Well Built: Simmie & Co Master Builders 1924 – 1978
RHSV Gallery Downstairs 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaSimmie & 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.
Vera Deakin – Search for the Missing by Carole Woods
Multi Cultural Hub 506 Elizabeth St, Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaVera Deakin, daughter of former Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, rallied to the British imperial cause in 1915 by assuming a leadership role in the fledgling Australian Red Cross Society. Aged
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Oral history interviewing for beginners: training
ZOOM Join from anywhere in the worldLearn the basics of oral history interviewing from two of Australia's most experienced oral history trainers, Sarah Rood and Al Thomson
This is an online workshop, conducted via Zoom.
Altona Homestead Devonshire Tea
Altona Homestead 128 Queen Street, Altona, Victoria, AustraliaThe Altona-Laverton Historical Society members and volunteers invite you to drop into the Altona Homestead on the first Sunday of the Month (February to December) to enjoy a serve of our famous Devonshire Tea or Cream Tea or Cornish Tea, anyway you look at them they are delicious.
MARKETING FORUMS
ZOOM Join from anywhere in the worldChristina Browning, the RHSV Marketing Officer, leads these forums which each month tackle a different aspect of marketing for historical societies - they tend to concentrate on social media as
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Tahbilk Winery: Explorers Way tourist drive launch
Tahbilk Winery 254 O'Neils Road, Tabilk, Vic, AustraliaTahbilk Winery has generously offered their Wetlands View Restaurant to host the launch of the Explorers Way tourist drive and brochure, a project of Nagambie Historical Society, in collaboration with the Strathbogie Shire. The Explorers Way revives the Major Mitchell Bicentennial Trail through the Shire, from Mitchellstown to Violet Town. It then travels, in reverse, the tracks of Hume and Hovell, returning through Euroa and Longwood to Avenel. The drive visits every cairn and memorial to the explorers in those areas, and the map brochure details other points of interest in each town. Roads less travelled have been used for the drive to highlight the beauty of the Shire, away from the freeways; long arching tunnels of eucalypts, golden pastures with stands of ancient trees, wooden bridges and tree-lined creeks, with the blue of the ranges always in the distance.
WRITING HISTORY GROUP
ZOOM Join from anywhere in the worldDr Cheryl Griffin leads this group which has been meeting since 2020. This group is for people who are tackling writing a history project or two and want a sounding
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Law and Order Under La Trobe: The First Prisons of Port Phillip
RHSV Gallery Downstairs 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaThe Royal Historical Society of Victoria, in partnership with the C J La Trobe Society, presents the annual A. G. L. Shaw lecture delivered by Dr Ashleigh Green, the current
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East Melbourne: The Men who went to War
East Melbourne Library 122 George St, East Melbourne, VIC, AustraliaIn 2014, Major-General Mike O’Brien gave us a list of men with a connection to East Melbourne who had volunteered for the 1st World War. As a result of enthusiastic
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Thomas Bent, Francis Bradford and electric tramways in Melbourne 1904-1909
RHSV Gallery Downstairs 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaIn 1904, electrical and mechanical engineer Francis Edwin Bradford (1869-1927), a recognised American electric tramways pioneer, was controversially contracted directly by Thomas Bent, Victorian Minister of Railways, and Premier, to report on and progressively electrify Melbourne’s suburban railway system. But Bent postponed work on the report, and instead requested Bradford design and supervise the construction of an electric tramway from St.Kilda to Brighton, as a first stage of electrifying the railways. Bent's instructions did not sit well with the Railway Commissioners.