Online Exhibitions

Why Melbourne? From Dreamtime to the Capital of Victoria (2004)

What did the ancient landscape look like, and who were the original inhabitants of the Port Phillip region? What were Europeans looking for when they searched uncharted shores and unknown terrain? Enter the story and explore the history of Melbourne, from Dreamtime to the Capital of Victoria.

RHSV Scrapbook Collection

For decades, the RHSV has received hundreds of donations of (printed) scrapbooks, from a number of scrapbook enthusiasts. These scrapbooks are comprised of mainly albums, containing newspaper clippings, pictures, letters, poetry, stories and other memorabilia. These are in no particular order, but have been compiled by various individuals who have selected items according to their own assessment of what is important, interesting, and worth remembering, from their own era. Enter this exhibit for a small sample of the stories that can be uncovered in our Scrapbook Collection.

 

 

Ephemera and Pamphlets – A Selection from our Collection

In this exhibit, we invite you to sample just a fraction of the items in our Ephemera and Pamphlets Collections. The collections include many  posters, junk mail, comics, menus, art exhibition catalogues, press clippings, calendars, invitations, theatre programmes, political stickers, badges and flyers, political tracts, pamphlets, Royal visit paraphernalia and programmes and so much more. Victorian history is represented here from the big ideas to the minutiae of daily life.

 

 

 

 

 

The WCTU and the 1891 Woman’s Petition

At noon on the 6th May 1891 the Premier of Victoria, the Hon. James Munro, received a deputation on Womanhood Suffrage. This exhibit aims to bring together a number of resources relating to the collection of signatures that made up the Woman’s Petition in 1891. The project aims to answer the questions:

  • Who were the women who collected the signatures?
  • How did they collect so many signatures in such a short time?
  • What motivated the women to undertake this task?
  • What were the social conditions like in 1891?