Chinese tourists are the most numerous group in Australia, although a small proportion of outbound tourists. However remarkably little is known about their socio-economic status, pattern of tourism, and attitudes to and perceptions of Australia, although every Australian state has devised a tourism strategy to tap into this market. Analysis of contemporary Chinese newspapers in Australia emphasises that Australian businesses poorly understand the Chinese tourism structure and are limited in their ability to benefit from it. Preliminary analysis indicates that Chinese tourists primarily visit the east coast and metropolitan centres (destinations for Chinese airlines) with forays into ‘standard’ iconic tourist destinations, like the Blue Mountains and the Great Barrier Reef, for basic ‘nature’ tourism. Language barriers and food preferences still disadvantage regional and more individualistic tourism, but tourist groups are becoming smaller and more specialized. The metropolitan focus is associated with shopping (for woollens and ‘safe and healthy’ milk and pharmaceutical products). What further differentiates Chinese tourists are various niche objectives, including assessing educational opportunities and property markets, and wine tourism. Chinese tourists are not merely ‘the new Japanese’ but a distinct and novel component of the Australian market, deeper understanding of which requires a multidisciplinary perspective.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained regulatory ground this century due to negative impacts on the natural and built environments and quality of life. The self-regulatory system of CSR in itself however, has been strongly criticised for its 'soft law' approach. While there is a strong literature base discussing case studies on the responsibilities within sustainability and social impact assessments for various potential industries, there is an important consideration of CSR: the community impact following company infrastructure and resources withdrawal. While there may be legal standards in place for these companies in their home countries, foreign investment withdrawal can mean downturned economies for regional and rural local communities, converse to the constructed images of bucolic and touristic idylls, from which the corporates retreat. This paper argues for the use of an interdisciplinary approach using tourism, rural and legal geographies to contribute research for alternatives and mandatory protection mechanisms for potentially finite tourism industries for small communities and considers the case of the Marianas Islands tourism industry which foreign company Japan Tourism had initiated for the island.

A framed, embroidered, 1815 map of Ireland passed down through successive generations is in my charge. The name of the small 1612 ‘charter town’ of Ballinakill, Queen’s County, stitched on the map – almost as the centre of Ireland – is a cultural statement of attachment to place. Drawing on genealogical, census and property records, I report some surname geographies and show how attachment to place might be problematic for a given family under decolonizing pressures. Given the relations between power, politics and space, my interest in the ‘social world’ of Ballinakill can quickly become a quagmire of fixed notions of Irish identity in nationalist historiography. I test a view that assemblage thinking affords a processual and socio-material perspective in my argument that ‘family geography’ is the next evolution beyond “family history”, one in which a traveling genealogist considers heritage as situational, place-based change, such that ‘family geography’ could augment or replace traditional ‘family history’ studies of lineages based on marriage and progeny in classical genealogical research. The study reveals Ballinakill to be both a real and imagined place and that genealogy travelers might not appreciate historical quarrels without careful analysis.