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.

Speaker: Peter Beer Peter has published the book: From cottages to Colosseums – Clements Langford – A Melbourne Master Builder’s Lasting Legacy. Clements Langford is Peter’s great-great grandfather. Clements, aged 18 moved to Melbourne in 1868 with his family.  His father George became a grocer on the corner of Church and Kent Streets, Richmond. Clements
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