Lane Cove Library 7pm

Dr Peter Hobbins, will speak on The Shipwreck of the Queen of Nations on the way to Colonial Sydney: Exhausted or inebriated?

Dr Peter Hobbins is Head of Content at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. As a historian his research focuses on the development – and disasters – surrounding medicine, aviation, maritime and defence. In his talk he will discuss the wreck of the Queen of Nations. Bound for Sydney in 1881, the ship inexplicably sailed onto Towradgi Beach, north of Wollongong. The vessel was wrecked and a sailor lost his life. Then the crew accused the captain of being drunk while in command. How could this have happened to the Aberdeen Line, famed for the sobriety of its officers and the safety of its ships? This presentation explores the story, its scandals and the rapidly changing nature of maritime technology. What remains of the shipwreck lies off the coast near Corrimal NSW.

Lane Cove Library 7pm

June Michelle Richmond will speak on the History of the Northern Beaches of Sydney.

Michelle Richmond trained as a primary teacher, teaching in NSW and London, before pursuing her other passions by studying history and archaeology at the University of Sydney. She then worked for a time as an aid and development officer in Azerbaijan. Back in Sydney she worked as a historian in several heritage consultancy firms before taking up her role as a professional historian based at Northern Beaches Council library. The northern beaches, covering the area north of Sydney Harbour, west to Middle Harbour and north to the entrance of Broken Bay, was explored early after white settlement, though it remained a largely rural area well into the 20th century. Michelle has studied the history of the northern beaches, examining both Aboriginal and white settlement.

Lane Cove Library 7pm

23rd July Dr Meg Foster will speak on Not Just Ned: Recovering Forgotten Bushrangers from Australia's Colonial Past.

Bushrangers are Australian legends, and as such, sometimes romanticised. But not all Australian bushrangers were seen in a glowing light in their own time. And not all were white men. In this talk, historian Meg Foster reveals the stories of bushrangers who didn’t fit the mould. These bushrangers’ remarkable lives have been obscured, misrepresented or erased from the national story for over a century, and this is no accident. There is far more to these bushrangers, and their histories, than immediately meets the eye.

Dr Meg Foster is an award-winning historian of banditry, settler colonial and public history, a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney, and the former Mary Bateson Research Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her first book, Boundary Crossers: the Hidden History of Australia's Other Bushrangers, was published with NewSouth in 2022.

27th August Dr. Catherine Bishop will speak on Domestic Goddesses or Business Tycoons?. Women in Australian History

‘A woman’s place is in the home’, we have been told for generations. But is that really true? Award-winning author Dr Catherine Bishop debunks this myth, telling the stories of some entrepreneurial women in Australasian history - from 19th century butchers, undertakers and brothelkeepers, to 20th century mica miners, taxi drivers and missionaries.

Dr. Catherine Bishop is a postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie Business School, currently writing a history of Australian women in business since 1880. She is the author of Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney, which won the Ashurst Business Literature Prize, and Women Mean Business: Colonial Businesswomen in New Zealand, and Too Much Cabbage and Jesus Christ: Australia’s ‘Mission Girl’ Annie Lock. Her latest book, The World We Want: The New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum and the Cold War Teenager, will be published in late 2024. Signed copies of Catherine’s books will be available for sale for cash or card.

Richard White will speak on What’s happening to Australia’s national symbols?

The symbols of a nation never stand still – they are constantly changing, despite the desire to think of them as immovable. Even during the four years of editing and updating a new edition of Symbols of Australia, originally published in 2010, it was hard to keep up as well-established national symbols shifted on their foundations. This illustrated talk surveys a range of Australia’s national symbols, from the formal to the popular, the commercial and the humorous, examining their origins, their many and varied meanings, and how they have changed over time.

Richard White taught Australian history and the history of travel and tourism at the University of Sydney from 1989 to 2013. His publications include Inventing Australia, The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing and On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia. His current research interests include the history of tourism’ in Australia and the history of the cooee, but he has to admit he spends more time in the garden than at a desk. A new edition of Symbols of Australia (co-edited with Melissa Harper and first published in 2010) appeared in 2021.

Professor Kate Fullagar will speak about her book,

Bennelong and Phillip: a History Unravelled.

The book provides the first joint biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two pivotal figures in Australian history. Fullagar's account challenges many misconceptions, among them that Bennelong became alienated from his people and that Phillip was a paragon of Enlightenment benevolence. To present this history afresh, Bennelong & Phillip relates events in reverse, moving beyond the limitations of typical Western ways of writing about the past, which have long privileged the coloniser over the colonised.

Kate Fullagar is currently Professor of History at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, in the Australian Catholic University, and co-editor of the journal History Australia. Her book The Warrior, The Voyager and the Artist won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2021 NSW Premier's Awards.