Launceston Historical Society Talks: Recent Episodes
Brad Wood
A lecture series on a variety of subjects of relevance to the history of Launceston, the Tamar Valley & nearby districts of Tasmania. A different speaker is engaged to give a talk before members and the public on the second Sunday of each month.
'Our First Baptism of Fire': Northern Tasmanians in the 12th Battalion at Gallipoli, April 1915. A talk by Stefan Petrow on 13 April 2025
This lecture is given by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, a professor of heritage and digital humanities at the University of New England and also an associate member of staff at Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania.
In the early 1830s there were a series of strikes, go slows, mass escapes and attacks on overseers in Notman’s gang tasked with completing a road just south of Launceston. Collectively these form the largest protest by convicts in Australia since the Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804.
It puts the turmoil within Notman’s gang into the wider context of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land in the early 1830s, especially between the closure of Macquarie Harbour and the opening of the Port Arthur penal colony.
Using digitisation to cross reference a mass of convict and court records, Professor Maxwell-Stewart identifies the ring leaders at the heart of this mass collective protest as well as the magistrates and other officials charged with bringing the gang to heel.
Content for this talk comes from a larger body of work co-authored with Monika Schwarz (Monash) and Michael Quinlan (UNSW).
Perth Gaol Archaeological Dig. A talk by Darren Watton and John Dent on 17 November 2024.
Boot up for a byte of history/ A talk by Wendy Roberts and Catherine Pearce. 21 July 2024
Joseph Reginald Forward and the making of the Launceston Public Library, 1906 - 1948. A talk by Stefan Petrow
Crooks, Craftsmen and Gold Diggers - convict clock and watchmakers. A talk by Julian Burgess on 21 April 2024
A Good Riddance: The Inception of Criminal Deportation in Colonial Australia. The 2024 John West Lecture by Kristyn Harman, 17 March 2024
Virtual Tour of Local Heritage in Launceston. Why do we live the way we do? A talk by Michelle Blake on 19 Nov 2023
The Albert Hall and the Tasmanian Exhibition 1891-92. A talk by Prue McCausland on 15 October 2023
The Virtues of Local History (the case for a new Launceston history). A talk by Dr Thomas Dunning 15 February 2015.
Significance of Tamar Valley for Tasmanian Aboriginal People. A talk by Geoff McLean 19 February 2023.
The 2nd Mead Smith Von Stieglitz Lecture
The Annandale Community Archaeology Dig. A talk by John Dent on 17 July 2022
Anaesthesia and Surgery in Antarctica - No Place to Get Sick. 10th Pugh Day Lecture by Michael Cooper 19 June 2022
Coping with Shock Infectious Diseases: Typhoid and Cholera in 19th Century Tasmania. A talk by Stefan Petrow on 15 May 2022
Touring Around Tasmania with Spurling in 1914. A talk by Graeme Williams in November 2021
William Henry Clayton: an amateurs perspective of the legacy of the architect in Tasmania and New Zealand. A talk by Robert Smith on 15 August 2021
Pugh Day Lecture. The role of anaesthetists in safe childbirth in Australia - from pioneers to present day. Talk read by Dr John Paull for Professor Alicia Dennis on 21 June 2021
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Malcolm Levett & Andrew Holt of Bent Eared Records. ©Launceston Historical Society 2021
Controversial Publisher of the Cornwall Chronicle. Talk by Mike McCausland on 16 February 2020
On breaking German resistance - Tasmanian soldiers and the end of World War I. Talk by Dr Stefan Petrow on 18 November 2018
Aboriginal Archaeology in Tasmania. Talk by Evan Livingstone-Thomas on 16 September 2018
Dr Christina Henri talk 9 November 2017. Engaging the convict legacy: arts role as a means of understanding
Dr Anne Neale talk on 15 November 2015, Horace Bennett, architect of the Launceston Town Hall
Talk by Dr Roger Kellaway 20 July 2014The Launceston Examiner of Thursday, 14 March 1857 contained a short paragraph noting that some weeks ago a fishing party had found gold in the bed of the South Esk River. A group of respectable gentlemen were now setting out for the Third Basin to assess the extent of the discovery. Their report published on Saturday was positive. Every dish washed contained 10 to 20 specks of waterworn gold: not enough to be profitable on its own but a clear indication that the source must be close by. On Sunday, three to four hundred people visited the site. Most were merely curious but some went with spades and tin dishes to test the discovery for themselves. Within a week, a small mining camp emerged at the Third Basin. It contained a few crude hunts with boughs for roofs, numerous canvas tents and even one business. An enterprising pastry-cook had set up a shop to sell cakes and ginger beer to diggers and visitors alike. The population was highly variable. The census of 31 March 1857 recorded 65 persons living at the Third Basin. Other parties were off searching upstream or in bush country towards the Asbestos Range in an unsuccessful search for the source of the gold. As summer turned into autumn, low gold yields and colder and wetter weather saw most diggers return to their normal jobs back in Launceston. There would be thousands of gold rushes of this scale in nineteenth-century Australia. The Third Basin gold rush gains its historical significance from the juxtaposition of place and time. A major gold field within an hour’s walk of Launceston was seen as a city-transforming event. This accounts for the detailed coverage the local papers gave to the diggings and to developments such as the revival of the Northern Gold Prospecting Association. The rush also occurred at a critical time in the economic history of Tasmania. In 1857, the colony was slipping into a depression that was to last until the mid-1870s. While many of the causes involved complex international issues, a Tasmanian gold field could ameliorate the local factors that intensified the depression.