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Research biography

Professor Tim Bonyhady is one of Australia’s foremost environmental lawyers and cultural historians.

His first major legal book, The Law of the Countryside: the Rights of the Public, focused on British law. Otherwise his domain has been Australian environmental law, focusing on property rights in Environmental Protection and Legal Change; on third parties in Places Worth Keeping: Conservationists, Politics and Law, and on climate law and environmental impact assessment in Climate Law in Australia, Adaptation to Climate Change and Mills, Mines and other Controversies.

Tim’s research also involves many aspects of cultural history. Australian colonial art was the subject of his first three books. Then his interests extended to art, science and exploration in Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth. In The Colonial Earth he brought his legal and cultural interests together as he examined the origins of environmental concern in Australia. In Good Living Street his focus switched to Vienna, with questions of art, religion and identity looming large in a multi- generational family history.

Tim has also been an advisor to Commonwealth and State inquiries into environmental law and has curated exhibitions for the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Books & edited collections

• Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801-1890, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, first published 1985 (hardback), reprint 1991 (paperback), 192pp
• Australian Colonial Paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australian National Gallery/Oxford University Press, 1987, 270pp
• The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800-1880, Canberra, Australian National Gallery/David Ell Press, 1987, 111pp
• The Law of the Countryside: The Rights of the Public, Abingdon, Oxford, Professional Books, 1987, 290pp
• Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth, Sydney, David Ell Press, 1991, 383pp
• Places Worth Keeping: Conservationists, Politics and Law, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1993, 192pp
• The Colonial Earth, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, first published 2000 (hardback), reprint 2001 (hardback), reprint 2002 (paperback), 432pp
• Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2002, 49pp
• Good Living Street: The Fortunes of my Viennese Family, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2011, 456pp; also published as Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900, New York, Pantheon, 2011, 376pp; as Good Living Street: The Fortunes of my Viennese Family, London, Allen & Unwin, 456 pp, 2012; and as Wohllebengasse: Die Geschichte meiner Weiner Familie, translated by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Zsolnay, Vienna, August 2013, 448 pp
• The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania’s Black War, Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, 2018, 256 pp (with Greg Lehman)
• The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A Rodent History of Australia, Melbourne, Text, 2019, pp 283
• Two Afternoons in the Kabul Stadium: A History of Afghanistan through Clothes, Carpets and the Canberra, Melbourne, Text, 2021, pp 331

Refereed journal articles

• 'Duterrau's Paintings of the Tasmanian Aborigines', Bowyang, no. 3, April 1980, pp. 93-105
• 'Eugene von Guérard's South Australia', Imprint, vol. 22, nos 1-2, June 1987, pp. 12-14
• 'German Melbourne' in Hans Gercke (ed.), Australian Impressions: One Hundred Years of Landscape Painting, Heidelberg, Braus, 1987, pp. 18-33
• 'Is this Australia's Face?', Art Monthly Australia, no. 14, September 1988, pp. 1-3
• 'Drawing in Australia', Art Monthly Australia, no. 15, October 1988, pp. 12-13
• 'The Politics of Colonial Sculpture', Art and Australia, vol. 28, no. 1, spring 1990, pp. 102-106
• 'A Rat's Tale', Overland, no. 127, winter 1992, pp. 7-9
• 'The Australian of the Year', Overland, no. 129, summer 1992, pp. 11-18
• 'Art Without Economics', Art Monthly Australia, no. 51, July 1992, pp. 11-12
• 'A Different Streeton', Art Monthly Australia, no. 61, July 1993, pp. 8-12
• 'Lake Pedder 1871', Island, no. 55, winter 1993, pp. 16-21
• 'Lake Pedder 1971', Island, no. 56, spring 1993, pp. 29-34
• 'Undermining Sydney', Eureka Street, vol. 4, no. 9, November 1994, pp. 40-42
• 'Artists with Axes', Environment and History, vol. 1, no. 2, June 1995, pp. 221-39; also published in reduced form in Art Monthly Australia, no. 80, June 1995, pp. 6-10 and republished in Sarah Johnson (ed.), Landscapes, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 78-96
• 'A Usable Past: The Public Trust in Australia', Environmental and Planning Law Journal, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 329-38; also published in Defending the Environment: Second Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, Australian Centre for Environmental Law, Adelaide, 1995, pp. 355-72
• 'The Artist as Activist: John Watt Beattie on the Gordon River' in Pete Hay (ed.), Imagine Nature, Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart, 1996, pp. 20-31; also published in reduced form in Periphery, no. 26, February 1996, pp. 7-9
• 'Pedder Pennies', in Jonathon Holmes (ed.), Brushing the Dark: Recent Art and Tasmania, Contemporary Art Services Tasmania, Hobart, 1996, pp. 26-30
• 'The Making of a Public Intellectual' in Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds), Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996, reprint, 1997, pp. 1-19 (co-authored with Tom Griffiths)
• 'Streeton's Ghost', Eureka Street, November 1996, pp. 14-16
• 'Peugeot's Paris', Art Monthly Australia, no. 98, April 1997, pp. 10-11
• 'The Paris Harbour Bridge', Eureka Street, March 1997, pp. 37-38
• 'The Primeval Forest', in John Dargavel (ed.), The Coming of Age, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra, 1997, pp. 7-16; also published in John Dargavel (ed.), Australia's Ever-Changing Forests III, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1997, pp. 24-34
• 'What the Eye Doesn't See', Eureka Street, June 1997, pp. 34-5
• 'The Uncritical Culture', Eureka Street, October 1997, pp. 24-32
• 'Disturbing the Dead', Art Monthly Australia, no. 105, November 1997, pp. 9-12
• 'The Ploughman's View', in Geoff Levitus (ed.), Lying about the Landscape, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1997, pp. 52-67; also published in modified form in Making it Modern: The Watercolours of Kenneth Macqueen, Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery, 2007, pp. 26-39
• 'Landscape of Ideas', Eureka Street, May 1998, pp. 28-35; also published in modified form as 'Missing the Difference' in After the Garden?, special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 98, no. 4, Fall 1999, pp. 655-68
• 'Colour Separation', The Australian's Review of Books, June 1998, pp. 13-14, 31; also published in reduced form in Ian McLean (ed.), How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art 1980-2006, Brisbane, Institute of Modern Art/Power Publications, 2011, pp. 209-213
• 'Australia First?', Art Monthly Australia, no. 114, October 1998, pp. 16-20
• 'Grand Prix Culture', The Australian's Review of Books, February 1999, pp. 3-4
• 'With Heads held High', The Australian's Review of Books, June 1999, pp. 14-16
• 'Bludgeon, Dirk and Grease', Eureka Street, July/August 1999, pp. 34-40; also published in modified form in Brad Buckley & John Kominos (eds), Republics of Ideas, Sydney, Pluto Press, 2001, pp. 45-64
• 'The Bush as the Garden', in Peter Timms (ed.), The Nature of Gardens, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999, reprinted twice 2000, pp. 136-58
• 'The Mistress and the Spinster', The Australian's Review of Books, September 1999, pp. 14-16
• 'Gone Tomorrow', The Australian's Review of Books, February 2000, pp. 11-13
• 'Introduction' to Urban Justice: A Special Issue of Urban Policy and Research in Honour of Patrick Troy, Urban Policy and Research, vol. 18, no. 2, June 2000, pp. 141-4 (with Margaret Levi and Mark Peel)
• 'Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth', National Library of Australia News, vol. 12, no. 7, April 2002, pp. 3-6; also published in The World of Antiques, July-December 2002, pp. 55-8; also published in reduced form in State Library of Victoria News, no. 20, June-September 2002, pp. 2-3
• 'The Great Defenders', The Source: A Magazine by Melbourne Water, no. 21, August 2002, pp. 8-9
• 'Introduction', The Rugs of War, Canberra, School of Art, Australian National University, 2003, pp. 1-2
• 'Out of Afghanistan', The Rugs of War, Canberra, School of Art, Australian National University, 2003, pp. 4-18; also published in extended, revised form in Woven Witness: Afghan War Rugs, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, 2007, pp. 41-49
• 'Foreword' to Geoffrey Edwards, Giant: Ancient and Historic Trees, Geelong, Geelong Gallery, 2003, p. 5
• ‘Woodchipping the Spirit of Tasmania’, Art Monthly Australia, no. 173, September 2004, pp. 35-38; also in Imaging Nature: Media, Environment and Tasmania,http://www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/
• 'Foreword' to Catherine Rogers, The Styx Valley: Valley of the Giants 2005, Sydney, Rogers, 2004
• ‘Torn between Art and Activism’, Eureka Street, May 2005, pp. 24-26; republished in Local Global, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 19-23
• ‘Burke and Wills would Quake in their Boots’, Island, no. 102, Spring 2005, pp. 17-23; also in Seeing Red, no. 5, March 2006, pp. 13-15
• 'Foreword' to Catherine Rogers, The Styx Valley: Valley of the Giants 2006, Sydney, Rogers, 2005
• ‘Introduction’, to National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2005, pp. 1-6
• ‘The Pioneer’, in Patricia Tryon Macdonald (ed.), Exiles and Emigrants: Epic Journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2005, pp. 120-24
• ‘Louisa’s Legacy: An Appreciation of Tasmania’s First Environmental Activist’, Launceston Historical Society Papers and Proceedings, vol. 17, 2005, pp. 1-9
• 'Foreword' to Catherine Rogers, The Florentine Valley 2007, Sydney, Rogers, 2006
• 'Foreword' to Catherine Rogers, Tall Trees of the Upper Florentine 2008, Sydney, Rogers, 2007
• ‘Introduction’ in Tim Bonyhady & Peter Christoff (eds), Climate Law in Australia, Sydney, Federation Press, 2007, pp. 1-7 (with Peter Christoff)
• ‘Dealing with Interests displaced by Marine Protected Areas: A Cast Study of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Structural Adjustment Package’, Ocean and Coastal Management, vol 53, 2010, pp. 581-588 (with Andrew Macintosh and Deb Wilkinson)
• ‘Swimming in the Streets: The Beginnings of Planning for Sea Level Rise’ in Tim Bonyhady, Andrew Macintosh and Jan McDonald (eds), Adaptation to Climate Change: Law and Policy, Sydney, Federation Press, 2010, pp. 80-97
• ‘How Australia once led the World’ in Monash University Law Review (Special Issue on Climate Law), vol. 36, no. 1, 2010, pp. 54-68
• ‘The Tipping Point’ in Eugene von Guérard: Nature Revealed, Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria, 2011, pp. 36-41; also published in reduced form as ‘From the Sublime to Ridicule’, Australian, 14 April 2011, p. 15
• ‘The Gallia Family, the Hoffmann Treasures’, Gallery: National Gallery of Victoria, May/June 2011, pp. 49-51
• ‘The Gallias: A Modern Viennese Family’, fin Vienna: Art and Design, Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 26-35, 274, 280
• ‘Gustav Klimt, Hermine Gallia, 1904’, Vienna: Art and Design, Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 224-225,
• ‘Josef Hoffmann, The Gallia Apartment, in Vienna: Art and Design, Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 228-233, 280

Book chapters

• The Skottowe Manuscript: Thomas Skottowe's Select Specimens from Nature of the Birds, Animals &c. &c. of New South Wales, Sydney, David Ell Press/ Hordern House, 1988, 2 vols, 78, 56pp
• Environmental Protection and Legal Change, Sydney, Federation Press, 1992, 233pp
• Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, first published 1996, reprint 1997, 271pp (with Tom Griffiths)
• Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, Canberra, National Portrait Gallery, 2000, 150pp (with Andrew Sayers)
• Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia, Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2001, 253pp (with Tom Griffiths)
• The Rugs of War, Canberra, School of Art, Australian National University, 2003, 37pp (with Nigel Lendon)
• Climate Law in Australia, Sydney, Federation Press, 2007, 315pp (with Peter Christoff)
• Mines, Mills and other Controversies: Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia, Sydney, Federation Press, 2010, 304pp (with Andrew Macintosh)
• Adaptation to Climate Change: Law and Policy, Sydney, Federation Press, 2010, 287pp (with Andrew Macintosh and Jan McDonald)
• 'German Melbourne' in Hans Gercke (ed.), Australian Impressions: One Hundred Years of Landscape Painting, Heidelberg, Braus, 1987, pp. 18-33
• 'The Commandant and the Convict' in Tim Bonyhady (ed.), The Skottowe Manuscript: Thomas Skottowe's Select Specimens from Nature of the Birds, Animals &c. &c. of New South Wales, Sydney, David Ell Press/ Hordern House, 1988, vol. 1, pp. 11-39, 73-8
• 'A National Landscape', "'To Quit Barbarous for Civilized Life'", and 'Aboriginal Celebrities', in Daniel Thomas (ed.), Creating Australia: 200 Years of Art, 1788-1988, Adelaide, International Cultural Corporation of Australia/ Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1988, pp. 46-7, 76-7, 92-3
• 'Introduction' and 'Property Rights', in Tim Bonyhady (ed.), Environmental Protection and Legal Change, Sydney, Federation Press, 1992, pp. vii-viii, 41-78
• 'The Art of Wilderness', Art Monthly Australia, no. 68, April 1994, pp. 4-7; also published in Will Barton (ed.),Wilderness: The Future, Sydney, Envirobooks, 1994, pp. 170-180
• 'The Battle for Balmain', in Pat Troy (ed.), Australian Cities, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 112-41; also published in reduced form in Urban Futures, no. 18, June 1995, pp. 25-34
• 'The Making of a Public Intellectual' in Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds), Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996, reprint, 1997, pp. 1-19 (co-authored with Tom Griffiths)
• 'The Stuff of Heritage' in Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds), Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996, reprint, 1997, pp. 144-62
• 'No Dams: The Art of Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis' in Roger Butler (ed.), The Europeans: Emigre Artists in Australia 1930-1960, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, pp. 236-53
• 'Conservation' in Graeme Davison, John Hirst & Stuart McIntyre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 146-8
• 'John Mulvaney' in Graeme Davison, John Hirst & Stuart McIntyre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 443-4 (co-authored with Tom Griffiths)
• 'Governor Phillip's Legacy', in Patrick Troy (ed.), Equity, Environment, Efficiency: Ethics and Economics in Urban Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 134-58
• 'Introduction' to Tim Bonyhady & Andrew Sayers (ed.), Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2000, pp. 1-12
• 'The First Aboriginal Memorial', in Tim Bonyhady & Andrew Sayers (ed.), Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2000, pp. 13-28
• 'An Australian Public Trust', in Stephen Dovers (ed.), Environmental History and Policy: Still Settling Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 258-72
• 'A Detestable Business', in Peter Cochrane (ed.), Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library's First Hundred Years 1901-2001, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2001, pp. 61-76
• 'The Disappointment of the Law' in Steve Dovers (ed.), Processes and Institutional Arrangements for Resource and Environmental Management: Australian Experience, LWRRDC, Canberra, 2001; also in Stephen Dovers & Su Wild Rivers (eds), Managing Australia's Environment, Federation Press, Sydney, 2003, pp. 463-71
• 'Landscape and Language' in Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds), Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 1-13 (with Tom Griffiths)
• 'So Much for a Name' in Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds), Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 140-61; also presented in modified form on Lingua Franca, Radio National, 2 March 2002
• ‘The New Australian Climate Law’ in Tim Bonyhady & Peter Christoff (eds), Climate Law in Australia, Sydney, Federation Press, 2007, pp. 8-31
• ‘Introduction’ in Tim Bonyhady & Andrew Macintosh (eds), Mines, Mills and other Controversies: Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia, Sydney Federation Press, 2010, pp 1-15
• ‘Postscript’ in Tim Bonyhady & Andrew Macintosh (eds), Mines, Mills and other Controversies: Environmental Impact Assessment in Australia, Sydney, Federation Press, 2010, pp 250-83
• ‘Still Wild, Still Threatened’ in In the Balance: Art For a Changing World, Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010, pp 8-9
• ‘The Law of Disasters’ in Tim Bonyhady, Andrew Macintosh and Jan McDonald (eds), Adaptation to Climate Change: Law and Policy, Sydney, Federation Press, 2010, pp. 265-279

Conference papers & presentations

• 'A Usable Past: The Public Trust in Australia', Environmental and Planning Law Journal, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 329-38; also published in Defending the Environment: Second Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, Australian Centre for Environmental Law, Adelaide, 1995, pp. 355-72

Committees

EXTERNAL ORGANISATIONS

• Member of the Expert Panel for the Hawke Review, 2008-2009, which produced the report, The Australian Environment Act: Report of the Independent Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, 2009, 372pp.
• Expert adviser to the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Victorian Parliament which produced the report, Inquiry into the Environmental Effects Statement Process in Victoria, 2011, 245pp