On the second Friday of every month at 10 am, why not take a short break and meet other PHA (Vic & Tas) members for coffee?

In April, we are running three Coffee Catchups:

In Balaclava, Coffee with Sophie Couchman at the Levanter Café (back room), 298 Carlisle Street, Balaclava

In Bendigo, Coffee with Janette Bomford at the Bendigo Art Gallery Cafe, 42 View Street, Bendigo

In Croydon, Coffee with Kim Meagher at Miss Lacey Café and Wine Bar, 50 Main Street, Croydon

Register to receive a reminder email.

If you’d like to host a catchup in your area on the same day and time, let us know! Drop us an email with your preferred location and we’ll promote it for you.

This month join PHA (Vic & Tas) in sunny Bendigo for a personalised tour of the Golden Dragon Museum. After the tour we will chat Chinese history and heritage over a cooked meal at the Emperors Dragon restaurant.

The Museum holds artefacts that reflect the history of Chinese in Australia from the 1850s gold-rushes to today. Chinese have continued to be a significant part of Australia, constituting one of the largest non-British migrant groups in both the 1850s and today. This presence has had a large impact on Australia, from our immigration polices to our diplomatic relations in Asia. Bendigo plays a crucial part in this history having drawn migrants over with the promise of gold, to the annual Chinese dragon procession at the Easter Fair - the longest running in Australia!

The Golden Museum aims to tell this diverse history through a large collection of over 30,000 objects, documents, photographs and oral histories. As our own President Sophie Couchman stated in her significance assessment of the museum collection, "the real strength of the collection is the deep insight it provides into the Bendigo Chinese community as a whole. No other single collection in Australia is able to provide the depth of insight into the Chinese community as large as Bendigo's."

The ticket covers the cost of museum entry and a set meal at the Emperors Dragon restaurant. Register here!

On the second Friday of every month at 10 am, why not take a short break and meet other PHA (Vic & Tas) members for coffee?

In April, we are running three Coffee Catchups:

In Balaclava, Coffee with Sophie Couchman at the Levanter Café (back room), 298 Carlisle Street, Balaclava

In Croydon, Coffee with Kim Meagher at Miss Lacey Café and Wine Bar, 50 Main Street, Croydon

If you’d like to host a catchup in your area on the same day and time, let us know! Drop us an email with your preferred location and we’ll promote it for you.

Welcome to 2024!!

To start off the new year PHA (Vic & Tas) is hosting a social event for our members. Come join us at the Riverland Bar on the banks of the Yarra River for an evening of drinks, conversation, and a quiz!

Drinks at bar prices, all you need to do is RSVP! 

Join newCardigan and friends from ALIA Vic, ASA Vic, AMaGA Vic and Professional Historians Australia Tas & Vic for the re-scheduled annual GLAM Victoria Picnic! No RSVPs necessary, just come and enjoy the company of people in our sector.

newCardigan is a social and professional group for people who work in galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), other cultural and memory workers, and people who are interested in these professions.

For further details please see newCardigan’s event listing here.

Join us for a drinks and nibbles at the Kathleen Syme Library to celebrate and reflect on your week this year with other PHA (Vic & Tas) members. This is a chance to reflect on our work in a supportive environment with fellow historians. It is an opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences and debrief on any difficult challenges we have faced in 2023. Make sure you don't miss out on this valuable members-only event! 

Register here

Image: Jordan Allen, 1970, State Library of Victoria, filename: jo000337-005

There is more to researching the history of Victorian land than rate books, parish plans and Torrens titles. Sometimes even these aren’t helpful and can be frustrating, especially if time is of the essence.

Sue Walter will share some of her tricks of the trade and knowledge gained from decades of experience in working in land history. Many of tools for research Victorian land history can be found from the comfort of your own home, some for free!

This is a hands-on workshop drawing on real examples, and by the end of the session we hope you will be able to expedite your projects and have expanded your research skills.

Attendees will be asked to complete a brief pre-session questionnaire to assist Susan provide a session that suits your level of experience and expertise. Wifi internet will be available but participants will need to bring their own laptop. Please contact PHA (Vic & Tas) if you have trouble accessing a laptop. Printed workshop notes will be provided on the day.

This is a PHA (Vic & Tas) members only Masterclass. It is worth 20 PD points.

More information coming soon!

Image: Department of Crown Lands Survey. (1916). Bendigo. Courtesy State Library of Victoria.

As part of History Month, we partner with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria to host an event where three historians talk about a moment of amazing coincidence or serendipity in their research – it could be coming across a vital piece of information or finding just the right contact or network, seemingly by chance. It is always a great night to hear from young historians who research a remarkably wide range of subjects.

The hosts for the evening are Andrew Lemon for the RHSV and Sophie Couchman for PHA.

Speaking will be:

Kylie Andrews: Searching for the ABC’s ‘lost’ women producers

Nicole Davis: In Arcadia: Finding the Owners of Nineteenth-Century Arcades in Australia

Miranda Francis: Footscray High School creche - oral histories and archives

Visit the Royal Historical Society of Victoria’s events page to register your attendance.

*** Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control we have had to cancel this online skill sharing event. ***

Dr Michele Matthews on Historic Time Capsules: 19th century petitions, letters and report held at the Bendigo Regional Archives Centre (BRAC)

Celebrating forty years in 2023, since she commenced working as an Historian, Dr. Michele Matthews describes herself as a passionate social Historian, who loves nothing more than to delve into the stories encapsulated in primary source documents.  Michele has cultivated a long-term passion for the Petitions, letters and reports, now part of VPRS 16936 City of Sandhurst/Bendigo Council Inwards Correspondence, which she first met in 1983, while undertaking research for her Honours thesis. 

Twenty-five years after that first encounter, Michele was appointed the Archives Officer at the newly-created BRAC, a position she held from 2008-2018.  In a wonderful arc of serendipity, she cared for, continued to catalogue, and educate researchers and the public about that same correspondence series.

When Michele was seeking a project that would both showcase and preserve an aspect of the BRAC collection, she turned to the hundreds of Petitions held within VPRS 16936.  A successful Community History grant application enabled the purchase of a state-of-the-art digital camera.  Armed with this, and a team of dedicated volunteers, Michele (and co-staffer Marg) set up a system for identifying, transcribing and digitising over 500 Petitions.  Issues covered in these primary source “time capsules” included Infrastructure (roads, footpaths, bridges), Lighting, Women’s concerns, occupations, parks and gardens, nuisances, and staff.

Michele will discuss examples from these Petitions, as well as from letters and reports.  Light will be shed on fascinating stories of individuals’ lives, the issues locals were passionate about, the success, or not, of united people power, personal appeals to the Council, and the day-to-day workings of a nineteenth century regional Council.  Reports by Council staff, penned between the 1870s-1890s, span topics as diverse as industries, health, parks and gardens, bye laws, street trees, and racism.

To register for the event, visit our website here.

Dr Adel Yousif and the Impact of Colonialism on Health: Lutriwita and Palestine Compared

This presentation highlights the effect of colonisation on indigenous peoples human rights and access to food, health, shelter and personal safety. We estimate the effect of colonisation on the size of Tasmania’s palawa population in 1800. We detail the ways in which the colonisation of lutruwita impacted upon palawa society and summarise the lessons that can be gleaned from this. We end by illustrating the ongoing effects of colonisation by comparing contemporary health outcomes for First Nation and Palestinian populations living in the state of Israel, Gaza and the occupied west bank of Palestine. 

Dr. Adel Yousif is the first in his extended family to have a nationality/passport "Australian" received in 1995. His father was born in Haifa, Palestine. His family were farmers growing their olives and tending their land and livestock as they had done for generations. In April and May 1948, Zionist militia attacked his father’s village “Ayn Gazal” and members of his father’s family were killed and evicted from the area which is now part of Israel. They have been refugees ever since. His father and grandfather both died without a passport or nationality. He is now married, living in Hobart and working as an academic.

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a professor of heritage and digital humanities at the University of New England and CEO of Digital History Tasmania. He specialises in using big data to explore the impacts of colonisation and forced labour on health and social inequality.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

Professor Greg Lehman is an art historian, an award-winning curator and writer, and a well-known public commentator on Indigenous history, identity and place. In 2017, Greg led the development of First Tasmanians, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery’s first permanent Indigenous gallery. Together with Tim Bonyhady, he also co-curated The National Picture: the Art of Tasmania’s Black War for the National Gallery of Australia, which won the 2019 Museums and Galleries Australia Award for Travelling Exhibitions. 

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Ian Terry: Uninnocent Landscapes: following George Augustus Robinson’s Big River Mission

For more than two years Ian Terry followed the route of George Augustus Robinson’s 1831 Big River Mission, which was credited with ending frontier violence in Van Diemen’s Land. Accompanied by 13 Aboriginal envoys Robinson spent two months walking around central Tasmania before meeting 26 survivors of the Lairmerrener and Paredarerme people west of Lake Echo promising them that if they stopped resisting invasion and agreed to exile they would later be able to return to their Country. They accompanied Robinson to Hobart and after meeting with Governor Arthur were transferred to Flinders Island. They never returned to Country. Ian’s project was to photograph the landscapes the Big River Mission passed through as an act of documentation of change and truth-telling about colonisation and dispossession.

Ian Terry has worked as an outdoor tour guide, heritage officer at the Parks and Wildlife Service, freelance historian and heritage consultant, and, most recently Senior Curator of Cultural Heritage at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Among the many exhibitions he curated at the museum was Our Land: Parrawa, Parrawa! Go Away! which examined the history of frontier conflict in Tasmania.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Spice up your winter and catch up with fellow PHA (Vic & Tas) members! 

Join us for a social event at the Transport Hotel.  Please pay for your own drinks and snacks, and catch up with fellow members, or maybe meet someone new!

Tables are reserved inside from 6pm, however there is plenty of space for those arriving a little early or for anyone wanting to kick on!

Register your attendance here.

Food and drink menu

Greg Lehman: The noble savage in the Antipodes: Tasmanian Aborigines in the European Imagination

Since the beginnings of Western historical and ideological traditions in Classical Antiquity, Europeans have defined themselves by mythologising people and places existing just beyond the boundaries of empire and understanding. The idea of the Noble Savage in Australia is often attributed to the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his influence on the thinking of French navigators who visited Van Diemen’s Land between 1772 and 1802. However, the idea of the Noble Savage has a deeper history and broader implications for how we understand our history and the place of Aboriginal people in it.

Professor Greg Lehman is an art historian, an award-winning curator and writer, and a well-known public commentator on Indigenous history, identity and place. In 2017, Greg led the development of First Tasmanians, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery’s first permanent Indigenous gallery. Together with Tim Bonyhady, he also co-curated The National Picture: the Art of Tasmania’s Black War for the National Gallery of Australia, which won the 2019 Museums and Galleries Australia Award for Travelling Exhibitions. 

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

At the second annual Wilson History Oration, ‘Inundated: Floods, History and High Water’, eminent environmental historian Dr Margaret Cook will explore the ways historians can engage with the public, the media, other professions, and policy makers. In discussing her work on floods, she will highlight how her role and training as a public historian shapes her scholarship and historical practice. Join us for this online event, as we consider these themes during one of our greatest crises in history: the climate emergency.

Dr Margaret Cook is one of Australia’s experts on the history of water, rivers and ‘natural’ disasters. Her recent books include the acclaimed A River with a City Problem: a history of Brisbane floods; a co-edited collection Disasters in Australia and New Zealand, and a co-authored book Cities in a Sunburnt Country.

Margaret is a Research Fellow in the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University and at La Trobe University and is currently undertaking work on histories of the Murray Darling Basin, while continuing to work on floods. She is a long-standing member of the Professional Historians Association (Qld).

Find more information on our website, and register for the event here.

Kirstie Ross: Thomas and Mary Moore: Re-writing lives with objects

 On 13 January 1889, five days after their marriage, Tom and Mary Moore arrived at their newly constructed cottage west of Strahan. The town’s residents quickly offered Mary ‘a hearty welcome’, hoping that she would be ‘pleased with [their] beautiful bay’ and would ‘enjoy many years of wedded happiness in her new home’. But Tom’s aversion to settled life meant that these good wishes came to nothing. By the time the couple marked their third wedding anniversary, Tom had resumed the track-cutting and prospecting of his bachelor days, which took him away from his family for months at a time. By 1913, Mary had shifted permanently to Hobart without her husband. Tom’s biographers portray Mary as a victim of her husband’s emotional shortcomings. However, this talk will present another version of Mary, as well as the social milieu rejected by Tom. By contextualising two silver napkin rings owned by the couple within genteel practices of gift-giving, dining, and housework, it will highlight domesticity and respectability in the late 19th century. In doing so, this talk will also demonstrate the utility of objects for writing about women whose lives have been overshadowed by accounts of their pioneering husbands.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Brian Tseng is a historian and heritage consultant who has worked in the built heritage industry for more than a decade. Utilising his history degree, Brian set a course to develop his knowledge and skills within the built heritage field. He started by researching the history of heritage properties then moved into other roles, including managing heritage projects and providing design advice to architects and property owners. Currently Brian works at Heritage Victoria and assesses properties of state-level heritage significance.  

In this Online Skill Sharing session Brian will walk us through working in Heritage - including his own professional journey, advice on how to get into the industry, and what skills are necessary.

Please bring any and all questions!

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86355993538?pwd=TUQ4YW9KSHFwbkJLU3RESlEvemNyZz09

Meeting ID: 863 5599 3538
Passcode: 849785

Philippa Moore: "Make a map, not a tracing": Searching for Maria Lord in colonial and modern-day Hobart

Between 1811 and 1814, a house was built on Hobart’s Macquarie Street which, over 200 years later, is still standing and has the distinction of being the oldest extant town house and four-storey residence in Australia. Known as Ingle Hall since the late 1890s, it was the residence of Edward and Maria Lord from roughly 1816 to 1823. Mydoctoral research, the result of which will be a creative work based on the life of Maria Lord, is primarily concerned with how to write about historically obscure women in creative and provocative ways, that go some way to restoring their rightful place in the public narrative. I have developed a unique methodological approach which incorporates elements of deep mapping, where I've used place/space as a conduit for biographical revelation and connection with my subject. In this presentation, I will use Ingle Hall as the primary illustrative example of my approach and demonstrate how it has enabled me to explore and recreate an historically overlooked life in colonial Australia. I argue that place, when engaged with, can be a valuable tool for biographical revelation, even if one cannot make the same truth claim as a traditional biography. Deep mapping is just one of the many tools we have at our disposal in this exciting new era of research and historiography where we can think about and explore the past, and lesser-documented lives, in different, inclusive and creative ways. 

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Acclaimed journalist and author Gideon Haigh will inspire and enliven our writing through the consideration of excellent writers and discussion of methods to make people, places and events leap off the page. The masterclass will feature interactive sessions about approaches and techniques for writing history creatively. Gideon will also appraise a short written example of each masterclass attendee’s work of up to 1,000 words to be submitted by 19 April. Participants should bring their preferred writing tools and have a task in mind they'd like to work on.

Cost is $250 and includes lunch

This event is available exclusively to PHA (Vic & Tas) members. It is worth 20 PD points.

Register here.

Adel Yousif & Hamish Maxwell Stewart: Colonisation - The Palestinian and Tasmanian Aboriginal Experience Compared

This presentation compares the impact of colonisation on Tasmania and Palestine. It starts by exploring the implications of the latest pre-contact population estimates for Tasmania. While historians have emphasised the role played by direct violence in population decline, these new estimates reveal the extent to which malnutrition and the other consequences of loss of access to land and resources are likely to have been much greater. In the second half of the presentation we expand upon this theme by exploring the long run impacts of colonisation in Palestine on health, inequality and incarceration rates using NGO reports. Many of the differences between Israeli and Palestinian outcomes are similar to those for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. We conclude by arguing that an emphasis on violence can let the coloniser off the hook.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Ian Morrison: “Everything that a flower should have”: Maggs Brothers and the facsimile trade

The oldest book in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts is The Description of a Voyage made by Certaine Ships of Holland into the East Indies (London, 1598). It is interesting for many reasons, including as the first English-language account of the voyage that led to the establishment of the Dutch East India Company. It isn’t completely authentic though: several pages are “supplied in facsimile”. Researching what this actually means – forgery? not exactly … – opened up larger questions about the practice of “completing” imperfect books, and the choice between a complete text and an authentic artefact.

Ian Morrison is currently Acting Manager Collection Development at Libraries Tasmania. In January 2020 he received a research grant to look at the records of the London bookseller Maggs Brothers, which are held in the British Library. This talk is about the vicissitudes of an international research project in the time of Covid, and the outcomes of the eventual visit to London when travel became possible.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

‘Commissioned Histories’ with Janette Bomford.

The Monthly Online Skills Sharing (MOSS) are held the third Wednesday of each month via. Zoom. These are a chance to learn new history and heritage skills from fellow PHA (Vic & Tas) members through an informal conversation online.

This is an exclusive event for PHA (Vic & Tas) members only and is worth 10 PD points. Zoom details are the same for all MOSS sessions.

Image: ‘Learning the ropes, Lane Cove junior sailing club’, Sydney, Australian Information and Service Collection, National Library of Australia.

Join PHA (Vic & Tas) members at Graduate House to celebrate three decades of this Association. A 'once in a decade' opportunity for members (current and former) and history/heritage friends to reunite, reminisce and hear from a special panel featuring foundational, intermediate and new members reflecting on their experiences over 30 years of the Professional Historians Association (Victoria & Tasmania). All are welcome.

Venue: Graduate House, 220 Leicester Street, Carlton, 3053
Date: Sunday 13 November 2022
Time: 2pm - 5pm
Cost: $60 for canapes, complimentary drink on arrival, cake, tea and coffee
RSVP: Sunday 6 November 2022

Book here: https://phavic.wildapricot.org/event-4877675

PHA (Vic & Tas) history:
In 1989, a small group of Monash University Public History students formed a group to hold monthly meetings with guest speakers presenting on public history. In 1991, this group formed an association, primarily of women, supporting members to forge a career path as public historians in the community outside the University. This was a radical shift from the world of academic history that was still dominated by men. In Tasmania, the Hobart Urban History Group operating in the 1980s formed the Professional Historians Association in 1990 to support historians working in the field of Public History. It aimed to promote the profession of the historian, developing standards and guidelines. In 2018, Victoria and Tasmania merged and today, the association is made up of a formidable list of who’s who in the history and heritage community. From a handful of historians, PHA (Vic & Tas) now represents over 230 historians across two states.

From Language Retrieval to a Living Language: a brief overview of palawa kani, by Theresa Sainty.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

To register for the event visit the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Using Big Data: the challenges, advantages and disadvantages with Karen Agutter, University of Adelaide.

The Monthly Online Skills Sharing (MOSS) are held the third Wednesday of each month via. Zoom. These are a chance to learn new history and heritage skills from fellow PHA (Vic & Tas) members through an informal conversation online.

This is an exclusive event for PHA (Vic & Tas) members only and is worth 10 PD points. Zoom details are the same for all MOSS sessions.

Image: ‘Learning the ropes, Lane Cove junior sailing club’, Sydney, Australian Information and Service Collection, National Library of Australia.

Each year the Royal History Society Victoria and the PHA (Vic & Tas) partner to present an evening of new ideas and interesting discussion. The annual “Emerging Historians” event is a popular event that offers fascinating insights into a wide variety of new history research. 

This year we present four speakers who will share their research on a variety of topics that showcase how multifaceted history can be.

Sarah Craze The Battle to Play Sport on Sunday in Camberwell

Portia Dilena The Albury Study Centre of the RCAE and Feminism in 1970s Albury-Wodonga

Nicola Dobinson British-Iranian Diplomacy in the 1970s: Insights from a History of Emotions Approach

Andrew Kilsby Family Business: The Simmies of Simmie & Co and Harpsdale

Chaired by Andrew Lemon (former President of the RHSV) and Kimberly Meagher (PHA (Vic & Tas)

Proudly presented by the Professional Historians of Australia (Victoria and Tasmania) and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. 

This event will be held at the RHSV building in the city, but also live streamed via Zoom.

Register to attend the event through the RHSV website, here. PHA (Vic & Tas) members are to select the $10 members price.

The event is worth 10 PD points.

Image: Leunig, Mary, artist. (1992) Lover [original artwork]. State Library of Victoria.

Tasmanian Members, those attending the biennial Oral History Australia conference in Launceston, and those who might just happen to be in Launceston here's an opportunity for PHA (Vic & Tas) members to catch up over a meal on the Apple Isle!

Attendees pay for their meal and drinks, but please register by Friday 30 September 2022 so that we can book a table. The menu can be viewed at the Me Wah Restaurant website here. You will be able to note any dietary issues, allergies or medical conditions the restaurant should know about when you register.

Image credit: Woman eating an apple, Huon apple orchard, 1940-1990, Libraries Tasmania, https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/AA375-1-871.

Ann Larkins and the Spaces of the King’s Female Orphan School, by Ann-Marie Ezzy.

When the King’s Female Orphan School opened in Hobart Town in 1828, it was touted as a place of refuge and education for the colony’s children. With her mother’s death and her father’s loss of his ticket of leave, Ann Larkins was “admitted on the foundation” in the latter part of 1828 and remained at the orphanage for three years until her father could retrieve her.    Ann Larkins was not remarkable for any great doings, but exploration of her small story can give a more complex understanding of our past.  She was a minority: a child, a female, and came from a subordinated social class. One way to understand what life was like for Ann, for whom there are minimal records, is to explore the where and why. Scrutiny of the spaces of the orphanage creates not only insight into the discrepancy between intent and actual practice, but also how its operation connected to the wider world. Thinking about the local within the global illuminates colonial social anxieties and the impacts of gendered and classed understandings.

Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.

RSVPs are essential

To attend in person go to libraries.tas.gov.au, then Allport Library, followed by What’s On.

To register for the webinar use the following URL. You may need to cut and paste it:

https://tinyurl.com/2ttasvxm

You can listen to all previous lectures on their Soundcloud website.

Researching and Writing Biographies with Sue Silberberg.

The Monthly Online Skills Sharing (MOSS) are held the third Wednesday of each month via. Zoom. These are a chance to learn new history and heritage skills from fellow PHA (Vic & Tas) members through an informal conversation online.

This is an exclusive event for PHA (Vic & Tas) members only and is worth 10 PD points. Zoom details are the same for all MOSS sessions.

Image: ‘Learning the ropes, Lane Cove junior sailing club’, Sydney, Australian Information and Service Collection, National Library of Australia.