Author: Rosemary Cameron

Charles Ferguson saw the construction of a sailor’s home as the solution to “a vast amount of evil, [as] it is well known that the crimping system is in full bloom here [Melbourne].” Ferguson’s proposal received support from various wealthy Melburnians as well as the Victorian Government that provided Crown lands upon which the home was to be built. Alfred Smith who designed major public buildings such as the Bank of Victoria, the Supreme Court of Victoria,

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” It may not seem it, but the modest façade of Mrs Purnell’s Hotel at 12 Bourke St is a symbol of one man’s failure and his wife’s strength in providing financial security for herself and her family.

” It represents the outcomes of their failed family life. When this photograph from the Royal Historical Society’s images collection was taken in about 1868, Margaret Purnell had just become the licensee and Thomas Purnell had been gone from the scene for four years,

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This article, by Michelle Arrow and Frank Bongiorno was published as an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 September 2022.

When Labor won the May 2022 federal election, it promised to end the climate wars. A decade of policy inertia had left Australia lagging on the urgent transition to clean energy. Yet while the Morrison government dragged its feet on climate, it was energetically reviving the history wars. For Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and their ministers,

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On Friday, 9th September 2022, the Hon. Lizzie Blandthorn, MP, Minister for Planning, approved Planning Amendment C387, extending the Heritage Overlay to protect 121 individual buildings and five (5) precincts. Of these sites, roughly one third date from before 1914, somewhat over a third date from 1914-45, and somewhat less than a third date from 1945-75.

For the past five years, the RHSV has been calling for a review of protections in Melbourne.

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Inspired by a photograph taken in 1906 from one of the tallest buildings in Melbourne at the time – the nine-storey Commercial Travellers Club – Cheryl Griffin has described the history of the Yarra River’s Turning Basin for the latest edition of CBD News. 

“Although it is hard to imagine the landscape before white settlement, it was once a fertile wetland and for many thousands of years and countless generations of Wurundjeri people it was a hunting and fishing ground,

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Back in 1878 Melbourne’s docks were under siege by the Melbourne Harbour Trust itself. Desperate to widen the Yarra so that it could handle bigger ships the Harbour Trust brought in heavies to destroy a privately owned dry dock which stood in their way. The ‘ battle of the docks’ attracted 1500 onlookers before police broke up the fight and arrested 6 Harbour Trust employees. The physical battle then became a media war between Wright and Orr which owned the dry dock and the Harbour Trust – 

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The RHSV congratulates the Minister for Planning, the Honourable Lizzie Blandthorn, MP, on her decision to extend the protected area (the World Heritage Environs Area or WHEA) around the Royal Exhibition Building & Carlton Gardens World Heritage Site. This represents a major step forward in our campaign to implement better protection of Melbourne’s only World Heritage Site.

In 2004, when Australia sought World Heritage listing for the Exhibition Building site, it promised a buffer zone around the Carlton Gardens,

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Cheryl Griffin’s latest article in CBD News has just hit the streets. Cheryl takes us on a journey inspired by a photograph from the 1930s of a very modest, rather sad, little house found in Franklin Street. The land was first bought by John O’Shanassy, later Sir John, Premier of Victoria.

“For some time, this house was reputed to have been the home of Melbourne’s first mayor, Henry Condell, a theory dispelled around the time the photograph was taken,

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28 June 2022. In response to the City of Melbourne’s latest undermining of the cultural heritage of the Queen Victoria Market, Charles Sowerwine, Chair of the RHSV Heritage Committee, released the following statement.

“The CEO of the Queen Victoria Market, Stan Liacos, has been on a propaganda offensive, presenting a warm fuzzy on change at the Queen Victoria Market. As CEO, Stan has driven the process of change currently engulfing the market, change based on the proposals Robert Doyle made nine years ago,

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A impassioned call for heritage action from Professor Charles Sowerwine, chair of the RHSV Heritage Committee in the lead up to the Victorian election.

“For nearly a decade, your RHSV Heritage Committee has been participating in the planning process to protect heritage. But heritage is losing out. It’s time to put heritage on the political agenda. As members of local historical societies, let’s demand that candidates and elected representatives address the structural issues in the planning system that cause increasing loss of heritage.”

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THREAT TO ABC LIBRARIANS AND ARCHIVES

Richard Broome’s response, 16 June 2022

An article in the Conversation recently outlined that the ABC is planning to axe librarians. President of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Richard Broome has written a response to the Chair of the ABC Ita Buttrose, outlining his concern for the redundancies and realignments of staff connected with the ABC’s archive/library and on-going record keeping.

As the article in The Conversation states: “When information professionals do their jobs well,

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Inspired by a sketch of Batman’s Hill which was the western boundary of Melbourne during the 1830s, Ashley Smith has done a deep dive into the dubious history of duels fought on the hill. The hill was eventually levelled in the 1860s to make way for extensions to the Spencer Street Railway Station but its infamy lives on in the stories of duels when gentlemen put their lives on the line to defend their honour or the honour of a woman.

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Cheryl Griffin’s latest article in CBD News has just been published – all about of a little ramshackle house that could have been found in Spring Street for over 50 after it was built in 1840.

When Godfrey Howitt, his brother Richard and other members of their family, decided to settle in Port Phillip in April 1840, Godfrey and Richard brought a home and that is what you see here.

His prefabricated wooden cottage fronted Spring St in the south-east corner of the CBD and his land,

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The wealth and extravagance of the 1880s, the era of Marvellous Melbourne, was long gone when this photograph was taken, but it is still evident in the two main buildings you see here – the Grand Hotel on the left and the Princess Theatre on the right.

The ornate Princess Theatre that dominates this streetscape gives no sense of the terrible fate that overtook Victorian society in the 1890s. The collapse of the banks and the suffering that followed overwhelmed almost every aspect of life.

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