Are you coming up to an organisation’s anniversary and thinking about how to recognise the occasion?

A professional historian is the ideal person to work with you on this event, but it can be hard to know where to start! My first suggestion is to start the conversation with your team and your historian.

What story do you want to tell as part of this event?

Who is your audience?

And what is the end product?

It might be a book that you want to write, and exhibition to display your story, or a digital approach that allows for your story to be shared across platforms.

You can read more about commissioning a history courtesy of Professional Historians Australia here: https://www.historians.org.au/commissioning-history

Please be in touch with me here to start the conversation.

I recently gave a keynote on Australian History (key events and their cultural impact) to a group of Grade 5 and 6 students. It was a great request from a school as a way to begin their history inquiry unit and spark off a term of investigation and development.

There are lots of ways to engage students with history, and sometimes having an outsider come to visit can help kickstart the conversation with your class. My work with schools has included sessions where students solve a real-life ‘history mystery’, guiding classes to put on a history exhibition and facilitating an oral history program with local seniors or family members.

Get in touch here for a conversation about what might suit you and your school.

Pics from National Museum Australia, Australian War Memorial and AIATSIS

Speaking of house histories, here are some estate sale advertisements courtesy of State Library Victoria.

Talking about life as a professional historian, researching house histories and unusual ways to find out about the past.

I’m thrilled to share these History Education Resources for primary teachers, put together with the team at Glen Eira City Council

The videos and accompanying teacher resources explore everyday life in the past, significant people and places and First Nations histories. They offer practical skills sessions on topics such as interpreting a variety of historical sources, interviewing people and continuity and change in the local community. They highlight the work and collections of local historical societies and feature interviews with Glen Eira’s Aboriginal Community Officer and the History and Heritage team members.

The Council are making these resources freely available to schools and whilst they are connected to the local area they are still useful beyond Glen Eira’s borders!

Take a look here: https://lnkd.in/gfxm4WPW

Travellers Aid is turning 100 this year. I’ve been working with Way Back When Consulting Historians to uncover the stories of this fabulous organisation that provides an essential service to people as they travel in and around Melbourne. Channel 9 visited the Travellers Aid’s ‘office under the stairs’ at Southern Cross Station and had a sneak peak of their daily work. It aired on Channel 9 on Sunday, 15 May.  Have a look at it here. The book and travelling exhibition are underway and will be out later this year.

Amidst the stories of hosting parties for diplomats, raising money for charity and opening dance schools in Germany and in Australia, Alice Meyer von Forell and her husband Hans were interned in wartime Australia as enemy aliens. I talked about Alice’s life for last year’s booked out PHA (Vic) event, ‘No Place for a Woman’ , but I’m still finding more explore in her journey.

Those who knew Alice in later life knew little of the difficult start she and Hans had had in Australia, first taken from their home in the middle of the night, then imprisoned and interned. After a few months Alice and Hans were released but had to live 100 miles from the coast (because they were still deemed a security risk). After a few months of this ‘freedom’ Hans was interned again.  Alice has always struck me as a strong and determined woman and this shines through in her letters (held at the National Archives of Australia) as she advocated for her and her husband’s freedom from internment.

This February I will be reprising my talk on Alice for a PHA (Vic) event to be held in Ballarat at The Gold Museum. BOOKED OUT! 

You can read more about Alice on the Hello Ballarat blog.

Image above via The Age (Alice and her dog Caesar in their Lisson Grove ballroom) and below via The Argus (an early advertisement for Alice and Hans’ school).

This week I’m researching my Uncle Tony. He wasn’t someone I knew well, but there were a few family legends that I have heard about him. One of them was that during the war he was on an island in the Pacific where he caught a fish for dinner. He said ‘I wish I had a lemon to have with this fish’. Next minute, a lemon washed up on the shore…

I haven’t been able to definitively prove this family story! But I have been learnt that it is a little more likely than it sounds.

Today I’m researching Leslie Norman Ley, on what would have been his 100th birthday. He was a pilot in World War II, a University of Melbourne alumnus, a father, a husband and an accountant. See more in the National Archives of Australia http://bit.ly/1P8ynPj