Wal Richards loved weddings. Given a box brownie camera as a young man in 1946, he started cycling on his blue and white bike to weddings in Maryborough and surrounding towns. Uninvited, he would position himself up close to the action and record events in his candid and unorthodox style. 

Wal’s physical and mental disabilities meant that he was an easy person to underestimate and many people assumed that he didn’t have film in his camera. But in 1996, when Wal passed away, his family found more than 20,000 unsorted wedding photographs stored in shoe boxes in his house. 

The collection was donated to the Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society. In 1998 the Central Goldfields Regional Art Gallery held an exhibition of Wal’s work. His striking photos and remarkable story generated broad interest and was written up in Time Magazine. 

Whilst only a small portion of the weddings in Wal’s photographs have been identified so far, the collection is a remarkable and unusual social history of Maryborough spanning almost half a century. 

The collection is housed at the Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society, which is located in the Worsley Cottage Complex.

The current Flinders Street Station building has been part of the lives of Melbournians for over 100 years.

Inspired by the launch of the latest competition to put forward proposals for its restoration and reinvigoration, and to highlight some of the amazing Flinders Street-related material in Victoria's cultural collections, I will be celebrating the past, present and future of my favorite station.

Over the next few months, I will be recording impressions and stories found whilst exploring the station as it exists today, trawling the internet for related sounds and images (such as this timelapse) and featuring some of the wonderful images of the station that are held in Victoria's cultural collections. As a taster for my future posts, here's a selection of images that I've found.

At the close of the First World War, Australia began an ambitious and controversial soldier settlement scheme, allocating small parcels of potential farming land to returned soldiers.

33,000 acres were set aside in Red Cliffs, and in 1920, the returnees started clearing the Mallee Scrub, making Red Cliffs the largest Irrigated Soldiers' Settlement in Australia.

The Red Cliffs Military Museum, part of the Red Cliffs-Irymple RSL Sub-Branch, began around 1995, when a small billiard room was used to store wartime artefacts donated by local families. By 1997 the collection had grown so much that the museum developed and started opening to the public.

The collection continues to grow and holds artefacts from the Boer War, WW1, WW2, Vietnam and East Timor, and includes diaries, albums, arms, documents and uniforms, scale models and trench art.

A range of these artefacts, and interviews with soldiers and their families, telling of life in and between the First and Second World Wars, are presented here.

The internment of civilian and military populations was widespread during the twentieth century.

The Australian experience of imprisonment is complex: Captured Australian soldiers faced years in Asian and European camps, often returning home traumatised or suffering physically. Australia also interned enemy soldiers and civilian residents with ties to enemy nations.

The physical objects created by internees and by the societies that imprisoned them can tell stories not found in archives. Prisoners expressed themselves through art, doctors built tools and internees made furniture to fill sparse barracks. Similarly, authorities used the internee experience to tell stories, and the image of the prisoner could be used to communicate power or compassion depending on the audience.

These objects are comparatively rare in military collections, as internees faced obstacles when producing physical objects. Lack of access to materials, hostile guards and strict rules, low morale and poor health all contributed to their scarcity.

Victorian Collections provides a window into the story of internment. This story uses objects drawn from Victoria’s collecting organisations to explore the internee and prisoner experience.

In his hometown of Ararat, Stan Kelly (1911 – 2001) was known as an engine driver and as a talented painter of plants and flowers. A determined amateur, Stan painted at home on a small table and shared his talent by teaching botanical art in Ararat. Today, many Australians travelling overseas carry his artwork in their pocket.

Kelly is now recognised as one of Australia’s premier botanical illustrators, especially respected for his works on eucalypts. His first book, Australian Eucalypts in Colour, was published in 1949. His most celebrated work, Eucalypts Volumes I & II, was first published in 1969 and became a core reference for students of Australian botany.

Kelly received an Order of Australia Medal in 1980. In 2009, he was posthumously honoured when a selection of his botanical illustrations was adapted for the ‘N’ series Australian passport.

The Langi Morgala Museum in Ararat houses a permanent exhibit on Stan Kelly and his work, including a fine collection of his paintings.

A collection of over 500 of Kelly’s watercolour paintings is held by the National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

A collection of photographs of the dairying town of Drouin in West Gippsland Victoria taken during the Second World War.

In 1981, two packets of old photographs were returned to Australia by the New York office of the Australian Information Service. Inside these packets were images from the dairying town of Drouin, in West Gippsland, taken during the Second World War.

Presenting the ideal picture of a prosperous and hard-working Victorian town dealing with rationing and manpower shortages caused by the war, these photographs were part of the Department of Information's war effort publicity campaign.

Photographer Jim Fitzpatrick was commissioned to take the photos in 1944 and 1945, and he concentrated on images of healthy and industrious women and children, as well as soldiers on leave and men working in the town. The photographs appeared in the bimonthly South West Pacific which was distributed free to overseas press, and was designed to promote Australia to her allies, particularly the United States.

The images that make up this story now form part of the Drouin Town and Rural Life During World War II collection at the National Library of Australia.

The fires of February 2009 left an indelible mark on the histories of Victoria’s community collecting organisations; whether through blackened ash markings or by the absence of once cherished objects and ephemera.

This exploration of Victoria’s collecting response to the Black Saturday bushfires is inspired by Liza Dale‐Hallett, Rebecca Carland and Peg Fraser’s reflections on the Victorian Bushfires Collection project, in 'Sites of Trauma: Contemporary Collecting and Natural Disaster'.

Country Football. On one hand it's just a game. On the other, it's life or death...

Films in this collection are a record of living memory: how the game has changed; how it continues to evolve; and how football is inextricably linked with our communities.

These 21 films include stories of legendary games, long time campaigners, rivalries, reluctant mergers, and of things lost and lamented. Collected from all corners of Victoria.

The Armytage family owned Como House in South Yarra for nearly 95 years. The property was managed by the women of the family for more than seventy years from 1876 to 1959. The history of the Armytage family, and the families who worked for them, provides an insight into almost a century of life on a large estate.

Como was purchased in 1864 by Charles Henry Armytage and it became the home of Charles, his wife Caroline, and their ten children. Charles died in 1876 and Caroline in 1909. Their daughters Leila, Constance, and Laura lived on at Como and left an indelible impression there.

The last surviving children of Charles and Caroline - Constance and Leila - sold Como to The National Trust of (Vic) in 1959. Como was the first house acquired by the Trust. One of the most significant aspects of this purchase was the acquisition of the complete contents of the house. The Armytage sisters realized that if Como was to survive as an expression of their family and its lifestyle, it must remain intact as a home. They also left an extensive archive of diaries, letters, journals and photographs.

Boasting one of Melbourne’s finest gardens, an inspiring historic mansion, and an impressive collection of antique furniture, the property provides a glimpse into the privileged lifestyle of its former owners; one of Australia’s wealthiest pioneer families.

Life can be seen to contain two major elements: the animate and the inanimate. While the inanimate bricks and mortar, objects and pathways, help in our understanding of this family, it is the animate, the social history, which makes Como come alive.

The text above has been abstracted from an essay The Armytage Family of Como written by Adrea Fox for the publication The Australian Family: Images and Essays. The entire text of the essay is available as part of this story.

This story is part of The Australian Family project, which involved 20 Victorian museums and galleries. The full series of essays and images are available in The Australian Family: Images and Essays published by Scribe Publications, Melbourne 1998, edited by Anna Epstein. The book comprises specially commissioned and carefully researched essays with accompanying artworks and illustrations from each participating institution.

One hundred years on, evidence of the impact of the First World War can be plainly seen across Victoria.

Built heritage including cenotaphs, statues, plaques and obelisks are peppered across the state’s public spaces, each dedicated to the commemoration of the war service of the thousands of Victorians who served between 1914 and 1918.

Many of these men and women died in active service and were buried overseas, so locally built monuments served as important places to mourn and remember them. They were places for private and collective mourning, commemoration and remembrance.

These memorials were truly local, often built through community fundraising and supported by communities who shared a sense of loss. Most are inscribed with the names of those who died from the region, while others list the names of all those who served.

Across Victoria, cenotaphs and built memorials remain central to ANZAC Day services, but the way we commemorate has changed with each generation and so has the way we remember and mourn the servicemen of the First World War. Photographic and material culture collections from across the state, catalogued here on Victorian Collections, capture some of the tangible and intangible heritage associated with the shifting ways we commemorate the First World War. They provide meaningful insight in to our society and how we make sense of war and loss.

The first issue of the Dimboola Banner rolled off the press on 10 May 1879, printed by a Mr Henry Barnes and edited by his brother, William.

Many proprietors and editors have come and gone since then but today, more than 130 years later, the Banner is still published weekly, even though it’s now printed in Warracknabeal rather than in Dimboola itself.

Meanwhile, the former Dimboola offices of the Banner have been acquired by the Dimboola & District Historical Society and transformed into a Newspaper and Letterpress printing museum. The museum owns and operates a diverse collection of vintage presses, all in working condition.

Newspapers and printers have traditionally played a vital role in the life of country communities, and a long-time newspaper man comes to know most things there are to know about the life of their town and district. Joe Barry spent 54 years in the newspaper and printing business in Dimboola, which means he’s well qualified to impart a wealth of tales to visitors at the Dimboola Printing Museum.

The printing trade has seen many vast and radical technological transformations, particularly with the dawn and evolution of the current digital era. The Dimboola Printing Museum preserves a vast wealth of functioning relics from earlier eras of print technology, including letterpresses well over a century old in perfect working order.

The museum collection also includes a vast amount of loose type from the long-gone era of hand-set typography.

In 1990, a group of rural and farming women met in Warragul for what was to be the inaugural Women on Farms Gathering.

A group of local women had developed the idea while involved in a Women on Farms Skill Course. It was to prove inspirational, and the gatherings have been held annually ever since, throughout regional Victoria.

The Women on Farms Gathering provides a unique opportunity for women to network, increase their skills base in farming and business practices, share their stories and experience a wonderful sense of support, particularly crucial due to the shocking rural crises of the last decade. Importantly, the gatherings help promote and establish the notion of rural women as farmers, business women and community leaders.

The relationship between Museums Victoria and the Women on Farms Gathering is a model of museums working with living history.

The people of Victoria have had a constantly changing relationship with their native birdlife.

Ever-present and iconic, we’ve put Australian birds on official state heraldry and on tomato sauce bottles and biscuit packets. There has always been an immense fondness and respect for our unique birds. However, attitudes towards wildlife generally and birds specifically have undergone seismic paradigm shifts over the last few hundred years.

Looking at objects catalogued here on Victorian Collections, we can map this change and trace the ways that Victorians have interacted with birds, from Indigenous spirituality to citizen science programs.

From the nuclear to the extended family, from groups of close friends, communities and neighbourhoods, to one on one relationships: family means many different things to different people.

Family describes our most cherished, and sometimes most difficult, relationships. In this collection of digital stories and videos, Victorians share their family stories.

Family stories include stories of immigration; disadvantage and survival, indigenous life, stories of sickness and health; life and death; childhood and old age.

CULTURAL WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander users are warned that some of the videos in this story may contain images of deceased persons and images of places that could cause sorrow.

From the first woman to graduate from any Australian university to leading artists, those who gazed towards the heavens, and others who broke through male dominated barriers, women are not only present but deserve to be celebrated. 

This exhibition, originally held at the School of Mines Ballarat (SMB) E. J. T Tippett library, showcases these significant contributions and untold stories through items from the Federation University Historical Collection. 

Do you know of other Trailblazing women associated with the university through time who deserve recognition? Let us know so that we can help to capture and share their stories!