Funding for the 2023 Victorian Community History Awards announced

 In a message from the Royal Historical Society of Victoria today.......

VICTORIAN COMMUNITY HISTORY AWARDS ARE BACK! AND NOW OPEN. HOORAY!

Info for publishers, authors, curators, podcasters - everyone involved in history projects.

We are thrilled to announce that the Victorian Community History Awards have retained their funding for 2023 and are launched today (8 September 2023). We thank all our members and friends, led by our President Richard Broome, for their intelligent advocacy in engaging with their local members of Parliament and Minister Danny Pearson, Department of Government services over the last 3 months. With so many budget cuts we almost despaired of funding and we were prepared to go it alone with a no-frills program but the Minister, Danny Pearson, really fought hard to get these awards up. Our heartfelt thanks to the Minister and his hard-working staff.

Below is the I message I sent to Minister Danny Pearson to thank him personally for his efforts:

Dear Danny,

Your name was mentioned in glowing terms in a newsletter I received today from the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in relation to your considerable efforts as Minister for Government Services to have funding for the Victorian Community History Awards retained for 2023.

I was involved in the VCHA Committee for many years on behalf of the RHSV, and attended many of the Awards Ceremonies.   In talking to both Award recipients as well as those who received a Commendation from the judges, I am aware of how very thrilled those entrants were at receiving recognition for their work.   

Local historians devote many years, usually, researching and writing local history, but it is a very under recognised field of endeavour, except for the VCHA.   Every entrant for that years' awards receives an invitation to attend the event, and I have met people from all over the state who come down to Melbourne  in the hope of receiving an award.  They  have often got up early to catch a 4 am train to be able to make the awards, or driven for hours to get here.   

The Awards and Commendations are big news for these people and feature in local newspapers, websites and radio programs.

The Awards are truly a wonderful thing for people engaged in local history activities, and I would like to thank you personally for your efforts in having the funding retained for 2023 (and into the future, I hope!)  The Awards are a very worthwhile program for the Victorian Government to support.

Yours sincerely,

Lenore Frost

Essendon, Vic

FRHSV

George Hyde, pastoralist, insolvent, man of colour, who died at the Keilor Inn, 1844

         Keilor Inn, by George Alexander Gilbert, 1845.

    Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria Collection. 

Even in death, George Hyde, pastoralist, found himself embroiled in controversy.  He was one of the Port Phillip Pioneers who was dis-interred from his grave at the Old Melbourne Cemetery and re-interred at the Fawkner Pioneer Cemetery, to make way for the Queen Victoria Market in 1922.  It was another indignity for a man who had suffered many indignities in life owing the circumstances of his birth.

George Hyde was born in British Honduras, the illegitimate son of a Scottish timber merchant and the daughter of a West African Mandigo slave women.  Educated in Britain, and like his father one of the largest slave owners in Honduras, the colour of his skin precluded him from many of the civil rights and privileges afforded his father.  In 1827 George Hyde petitioned the British Parliament for the extension of civil rights to the free coloured population, as were enjoyed by their counterparts in the West Indian colonies.

Hyde returned to Scotland in 1836 where he married Margaret Collier, and together with their only son, George Robert Hyde,  born in 1840, boarded the Ariadne for Port Phillip.

Christine Laskowski has taken a detailed look at the fortunes and misfortunes of the Hyde family, outlining their life in British Honduras, the pioneering colony of Port Phillip, and his unfortunate demise in the Keilor Inn while travelling from his holding at Green Hills (now Toolern Vale) and Melbourne.   For the full story, see her excellent article on the Time Travellers website.