RAHS Latest News
Good Servants and Valuable Wives: 190 years since the arrival of the Red Rover in 1832
Written by Patrick Bourke, RAHS Member On 10 August 1832 the Red Rover arrived in Sydney Harbour with 202 free young unmarried Irish women onboard. This ship had left Cork, Ireland, on 10 April 1832. On 15 August the young women left the Red Rover and were housed in the Sydney lumber yard, which was at the southern corner of George and Bridge streets, until they could find employment. There is now a Royal Australian Historical Society green plaque on the wall of the entrance alcove of Moran...
Picturing Post-War Reconstruction at a Local Level
Fanny Durack (1889-1956) and Mina Wylie (1891-1984)
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2022, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from previous years to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month. 110 years ago, Stockholm hosted the first-ever women’s Olympic swimming event. Women had been competing at the Olympic Games since Paris 1900, in such...
Playing Their Part: Official Book Launch at Government House
Playing Their Part: Official Book Launch at Government House Playing Their Part: Vice-Regal Consorts of NSW, 1788-2019 (published 2020) was officially launched at Government House, Sydney on Wednesday 23 February 2022. The book was launched by Mr Dennis Wilson (consort to Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, Governor of NSW) alongside Mrs Linda Hurley (consort to His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC [Retd], Governor-General of the Commonwealth of...
Cecile Ramsay Sharp (1913-2006) – “Miss Huguenot”
Written by Elizabeth O’Connor, RAHS Member, Secretary of the Watsons Bay & Vaucluse Social History Group To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2022, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from previous years to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month. My mother, Cecile Ramsay Sharp (nee Corbett) was born in 1913 at Hurstville, educated at...
Louise Lovely (1895-1980)
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2022, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from previous years to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month. In the early 2000s, the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards—now known as the AACTAs—tried out the nickname “the Lovelys”, in the style of the Oscars....
Olive Muriel Pink (1884-1975)
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer To celebrate Women’s History Month in 2022, the Royal Australian Historical Society will continue our work from previous years to highlight Australian women that have contributed to our history in various and meaningful ways. You can browse the women featured on our webpage, Women’s History Month. Botanical artist, anthropologist, and Aboriginal rights activist Olive Muriel Pink lived a long and fascinating life that took her from her birthplace...
How science was communicated in colonial New South Wales
By Davina Jackson [PhD, M.Arch, FRGS, FRSA, FRSN] Two hundred years ago, in June 1821, Australia’s first learned society was launched in Sydney. Named the Philosophical Society of Australasia – because ‘natural philosophy’ was the prevalent term for science at that time – the group comprised seven prominent men who shared the goal of establishing a museum of natural history. The founders were Judge Barron Field, Dr Henry Grattan Douglass, Colonial Secretary Frederick Goulburn, surveyor John...
National Threatened Species Day
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern On 7 September 1936, Benjamin, the world’s last known thylacine, died in captivity at Hobart Zoo from suspected neglect. Despite decades of a rapidly dwindling population, hastened by habitat destruction, disease, the incursion of introduced species, and human intervention, the species had only been declared protected two months prior. It would take fifty years before the thylacine—better known as the Tasmanian tiger after the distinctive stripes...
Changing times: 50 years of daylight saving
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern Daylight saving is an accepted, if confusing, part of life for most Australians. On the first Sunday in October, people living in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory set their clocks forward by one hour to extend daylight hours after the working day. On the first Sunday in April, we set them back. The practice is a controversial one, neatly illustrated by the five time zones daylight saving...
Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer On Saturday 6 November 2021, the RAHS held a special online event, exploring the Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. This is the first in a series of two blog posts about the interwar decades, providing an overview of the broad spectrum of changes that occurred across Australian politics, society, and culture during that time. Read the second instalment here ‘… the power of the modern … simultaneously exhilarated and alarmed the...
Ninnis, Mertz, and Mawson
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern 110 years ago in 1911, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) set sail from Hobart, Tasmania, on the old whaling ship Aurora. Among the crew were a young Frank Hurley, soon-to-be war photographer; Frank Wild, English explorer and Antarctic veteran; Belgrave Ninnis, son of the Arctic explorer of the same name and lieutenant with the Royal Fusiliers; Xavier Mertz, Swiss champion skier; and Douglas Mawson, Australian geologist and leader of the...
RAHS Weekly News Round-Up