Category: Recent News

Sunday 2 August 2020

With level 4 restrictions coming in to place tonight from 6pm we have decided that all staff will work from home for the next 6 weeks or the duration of level 4 restrictions. Our phones are switched through to Rebecca’s mobile and we are still accessible by email. Our Zoom events and meetings will go ahead as planned. The bookshop will still be operating however, apologies in advance, we will only be posting books once a week so deliveries will be slower than usual.

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The RHSV’s Heritage Committee has just made a submission to the Draft Heritage Management Plan for the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens. More can be seen here. In this submission, we noted the lack of a single responsible authority for the world heritage site. In our response to the Discussion Paper preparing the Review of the Strategy Plan for the World Heritage Environs Area, we noted the betrayal of promises to protect the surrounding areas from high-rise building.

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Cheryl Griffin looks at an early 1950s Melbourne streetscape – more pointedly it is of the Commonwealth Bank Building at 219 – 225  Bourke St.  This 11-storey building dwarfed the Victorian buildings around it but the word ‘skyscraper’ wouldn’t be used for another 5-6 years when the breathtakingly tall 19-storey ICI House was built.

Cheryl’s full article can be read in the August 2020 CBD News.

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22 July 2020

Read our submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the destruction of the 46,000-year-old caves at the Juukan Gorge (link below). We argue that it demonstrates profound failings in the legislation to protect Australia’s heritage, not only in WA, but also in the Commonwealth, which was missing in action.

Commonwealth Environment Minister Sussan Ley justified doing nothing on the grounds that there was no application for protection, but it emerges today that when the traditional owners of the Shenhua Watermark site on the Liverpool Plains did apply for protections,

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The iconic GMH site at Fishermans Bend, where Ben Chifley launched the first Holden, was on track to be listed on the Victorian Heritage Register until, in February, Planning Minister Richard Wynne called in the nomination. The Minister is short-circuiting the heritage and planning processes to facilitate a development that will destroy much of the historic fabric before the site is registered. We have written to the Minister to urge him to follow proper process.

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What to do with our statues and monuments?

A Policy Statement from the Royal Historical Society of Victoria

23 June 2020

The Black Lives Matter protests have highlighted the ways the past impacts heavily on us today. Our predecessors’ values were in many respects appalling. Attitudes we would describe as racist, misogynist or anti-Semitic were embedded in past cultures. We are beginning to question them but we have a long way to go.

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Heartfelt congratulations to our affiliated society member Helen Gobbi, of History Monash, who was awarded an OAM for service to community history. Helen is a very worthy recipient and last year was awarded an RHSV Award of Merit. Her citation for the Award of Merit can be read on our website here.

And to Arthur and Lurline Knee who were both awarded OAMs for the service to the community of Tatura. 

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Caroline Webb had a great article in today’s The Age (Fri 29 May) about the demise of local newspapers and the loss to historians. Wonderful quotes (and photos) from Heidelberg Historical Society secretary Janine Rizzetti, Camberwell Historical Society president George Fernando and our own President, Richard Broome.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/scrapped-newspapers-were-communities-heart-and-soul-say-historians-20200528-p54xei.html

 

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At our AGM on Tuesday 26 May 2020, the RHSV membership elected two new Fellows, Elisabeth Jackson and Dr Rosalie Triolo.

We also honoured some high-achieving volunteers who work for historical societies across Victoria – from Ouyen, Bendigo, Malmsbury, Knox, Richmond & Burnley, East Melbourne and Croydon –  and from the RHSV itself.

The citations for all our 2020 awards can be read on our website (the menu is at the bottom of our Home Page) or use these links:

Fellows,

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Before we all break into a chorus of  Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do click on the link below to read Cheryl Griffin’s latest article in CBD News.

And there she was, just riding down the street …

 

 

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The lastest CBD News has hit Melbourne streets and it contains another corker of an article from Cheryl Griffin. Inspired by a photograph, taken in about 1924, which represents a time capsule of Melbourne as it was just after World War One – and on the cusp of great change. The old Myer buildings in Lonsdale St just about to be demolished to make way for the Myer we know today. Read Cheryl’s article here.

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Elisabeth Jackson, RHSV Vice President and member of the RHSV Heritage Committee reports on a successful heritage outcome opposing a development application which went before VCAT. The development site in question was on the corner of Sydney Rd and Park St, Brunswick.

Elisabeth says, “Heritage concerns were only one aspect of the objections to this proposal which involved a huge tower overshadowing Princes Park and building on a very contaminated site. The main heritage concern related  to the proposed removal of a 1920s electrical substation. 

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On Friday 3 April the RHSV submitted two objections to Heritage Victoria regarding the relentless push to destroy the culture of Queen Victoria Market. The two objections were for

• Permit Application Number P30767 (Trader Shed)
• Permit Application Number P32629 (Northern Shed)

The objections in full can be read here on our website.

Our thanks to Ian Wight and Judith Smart who prepared these two submissions.

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