Saturday 12 October 2.00pm. A walk lead by Val Noone – In the Footsteps of Nicholas O’Donnell: doctor and community leader in Hotham 1869-1919. Dr Nicholas O’Donnell (1862- 1920) was a prominent medical practitioner and Irish scholar who lived and worked in North Melbourne during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His remarkable manuscript
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Talk by David Sornig – Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp. In Blue Lake, David Sornig examines how the 8km-square zone to the west of central Melbourne became the city’s blind spot. Once a fertile wetland with a large blue saltwater lagoon, it passed through various incarnations: from boneyards and rubbish
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Guest Speaker: Professor Janet McCalman AC – Vandemonians in North Melbourne: our Local Convict Past. Janet is an eminent scholar in her field of Australian social history, with particular expertise and reputation in the history of health and medicine. Janet is a superb communicator and scholar whose most notable accomplishments have been in making the
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Talk by Des Tobin – ‘A. V. (Phonse) Tobin – Irish (and North Melbourne) to his core. Alphonsus Vincent Tobin (1905–1993), funeral director and football administrator, was born on 23 August 1905 in Melbourne, third of six surviving children of Irish-born Thomas Tobin, labourer, and his Victorian-born second wife Alice, née O’Dowd. Phonse’s twin brother,
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Talk by Ian Shears – Greening Melbourne. Melbourne’s historic urban forest includes approximately 20,000 trees in the private realm. These trees help keep our landscape resilient, our city liveable and sustainable and maintain Melbourne’s character and heritage.