Steven Cooke, Author at Royal Historical Society of Victoria - Page 4 of 14

RHSV SEEKS ARCHIVIST

13 February 2023 - 8 March 2023 Steven Cooke

The RHSV is seeking a part-time Archivist to work on project for 89 days, across 2023.

In late 2022 the RHSV took ownership of a large social history collection, the Jones Collection. It is a wide-ranging, deeply rich collection that documents a century of one family’s life in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg from the 1920s as well as from earlier generations. Its significance centres around the unusual survival of a relatively intact collection relating to the day-to-day lives of a family of modest means,

CONGRATULATIONS TO AUSTRALIA DAY AWARD RECIPIENTS

27 January 2023 - 27 January 2023 Steven Cooke

We were thrilled to see that a large number of people associated with history, community history and historical societies were the recipients of Australia Day honours.

We send our warmest congratulations to the following award recipients:

Emeritus Professor Robert MANNE AO

For distinguished service to tertiary education, to political and social commentary, to public affairs, and to the Indigenous community.

Dr Judith BRETT AM

For significant service to education and public debate,

TROVE – AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?

23 January 2023 - 23 January 2023 Steven Cooke

In mid-January Rosalie Triolo and I accompanied VCE Australian History teachers to some of our key national cultural institutions in Canberra hunting for resources for their students. Most institutions were managing on very tight budgets due to an ‘efficiency dividend’ placed on all cultural institutions by recent governments. Only the Australian War Memorial seem to be in good health and expanding massively in three directions on its site.

Of most relevance to the history sector is the National Library of Australia.

DREAMS SHATTERED OR FUTURE NIGHTMARE DEVOID OF HERITAGE AVOIDED?

16 January 2023 - 16 January 2023 Steven Cooke

An article in The Age on 14 Jan 23 was critical of Maribyrnong City Council’s implementation of an interim heritage overlay in December 2021 on about 900 properties across eight precincts in West Footscray and surrounding areas to protect interwar and postwar-period homes. Home owners were distressed about the loss of value in their properties.

“Royal Historical Society of Victoria’s heritage committee deputy chair Ian Wight said introducing interim controls without consultation was a strategy sometimes used by councils to minimise the risk of home owners rushing to redevelop.

RHSV CLOSED FROM 12PM FRIDAY 23 DECEMBER

13 December 2022 - 16 January 2023 Steven Cooke

The RHSV will close for 2 weeks over the Christmas / New Year period.

We close on Friday 23 December at 12 noon and reopen on Monday 9th January.

Bookshop – order on-line before Friday 16th of December for delivery by Christmas or by Wednesday 21st December if you opt for Express Post. Click and collect or just browsing the bookshop at 239 A’Beckett St is available until 12 noon on Friday 23 December.

Berthing at Little Dock … maybe for a cuppa?

2 December 2022 Steven Cooke

Before the Spencer Street Bridge was built, this was the view from the corner of Spencer and Flinders streets.

This photo was taken some time in the late 19th or early 20th century, and features Spencer Dock, also known as Little Dock. It was opened in August 1854 and was described by The Argus (August 18) as the “first public dock in Victoria”. The first ship to enter was the Flying Cloud, which unloaded 300 tonnes of cargo.

Robbie Burns in St Kilda Rd

28 November 2022 Steven Cooke

Cheryl Griffin’s latest story has just appeared in CBD News.

“As you link arms and sing Auld Lang Syne this New Year’s Eve, you probably won’t bring to mind the legendary poet Robert Burns who died 226 years ago in distant Scotland never having visited Australia, which at the time of his death had been settled barely a decade.

“Narrm was still undisturbed, except for the everyday activities of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung,

In the words of Carole King: “City streets, the stories that they tell”

3 November 2022 Steven Cooke

“When the Hoddle Grid was superimposed on the early Melbourne landscape in 1837 it did not take into account the spiritual and cultural connections to this land of its traditional custodians, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung Peoples of the Eastern Kulin.

“Nor did it consider the lie of the land in its bid to recreate a sense of “home”, of the familiar in an unfamiliar colonial context. It ignored the fact that Elizabeth St was laid out along the line of an old creek bed in what was the base of a valley,

Calling Miss Phryne Fisher

3 November 2022 Steven Cooke

Where was Miss Fisher when, “At 10.30pm on Wednesday, January 29, 1947, four gunshots echoed off the walls of the Flinders Street Extension”

“Two men, Yueng Shing, captain of the ship S.S. Fort Abitibi, and local taxi driver, Albert Sydney Pack, had been shot. Shing was hit by two bullets which pierced his lung and heart; these wounds would soon prove to be fatal. Pack was hit once, but luckily managed to recover in hospital.

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR TO CANBERRA for VCE AUSTRALIAN HISTORY TEACHERS

25 October 2022 - 31 October 2022 Steven Cooke

Actually there is no mystery about this tour for teachers of VCE Australian History – it is 4 days in Canberra of jam-packed activities designed to help teachers in sharing their fascination and love of Australian history with their students. At every institution curators and librarians will deliver tailored information for VCE Australian History teachers and behind-the-scenes activities.

Dates: Sunday 15 to Wednesday 18 January, 2023

Cost: Participants pay a subsidised participation fee of $875 which includes flights return,

Crimping? A crime that has disappeared?

29 September 2022 - 29 September 2022 Steven Cooke

Charles Ferguson saw the construction of a sailor’s home as the solution to “a vast amount of evil, [as] it is well known that the crimping system is in full bloom here [Melbourne].” Ferguson’s proposal received support from various wealthy Melburnians as well as the Victorian Government that provided Crown lands upon which the home was to be built. Alfred Smith who designed major public buildings such as the Bank of Victoria, the Supreme Court of Victoria,

Mrs Purnell’s Hotel – a small feminist statement of the 1860s

26 September 2022 Steven Cooke

” It may not seem it, but the modest façade of Mrs Purnell’s Hotel at 12 Bourke St is a symbol of one man’s failure and his wife’s strength in providing financial security for herself and her family.

” It represents the outcomes of their failed family life. When this photograph from the Royal Historical Society’s images collection was taken in about 1868, Margaret Purnell had just become the licensee and Thomas Purnell had been gone from the scene for four years,

The real ‘history war’ is the attack on our archives and libraries

20 September 2022 Steven Cooke

This article, by Michelle Arrow and Frank Bongiorno was published as an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 September 2022.

When Labor won the May 2022 federal election, it promised to end the climate wars. A decade of policy inertia had left Australia lagging on the urgent transition to clean energy. Yet while the Morrison government dragged its feet on climate, it was energetically reviving the history wars. For Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and their ministers,

RHSV Congratulates Minister for Planning on Melbourne Heritage Amendment

19 September 2022 Steven Cooke

On Friday, 9th September 2022, the Hon. Lizzie Blandthorn, MP, Minister for Planning, approved Planning Amendment C387, extending the Heritage Overlay to protect 121 individual buildings and five (5) precincts. Of these sites, roughly one third date from before 1914, somewhat over a third date from 1914-45, and somewhat less than a third date from 1945-75.

For the past five years, the RHSV has been calling for a review of protections in Melbourne.

ONCE AN ANCIENT WATERFALL

25 August 2022 Steven Cooke

Inspired by a photograph taken in 1906 from one of the tallest buildings in Melbourne at the time – the nine-storey Commercial Travellers Club – Cheryl Griffin has described the history of the Yarra River’s Turning Basin for the latest edition of CBD News.

“Although it is hard to imagine the landscape before white settlement, it was once a fertile wetland and for many thousands of years and countless generations of Wurundjeri people it was a hunting and fishing ground,