Past Events
July 2018
Holsworth Local Heritage Trust Grants
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…
August 2018
History Victoria Support Group: Moving Forward
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…
Revisiting Catani
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…
October 2018
Lost Flocks & distraught shepherds: Captain Charles Swanston
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…
December 2018
Legacies of the ‘70s Gay Liberation Movement
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…
February 2019
2019 Augustus Wolskel Lecture
History-in-the-Round, the Evolving Role of Heritage Conservation delivered by The Hon Simon Molesworth AO QC
March 2019
Vida Goldstein and Maud Wood Park
Distinguished historian, Professor Marilyn Lake AO, will deliver the RHSV's inaugural Women's History Lecture, Progressive New World which focuses on feminist friendship across the Pacific.
Workshop: Scanning for beginners
A hands-on workshop for those who can use a computer and can navigate the internet but would like to learn how to use scanners.
Workshop: Keeping a digital collection for beginners
In this hands-on workshop we learn what should happen to a file after it has been digitised. Covering: file formats, image resolution, best practice file and folder naming, metadata, software, security and access.
April 2019
Waltzing Matilda: Australia’s Accidental Anthem. A forensic history.
This song that started as an accidental collaboration in outback Queensland in 1895 caused the death of a seven-year relationship and went on to inspire a nation during World War II, following Banjo Paterson's death in 1941.
Workshop: Publishing local history books for beginners
This seminar will cover all the basics of how to publish local history successfully.
May 2019
Weston Bate Oration: Making History By Saving It
The RHSV is delighted that Kristin Stegley OAM, Chairman of the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), has accepted our invitation to deliver the 2019 Weston Bate Oration.
June 2019
Breakthrough!
With Andrew Lemon (RHSV) and Alicia Cerreto (PHA) hosting the event, some of our newest historians/members tell their breakthrough story. Do you know that euphoric feeling of discovery while in the depths of research? Or that wonderful moment of making a connection that no one had seen before?
July 2019
Dr Andrew Lemon on Treasures from the RHSV Collection.
For Rare Book Week a lunch-time lecture. The RHSV began assembling its library collection from the time of its inception in 1909 and it also incorporated, in the 1920s, the library of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Victoria) which formed in 1883. Former president of the RHSV and well-known professional historian, Dr Andrew Lemon, will speak on some of his favourite items and oddities from the collection which is the largest and richest collection of Victorian history outside those…
The Blackburns. Private Lives, Public Ambition. A lecture by Caroline Rasmussen
When socialist barrister and aspiring member of parliament Maurice Blackburn met Doris Hordern, ardent feminist and campaign secretary to Vida Goldstein, neither had marriage in their imagined futures. But they fell in love - and together, they shook Australia. Caroline Rasmussen talks about her latest book, The Blackburns Private Lives, Public Ambition.
Victoria’s Earliest Potteries
We are delighted that Gregory Hill, a leading authority on both Australian Colonial Pottery and Australian Art Pottery, will be delivering a lunch-time lecture on Victoria’s Earliest Potteries.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW: Cataloguing and digitisation workshop series.
A series of 6 graded workshops covering all you need to know on cataloguing and digitisation. Spaced over 6 months to give participants time to put into practice their new skills before tackling the next topic.
August 2019
Celebrating Engineering History: a mini-conference
Victoria has many outstanding world-leading engineering works, but many of these achievements are not well documented, or have been forgotten, and need to be celebrated. Four papers will be presented focussing on the history of some of the significant engineering works in Victoria.
September 2019
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. MODULE 2: USING CATALOGUING SOFTWARE
The RHSV is offering a series of 6 linked workshops which cover cataloguing and digitisation. This series of workshops starts with basic concepts and builds in complexity. We have spaced the workshops so that participants have time in which to put into practice their new skills before the next workshop. Some participants will want to book for the full series of 6 workshops and others will want to choose those individual workshops that are most suitable for them. So, although…
Lecture: The Wreck of the Fiji
Author and historian, Alan McLean will spin the story of the wreck of the Fiji off Moonlit Head 1891. There will be a corresponding exhibition in the RHSV Library on the items retrieved from the wreck by Heritage Victoria.
October 2019
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. MODULE 3: SCANNING FOR BEGINNERS
The RHSV is offering a series of 6 linked workshops which cover cataloguing and digitisation. This series of workshops starts with basic concepts and builds in complexity. We have spaced the workshops so that participants have time in which to put into practice their new skills before the next workshop. Some participants will want to book for the full series of 6 workshops and others will want to choose those individual workshops that are most suitable for them. So, although…
Lecture: Geraldine Moore on key events in the life of George Higinbotham
George Higinbotham was a highly influential politician in colonial Victoria. One of his contemporaries described him as a man of ‘dash and daring’ who ‘won from privilege and class ground that they have never since been able to recover.’ Even today debate rages about his character and his legacy. Some see him as a visionary who fought for responsible government free of Colonial Office interference and obstruction by an undemocratically elected Legislative Council. Others see him as a flawed character…
November 2019
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. MODULE 4: DIGITISING BOOKS AND PHOTOGRAPHING OBJECTS
The RHSV is offering a series of 6 linked workshops which cover cataloguing and digitisation. This series of workshops starts with basic concepts and builds in complexity. We have spaced the workshops so that participants have time in which to put into practice their new skills before the next workshop. Some participants will want to book for the full series of 6 workshops and others will want to choose those individual workshops that are most suitable for them. So, although…
Lecture. Farming the Mallee: Visions and Realities 1890-present
We are honoured that our last major lecture for 2019 will be delivered by Professor Katie Holmes, Director, Centre for the Study of the Inland and co-author of the soon-to-be-published Mallee Country: Land, People, History together with Richard Broome, Charles Fahey and Andrea Gaynor. In the early 1890s the Victorian Mallee was seen as a ‘howling wilderness’ covered in ‘dismal scrub’. As surveyors began to subdivide the large pastoral stations into 320 acre blocks, the Mallee boosters envisaged an area…
December 2019
Jack Wetherly under the microscope
We are delighted to present a talk by Catherine Gill who has been volunteering at the RHSV. Catherine writes, "As part of my recently completed Masters in Cultural Materials Conservation, I was given opportunity to study the portrait of Jack Wetherly. The original artwork was painted in 1840 by Thomas Napier. Records at the RHSV state that the painting in its collection is a copy of the original artwork and was possibly painted by Thomas Clark. "With consent from the…
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. MODULE 6: MAKING COLLECTIONS ACCESSIBLE
The RHSV is offering a series of 6 linked workshops which cover cataloguing and digitisation. This series of workshops starts with basic concepts and builds in complexity. We have spaced the workshops so that participants have time in which to put into practice their new skills before the next workshop. Some participants will want to book for the full series of 6 workshops and others will want to choose those individual workshops that are most suitable for them. So, although…
January 2020
Workshop: Born Digital Documents
Presented by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and Victorian Collections, this hands-on workshop provides an introduction to the principles of acquiring, storing, cataloguing and caring for born-digital material. This workshop is suitable for beginners who may have, or plan to acquire, digital images, media files or documents in their collection. Participants are asked to bring along their own laptop or contact the organisers to arrange a device upon booking. Morning tea and afternoon tea will be provided and we…
February 2020
Seminar: EARLY MELBOURNE SUBURBS 1835-1880
The RHSV and the Genealogical Society of Victoria are delighted to co-present this full-day seminar which will give participants a deep understanding of the forces and influences which have shaped Melbourne's early growth. The seminar will be opened with a overview by Gary Presland on how Melbourne's Geography shaped its development. Then the following historians will explain the development of their locale Footscray by Carmel Taig Prahran by Steven Haby & Judith Buckrich Heidelberg by Graham Thorley "Up Sydney Road"…
March 2020
What the Little Bird didn’t tell me
Professor Lynette Russell questions whether there are there some family secrets and necessary lies that should never be told? And she hopes that these reflections will have something to say to other family historians.
April 2020
Law, Lawyers and La Trobe
POSTPONED until further notice.
The A G L Shaw lecturer in 2020 will be leading legal history scholar, Dr Simon Smith AM FRHSV, who recently published "Solicitors and the Law Institute in Victoria 1835-2019: Pathway to a Respected Profession." Simon Smith is an Adjunct Professor with the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University. He was Vice-President of the RHSV in 2009-2011.
May 2020
Returning our Ancestors
This partnership event between the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council has been cancelled for the moment. The screening Returning Our Ancestors followed by a discussion with Bonnie Chew, Councillor of the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council and our President, Richard Broome. Repatriation of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains will hopefully be rescheduled later in the year.
RHSV AGM, connecting through ZOOM
Our 2020 Weston Bate Oration has been cancelled (possibly postponed until Spring). However the AGM will be going ahead, on 19 May, through ZOOM so we will be sending, by email, a link to all members so that they can join in our AGM through the web (either video or audio) and participate in the AGM, ask questions of the Council etc.
July 2020
RHSV AGM: resumption following an adjournment
For those who attended our AGM on Tuesday 26 May you will know that our meeting was adjourned as the audited financial reports were found to have some errors. Those errors have now been corrected and the updated financial reports can be found in our 2019 Annual Report here. Or you can find the Annual Report on our website under Publications > Annual Reports. The resumption of our AGM will be brief and will be held on Tuesday 14 July…
September 2021
C J LA TROBE; JOLIMONT PLANTSMAN
Friends of La Trobe's Cottage Annual Lecture This presentation will explore how Governor La Trobe’s school days in England and his travel experiences further afield as a young adult fostered his interest in the natural world, which led him to seek out the plants of Port Phillip, create a beautiful garden at Jolimont (as well as send thousands of plant specimens to herbaria in Europe). The talk includes a pictorial tour around La Trobe’s Jolimont garden noting his plant choices.…
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