Royal Historical Society of Victoria

Law Week Daily Guided History Walking Tours : Melbourne’s Legal Precinct
2018-05-14 - 2018-05-19
The RHSV is excited to launch, during Law Week, a new guided walking tour of Melbourne’s historic legal precinct based around William St. These walks are free-of-charge but bookings are essential. From Monday to Friday we will be offering a 50 min lunchtime walk and, on Saturday, when the courts are open for Law Week, we will be offering a 2 hour walk.

Exhibition: Standing in the Corner
2018-06-05 - 2018-06-06 | Supreme Court Library, 485 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
Standing on the Corner illustrated how Melbourne’s corners have been used across 110 years. These are corners of Melbourne as they were – so many of them now lost to us. To provide context for the images, the exhibition included a variety of maps of Melbourne for the period 1850-1960.

Exhibition: Standing in the Corner
2018-07-02 - 2018-07-04 | Supreme Court Library, 485 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
In this exhibition curated by the Ephemera Society of Australia, private collectors unlocked their cabinets and cupboards to share extraordinary curios and treasures from their personal collections in an exhibition of Australiana. Featuring never before exhibited material, this fascinating exhibition offered an evocative and beautiful snapshot of history, design and culture from 1875 to the present day. More than 40 discrete displays contained collections of historic chocolate bars, dance cards, bubble gum tattoos, scrapbooks, badges, blotters, biscuit tins, menus and sport memorabilia

Workshop: Writing & Publishing Local History
2018-07-10 | Supreme Court Library, 485 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
An all-day workshop which includes lunch and morning tea. Gain new perspectives on local history, learn how to use new types of tools and such

Workshop: Writing & Publishing Local History
2018-07-11 | Supreme Court Library, 485 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
An all-day workshop which includes lunch and morning tea. Gain new perspectives on local history, learn how to use new types of…

Open House: RHSV HQ – Heritage Listed Drill Hall Tour
2018-07-29 10:00 - 16:00 UTC
We will be offering tours of our heritage listed Drill Hall during Open House Melbourne and will also be explaining our collection, our exhibitions and our varied work to interested members of the public. There will be children’s activities to keep them occupied.

Holsworth Local Heritage Trust Grants
2018-07-31 17:00 UTC | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
TUESDAY 31 JULY 2018: APPLICATIONS CLOSE AT 5PM
The Holsworth Local Heritage Trust, a charitable fund within the Victorian Community Foundation, invites applications for grants from not-for-profit organisations such as historical societies, clubs, schools and museums in regional and rural Victoria.
The Trust is interested in supporting enthusiastic community groups and organisations with a true interest in heritage preservation and appreciation, and the enhancement of community life.
The RHSV auspices the grants process. Grants of up to $2,000 are available for the publication of any specific or general local history or natural history in rural and regional Victoria. More information and application forms: https://www.historyvictoria.org.au/programs/holsworth-local-heritage-trust
The RHSV thanks the Holsworth Local Heritage Trust for their generosity and clear-sightedness.

Malmsbury Town Hall 150th Celebration
2018-08-04 16:00 - 20:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Malmsbury Town Hall, 91 Mollison Street Malmsbury, Melbourne, 3446, Australia
150th Anniversary Celebrations commence 4:00pm. Brass Band. Fun family bush dance. Re-enactment of Town Hall opening. Bring a plate to share. Bar available. Gold coin donation.

La Trobe and his Horses: Testing Times
2018-08-12 14:30 - 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Mueller Hall, Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Birdwood Avenue, Melbourne, 3004, Australia
La Trobe and his Horses: Testing Times – a talk with the C J La Trobe Society

Speaker: Peter Hiscock AM, former director the Sovereign Hill outdoor museum at Ballarat, and life-long horseman.
Peter will focus on the horsemanship of Charles Joseph La Trobe and the horse as a major player in the settlement of the Port Phillip District / Colony of Victoria – a fact so often neglected in the historical narrative.
Includes a delicious afternoon tea.
Bookings essential
Note: Allow sufficient time to park. Best Public Transport is via any tram to Domain Interchange, Stop 20. (Note also 605 bus service: Flagstaff Station to Gardenvale, via Birdwood Avenue.)
All welcome.

The History of the Handkerchief
2018-08-14 20:00 - 22:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Uniting Church Community Centre Ivanhoe, 19 Seddon Street Ivanhoe, Melbourne, 3079, Australia
Elizabeth Banham has been a member of the Heidelberg Historical Society and the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria for many years. With a love of textiles and history, Elizabeth decided to research the history of handkerchiefs which she will outline in this public talk.
Handkerchiefs have been around for centuries and their functions and appearances have altered in response to changes in fashion and social etiquette overtime. From very early days when beautifully embroidered and lace handkerchiefs were important to show ones position in society, to the present day where they are more plain, handkerchiefs have always been part of our everyday use.
This talk is free and all are welcome.

History Victoria Support Group: Moving Forward
2018-08-19 09:30 - 15:00 UTC | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
The RHSV’s History Victoria Support Group is holding a full-day seminar for our affiliated historical societies and heritage groups on Sunday 19 Aug from 9:30am – 3pm. Tickets are $20 and include lunch and morning tea.
Speakers will cover a multitude of different topics of relevance to volunteer-run organisations – Digitising your collection, The Role of the Treasurer, Crown Land Leases – some advice, PROV’s Places of Deposit program etc – and, most importantly, there will be many opportunities for networking and raising concerns/issues.
Further event information can be downloaded from:
HVSG: Moving Forward Seminar Schedule

Book Fair
2018-08-22 | Drill Hall, Royal Historical Society Victoria, 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST: MEMBERS’ ONLY PREVIEW
The RHSV’s world famous 2nd hand history Book Fair is on again in late August.
If you have books that you’d like to donate you can drop them off at the Drill Hall during office hours or, if you cannot drop them off we are happy to collect them within the bounds of Melbourne. We are anticipating there will be some works done to our foyer over the coming months and that entrance will be closed briefly. So, please ring Amy on 9326 9288 if you’d like to organise a collection or to check which entrance is being used. There is 15min car parking outside our building.
Please note that the Book Fair is only for HISTORY books – any history! So please don’t donate non-history books as they will just be thrown away.
Mark your calendars for the Members’ Only Preview Sale on the evening of Wednesday 22nd of August. To attend RHSV events which are ‘Members’ Only’ you must be a current member of the RHSV, not simply a member of one of our affiliated societies. After the preview night, the sale will continue until close of business on Saturday 25th August and will be open to all.

Revisiting Catani
2018-08-30 12:30 - 13:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
Speaker: Bill Russell
Florentine born Public Works Department engineer Carlo Catani died 100 years ago, in July 1918. He is revered for the work he did, during nearly 40 years in the public service, in shaping key bits of the Melbourne and St Kilda we recognise. For our Melbourne Day lunchtime talk, former RHSV president Bill Russell, who for some years was Director-General of the successor department to that of Catani, will consider whether Catani deserves a posthumous promotion or a retrospective reprimand.
Former President of the RHSV, Dr EW (Bill) Russell studied history at the University of Melbourne and then obtained his Diploma of Archive Studies from University College, London, in 1973 and was the first Victorian archivist to hold formal qualifications in archives. His doctorate in history at Monash University, completed in 1980, was based on records in PROV. He has worked in the Commonwealth and Victorian Public Services. In 1982 Dr Russell was appointed Secretary for Minerals and Energy and Commissioner, State Electricity Commission and in 1985 he became Director General, Department of Property and Services.In 1988 Dr Russell took up the position of Professor and Director, Public Sector Management Institute at Monash, one of 5 professorial positions he occupied at various universities. His last such position was as Professor and Director of the Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport at the University of Melbourne.
Bill is currently busy as Secretary of the non-profit advocacy group of which he is co-founder, the Rail Futures Institute Inc.

The Biennial RHSV conference : War, Peace, Protest: Fifty Year Reflections on 1968
2018-09-16 09:30 - 15:45 (Australia/Melbourne) | Drill Hall, Royal Historical Society Victoria, 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
The biennial RHSV conference has events over two days. On the evening of Friday 14 Sep we launch our exhibition on 70s Melbourne followed by the RHSV Augustus Wolskel lecture delivered by Peter Edwards. Then on Sunday 16 Sep (9:30am – 3:45pm) the keynote will be delivered by Seamus O’Hanlon. A full program of speakers includes Richard Broome, Charles Sowerine and Rebecca & Jean McLean reflecting on their documentary, Save Our Sons following its screening. Lunch and morning tea is included.

SAVE OUR SONS (SOS) from Ronin Films on Vimeo.

History Week 2018
2018-10-07 - 2018-11-14
http://historyweek.org.au/
Each year the RHSV History Week grows in stature and number of events. It is a great hook to encourage community involvement in your history society or to focus some local media on what you do. The History Teachers Association of Victoria has been promoting History Week to their members across Victoria. For suggestions on how teachers can get involved in History Week the History Teachers Accociation of Victoria has created this History Week Ideas document.
If you are involved in a historical society in Victoria why don’t you contact your local school and suggest an event?
Don’t forget to register your events on the History Week website.
History Week is funded by the Vera Moore Foundation.

Lost Flocks & distraught shepherds: Captain Charles Swanston
2018-10-16 17:15 - 19:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
Evening Lecture
Time: 5:15pm drinks for a 5:45pm lecture
Cost: Free for RHSV Members; $10 for Non-Members
Melbourne by 1856 was growing in confidence and grandeur, as Henry Gritten’s fine painting of Swanston Street depicts. Captain Charles Swanston, the man after whom the bustling thoroughfare was named, would have been gratified. Swanston—heroic soldier of the Honourable East India Company, Van Diemen’s Land banker, legislator, pillar of Hobart Town society, fomenter of the squatting rush to Victoria—could always recognise a good commercial opportunity. His business tentacles stretched around the globe. Yet following the catastrophic collapse of the Derwent Bank, his desperate dash to the California goldfields and his mysterious death at sea, he was virtually expunged from the public record. In reviving Swanston’s remarkable story from a dusty, almost forgotten treasure trove of bank archives, Eleanor Robin brings to light his considerable contribution to the economic, political and social life of Van Diemen’s Land and his leading role in the settlement of Melbourne.
Dr Eleanor Robin started life as a journalist, working with the Canberra Times, in the federal parliamentary bureau of the Sun News-Pictorial, and for the Sun-Herald and Sydney Morning Herald. Highlights of her later career in Canberra included nine years (1980-1989) as head of the information section of the Australian Heritage Commission and many stints between 1992 and 2001 as a writer with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. At the ANU she studied anthropology and Australian history. Being a keen naturalist, she also holds qualifications in Ornithology from Charles Stuart University.
While living recently in Tasmania, Eleanor became fascinated by that state’s maritime history and the stories of the early capitalists’ wild optimism, ambition and bold enterprise. This led into her doctoral research at the University of Tasmania and publication of her book SWANSTON Merchant Statesman.

A White Hot Flame
2018-10-23 20:00 - 22:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Camberwell Library Meeting Room, 340 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria, 3124, Australia
A White Hot Flame: Mary Montgomerie Bennett: Author, Educator, Activist for Indigenous Justice. A presentation by Dr Sue Taffe.
All welcome.
Sue Taffe is a Melbourne historian who has written about the contributions of twentieth century activists to campaigns for Aboriginal rights. She is the author of Black and White Together FCAATSI: the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Mary Montgomerie Bennett (1881–1961) is an important but under-recognised figure in Australian history. A member of a successful squatting family, she became a voice for reform at a time when Aboriginal Australians had their citizens’ rights curtailed by repressive state laws.
From her late forties until her death she fought for justice on behalf of the first Australians. She was a teacher, a writer and an advocate. She vehemently opposed the separating, on racial grounds, of Aboriginal children from their families. She put the case, decades before campaigns began, for Aboriginal rights to traditional lands. And she argued for citizenship rights, including equal pay and access to old age pensions for Aboriginal people. A friend described her as ‘a white hot flame’, relentless in pursuit of a better world for the people she loved.

"Living Culture" by Lionel Launch – Mt Martha
2018-10-27 10:00 - 13:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | The Briars Information Centre, Nepean Highway, Mt. Martha, Victoria, 3934, Australia
Mornington & District Historical Society Annual Leslie Moorhead Lecture
This years lecture is titled “Living Culture” by Lionel Launch an indigenous man who will take us through a variety of aspects of aboriginal culture, including medicinal plants and ending with a didgeridoo performance. Numbers are strictly limited. Book through Dawn 03 5977 0027.
Cost is $12.00 per person.

175th Anniversary of the Naming of Seymour
2018-11-10 - 2018-11-11
The general format will include a street parade on Sat 10 Nov, down Station St and up Tallarook St to finish at Kings Park, where there will be lots of displays by local groups and organisations. The Army at Puckapunyal are supporting us, not only on the Saturday for the parade and display, but also on Sunday in support of the RSL for the commemoration at the Hospital Gates, for the 100th anniversary of Armistice. There will be many static displays at Kings Park at the conclusion of the parade. There will be lots of groups open on the anniversary weekend, including the Vietnam Veterans Walk, the Railway Heritage Centre, the Scout Hall, tours at Light Horse Park and the Historical Society (of course!).

Hell Ship – The Journey of the Ticonderoga
2018-11-17 14:00 - 19:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Badcoe Hall, Quarantine Station, Point Nepean, Victoria, Australia
The Nepean Historical Society is producing the play, ‘Hell Ship – The Journey of the Ticonderoga’ written and performed by Michael Veitch, at The Quarantine Station on 17th November at 2.00 and 7.30pm. It will be remarkable to hear this story told at the very place where the journey ended. In 1852, the handsome emigrant clipper Ticonderoga arrived in Australia with a nightmare in her holds. One hundred of her passengers were dead, and nearly another hundred would continue to perish in quarantine. On her 90-day voyage from England, deadly typhus fever had torn through her decks, spawning the name by which she would forever be known, Hell Ship. We have set up a booking facility with TryBooking, so search TryBooking https://www.trybooking.com/XNNG for Ticonderoga

Exhibition: CARLO CATANI Visionary, Creator, Genius
2018-11-20 - 2019-03-23 | Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053, Australia
CO.AS.IT. is proud to present Carlo Catani: Visionary, Creator, Genius the first exhibition of its type dedicated to one of Victoria’s greatest civil engineers and a key figure in the development of the State of Victoria from 1876 to 1917.
Catani dedicated over 41 years of his life to public service and helped shape our State into what it is today. This special bi-lingual exhibition explores his wide-ranging accomplishments through unique images and objects and showcases his talent, dedication and enduring legacy to Victoria.

Siren to Siren: Football and Victoria
2018-12-03 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-04 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-05 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-06 09:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | RHSV, Cabinet of Curiosities Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
About the Exhibition
Curator: Ashley Smith
Date: Until Friday 21 December, 2018
Time: 9AM – 5PM, Monday to Friday
Cost: Free
This tiny exhibition is housed in the RHSV’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
Ashley Smith has curated the current engaging exhibition on the history of VFL. The RHSV collection revealed many gems and this has been augmented by the loan of material from avid VFL/AFL professional ephemera collector, Francis Doherty, of Around the Grounds Football.

Putting it Out There: Melbourne in the 1970s
2018-12-03 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-04 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-05 09:00 - 17:00, 2018-12-06 09:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
About the Exhibition
Date: 14 September 2018 – 17 January 2019
Time: 9AM – 5PM, Monday to Friday
Cost: Free
Curator, Zoe Henderson, has grounded this exhibition in the domestic arena of 1970s Melbourne. We reflect on and explore the ways in which the life of the city and society were shaped by the changing ideas and actions of its citizens. The 70s were a turbulent decade driven by increasing social awareness and cultural diversity. Nothing reflects this better than the slide from the confronting political slogan in the early years of the decade – It’s Time – to the slightly defeated plea, Get Australia Working, by 1977.
Whilst some of the concerns which led Melburnians to demonstrate were global – remember Portuguese East Timor? – some were distinctly Melbourne – hello F-19 and the freeways! In between there was a tsunami of old and newly defined political and social causes which reached and touched all Melburnians. This played out against a backdrop of political and social division brought about by the Vietnam War moratoriums, the Dismissal, the economic instability of the Oil Crisis and escalating local unemployment. Ordinary Melburnians took part in community groups, activist associations, consciousness raising, political parties. The young might identify themselves as Sharpie or Surfie, take courage to redefine their sexual identity, or simply enjoy being young and cool, growing their hair, wearing flares, beads and platform shoes. Whatever your take on Melbourne in the 70s, come and re-live the energy of the decade.

Legacies of the ‘70s Gay Liberation Movement
2018-12-06 17:30 - 19:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
About this talk
Speakers:
Dr Graham Willett, History Fellow. University of Melbourne
Dr Kathy Sport & Gary Jaynes, Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives
This promises to be a fascinating evening, covering amongst other things, an overview of the significant events of the decade, the social and cultural contributions of activism, and the influence of feminism and liberation politics. We will also hear about the establishment of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. The speakers will present an insiders’ view of this pivotal and tumultuous decade for gay liberation.
