RAHS Upcoming Events
The Royal Australian Historical Society has an established tradition of delivering a diverse Calendar of Events throughout the year, helping make history accessible to all. This program includes lectures, skills-based workshops, regional seminars, tours and book launches.
The annual RAHS Conference is a highlight of the Society’s activities. It provides an opportunity for the RAHS and its Affiliated Societies to network at a conference dedicated to promoting local and community history, showcasing the research of individuals and societies.
March 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – How to watch a flogging: Pop culture convicts and the making of Australian history
THIS TALK HAS BEEN POSTPONED. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 5 March 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
CLICK HERE TO BOOK A TICKET
Event Description:
Convicts loom large in Australian history having shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. In speaking to his book Caught on Screen, due for release in 2025, James Findlay will explore the role screen culture has played in projecting the convict experience to audiences in Australia and overseas. Including how such representations intersected with, and helped to direct major debates about nationalism, the legacies of colonisation, Aboriginal dispossession and the origins and character of Australian society.
About the speaker:
James Findlay is a Lecturer in Australian history at the University of Sydney. He has a research focus on historical film and television studies, convict history, Australian popular culture, and public history. He has held the Australian Film Institute Research Collection Fellowship and before becoming a historian worked extensively in film and television production, mostly in the field of documentary.
RAHS Special Lecture – Aspects of Chinese-Australian Heritage: Landscape Traces
Year of the Rabbit festivities, Chinatown, Sydney (Stuart Read)
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 19 March 2025 @ 6.00 pm – 7.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: RAHS members $20 | Non-members $25
Event Description:
The Chinese have long known Australia. As ‘sojourners’, fleetingly chasing sandalwood, trepang, gold and ‘stayers’. They marked landscapes of transit, harvest, making, growing, and trade. This included harvesting food and timber, ringbarking, mining, water use, and gardening. At first vegetables, later, much more. China has long had sophisticated horticulture and a rich flora. We owe it much – many garden plants are Chinese and got here early. Find out more!
About the speaker:
Stuart Read is a landscape architect, horticulturist and historian, with ongoing curiosity on cultural introductions, influences, and patterns of blending. His first NSW State Heritage Register Listing seen through to fruition was the Chinese Garden of Friendship at Darling Harbour. He is the Sydney Branch Chair and past national Australian Garden History Society Co-Chair and works by day for Heritage NSW.
Central Coast Regional Seminar – Looking Outside the Square: Exploring Business and Biographical Records in Family and Local History
This event is in partnership with the Central Coast Family History Society
Terrigal, 1948 (RAHS Collection)
Event Date & Time: Saturday, 29 March 2025 @ 10.00 am – 3.30 pm
Event Location: Gosford Lions Community Hall, 3/8 Russel Drysdale St, East Gosford NSW 2250
Cost: $20 (includes morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea)
Event Description:
The RAHS and the Central Coast Family History Society are co-hosting a regional seminar for genealogists, historians, and researchers that will cover a range of resources essential for uncovering individuals’ connections to historical businesses and institutions. Presenters will discuss how to access records from major archives, including the State Archives Collection, the State Library of NSW, the National Library of Australia, Reserve Bank of Australia and the Noel Butlin Archives Centre. In addition, attendees will be introduced to the Historical Land Records Viewer (HLRV) and the Biographical Database of Australia (BDA).
About the speakers:
Carol Liston AO is an Australian historian who specialises in the history of early New South Wales (1788–1860). Her particular interest is the colonial development of the County of Cumberland (Greater Western Sydney), using land records, family history and surviving buildings to document the past.
Christine Yeats is an archivist, historical researcher and active supporter of local historical societies. Her research interests include the history of the Romani (Gypsies) in nineteenth-century Australia and attempts to introduce a silk industry into the Australian colonies.
April 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – The True Story of the Dog on the Tuckerbox
Dog on the Tuckerbox (RAHS Postcard Collection)
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 2 April 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
In 1932, the Australian Prime Minister unveiled the statue of the Dog on the Tuckerbox, in Gundagai, NSW, on the Hume Highway halfway between Sydney and Melbourne. As the town’s ‘pioneer memorial’, it would become arguably the most popular purpose-built tourist attraction until the ‘Big Banana’ in 1964. To coincide with the opening, Royal Doulton released a collection of souvenir ware; other souvenirs of the Dog on the Tuckerbox would multiply through the rest of the twentieth century.
The statue celebrated a popular story – told in an 1857 poem, and later poetry and song – about an unlucky bullocky whose team had become bogged ‘nine miles from Gundagai’. To cap it all off, his dog sat on his tuckerbox. Or did he?
About the speaker:
Richard White retired from the University of Sydney in 2013, having taught Australian history and the history of travel and tourism there since 1989. He is a Councillor of the RAHS and initiated the establishment of the History Council of NSW. His publications include Inventing Australia, On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, and Symbols of Australia (new edition 2020).
RAHS-WEA Workshop – Using Maps in Local History Research
Grace Bros. Ltd. subdivision, Lidcombe – John St, Parramatta Rd, Grace Ave, Frances St, 1929 (SLNSW).
This event is in partnership with WEA Sydney
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 9 April 2025 @ 11.00 am – 1.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: RAHS members $35 | Non-members $39
Event Description:
Discover how crown plans, parish maps, town maps, subdivision plans and SIX Maps can enhance your research, shed light on local history, and assist in tracing family genealogy. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this workshop is perfect for all levels. Participants will be introduced to the Historical Land Records Viewer, the NSW State Archives collection and other resources.
About the speaker:
Adjunct Associate Professor Carol Liston AO is an Australian historian who specialises in the history of early NSW (1788–1860). Her particular interest is the colonial development of the County of Cumberland (Greater Western Sydney), using land records, family history and surviving buildings to document the past.
May 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Charles Darwin in Australia
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 7 May 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Early in 1836, Charles Darwin spent two months in Australia as part of his voyage around the world on HMS Beagle. This lecture will be based on Darwin’s diary entries, illustrated with contemporary sketches and paintings by former fellow Beagle shipmates Conrad Martens and Augustus Earle. The complete story is told in the book Charles Darwin in Australia, co-authored by Frank and by his wife Jan, who, having worked in the pictures section of the State Library of NSW, was familiar with the relevant Martens and Earle illustrations.
About the speaker:
Frank Nicholas has been an academic at the University of Sydney for 50 years. As such, he has spent decades telling other people’s stories.
RAHS-WEA Workshop – Making Home: A Short History of Houses, Interiors and Gardens in NSW
Museums of History NSW – Caroline Simpson Collection: Majoliche per rivestimenti e decorazioni edilizie / Figli di Giuseppe Cantagalli, 1900.
This event is in partnership with WEA Sydney
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 28 May 2025 @ 11.00 am – 1.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: RAHS members $35 | Non-members $39
Event Description:
This workshop is an introduction to the sources that help us understand the history of houses, interiors and gardens in NSW. The range of research material in terms of architecture and interior and garden design is extensive. You will discover the many tools available to help you interpret the range of housing stock that survives both in urban and country areas. You will be introduced to the historical contents of these houses, ranging from door fittings to kitchen furniture and wallpapers to tiles, using trade literature, pattern books and objects from the collections of the Caroline Simpson Library, Museums of History NSW (MHNSW).
About the speaker:
Dr Matthew Stephens is research librarian at the Caroline Simpson Library, Museums of History. His particular interests are early domestic libraries and music-related collections and how they help us understand the history of the home and its residents in NSW.
Please note: RAHS members should contact WEA first to check if their member number has been added to their student record before they enrol.
June 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Stimulated, exhausted or inebriated? Investigating the Queen of Nations shipwreck
Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 4 June 1881, p. 904
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 4 June 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
CLICK HERE TO BOOK A TICKET
Event Description:
Why did Captain Samuel Bache drive his fine clipper ship, Queen of Nations, onto Towradgi Beach in 1881? Was he really drunk as his crew insisted? And what about the captain’s scandalous past involving a sailor who turned out to be a young woman? Dive into the drama and tragedy of sailing to nineteenth-century Australia in this lively presentation.
About the speaker:
Dr Peter Hobbins has the entertaining job title of ‘Head of Knowledge’ at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. It doesn’t mean that he is a know-it-all, but he is in charge of the museum’s curators, maritime history library and magazine, Signals. Peter’s background is in the history of science, technology and medicine, where he has researched various ghoulish subjects including snakebite, pandemics, quarantine, aircraft accidents and shipwrecks.