The AGL Shaw lecture has been presented in partnership with the C J La Trobe Society for many years. It is one of the RHSV's Distinguished Lectures and we are thrilled that, in 2024, Professor Penny Edmonds from the Flinders University will be delivering the lecture. In 1838 Quaker James Backhouse posted the 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) ‘hot off the press’ from Cape Town to key figures he had met in the Australian colonies, including missionary George Langhorne, with instructions for it to be sent to Police Magistrate Foster Fyans and Captain William Lonsdale in Port Phillip. The much-studied 1837 report is often described as the ‘blueprint’ for imperial reform and the protection of Aboriginal peoples in the colonies. Backhouse sent the report to New South Wales including to three men of influence whom he had met in Sydney – the Colonial Secretary Alexander McLeay, police magistrate Archibald Innes and Reverend John Saunders. These three men would be central to the formation of the Sydney branch of the Aborigines’ Protection Society or the ‘Australian APS’, suggesting that the report’s distribution was part of a transimperial moment of humanitarian activism.  

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.