Ron Setford and his wife Grace Setford lived in Tanner Avenue, East Kew, from c.1946 to c.1995. A keen photographer, he recorded the changing face of Kew over a 20 year period. Apart from 30 photographs of built structures and places in Kew dating from 1960 and 1961, 145 of his 35mm colour slides chronicle the development of the Eastern Freeway through the Yarra Valley over a five year period from c.1972 to c.1977. This important collection was donated to the Society by his granddaughter in 2025.This collection of 175 35mm slides is of local and statewide significance, owing to its subject matter, particularly the major development of road transport infrastructure during the 1970s with the construction of the Eastern Freeway. The photographer also took care to annotate and date most of his slides which enable the researcher to pinpoint temporal and spatial locations.A photograph providing a visual contrast of the pre and post-World War II architectural styles of the Denmark Street Baby Health Centre and two of the Country Roads Board office buildings. Each was built on part of the land fronting the Kew branch line. In May 1939, the Railway Commissioners agreed to lease a site at the Kew Railway Station for a Baby Health Centre. The single-storey cream brick building was designed by Roland Chipperfield. The Country Roads Board (1913–83), later renamed VicRoads, transferred its headquarters from the Royal Exhibition Building to Kew in 1961, following the completion of two modernist eight-storey office towers in 1960. The VicRoads buildings were closed in 2024, and there is ongoing debate about what replaces them.Nilron setford, photographs -- kew (vic.) -- 1960s, country roads board, vicroads, denmark street -- kew (vic.), denmark street baby health centre

This work is from a series centred around the Chinese proverb “to hold a book in one’s hand is to hold a house of gold” in which the artist positions himself within sites of colonial power. Set within the National Wool Museum gallery, the artist references the pose of an exhausted shearer after a long day of arduous labour. However he is reclining while reading The Fire Stick by Wulla Merrii, a novel set against the 1891 Queensland Shearer’s Strike, questioning cultural stereotypes and how they pertain to concepts of work and leisure. Dressed in sub fusc, his official uniform as an Oxford scholar, Thompson is a defiant intellectual challenging past and continued misperceptions of First Nations people, while embracing both the intersections of his identity and his ancestral heritage. Dr Christian Thompson AO is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation with Irish and Chinese heritage. His practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, textiles, performance and sound, evolving through a process of auto – ethnography. While employing various modes of research, he connects his own experience to larger social, political, cultural meanings and understandings. His doctoral research and art practice has had a critical impact on International and Australian art, making global history as one of the first Australian Indigenous students at Oxford University. In 2018 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to the visual arts and as a role model to young indigenous artists in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.Framed photograph showing a man dressed in an academic gown, laying on their back holding a book. The setting is a reconstructed shearing shed, inside the galleries of the National Wool Museum.dr christian thompson, first nations, artwork, photography, oxford, heritage, national wool museum

This book is the story of modern Warrnambool, describing aspects of the city from the 1980s to 2015. It looks at such topics as religion, law, population, housing, infrastructure, employment, industry, health, education and politics. The author, Gordon Forth, was formerly a lecturer in the Faculties of Education and Arts and the Director of the Centre for Regional Development at Deakin University in Warrnambool. He has written and edited a number of books dealing with Warrnambool and district history. Mark Rashleigh, responsible for the design and lay-out of the book and many of the photographs, was a lecturer in visual communication and graphic design in the Faculty of Arts at Deakin University and is now involved with the Warrnambool and District Historical Society in the preparation and cataloguing of historical photographs.The book is of some importance as it is the only comprehensive study of Warrnambool over the past 30 years and complements ‘By These We Flourish’, the story of Warrnambool’s people, places and events up to the 1980s. It is will be of great interest to readers in general and researchers in particularThis is a hardcover book of 320 pages. The dust cover is multi-coloured (black, white and gold) with an image of the water tower at the former Fletcher Jones Factory site on the front cover and an image of the Warrnambool Breakwater on the back cover. The hard cover book has the same colouring and images as the dust cover.Front covers – ‘A Tale of Two Cities – A History of Modern Warrnambool’, ‘Gordon Forth’, ‘Halstead Press’ Spines – ‘A Tale of Two Cities – A History of Modern Warrnambool’, ‘Forth’, ‘Halstead’ Back Covers – ISBN number and code warrnambool, gordon forth, a history of modern warrnambool, a tale of two cities