It is always exciting when Robyn Annear releases another of her captivating books into the wild and her latest book, which releases on the 30th of November, promises to be fabulous. Robyn has devised 7 historic walks around Melbourne and she will be leading a walking tour for RHSV members of one of those walks - around the Queen Victoria Markets and Flagstaff Gardens area. 

London, 1913: A wealthy young woman from a stately country home falls in love with and secretly marries a handsome young diplomat from the Turkish Embassy. It sounds like a plot line from the hit British period drama Downton Abbey … but it is the real-life story of Melbourne socialite Florence Winter-Irving.

Robyn Annear has devised 7 historic walks around Melbourne and, in this event, she will be taking us on one of those 7 walks, albeit whilst we are seated comfortably at the RHSV with a glass of wine in hand. The walks showcase the hidden histories we might scurry past every day, the buildings now gone and the extraordinary characters who inhabited them. Robyn, as always, will be charming, erudite and frankly gossipy.

Explore the history of Maltese migration to Australia during the twentieth century. Did you know that migration from Malta was once heavily restricted because the Maltese were seen as a threat to 'white Australia'? Yet, after WWII, Malta was one of the first countries with which Australia signed an assisted migration agreement. This webinar will
Read More...

When table manners were fashionable, eating houses proudly served meals on crockery emblazoned with their establishment name – each mouthful reminding customers of exactly where they were. Join Di for a fun night when she'll be displaying many Victorian pieces from her vintage hotelware collection, telling their stories and hers. She'll also be selling her pure linen Coles Cafeteria art tea towels which are printed with each cafeteria location throughout Australia.

Free monthly cataloguing clinics via Zoom. The clinics run for an hour from 11am – 12noon on the 4th Thursday of each month. It is a relaxed gathering of people who are finding their way through the intricacies of cataloguing material in historical collections which, as we all know, fall between a library and a museum with sometimes a bit of art gallery thrown in.

Kaleidoscope is the RHSV's major exhibition in 2022 and it celebrates the women who were crucial in building the organisation from its beginning in 1909. This is biography imagined through the lens of a Kaleidoscope. The viewer is offered fragments of the lives represented here. There is no linear narrative. Each time the kaleidoscope turns, a different story emerges. There are repeating patterns but different emphases and new ways of seeing, new reflections, new refractions. No one story dominates and one story does not fit all.