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.
September 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Finding the Outrageous Fortunes: Detecting the adventures of crime writer, Mary Fortune, and her criminal son, George
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 3 September 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
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Event Description:
The saga of journalist and crime writer Mary Fortune and her criminal son, George, forms a most unusual chapter in Australian history. Mary was a woman of mystery, her life adventurous, to say the least. It spanned several continents and included long stints on the Victorian goldfields and ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ from 1853 to 1911. It included a bigamous marriage to a police trooper. She was gaoled for drunkenness. She had a long, prolific career writing crime fiction (in addition to various genres of journalism). Her illegitimate son, George, became a career criminal – meaning that while Mary was writing about crime, George was committing it.
In the field of crime fiction, Mary was a true pioneer, with no role models to emulate. Only a decade after the establishment of the Victoria Police, she was referencing cutting-edge technologies and detective methodologies. Many of the devices and conventions we take for granted are to be found in her stories, predating the work of Arthur Conan Doyle by some thirty years. Despite all this, she was almost forgotten after her death, her identity and the scope of her achievements being obscured by the multiple pseudonyms she used during her lifetime. Meanwhile, her son George become ‘famous’ for pulling off one of Melbourne’s most notorious bank robberies. His troubled life became something of a classic tragicomedy.
Uncovering the mysteries of Mary and George has been a lengthy adventure in literary detection for co-authors Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown, with the 2025 publication of Outrageous Fortunes being the culmination of the last ten years of their quest. This lecture will offer a glimpse of their discoveries about Mary and George and highlight the literary and historical significance of their respective stories.
About the speaker:
Megan Brown completed her PhD at the University of Wollongong, examining the work of Mary Fortune. She has contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature and The Unsocial Sociability of Women’s Life Writing.
RAHS Special Lecture – Dangerous Passage: A Maritime History of the Torres Strait
This event takes place during History Week 2025
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 10 September 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
The reef-strewn passage between Australia and Papua New Guinea remains the most hazardous of all the major Straits in the world. The Torres Strait Islanders knew these waters well because voyaging and trade were part of their lives and livelihoods. Early navigators such as Torres, Cook, Bligh, and Flinders contributed to the charting of this dangerous passage. However, it was not until the completion of detailed hydrographic surveys by the British Admiralty in the 1840s, the advent of steamships, and the introduction of Torres Strait Pilots that it could ultimately be used as a major shipping route. Ian Burnet will discuss this history, which includes stories of murder, mayhem, mutiny, disastrous shipwrecks, desperate voyages of survival in open boats, headhunting and hurricanes.
About the speaker:
Ian Burnet grew up in South Gippsland in Victoria and graduated with a combined major in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Melbourne. His books show his fascination with the diverse history of the Indonesian archipelago to the north of Australia. Ian is the author of seven books on maritime history, the spice trade and the vast archipelago to the north of Australia. These include Spice Islands, East Indies, Archipelago, Where Australia Collides with Asia, The Tasman Map, Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages and Dangerous Passage. Details can be found on his website – www.ianburnetbooks.com.
RAHS Walking Tour – Water, Water, Everywhere!
Frazer Fountain, Hyde Park, Sydney, c. 1890s (RAHS Collection)
This event takes place during History Week 2025
Event Date & Time: Friday, 12 September 2025 @ 10.30 am – 12.00 pm
Event Location: Meet at the junction of Martin Place and Macquarie Street, Sydney
Cost: RAHS and Affiliated Societies Members $20 | Non-Members $25
Event Description:
Join this 1.5-hour stroll around Hyde Park and its environs to discover water features that go unnoticed as we hurry about our city business. Major water sculptures are immediately obvious, but we will also discover, among others, a copy of a sculpture in the heart of Florence, a reference to the town’s water supply, drinking fountains for the thirsty, a scent bottle and a memorial to a popular Sydney actor.
This tour is strictly limited to 20 people. Walking shoes, hats and water bottles recommended.
About the tour guide:
Judith Dunn OAM, FPDHS is a tour guide and sought-after public speaker, who received an Order of Australia for services to history and heritage, and holds a Parramatta and District Historical Society Fellowship for researching and recording Parramatta history. Over decades, Judith has accumulated expert, specialist knowledge in heritage conservation and archaeological matters relating to local heritage sites and historic cemeteries, and regularly monitors site changes and informs site owners on a voluntary basis.
October 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – A (Virtual) Walk Around Sydney in June 1790
West view of Sydney Cove taken from the Rocks, at the rear of the General Hospital, 1790 (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW)
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 1 October 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Gary Sturgess takes us on a virtual walk around the settlement in Sydney Cove at the end of the First Fleet period, just before the Second Fleet arrived. Using contemporary paintings, charts and documentary sources, he recreates the physical environment of ‘the camp’, enabling us to better understand key events in the early settlement, and the shape of Georgian Sydney today.
About the speaker:
Gary L. Sturgess is an academic and former public servant who has closely studied the legal, financial and managerial foundations of the transportation system. In preparing to write a social history of the First Fleet period, he has explored the physical layout of the early settlement. Sturgess is the author of numerous articles on the convict system in peer-reviewed journals, and much of his work is published on his website, BotanyBaymen.com.
RAHS Special Lecture – Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900–1970
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 15 October 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
While Australia’s crusaders for women’s voting rights and the radical feminists of the 1970s are well known, less attention has been given to the generation between: the trailblazing women writers who challenged the nation’s status quo throughout the 20th century. Jacqueline Kent traces the influence of women whose lives and work were shaped by the seismic events of the 20th century, illuminating their immense courage and principled determination to change the world.
About the speaker:
Jacqueline Kent is a National Biography Award-winning writer principally of biographies, especially those of women. She has written the life stories of editor Beatrice Davis, pianist and social activist Hephzibah Menuhin, trans pioneer April Ashley, and the only full biography of Australia’s first woman prime minister Julia Gillard. She holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney.
November 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Records and reveries: Alice Haigh’s photographs of Sydney in the 1920s
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 5 November 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
The beautifully-crafted photo albums created in the 1920s by RAHS member Alice Maud Haigh (1878–1934) deserve recognition both for what they tell us about the rapidly-changing urban and architectural environment in Sydney, and for their implicit invitation to see more of our urban setting by walking the streets and understanding the context. This talk introduces the photographer and her work.
About the speaker:
Dr Catherine De Lorenzo brings cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives to her research on Australian art, photography, exhibitions, and public art. Having co-authored Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening our eyes (2018), her current project, with Bandgalung curator/writer Djon Mundine, examines selected Australian art exhibitions in Europe since 1937. She has served as an associate editor on several international journals, and is an Adjunct A/Professor at Monash University.
RAHS Special Lecture – Horizontal noticeboards: Chalk writing on pavements during the Great Depression
The Mirror, Perth, September 1930.
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 19 November 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Mr Eternity was not the only person chalking on footpaths in the 1930s. Writing on pavements is a form of graffiti that is seldom discussed but, despite its ephemerality, there is ample evidence for its existence during the last century or more. I investigated one short era, the tumultuous Great Depression years of the early 1930s, and found many examples of chalk and whitewash pavement writing. It was prolific, conspicuous, newsworthy and integral to the story of public life and politics in Australia during those turbulent times.
About the speaker:
Megan Hicks was a curator at the Powerhouse Museum for many years before turning to freelance work as a museum and heritage advisor, particularly for organisations with health and medicine collections. Megan also completed a PhD on ‘Pavement graffiti’ at Macquarie University and went on to become an Adjunct Researcher in urban studies with Western Sydney University. Currently, as an independent researcher, Megan’s particular interest is informal writing in public spaces, including graffiti and flyposters.