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March 2024
Women’s humanitarian work is never done: Women humanitarians and war child refugees in the 20th century
We are delighted that Professor Joy Damousi AM FASSA FAHA, one of Australia’s most distinguished historians and humanities thought leaders, will deliver the 2023 Women's History Month Lecture, part of our Distinguished Lecture series. Joy is the Immediate Past President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a Fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Find out more »CORNERS OF MELBOURNE: THE GREAT ORANGE-PEEL PANIC AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE STREETS
What better defines a city than its street corners? A corner gives you a starting point, a destination and a place to turn. It’s furnished with pillar boxes, newsstands and tram stops, and lamp-posts for light and lounging. Where would you be likeliest to find a pub? At the corner, of course. And who better than Robyn Annear to usher you around the corners of Melbourne, and reveal their bizarre, baroque and mostly forgotten stories?
Find out more »WESTERN TREATMENT PLANT TOUR
Experience the Western Treatment Plant at Werribee, and discover the historical and environmental importance of this fascinating site. The Western Treatment Plant was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2021, recognising its historical, archaeological and technical significance. The historic Western Treatment Plant in Werribee is a world leader in environmentally-friendly sewage treatment, and one of Victoria’s most unlikely hidden treasures.
Find out more »Doctor, teacher, gardener & spy
A doctor, teacher, gardener and spy. These are four real-life Australians who attracted the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). But who were they and why was ASIO interested in them? What role did social and political activism have to play in this? Come along to find out more!
Find out more »CATALOGUING CLINICS 2024
Join Jillian Hiscock, the RHSV Collections Manager, each month in this informative and easy-going Zoom forum on all aspects of cataloguing collections for historical societies. Jillian has a different topic each month and is happy to be guided by those who attend as to what they would like covered in upcoming clinics. Bring your questions (no matter the topic) - this is an interactive space where questions are encouraged. The RHSV does not endorse any particular cataloguing software - we believe it is horses for courses - and Jillian will talk about issues that impact on cataloguing whether you are using cataloguing cards or software.
Find out more »April 2024
Welcome home for our Terlecki timber piano front
Please join us to celebrate the restoration and reframing of our glorious carved Terlecki timber piano front. This piano front was donated to us by Keith Kilner representing his wider family and the recent restoration was paid for with a donation from the Boak family. We are enormously grateful to both families for their generosity. We'll be celebrating in style with a sparkling morning tea at the RHSV premises, 239 A'Beckett St and we'll be hosting members of both the Kilner and Boak families.
Find out more »EXHIBITION LAUNCH: MELBOURNE’S STORIED LANEWAYS
PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE LAUNCH OF MELBOURNE'S STORIED LANEWAYS Launched by Julian O'Shea Curated by David Thompson Designed by Daisy Searls Thursday 11 April, 5:30pm - 7pm We all have our favourite Melbourne laneway and curator, David Thompson, has chosen his favourites which reveal some intriguing Melbourne stories. When we think of today's gussied-up tourist-friendly laneways like Guilford Lane and Hosier Lane, it is hard to imagine that a mere 50 years ago the laneways were workaday places full…
Find out more »A G L Shaw Lecture. Anti-Slavery and Protection in Port Phillip and NSW: the Curious Colonial Afterlife of the 1837 Select Committee Report on Aborigines’.
The AGL Shaw lecture has been presented in partnership with the C J La Trobe Society for many years. It is one of the RHSV's Distinguished Lectures and we are thrilled that, in 2024 Professor Penny Edmonds, from the Flinders University, will be delivering the lecture. Professor Penelope Edmonds is Matthew Flinders Professor, History, in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, South Australia. Penny's research is distinguished by over two decades of creative and interdisciplinary work in the areas of Australian history, 19th century British empire and settler colonialism in the Australian and Pacific region, postcolonial histories, heritage and museums. She seeks to bring a critical theory perspective to questions of colonialism, race, gender, reconciliation and redress, humanitarianism, slavery and unfreedom in the Australian and Western Pacific region.
Find out more »May 2024
REGIONAL SEMINAR WEEKEND IN MORTLAKE
We are thrilled that Mortlake & District Historical Society will be hosting our first HSSC* regional seminar for 2024. Why not plan a weekend, or longer, and use the seminar in Mortlake as a jumping off point to explore the Western District? There is a wonderful program of speakers and topics and around the seminar is a convivial program of walks and a dinner.
Find out more »RHSV AGM + 2024 Weston Bate Oration: Dr Fiona Gatt
The forgotten class? Shopkeepers of nineteenth-century Melbourne
Shopkeepers played a vital role in the functioning of nineteenth-century Melbourne society. They owned the businesses where residents obtained goods, from basic daily needs to the flights and fancies of an emerging modern consumer culture. Echoes of their presence live on in the shopfronts and main shopping streets. This lecture investigates and compares the shopkeepers who operated in three distinct, representative suburbs of nineteenth-century Melbourne: genteel Malvern, inner urban North Melbourne and industrial Footscray. In doing so it provides a genuine comparative cross-section of the urban retail trade in this period and reveals the subtle differences between these localities in terms of the prestige and identity ascribed to shopkeepers within the socio-economic fabric of these local societies. Yet across all three towns (or suburbs), shopkeepers held an important and unique role, one that cannot be understood through the same lens as the working class or middle class.