The History Writers' Group which is led by Dr Cheryl Griffin meets monthly on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 11:30am - 1pm and these events are hybrid - some people choose to meet at the RHSV and others will Zoom in. This is a very interactive group which shares information and assists each other with problems they have encountered in their history writing.

Every year the RHSV hosts a fabulous second-hand history book fair where we sell history books of every imaginable genre. Victorian and Australian history dominate but you'll find biographies, war history, art history, natural history, classics, children's books, political and social history etc

In October 1934 a great air-race was planned from London to Flemington, Melbourne. From a field of 20 planes just 12 arrived. The winner took a whisker under 3 days; the last entrant arrived in February 1935. The best known tale is of the Dutch plane, Uiver, which made an emergency landing in Albury during a wild storm; the locals used the town’s lights to flash morse code to the plane and then lit the race-track, a make-shift aerodrome, with their car-headlights. Flight was one of the last frontiers and all the tales are unashamedly romantic and full of derring-do.

The daughter of Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, Vera Deakin studied music in the Habsburg Empire on the eve of the Great War. Driven by British imperial fervour on her return to Australia, she bypassed the government’s restrictions on women’s participation in the war effort by serving with the fledgling Australian Red Cross. Aged only 23 in 1915, she became the founding secretary of the Australian Red Cross Wounded & Missing Enquiry Bureau in Cairo and later London. Narrowly avoiding replacement by a man, she showed outstanding leadership and was appointed OBE.