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.
June 2026
RAHS Day Lecture – Historical Implications of the Life of Sir Gerard Brennan
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 3 June 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Sir Gerard Brennan’s life provides a powerful lens through which to view the transformation of Australia during the twentieth century – and it illuminates two compelling paradoxes. The first is how one man was both shaped by history and played a crucial role in shaping it. The second concerns the judiciary itself: its twin responsibilities to secure the legitimacy of law by ensuring it faithfully reflects society’s fundamental values, and simultaneously to guide society through changed circumstances.
Brennan’s Queensland Catholic upbringing, his father’s career in politics and on the Supreme Court, and his own experiences at the Bar during the Bjelke-Petersen era rooted him in a legal world still essentially British in orientation – yet those same experiences sharpened his conviction about what the Rule of Law truly demands of a civilised society. Moving to the federal sphere in the mid-1970s, as inaugural President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal he developed a distinctive and enduring approach to securing Administrative Justice. He joined the High Court in 1981 and in conjunction with the other judges, played a pivotal role in ‘Australianising’ the law – in parallel with the Australia Acts, the republican debate, and a broader search for national identity.
The talk focuses on three landmarks of that transformation: the Mabo judgment, which rewrote the nation’s relationship with its own past; Marion’s case, in which Brennan enunciated a compelling and profound legal approach to the protection of the dignity of people with disabilities; and the Constitution’s implied protection of political communication – a doctrine that continues to shape Australian public life. The underlying theme is that Brennan was no revolutionary. He believed in precedent, incremental change, and service. Yet this modest, traditional man – a Sunday-night volunteer at St Vincent de Paul – helped shape the law to secure a more just Australia. His life illustrates how History is often made by conservators, not crusaders.
About the speaker:
Jeff FitzGerald obtained an Honours degree in Law from Melbourne University and a PhD in the Sociology of Law from Northwestern University in the USA. He then taught Sociology and Legal Studies at La Trobe University, provided policy advice in the justice and governance areas in the Victorian Premier’s Department, and was Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Attorney-General’s Department. He then spent 10 years as Registrar at the University of Technology Sydney. Following his retirement at the end of 2006, he has acted as a consultant in the area of Higher Education governance and has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the AustLII Foundation, which provides free online access to a very broad range of legal authorities, writings and other related material.
Cowra Regional Seminar – Five Windows into NSW History
Theatre Cowra and Hotel Lachlan (RAHS Postcard Collection)
This event is held in conjunction with Cowra Family History Group
Event Date & Time: Saturday, 13 June 2026 @ 10.00 am – 3.40 pm
Event Location: Club Cowra, 101 Brisbane St, Cowra NSW 2794
Cost: $25 members | $30 non-members (includes a morning tea, lunch and a coffee/tea station)
Event Description:
The RAHS and the Cowra Family History Group present a full-day seminar that will delve into five types of collections you can use to explore local and family history.
Participants will learn about the Old Register, Apprenticeship and WWI Soldier Settlement records, land records, and NSW Railways.
About the speakers:
Carol Liston AO is President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and a leading historian of early NSW. Her research focuses on colonial society, families and institutions, and she has published widely in this field. She brings deep expertise in working with early government, church and archival records, and in interpreting them to reconstruct lives and communities.
Christine Yeats is Senior Vice President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and specialises in family and local history research. She is an experienced presenter of research seminars, with a focus on practical methods, digital tools and improving search techniques. Her sessions are known for their clarity and practical, step-by-step approach.
RAHS Special Lecture – Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 17 June 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Wattle fairies, talking magpies, excursions to the South Pole, unbreakable dolls, flesh-eating monsters, and toddler kings. Is there anywhere the childhood imagination cannot take us? In her recent book Playtime, Emily Gallagher explores children’s play and imaginative lives in the half-century before the Second World War. Often overlooked in Australian history, children were a significant demographic group throughout this period, and they deserve to be taken seriously as historical subjects. This lecture will explore some of the creative and surprising ways that young people navigated their changing world. It is a story about young dreamers and aspiring journalists, old schoolrooms and backyard cubbies, war and modernity, and the enduring power of the imagination to defy the routine and powerlessness of everyday life.
About the speaker:
Dr Emily Gallagher is a historian at the Australian National University. She began her career as a teacher in Sydney before deciding to pursue her passion for history and writing in Canberra. Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood (La Trobe, 2025) is her first book. Emily is also a research editor for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and a research fellow on an ARC-funded project writing the first history of grandparenting in Australia.
July 2026
RAHS Day Lecture – In Arnhem Land with the ‘Clever Men’: On researching the story of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948
Howell Walker (photographer), ‘Aborigines and C.P.M. [Charles Pearcy Mountford] with bark paintings’ (original caption), 1948. Collection of the State Library of South Australia.
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)
Cost: Free
Event Description:
In this richly illustrated presentation, Martin Thomas tells the story of how he came to write about one of Australia’s most controversial research ventures, the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Thomas will talk about his own response to some of the deeply unethical practices of the original expedition and the ways in which he worked collaboratively with Indigenous communities to understand how they regarded an expedition that collected thousands of ethnographic objects, natural history specimens, and human remains.
About the speaker:
Martin Thomas is Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University and a scholar of cross-cultural interaction and exchange. He is a broadcaster, occasional filmmaker, essayist, and oral historian. His books include The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains, The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews: In search of an Australian anthropologist, and Clever Men: How worlds collided on the Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948, winner of the 2025 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
Central Coast Seminar – From Classrooms to Courtrooms: Exploring NSW State Archives
View of Point Frederick and Mann Street South from President’s Hill, Gosford, 1924 (Courtesy of Central Coast Council)
This event is held in conjunction with Central Coast Family History Society
Event Date & Time: Saturday, 4 July 2026 @ 10.00 am – 3.30 pm
Event Location: Gosford Lions Community Hall, 3/8 Russel Drysdale St, Gosford NSW 2250
Cost: $25 (includes a morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea)
Event Description:
The RAHS and the Central Coast Family History Society will co-host a regional seminar for genealogists, historians, and researchers, covering a range of resources essential to exploring local and family history.
Participants will learn how to access records and use from the NSW State Archives Collections, including collections that have recently been digitised. Participants will learn about Education records, the Old Registers 1 to 9, Small Debts Courts, and how to locate and research State Archives on Ancestry.
About the speakers:
Carol Liston AO is President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and a leading historian of early NSW. Her research focuses on colonial society, families and institutions, and she has published widely in this field. She brings deep expertise in working with early government, church and archival records, and in interpreting them to reconstruct lives and communities.
Christine Yeats is Senior Vice President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and specialises in family and local history research. She is an experienced presenter of research seminars, with a focus on practical methods, digital tools and improving search techniques. Her sessions are known for their clarity and practical, step-by-step approach.
RAHS Special Lecture – Andrew Fisher: So Much More Than a Prime Minister
Portrait of Andrew Fisher, 1908 (National Library of Australia)
Event Date & Time: Thursday, 9 July 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)
Cost: Free
Event Description:
The remarkable contribution to Australian political life made by Andrew Fisher, Australia’s fifth Prime Minister, has only just begun to receive a measure of the recognition it deserves. Employed as a pit boy in the Scottish coal mines as a nine-year-old, Fisher eventually migrated to Queensland aged 22, in 1885, and shortly after joined the fledgling Queensland Labor Party. While never a charismatic politician, he was liked on both sides of the political divide for his honesty, integrity and unswerving dedication to the attainment of a more just Australia. Prime Minister no less than three times (between 1908 and 1915), and the first Prime Minister to enjoy a majority in both houses of Parliament, his governments legislated on the basis of fairness and acted on a genuine vision for the new Commonwealth.
About the speaker:
Professor David Headon AM is a cultural consultant and historian. Formerly Director of the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies, Cultural Adviser to the National Capital Authority and History and Heritage Adviser for the Centenary of Canberra, he is now a Foundation Fellow at the Australian Studies Institute (ANU), a Parliamentary Library Associate and the Canberra Raiders club historian.
RAHS-WEA Workshop – Discovering Forgotten Lives: Investigating the ‘Old Register’ and Parliamentary Papers
MHNSW State Archives Collection, NRS-5604-4-3, Old Register No 6 – Page 53, Entry 1398
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 15 July 2026 @ 11.00 am – 1.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)
Cost: RAHS Members $35 | Non-Members $39
Event Description:
Focusing on the Registers of Assignments and Other Legal Instruments alongside NSW Parliamentary Papers, this session highlights the value of official records in reconstructing colonial history. The registers capture key details of land and legal transactions, including parties involved and the nature of agreements. Parliamentary papers extend this perspective, documenting government activity through reports, debates, and formal inquiries. Used together, these sources illuminate both individual lives and institutional processes, helping researchers trace connections between private actions and public policy in NSW.
About the speaker:
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.
Kiama Regional Seminar & History Talk – Building Research Skills and Exploring Local History
Kiama looking northwest, c. 1936 (Adastra Aerial Photograph Collection)
This event is held in conjunction with Kiama Historical Society
Event Date & Time: Saturday, 18 July 2026 @ 10.00 am – 3.30 pm
Event Location: Kiama Library Auditorium (downstairs from the library), 7 Railway Parade, Kiama NSW 2533
Session A: Research Skills Seminar: $25 members | $30 non-members (includes morning tea and lunch)
Session B: Local History Talk: $3 members | $5 non-members (includes afternoon tea)
Event Description:
The RAHS, in partnership with the Kiama Historical Society, presents a full-day program combining practical research skills with local history.
The day is structured in two parts.
Session A (10.00 am – 1.45 pm) is a research skills seminar designed to support family and local history research. It focuses on building practical skills, improving research methods, and developing confidence in working with historical sources.
Participants will learn how to:
- search Trove more effectively
- use the Historical Land Records Viewer (HLRV) to research individuals, families and properties
- work with early New South Wales colonial records
Session B (2.00 pm – 3.30 pm) is a local history talk exploring the lives of the Rutter sisters, tracing their journey from the Female Orphan School in Parramatta to their connections with the Kiama and Gerringong districts.
Together, the sessions offer both practical skills and a case study in how historical research can be used to uncover and interpret lives in the past.
About the speakers:
Carol Liston AO is President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and a leading historian of early NSW. Her research focuses on colonial society, families and institutions, and she has published widely in this field. She brings deep expertise in working with early government, church and archival records, and in interpreting them to reconstruct lives and communities.
Christine Yeats is Senior Vice President of the Royal Australian Historical Society and specialises in family and local history research. She is an experienced presenter of research seminars, with a focus on practical methods, digital tools and improving search techniques. Her sessions are known for their clarity and practical, step-by-step approach.
August 2026
RAHS Day Lecture – A.D. Hope: A Poet in History
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 5 August 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: TBC
Cost: Free
Event Description:
The poet Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000) lived for all but seven years of the twentieth century. He was acutely aware of the changes in technology over his lifetime, moving from the horse-and-cart days of his childhood to seeing the live television relay of a rocket ship reaching the moon on his sixty-second birthday. This paper will trace the way his poetry responded to change and his growing concern about the way that humans destroy the world around them.
About the speaker:
Dr Susan Lever OAM taught literature for many years at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and she is the author and editor of several books, including A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years after the War. She became a friend of Alec Hope in the 1980s when she taught at the Australian National University.
RAHS Special Lecture – Unravelling the story of Elizabeth Fulloon and the Parramatta Female Factory, 1824–1827
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 19 August 2026, 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: TBC
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Described by Governor Darling as ‘a woman of extraordinary bodily strength and energy of character’, Elizabeth Fulloon was a 43-year-old recently widowed mother of five when she arrived in NSW to take up her role as Superintendent of the Parramatta Female Factory. How did the wife of a London schoolmaster become the Factory’s first female Superintendent? How should we remember her time there, and was she really responsible for the infamous 1827 riot?
About the speaker:
Heather Garnsey is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Fulloon and published her biography, Unravelled, in December 2025. She is an Honorary Member and Fellow of the Society of Australian Genealogists, where she worked for 35 years and was awarded an OAM in 2024 for her service to family history. After retiring in 2020, she is enjoying having more time for her own family history projects.