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Mining has usually been regarded as the simplest case of the location problem, to be explained, at least at the level of the producing district, largely in terms of the least-cost principle. This approach would also appear to have some relevance to the examination of the location of individual pits within a particular coalfield. This paper outlines a simple model for the development of an hypothetical coalfield, then considers the changing patterns of pit location on the main New South Wales coalfields in relation to this model. It would seem that there is a close coincidence between the hypothesized situation and the main evolutionary stages of these fields. There are, however, some significant departures from the idealized scheme, particularly during periods of industrial or economic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cobar Pediplain of western New South Wales. a vast gently undulating bedrock surface, contains abundant evidence of fluvial denudation since the middle-late Tertiary. Although network hierarchies are not functionally related to contemporary climate, and channel systems are largely infilled, valley systems have not undergone truncation or obliteration. The “laws” of drainage composition. and relief and valley-side slope characteristics are evaluated in this pediplain setting. The organization of fluvial hierarchies as manifested in the laws of stream numbers, lengths, slopes, and basin areas is conserved through geologic time. indicating a condition of time-independence. Values for bifurcation and stream length ratios are within the ranges recorded for mature areas. Relief measures are time dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

External commuting capitalizes upon existing investment in areas with a deficit in local employment. The Newcastle, New South Wales, commutershed has long included an expanding zone of external commuting in former mining towns well in advance of suburban spread. For displaced miners, and for other autochthonous commuters, strong constraints on residential mobility raise travel tolerance levels beyond those acceptable to suburbanites and other allochthonous commuters. Among external commuters, spatial differences in residential utility and paired residential-workplace utility lead to differing responses to enforced commuting, enabling prediction of the future roles of settlements as commuter source areas. The present structure contains the seeds of change, either toward integration in the suburban zone or toward progressive decline in resident workforce and ultimate disintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1865 and 1911 the sugar industry of the northeastern corner of New South Wales, Australia, was organized according to a variety of production systems: plantations, central mills and independent farms, small mills, and co-operatives. The authoritarianism of the plantations, based on gang labor, conflicted with the dominant desire to establish an equalitarian yeomanry in the region. Co-operation between yeoman and capitalist produced the central mill system, which is now universal, but petit bourgeois settlers of moderate capital attempted to maintain their independence by erecting mills of their own. Scottish Presbyterians were dominant in the latter group; their concentration on the lower Clarence resulted in a high density of mill power in the area, in contrast to the dispersion north of the Richmond where water transport was unavailable. The plantations were located in areas where it was possible to aggregate abandoned holdings and where population was sparse; the stability of the small farm pattern on the lower Clarence made it unnecessary for the capitalist millers actually to own land and employ field labor, but they did exert considerable control over the pattern of land use within their mill areas. Whereas the organization of the plantations created a nucleated settlement pattern, the other systems dispersed habitations and the small mills similarly dispersed processing activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In geographical and related research uncertainty and error have arisen in the selection, application, and interpretation of designs in plane sampling largely through a failure to differentiate between area sampling and location sampling procedures. A survey of some commonly used area sampling designs indicates the frequency and extent of this error. Location sampling has remained a poorly understood technique through its confusion with area sampling, and there has been a consequent failure to grapple with the problems of stratifying by location when the primary sampling items are of varying areal extent or are irregularly spaced. An objective method of stratifying by location employing minimal aggregation is described and is used as a basis for both systematic and random samples. Tests on locationally stratified farm sample designs, based upon certain known and hypothetical farm characteristics in one New South Wales shire, indicate that increases in sampling precision obtained through locational stratification are directly related to the levels of spatial segregation in the items being sampled.