The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is 40!

  Nicole Cama talks about the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. (The following is an edited article, which first appeared on The Dictionary of Sydney website. It accompanies a podcast of Nicole talking to Nic Healy from 2SER Breakfast.) The first Mardi Gras parade in Sydney was held on 24 June … Read more

History Matrix

  …In this occasional series about members’ blogs, we introduce HistoryMatrix, the electronic journal of Dr Bruce Baskerville. Bruce maintains four blogs – HistoryMatrix is the ‘history’ blog; mrbbaskerville is the place he opines;  Sepia Green is a blog for reviews; and, Green Plaques is a grant project to create an archive of commemorative plaques … Read more

Illegal Demolition of Historic Buildings in Australia

  by Yvonne Perkins Thousands of people have voiced their outrage at the latest illegal demolition of an historic building in Australia. The Corkman Irish Hotel, which had been part of inner-suburban Melbourne since the 1850s, is now a pile of rubble. Damaged a week earlier by a fire the police are investigating, the hotel … Read more

Historians communing: part one

  In the next two blog posts, Laila Ellmoos reflects on two conferences held in Victoria in 2016: the Australian Historical Association (AHA) conference in Ballarat and the Working History conference in Melbourne, organised by the Professional Historians Association (Victoria) (PHA Vic). This year the annual conference of the AHA was held in the Victorian … Read more

Support your national library

  by Francesca Beddie On 22 February the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story saying ‘the National Library of Australia has launched a major review of services, with key programs to be curtailed or cancelled amid staff cuts, as management struggles to deal with the Turnbull government’s efficiency dividend’. It reported that the library expects to … Read more

History, Place and Singapore

  The architect of the Republic of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew died on 23 March 2015, in the fiftieth year of the island nation’s independence. Yvonne Perkins recently interviewed Associate Professor Kevin Blackburn, an historian who has been working in Singapore for over twenty years. Her post reveals how history is evolving in the state over … Read more

Reflections on the AHA Conference 2014

  This year the Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference was held at the University of Queensland’s campus in Brisbane. The theme of the AHA’s 33rd annual get together, held in the week of 7-11 July, was ‘Conflict in History’. The setting of the conference, in rooms within the sandstone buildings that make up the university’s … Read more

Professional Historian Wins Major Literary Award

Professional historian, Clare Wright, has won the 2014 Stella Prize for women’s writing. Selected from a strong shortlist which included both fiction and non-fiction, Wright won $50,000 for her history of the Ballarat goldfields, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. In her citation, Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the 2014 Stella Prize judging panel, said: A rare … Read more

The Walking and Talking Historian

Post by Yvonne Perkins “I thought it was amazing”, enthused Robyn McConkey of North Sydney at the end of a history walk conducted by professional historian, Dr Ian Hoskins. A group of about thirty walkers had gathered three hours earlier outside Shore School in North Sydney for the walking tour, ‘Following Photography’ Footsteps’. The school … Read more