In 1840, Niel Black 'took up country' in the rich lands along Mount Emu Creek at the heart of the Western District. Backed by prominent partners in Scotland, this upstart Scottish farmer survived economic hardship in the 1840s and established a fine sheep and cattle run. During the 1850s, in the partnership's name, he started
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Please join us to launch the publication of Code of Silence: How Australian Women Helped Win the War, featuring author Diana Thorp in conversation with Professor Clare Wright Eighty years after the end of World War II, intriguing stories of the crucial contributions of women on the Australian home front are emerging. As war climbed
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Join us to celebrate the publication of Victoria - Suffering to Statehood by Michael P. Rucker Victoria – Suffering to Statehood provides intriguing, and occasionally poignant, details of history not generally found in most Australian history books. Every detail of this fascinating book; political, social and economic, is carefully researched and annotated. The author delves into
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The La Trobe Society and freelance historian Susan Priestley FRHSV invite you to join them for the lecture, "The Sound of Music at Port Phillip 1840 to 1842: featuring M. et Mme Gautrot, French stars of the colonial music scene". This lecture promises to be a lively presentation based on Susan's original research about music
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Join us to celebrate the publication of Love, Class and Empire by A. James Hammerton. Early twentieth-century Persia and the Persian Gulf presented a largely blank slate to the British, best known only as a vital conduit to India and a site of contest – the 'great game' – with the Russian Empire. As oil
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We are delighted that eminent historian Marilyn Lake AO will deliver the 2025 Hugh Anderson Lecture. In National Life and Character: A Forecast (1893 Charles Pearson, noting that China’s population had already surpassed 400 million, wrote presciently that with ‘civilisation equally diffused… the preponderance of China over any rival - even over the United States of America – is likely to be overwhelming’. The future would see China take ‘its inevitable place as one of the great powers of the world’. Pearson’s influential forecast shaped our foundational policy of White Australia: the ‘great white walls’ were erected to keep the Asiatic threat at bay. From the 1960s, however, Australians began to forge new ties with China, forging wide-ranging cultural, educational, economic and trade relationships. Asian histories and languages began to be taught in universities. Future diplomats were trained in Asian languages. Under the Whitlam government full diplomatic relations were established with Beijing. By the end of the 1970s, Hugh and Dawn Anderson had embarked on the first of their numerous trips to China. Hosted by the Chinese Writers Association, their deep cultural engagement with Chinese authors and literature was a key feature of Australian rapprochement with China.

Robert Pascoe, President of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, together with RHSV Councillors invites you to the launch of our exhibition
The Burying of Melbourne
Curated by Dr David Thompson
Designed by Susan Fitzgerald
To be launched by Steven Avery, Executive Director, Heritage Victoria

The National Trust of Australia (Victoria) and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria will present a public meeting at the Drill Hall which will present the NTAV and RHSV joint statement "More Housing and Heritage Must Go Hand in Hand” and the Charter 29 Report, “Reforming the Reforms.” 

Recently, the library of esteemed community historian Weston Bate was donated to the RHSV. Amongst the many gems was a rare book, Scapegoats of the Empire, written in Lancefield and published in 1907 about military crimes half a world away in South Africa. The author, George Witton, was the 3rd defendant in the military trial for murder brought against Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock. Morant and Handcock were executed by firing squad and Witton was jailed for life. Join distinguished historian Dr Andrew Lemon AM as he explores not just Scapegoats but looks to the rich literature that is spawned when the truth gets murky. 

Is our history in a drawer, a scrapbook, or a curated collection? Speaker: Mandy Bede This talk will focus on a selection of ephemera collections, teasing out the theme of how our history is preserved. Join Mandy Bede, President of the Ephemera Society of Australia, as she shows examples of printed Australian ephemeral material from
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