RHSV Lecture - Why is Victoria different?

Speaker: Weston Bate
When: Tuesday 14 October
Where: RHSV 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne
Time: 5.15 Tea / coffee 5.45 Lecture
Cost: Members free - Non-members $5.50

History Week Talk

This talk emphasises Victoria's fortuitous beginnings, with firstly a pastoral and then a mining boom. Contrasting groups of people and interests had an epic struggle for the power to control development. There was almost a civil war in the 1870s as the predominant goldrush generations tried to break the constitutional stranglehold of conservatives in the Legislative Council.

Radical liberalism, protectionism, emergence of trade unions, development of Marvellous Melbourne in the 1880s, Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, cultural depths, trends in religion are some of the topics to be covered, concluding with why Melbourne is so often cited as Australia's most livable city.