We will be offering tours of our heritage listed Drill Hall during Open House Melbourne and will also be explaining our collection, our exhibitions and our varied work to interested members of the public. There will be children’s activities to keep them occupied.

To celebrate Victoria’s centenary in 1934, Macpherson Robertson sponsored a great air race from England to Melbourne. There were originally 20 entrants of which only 12 arrived in Melbourne. The British winning entrants took a whisker under 3 days, the last plane to arrive took some 4 months.  The RHSV is mounting an exhibition which takes a close look at the entrants in the races (there were two races run concurrently – a speed race and a handicap race) including the most well-known entrant, the Dutch Uiver.     

This exhibition 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.

Simmie & Co was a prominent building company in Melbourne (1924-1978) and in Canberra (1926-1969).  In Melbourne the company was highly successful and built many iconic buildings, churches, monasteries, schools, housing, factories, defence works, the Shrine forecourt (1939-45), offices and theatres including some heritage-listed constructions (one designed by Robin Boyd). The founders were three Victorian brothers, all born in the last decade of the nineteenth century and all worked at the Sunshine Harvester factory before World War One – William, Jock & George. All were World War One veterans (two were Gallipoli veterans). All were wounded and survived. Two were closely involved with the Master Builders Association in Melbourne. Discover their story of a pioneering building company of the early to mid-twentieth century, of World War One veterans, of courage and a willingness to take a risk, of the beginning of the capital city of Australia and the workers, the unsung heroes, who made it all happen.