Public Record Office Victoria

🧵Armenian women grind grain and spin cotton in today's photo.

📷️ VPRS 14517/P0001/31, M553.
https://go.vic.gov.au/3Ra3Mdp

Do you want your research published?

Submissions are now open for the 2027 issue of our Provenance journal.

We invite contributions drawing on archival research that illuminate diverse aspects of Victoria’s history. If you have used original records held by Public Record Office Victoria as part of your research, you can either submit an article to be peer-reviewed by experts in the field, or a general paper based on your research findings or research journey. Submissions are encouraged from students, early career researchers and emerging scholars, community-based and family researchers, academics, professional historians, and archives professionals.

➡️ https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/submit-article

An assortment of historic church and marine records, Darebin, Pyrenees and Nillumbik council records, Omeo and Cassilis court registers and commercial building plans are among recent transfers to PROV's collection. All files are in physical format, ready for researchers to order and view in our reading room.

Learn more about the most recent additions to our collection: https://go.vic.gov.au/4v0Szui

In our last Map Warper deep dive for the month, we get technical: https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/how-map-warper-has-changed-research-landscape-part-three

"...with Map Warper, us researchers are on warp speed (sorry for the pun) when searching for and accessing copies of historic maps and plans," says historian Abi Belfrage.

PROV's online Map Warper tool was first launched back in 2019. Since then, it has become an invaluable site for researchers to explore changes to Victoria’s landscape over time. Users of the tool can ‘rectify’ historic maps and plans (meaning to place them over present day map coordinates), or simply view the maps already rectified to enhance their research.

Over the next three weeks we will post a series of blogs exploring how Map Warper is used by professional historians and academics to delve into the history of specific places, landscapes and sites across Victoria.

In part one, Abi explains how her research has changed since the introduction of Map Warper: https://go.vic.gov.au/4e2u4WZ

Take us to St Albans this Monday. May 1969. https://go.vic.gov.au/4cv7Bku

Today is the last day of International Archives Week ! And we end the week with one of our favourites from the collection... an aerial shot of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, during the 1954 tour of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Girls performed a large maypole dance on the grass, before the word “welcome” was formed by around 17,000 children. The Queen and Duke were then driven around the grounds, while the children cheered and waved.

As Melbourne was designed without a central town square, the MCG has been continuously re-imagined as a place where we gather and celebrate. In the years since the Queen’s visit, the MCG has hosted some of Victoria’s biggest sporting and non-sporting gatherings, including an event hosted by evangelist Billy Graham (1959, 143,000 people), and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour (2024, 260,000 people over three nights).

📸 Education Department, Miscellaneous Photographs, Negatives and Slides and Ephemera [Education History Unit] (1967 – 2003), Royal Visits – Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at M.C.G 4/3/1954 – Aerial View of Children’s “Welcome” Display. VPRS 14562/P2, Unit 20.

🔗 Discover this image, among others we've shared this week, and plenty more, at our new exhibition. Rehearsing the City is now showing at the Victorian Archives Centre. Come along: https://go.vic.gov.au/4d3ylsq

Happy International Archives Week Day 4!

In the 1950s, a huge increase in car ownership led to a spike in road accidents. Children were particularly at risk while riding bikes or crossing busy roads. To save lives, organisations and schools across Victoria created programs to teach children road safety skills. This photograph from 1962 shows one of these programs, a traffic school set up at Caulfield South State School.
Traffic schools allowed children to rehearse road safety in a controlled environment. The replica streets at this traffic school included realistic signage, pedestrian crossings with National Safety Council flags, hand-operated traffic lights, a railway crossing and construction signs. For the children in toy cars, traffic school provided a rare opportunity to practice adult responsibilities.
Though many have closed, several traffic schools still operate in Victoria.

📸 Education Department, Negatives of Photographs [Publications Branch] (c. 1950 – 1967), M244 Children’s traffic school in operation, Caulfield South, 1962. VPRS 14517/P1, Unit 36, M244.

🔗 This is one of the photographs now on display at the Victorian Archives Centre: https://go.vic.gov.au/4d3ylsq

Happy International Archives Week Day 3!

In 1901, Melbourne’s city streets were transformed by eight grand and ornately decorated arches, erected to celebrate the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. These monumental structures lined the route of the royal carriage as it made its way to the Royal Exhibition Building for the opening of Australia’s first Federal Parliament.

Most of the arches were funded by the state government and local councils, though several communities contributed their own tributes, including the dairy industry’s Butter Arch (made entirely of butter boxes), a German Citizens’ Arch, and a Chinese Citizens’ Arch on Swanston Street. The Chinese community raised £800 for their arch’s construction and supplied fine silks and other decorative materials. However, the community had little say in the design, with the work ultimately entrusted to G.B.H. Austin of the Public Works Department.

Though always intended as temporary displays, the arches succumbed to Melbourne’s autumn weather faster than expected. Within weeks, many had deteriorated so quickly that their former splendour gave way to shabbiness, requiring them to be dismantled.

📸 Education Department, Negatives of Photographs [Publications Branch] (c. 1950 – 1967), S260 Welcome to Duke and Duchess of York in 1901 by Chinese Citizens of Australia, Melbourne, 7 May 1901. VPRS 14517/P1, Unit 50, S260.

🔗 Just one of the wonderful photographs now on display at the Victorian Archives Centre: https://go.vic.gov.au/4d3ylsq

In part two of our three part article series on Map Warper, with the help of academic Ben Mountford, we explore Ballarat’s geography, historic sites and local infrastructure: https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/how-map-warper-has-changed-research-landscape-part-two

"...with Map Warper, us researchers are on warp speed (sorry for the pun) when searching for and accessing copies of historic maps and plans," says historian Abi Belfrage.

PROV's online Map Warper tool was first launched back in 2019. Since then, it has become an invaluable site for researchers to explore changes to Victoria’s landscape over time. Users of the tool can ‘rectify’ historic maps and plans (meaning to place them over present day map coordinates), or simply view the maps already rectified to enhance their research.

Over the next three weeks we will post a series of blogs exploring how Map Warper is used by professional historians and academics to delve into the history of specific places, landscapes and sites across Victoria.

In part one, Abi explains how her research has changed since the introduction of Map Warper: https://go.vic.gov.au/4e2u4WZ