We are delighted that Professor Frank Bongiorno will be delivering the inaugural RHSV Hugh Anderson Lecture, a new addition to our Distinguished Lecturer series. "Hugh Anderson (1927-2017) was a scholar of formidable breadth, productivity and versatility. While it is as a folklorist that he is arguably best known both in Australia and abroad, Anderson’s prolific
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Kaleidoscope is the RHSV's major exhibition in 2022 and it celebrates the women who were crucial in building the organisation from its beginning in 1909. This is biography imagined through the lens of a Kaleidoscope. The viewer is offered fragments of the lives represented here. There is no linear narrative. Each time the kaleidoscope turns, a different story emerges. There are repeating patterns but different emphases and new ways of seeing, new reflections, new refractions. No one story dominates and one story does not fit all. 

Robyn Annear has devised 7 historic walks around Melbourne and, in this event, she will be taking us on one of those 7 walks, albeit whilst we are seated comfortably at the RHSV with a glass of wine in hand. The walks showcase the hidden histories we might scurry past every day, the buildings now gone and the extraordinary characters who inhabited them. Robyn, as always, will be charming, erudite and frankly gossipy.

Sex workers in nineteenth-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women. Who were they? What did their daily lives look like? What became of them? Drawing on the findings of recent archaeological excavations, rare archival material and family records, historian Barbara Minchinton brings the fascinating world of Little Lon to life.

THE BRILLIANT BOY Gideon Haigh talks about  Doc Evatt We are thrilled that Gideon Haigh will talk about his latest book, The Brilliant Boy and the Great Australian Dissent, for the RHSV on Wednesday 29th of September. The event will be chaired by Dr E W Russell.  In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a
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Miles Lewis's presentation will look at why Australia's large collection of portable buildings should be nominated as a group for UNESCO World Heritage Listing. Portable buildings, today referred to as prefabricated, were imported in larger numbers to Australia than to any other part of the world during the nineteenth century. They were made not merely of timber and iron, but of oilcloth, slate, zinc, papier mâché, and ‘portable brick’.  nominated as a group for World Heritage Listing. 

History of the Spencer Street Bridge Have you ever noticed the Spencer Street Bridge? Arguably nondescript, this dependable 1930 structure has a backstory of political infighting, pioneering technology and an unexpected obstacle pre-dating the bridge by several millennia. City of Melbourne local history librarian Fiona Campbell will lead a visual journey through the design, construction
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