australia: Encounter, Recognition, Responsibility, the International 

Australian Studies Association (InASA) Conference 2016, hosted by the Centre for Human Rights 

Education, Curtin University, and held in Fremantle, Western Australia, on 7-9 December. These 

Coolabah issues address the urgent need for Australia to be reimagined as inclusive, conscious of 

its landscape and contexts, locale, history, myths and memory, amnesia, politics, cultures and 

futures; reimagined via intense conversations and inter-epistemic dialogue; reimagined through 

different ways of knowing, belonging and doing. Key agendas, polemics and contestations at stake 

in this two-part publication project are raised in Tony Birch’s thought-provoking article that serves 

equally as an introductory essay.