At the recent European Society for Environmental History conference in Zagreb, we announced the publication of a new volume in the RCC Perspectives series, titled, "Visions of Australia: Environments in History". I had the pleasure of co-editing the volume with Prof. Christof Mauch (Rachel Carson Center, LMU) and Dr. Emily O'Gorman (Macquarie University). The contributions in this volume explore the way that Australasian environments have been envisioned, worked, and changed in the past, and how ideas about places inform the present and future of the continent. It looks at some typical visions of Australia — the bush, the Great Barrier Reef — but also at mines, shorelines, sediments, and wheatfields, and beyond these to the historical networks of human and non-human actors that shaped these places and the ideas around them. It argues for an environmental history that is uniquely Australian, but which can enrich and expand the field of environmental history across the globe.

The essays in this volume are drawn from a symposium held on the lands of the Wattmattageal clan of the Darug nation at Macquarie University, Sydney, in February 2016, titled “Foreign Bodies, Intimate Ecologies: Transformations in Environmental History.” A big thanks to everyone who was involved in the symposium and the publication of the volume.