JANUARY 2020
SATURDAY
11th JANUARY at 2:00pm
"The Stony Ground: The Remembered Life of Convict James Ruse"
Cornish convict James Ruse was reputedly the first man to step ashore in 1788, carrying an officer on his back. He was put in charge of other convicts at the first settlement farm and among the first pardoned. At Experiment Farm in Paramatta became the continent’s first settled farmer – the first ex convict to be granted land – marrying Elizabeth Parry, the first woman to be emancipated. A few years later Ruse establishes plot number one on the banks of the Hawkesbury bringing himself into direct conflict with Aboriginal people. Michael Crowley’s historical novel The Stony Ground: The Remembered Life of James Ruse explores why this farm labourer repeatedly finds himself on the cusp of history.
Michael Crowley is a UK based writer and dramatist. The Stony Ground follows on from Michael’s poetry collection First Fleet, a collection in the voices of convicts, marines and Aboriginal people of 1788.’
Venue:
The Mitchell Theatre, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts
280 Pitt Street, Sydney
$3 Members | $8 Visitors
No bookings
required
FEBRUARY 2020
SATURDAY
15th FEBRUARY at 2:00pm
"Tall Tales - Stranger than fiction"
A bit of a tradition with the City of Sydney Historical Association, each year we have some of our COSHA members presenting some of the stranger stories from the past. This year, once again we are looking forward to three different COSHA members presenting.
Betty Candy: ‘The strange Antecedents of the Dog on the Tuckerbox’
Ruth Saunders: "AFTRS and Elephants"
Celeste Radcliff: ‘Australia’s Prince of Thieves’
There will be a Q&A session after the speakers have presented so that members can be involved in the event which should be both entertaining and thought provoking.
Venue:
The Mitchell Theatre, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts
280 Pitt Street, Sydney
$3 Members | $8 Visitors
No bookings
required
MARCH 2020
SATURDAY
14th MARCH at 2:00pm
"Iconic Australian Inventions"
When the First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788, they came to stay and to transplant from Britain an array of fully fledged methods and institutions. Australia’s isolation and distinctive geography and climate however forced the new settlers to change their ways and would continue to stamp Australian innovation with a distinctive character of its own. The national characteristics that brought the British to Australia rapidly became the basis for one of the greatest divergences between the homeland and the colony, many innovations and inventions of the day being now being used in our daily lives and taken for granted. We have a look at some of these iconic Australian discoveries and inventions from the 19th century colonial era through to our present time, some coinciding with the country’s post-war housing boom as demand for homes on quarter-acre blocks in the suburbs escalated. Chemist Ian Thompson worked in Australia and overseas in the formulation of chemical products and holds a number of patents to his name.
Venue:
The Mitchell Theatre, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts
280 Pitt Street, Sydney
$3 Members | $8 Visitors
No bookings
required
