Author: Rosemary Cameron

Hooray! The RHSV is now open to the public and members who want to visit the gallery or conduct research in the collection. The bookshop is also open and we’ll be reinstating Chris Manchee’s popular walking tours of historic Flagstaff Gardens. Please remember if you are visiting the Drill Hall that masks and sanitising are mandatory.

All historical societies across Victoria can open to their volunteers and the public as long as they have a COVID plan in place and follow all the Government regulations re social distancing,

The RHSV’s Heritage Committee has just made a submission to the Draft Heritage Management Plan for the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens. More can be seen here. In this submission, we noted the lack of a single responsible authority for the world heritage site. In our response to the Discussion Paper preparing the Review of the Strategy Plan for the World Heritage Environs Area, we noted the betrayal of promises to protect the surrounding areas from high-rise building.

Cheryl Griffin looks at an early 1950s Melbourne streetscape – more pointedly it is of the Commonwealth Bank Building at 219 – 225  Bourke St.  This 11-storey building dwarfed the Victorian buildings around it but the word ‘skyscraper’ wouldn’t be used for another 5-6 years when the breathtakingly tall 19-storey ICI House was built.

Cheryl’s full article can be read in the August 2020 CBD News.

22 July 2020

Read our submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the destruction of the 46,000-year-old caves at the Juukan Gorge (link below). We argue that it demonstrates profound failings in the legislation to protect Australia’s heritage, not only in WA, but also in the Commonwealth, which was missing in action.

Commonwealth Environment Minister Sussan Ley justified doing nothing on the grounds that there was no application for protection, but it emerges today that when the traditional owners of the Shenhua Watermark site on the Liverpool Plains did apply for protections,

The iconic GMH site at Fishermans Bend, where Ben Chifley launched the first Holden, was on track to be listed on the Victorian Heritage Register until, in February, Planning Minister Richard Wynne called in the nomination. The Minister is short-circuiting the heritage and planning processes to facilitate a development that will destroy much of the historic fabric before the site is registered. We have written to the Minister to urge him to follow proper process.

What to do with our statues and monuments?

A Policy Statement from the Royal Historical Society of Victoria

23 June 2020

The Black Lives Matter protests have highlighted the ways the past impacts heavily on us today. Our predecessors’ values were in many respects appalling. Attitudes we would describe as racist, misogynist or anti-Semitic were embedded in past cultures. We are beginning to question them but we have a long way to go.

Heartfelt congratulations to our affiliated society member Helen Gobbi, of History Monash, who was awarded an OAM for service to community history. Helen is a very worthy recipient and last year was awarded an RHSV Award of Merit. Her citation for the Award of Merit can be read on our website here.

And to Arthur and Lurline Knee who were both awarded OAMs for the service to the community of Tatura. 

Caroline Webb had a great article in today’s The Age (Fri 29 May) about the demise of local newspapers and the loss to historians. Wonderful quotes (and photos) from Heidelberg Historical Society secretary Janine Rizzetti, Camberwell Historical Society president George Fernando and our own President, Richard Broome.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/scrapped-newspapers-were-communities-heart-and-soul-say-historians-20200528-p54xei.html