Bookings: https://ephemerasociety.org.au/category/whats-on/ Tony Shields has been a stamp and coin dealer since 1970. Every day he handles wonderful pieces of history and art which he researches and loves.  Since childhood, he has been fascinated by the stories of Scott and Mawson in the Antarctic and has sought stamps and other items depicting the experiences of
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The Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network is presenting this fascinating lecture at the RHSV. Speaker: Daryl Karp, Australian National Maritime Museum’s Director and CEO Ms Karp has worked in the broadcast and cultural industries for over 20 years. Prior to her appointment as Director and CEO of ANMM, she  was the Director of the Museum of
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David Thompson will take you behind the scenes of our current exhibition, Melbourne's Storied Laneways which David curated. The exhibition was prompted by the upcoming publication of The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes: Essential but Unplanned by Weston Bate, Richard Broome, Nicole Davis, Andrew J. May, Helen Stitt which will be launched on 3rd October 2024. We
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Passing without fanfare or public ceremony, at midday on Sunday 15 June 1924, electricity from the new Yallourn Power Station first reached Melbourne when the State Electricity Commission switched on the high voltage transmission line linking Morwell and the Yarraville distribution terminal. The event marked the culmination of a five-year project to develop Victoria’s first baseload power station in the Latrobe Valley and the greatest single public infrastructure project the nation had seen. It was proclaimed by the press as “the cessation of Victoria's subservience … to the coal mines of Newcastle”, and would provide the foundation for the State’s industrial, economic and social prosperity over the following decades.

The forgotten class? Shopkeepers of nineteenth-century Melbourne
Shopkeepers played a vital role in the functioning of nineteenth-century Melbourne society. They owned the businesses where residents obtained goods, from basic daily needs to the flights and fancies of an emerging modern consumer culture. Echoes of their presence live on in the shopfronts and main shopping streets. This lecture investigates and compares the shopkeepers who operated in three distinct, representative suburbs of nineteenth-century Melbourne: genteel Malvern, inner urban North Melbourne and industrial Footscray. In doing so it provides a genuine comparative cross-section of the urban retail trade in this period and reveals the subtle differences between these localities in terms of the prestige and identity ascribed to shopkeepers within the socio-economic fabric of these local societies. Yet across all three towns (or suburbs), shopkeepers held an important and unique role, one that cannot be understood through the same lens as the working class or middle class.

Our first co-presentation with Engineering Heritage Victoria in 2024 will be by Ken McInnes who will explore the history, the entrepreneurs, the engineers, the operations, the expansion and the demise of the short lived South Yarra Water Works Company (1854 – 1863). In 1854, 170 years ago, Yan Yean Reservoir was completed. Over the following ten years water was progressively reticulated to the houses and businesses of Melbourne and its suburbs.

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE LAUNCH OF MELBOURNE'S STORIED LANEWAYS Launched by Julian O'Shea Curated by David Thompson Designed by Daisy Searls Thursday 11 April, 5:30pm - 7pm We all have our favourite Melbourne laneway and curator, David Thompson, has chosen his favourites which reveal some intriguing Melbourne stories. When we think of today's gussied-up
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Please join us to celebrate the restoration and reframing of our glorious carved Terlecki timber piano front. This piano front was donated to us by Keith Kilner representing his wider family and the recent restoration was paid for with a donation from the Boak family. We are enormously grateful to both families for their generosity. We'll be celebrating in style with a sparkling morning tea at the RHSV premises, 239 A'Beckett St and we'll be hosting members of both the Kilner and Boak families. 

What better defines a city than its street corners? A corner gives you a starting point, a destination and a place to turn. It’s furnished with pillar boxes, newsstands and tram stops, and lamp-posts for light and lounging. Where would you be likeliest to find a pub? At the corner, of course. And who better than Robyn Annear to usher you around the corners of Melbourne, and reveal their bizarre, baroque and mostly forgotten stories?