Royal Historical Society of Victoria

Tales from the MacRobertson International Air Races
2021-03-12 - 2022-03-17 | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
To celebrate Victoria’s centenary in 1934, Macpherson Robertson sponsored a great air race from England to Melbourne. There were originally 20 entrants of which only 12 arrived in Melbourne. The British winning entrants took a whisker under 3 days, the last plane to arrive took some 4 months.
The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is mounting an exhibition which takes a close look at the entrants in the races (there were two races run concurrently – a speed race and a handicap race) including the Dutch entrant, the Uiver. The Uiver (stork) is the most famous of the entries even though it came second. It was forced by bad weather to make an emergency landing in Albury where the locals used the town’s lights to spell A L B U R Y in morse code and then created a make-shift aerodrome on the racetrack using car headlights to con the plane down. Macpherson Robertson always maintained that the Uiver, a commercial KLM flight that went to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies with a little extra hop to Australia, came closest to his ideal as Robertson sponsored the race to encourage commercial flight not speed.
The first aircraft to finish was the De Havilland DH-88 Comet Grosvenor House, a specially- designed racing aircraft flown by Charles W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black. Both pilots were much feted in Melbourne. Photos show a handsome pair being mobbed by thousands. The adulation didn’t last, Campbell Black was killed by a plane propeller just 2 years later and Scott suicided.
Harold Brook was the pilot with the least experience – barely the minimum 100 hours. He had a paying passenger, the 28-year old Miss Ella Lay, who knitted her way to Australia. She was a pilot herself and the only woman to travel the full race distance from Mildenhall in England to Melbourne. Ella stayed on in Melbourne, took up nursing, and in 1941 enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in the very building where the exhibition is being held (the former Army Medical Corps Drill Hall). Ella died in 2005, aged 99. The Times printed her obituary.
The race generated many more fabulous stories including C. J. “Jimmy” Melrose who at 21 was the youngest pilot and one of the few Australians. Jimmy was funded by his mother and his De Havilland Puss Moth was christened My Hildergarde in her honour. He too died, too young, just two years later in a plane crash.
The last plane to arrive was piloted by Ray Parer and Godfrey Hemsworth and funded by New Guinea miners. Another entry was owned by well-known Australian pioneer aviator Horrie Miller who at the time was managing director of MacRobertson-Miller Aviation. He engaged James Wood and Don Bennett to fly the race however they came unstuck in Aleppo. As Bennett wrote in his autobiography, they “… hit the ground with a fair wallop and the undercarriage collapsed; down she went and the nose went in as we whipped over on our back. I was in the tail of the machine and my velocity from one end of the cabin to the other was remarkable. Even more astounding was the degree of “concertina-ing” of my body which took place at the far end.” That was the end of their race.

Who Lived in My House?
2021-10-13 11:00 - 12:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Online
Ever wondered who the past occupants of your house were? Or interested in researching your house history? Come along to this Heritage Help session and learn how to use research tools to find the history of houses and properties in Hobsons Bay and Melbourne.

Who Lived in My House?
2021-10-13 11:00 - 12:00 | Online
Ever wondered who the past occupants of your house were? Or interested in researching your house history? Come along to this Heritage Help session and learn how to use research tools to find the history of houses and properties in Hobsons Bay and Melbourne.
This session will run online.

The 1789 Smallpox Plague – exhuming the truth
2021-10-13 18:00 - 19:00 | ZOOM, Join from anywhere in the world
The 1789 Smallpox Plague – exhuming the truth
In April 1789 a smallpox plague suddenly broke out at Sydney Cove. It swept around the entire continent and killed up to 70% of the Indigenous peoples in the Sydney area, but only one colonist. Despite the fact that the First Fleet was well documented, the cause of the pandemic has remained a mystery. However, after years of research, author Jim Poulter believes he has finally cracked the case, and he believes that it was deliberate genocide. Jim says the key to solving the mystery lay in the identity of the one sailor who died in the plague. In his controversial talk and Powerpoint presentation, Jim will take you step by step through his research showing how he believes that the Lieutenant Governor, Major Robert Ross, hatched, executed and concealed his genocidal plot.
Jim Poulter is a history author whose family first settled in the Yarra Valley in 1840 and established enduring relationships with the local Aboriginal community. Jim grew up steeped in local oral history, but it is his professional skill as a forensic investigator that has enabled him put forward a solution to this 230 year old mystery. Jim continues to make a prolific contribution to the sharing of our Aboriginal history and heritage, and is probably best known for making the link in the early 1980’s between the tribal Aboriginal game of Marngrook and the origins of Australian Football.
This event will be delivered by Zoom and is a free event. Zoom details will be sent to all those who register just prior to the event.
Image: Botany Bay. ‘Sirius & convoy going in: Supply & agents division in the bay. 21 Janry 1788.’ William Bradley, watercolour from his journal ‘A Voyage to New South Wales’, 1802+. State Library of New South Wales, [Safe 1 / 14].
THIS IS A HISTORY MONTH EVENT: click on the logo for the full program of events

2021 DICKINSON LECTURE
2021-10-13 20:00 - 21:00 | ZOOM, Join from anywhere in the world
2021 DICKINSON LECTURE

RECENT ACQUISITIONS FOR THE DECORATIVE ARTS DEPARTMENT AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA
Amanda Dunsmore, Senior Curator, International Decorative Arts & Antiquities

The Kew Historical Society is pleased to announce that the annual Dickinson Lecture for 2021 will be presented by Ms Amanda Dunsmore, of the National Gallery of
Victoria. The International Decorative Arts & Antiquities Department collection of the NGV includes Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquities, British and Continental
decorative arts from 1200 to 1980, and North American decorative arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The lecture will explore an exciting selection of new additions to the NGV collection including eighteenth-century vases by the Vincennes Porcelain
Manufactory (pictured) to the window designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso’s ceramics.
Tickets $10
Tickets – Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/recent-acquisitions-for-the-decorative-arts-department-of-the-ngv-tickets-175237097877?keep_tld=1

Amanda Dunsmore, Senior Curator, International Decorative Arts & Antiquities
THIS IS A HISTORY MONTH EVENT
