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

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

Barcelona 

 

198 
 

 

 

Foreword to Reimagining Australia, Part 2 

 

 

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

Shiosaki, Misty Farquhar and Dean Chan 

 

 

 

 

This special double issue of Coolabah, numbers 24&25, was 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. The 

double issue addresses 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.