Historical information

This work forms part of the collection assembled by the historian Dorothy Rogers, that was donated to the Kew Historical Society by her son John Rogers in 2015. The manuscripts, photographs, maps, and documents were sourced by her from both family and local collections or produced as references for her print publications. Many were directly used by Rogers in writing ‘Lovely Old Homes of Kew’ (1961) and 'A History of Kew' (1973), or the numerous articles on local history that she produced for suburban newspapers. Most of the photographs in the collection include detailed annotations in her hand.

Significance

The Rogers Collection provides a comprehensive insight into the working habits of a historian in the 1960s and 1970s. Together it forms the largest privately-donated collection within the archives of the Kew Historical Society.

Physical description

On the Miller Estate, Myrtle Hill, an immense red gum became known as the 'Canoe Tree' because of the scar in its trunk which was believed to have been caused by the local Indigenous inhabitants of Kew in creating a canoe. Dorothy Rogers (A History of Kew, 1973) records that "the tree, with increasing age became a safety risk, and was at first lopped, but when the land was subdivided some years ago it was removed all together. In Bowyer Avenue, which bears a family name of the Millers, a memorial has been erected which commemorates the tree." There is no date given for its removal.