Royal Historical Society of Victoria

Celebrating 35 Years of Operational Women at MFB
2019-01-31 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-01 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-04 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-05 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-06 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-07 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-08 09:00 - 17:00, 2019-02-11 09:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne) and 9 more dates | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
Our first major exhibition in 2019 will celebrate 35 years since the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) first opened its doors to operational women and pays tribute to their important contribution to Victoria’s fire and rescue service.
The new exhibition features photos, interviews and historical research to capture the stories of just some of the women who have helped shape MFB. The free Curator’s Talk is at 12:30pm on Wednesday 13th February – see separate event listing to book tickets.
The exhibition runs from Friday January 25th January to Friday 22nd February 2019 inclusive.

Curator's Talk
2019-02-13 12:30 - 13:30 | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
Join us for a lunch-time curator talk and conversation with the team from Way Back When consulting historians and the MFB Director of Culture and Transformation, Dr Corinne Manning, about the making of this exhibition, Celebrating 35 Years of Operational Women in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade
Curator’s Talk, Wednesday 13 February at 12:30pm. RHSV Gallery Downstairs.

Curator's talk: Celebrating 35 years of operational women at MFB
2019-02-13 12:30 - 13:30 | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
Join us for a lunch-time curator talk and conversation with the team from Way Back When consulting historians and the MFB Director of Culture and Transformation, Dr Corinne Manning, on Wednesday 13 February about the making of this exhibition.
Celebrating 35 years of operational women at MFB examines the challenges and achievements of the pioneering women who became the first women to take on operational roles in the MFB. The exhibition also examines the progress made as MFB continues on its journey of embracing diversity. It honours the strength, bravery and professionalism that all operational women have shown in delivering outstanding service to the community.

Workshop: BSO Testing Events
2019-02-14 08:00 - 17:00 | VIC

2019 Augustus Wolskel Lecture
2019-02-19 17:15 - 19:00 | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
We are honoured to launch our 2019 Distinguished Lecturer Series when The Hon Simon Molesworth AO QC delivers the 2019 RHSV Augustus Wolskel Lecture on Tuesday 19 February at 5:15pm
Commencing with an overview of the history of the worldwide National Trust movement, this lecture will explore the evolved and still evolving role of heritage conservation as a means by which the telling of history, or at least the depiction of aspects of history, is assisted by the presentation and utilisation of historic places. The lecture will explore the differing approaches adopted over the last half century, which reflect changing social mores, taking us through to the challenges and concurrent opportunities of the current day at the cusp of virtual reality.
The Hon. Simon Richard Molesworth AO QC
BA, LL.B, FAICD, LFEIANZ, FAIML, FVPELA, PIA(HonF), C.Env.P, M.ICOMOS, MRSV
2019 is Simon Molesworth’s forty-first anniversary of his first elected position within the Australian heritage conservation movement. Those 41 years have seen Simon hold the most senior executive roles in the National Trust movement in Victoria, nationally and globally, including having been Chairman then President in Victoria for nearly 20 years and the Inaugural Executive Chairman & President of INTO, the International National Trusts Organisation during its first 10 years.
Simon has held numerous heritage advisory roles with government at both State & Federal level, including being a Commissioner of the Australian Heritage Commission for 5 years and a member of the Commonwealth’s National Cultural Heritage Committee for 14 years.
Founding the first environmental law association in Australia in his first year of legal practice, his entire legal career has been focussed on environmental, planning, heritage and natural resource law during which time he has held numerous legal advisory roles at both State & Federal level influencing the formulation of environmental and heritage laws and policies across Australia.
Appointed a Queens Counsel 24 years ago, most recently he has been an Acting Justice of the Land & Environment Court in NSW, with his two year judicial commission having just concluded on Australia Day.
Drinks: 5:15pm RHSV Gallery Downstairs
Lecture: 6pm RHSV Officers’ Mess Upstairs
This event is free for RHSV members and $10 for non-members.

Book Launch: AUSTRALIA, NO COUNTRY FOR REVOLUTIONARIES
2019-02-19 18:30 - 20:00 | Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053, Australia
Dr Simone Battiston, Senior Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology, will launch No Country for Revolutionaries, followed by a Q&A with the author Gianfranco Cresciani.
Between 1971 and 1991 the Italian Communist Party endeavoured to mobilise Italian migrants in Australia in order to extend its influence and power, attract their vote and defend their rights. Its establishment of an ‘autonomous’ Federation in Sydney resulted in a troubled relationship with the Communist Party of Australia and in grassroots surveillance of Italian migrants by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. This book tells their story during the Cold War.

Talk: Power’s Paddock Toorak 1840-1940
2019-02-20 19:30 - 21:30 | Malvern Town Hall, Corner High Street and Glenferrie Road Malvern, Melbourne, 3144, Australia
Join members of the Malvern Historical Society, when well known local historian, Di Foster, will present an illustrated talk on the development of the area in Toorak once known as ‘Powers Paddock’.
Di is the author of Melbourne’s most fashionable suburb: a history of Toorak, east of Kooyong Road, 1840-1998. The presentation will include fascinating highlights relating to the history of Toorak between Kooyong
Road and Glenferrie Road. Come prepared to be intrigued by the facts and stories.
Malvern Town Hall, Corner of Glenferrie Road and High Street, Malvern (Upstairs Foyer – lift available). This is a free event. Supper will be served. Bookings essential: Lorraine 9885 9082 by 18 February. All welcome!

Friends of St Kilda Cemetery Tour, Wonderful Women
2019-02-24 14:00 - 16:00 | St Kilda Cemetery, Dandenong Road & Hotham Street, St Kilda East, Vic, Australia
Come and join us for this fabulous walk through the cemetery, visiting the graves of Wonderful Women and hearing about their lives and significant achievements, Graves visited include Dame Mabel Brookes, Tilly Aston and many others. This is a most popular tour, so book soon. Cost is $15 and includes a delicious afternoon tea in the pavilion. Bookings: email info@foskc.org or telephone Liz 0422 379 053

What Makes A Good Historical Society
2019-03-03 14:00 - 16:00 | Hampton Community Centre, 14 Willis St, Hampton, VIC, 3188, Australia
The Sandringham Historical Society is holding its AGM on March 3 and Assoc Professor Don Garden OAM, FFAHS, FRHSV will be delivering a talk on What Makes A Good Historical Society.
Don Garden is the President of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, immediate Past President of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies, a member of the Australian Heritage Council and Vice President of the Kew Historical Society. For many years he taught History and Environmental History at the University of Melbourne, where he is now an honorary Fellow, Department of Resource Management & Geography, Faculty of Science and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New England, NSW.
His recent publications includes “Droughts, floods and cyclones: El Ninos that shaped our colonial past”.
As well as Kew and Sandringham he is a member of Nepean, Rye and Newstead historical societies.

Exhibition launch: Cold War Games
2019-03-07 17:00 - 19:00 | RHSV, Gallery Downstairs, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia
Exhibition Launch
5pm, Thursday 7 March 2019
Gallery Downstairs, RHSV.
Free event.
Research: Harry Blutstein
In 1956, an Olympic year, the world was beset with Cold War anxieties. Tensions between East and West had been heightened less than a month before the Games when the USSR invaded Hungary to crush an uprising. Then Israeli, French and British armies invaded and occupied Egypt’s Sinai and Suez Canal Zone. Would the Melbourne Olympic Games be remembered as the “friendly” Games, a sea of tranquillity in a stormy world, or would they become a victim of the Cold War? Would our moment in the sun be blown away by revolutions and wars raging over 15,000 kilometres away?
Reporting on the Olympic Games for The New Yorker Magazine, sports writer John Lardner suggested that Melbourne had found the antidote for the tensions that plagued the rest of the world. “Australia is enjoying almost a world monopoly on peace, harmony, civility, understanding, and other such symptoms of civilization and good breeding, while Europe is behaving like someone you would think twice about introducing to your sister.”
Keeping Australia safe from the frigid winds of the Cold War was ASIO. However it had never faced a challenge like the one posed by the Olympic Games. Its forte was hunting down “reds under the beds”: local comrades in the universities, unions and the media who might be run as agents of influence by Soviet spies. In 1954, Australians discovered just how real the threat was when Vladimir Petrov defected, as did his wife. He was Third Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, as well as being a lieutenant colonel in the KGB.
These factors lead to the Melbourne Olympics becoming the first Cold War Games.

Theatre Heritage Australia Inc. 10th Annual General Meeting
2019-03-09 14:30 - 16:00 | Prahran Mechanics Institute, 39 St Edmonds Road, Prahran, VIC, 3181, Australia
SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER – PHIL A’VARD
Actor, director, producer and long-time manager of the Alexander Theatre at Monash University
This is a free event – all THA members and their guests, and new members are welcome
Agenda: 2.30 pm – AGM
2.50 pm – Guest speaker Phil A’Vard
3.30 pm – Refreshments
Click on Event Website to submit your RSVP by 4 March 2019

Presentation and Exhibition Viewing: Carlo Catani: Visitonary, Creator, Genius
2019-03-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053, Australia
FREE – RSVP ESSENTIAL by clicking on the Event website link below
An event not to be missed! Join presenter and Exhibition co-curator Daniela Riachi for an informative and entertaining illustrated talk, on the life and work of Carlo Catani Victoria’s foremost Italian-born civil engineer, and key figure in the development of the State of Victoria from 1876–1918.
Following the presentation attendees will have the opportunity to view the enlightening bi-lingual exhibition Carlo Catani: Visionary, creator, genius, before it closes on 23 March 2019. The talk and exhibition explore Catani’s wide-ranging accomplishments and enduring legacy to the State of Victoria. Catani’s many notable projects include majestic Alexandra Avenue and Gardens in the heart of the city, development of the European style St Kilda foreshore and creation of scenic mountain roads which enabled the establishment of popular Victorian alpine resorts such as that at Mount Buffalo.
“Here is a most unique personality whom the State will remember,
because each year as it passes will help to perfect his artistic work”.
(Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 7th April 1915)
Image: Alexandra Drive and River Yarra, Melbourne, c1908.
Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria.

Vida Goldstein and Maud Wood Park
2019-03-19 17:15 - 19:00 | RHSV ZOOM by Invitation, Australia
The RHSV is delighted that distinguished historian, Professor Marilyn Lake AO, will deliver the RHSV’s inaugural Women’s History Lecture, Vida Goldstein and Maud Wood Park: the political significance of Australian-American women’s friendships.

Marilyn Lake, D.Litt, FAHA, FASSA, AO
Former President of the Australian Historical Association
Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne.

Author, most recently, of Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and TransPacific Exchange Shaped American Reform, Harvard University Press, 2019.
Vida Goldstein first met American suffragist Maud Wood Park in Boston, when on a lecturing tour following her attendance at the first International Woman Suffrage Conference, in Washington DC, in early 1902. Seven years later, Park travelled to Melbourne, where Goldstein, president of the Women’s Political Association and editor of the Woman Voter, introduced her to local women activists and future Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. Park came to Australia to investigate Australian women’s use of the vote post-suffrage. ‘The question is often asked,’ she wrote, “After woman suffrage what?” Sometimes the asker means what methods of organization will women employ; sometimes, what ends will they seek; sometimes, what results will they obtain’. After meeting party and non-party woman leaders, in Melbourne and Sydney, Park decided she had gained a ‘pretty definite idea of what women’s Causes”’ were. Convinced that an independent non-party stance was the best way forward for women in politics, Park returned to the United States, where, following ten more years of relentless lobbying, passage of the 19th Amendment was finally secured.
In 1920 Park became inaugural President of the non-party National League of Women Voters.

Drinks 5:15pm
Lecture 6pm
Books will be available for sale and signing.

Heritage Days 22 + 23 Mar: Shepparton & District
2019-03-22 | Shepparton, Shepparton, Victoria, 3630, Australia
Greater Shepparton City Council, in association with its Heritage Advisory Committee, is hosting its second grand ‘open heritage’ event on Friday 22 March and Saturday 23 March 2019. The two Heritage Open Days are free.
Over 50 heritage places in Greater Shepparton will be open, including homesteads, museums, churches (including one now a private dwelling), mosques, halls, historic irrigation infrastructure sites, cemeteries, old hotels, etc. Bus and walking tours will be available, along with independent visiting.
Many of these buildings and sites are normally inaccessible to the public.
Bus tours include the rarely seen Gowangardie Homestead, squatter-built in the 1860s, Fairley Downs, a commodious homestead with a small private cemetery, and Dhurringile mansion, now part of a prison. There will also be a tour of Shepparton’s four mosques and Sikh temple, another of early irrigation infrastructure, and a tour covering the region’s early 20th century architecture. And more.
Walking tours will be conducted in Shepparton, Mooroopna and Tatura, and many, many further places across the municipality will be open for independent visiting.
