‘Twixt Heather & Wattle’

presented by Dr. Rosalie Triolo

Dr Rosalie Triolo OAM FRHSV is a councillor of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and President of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies. She is an adjunct senior lecturer in History education and history of education, having taught school History for 13 years then ‘teaching History teachers’ at Monash University for 25 years. She was a Board member of the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria for 30 years, including six as President, and has published for public, scholarly and school audiences. She has been awarded for leadership, advocacy, presentations and publications and draws on unique research for the festival.

‘Twixt Heather & Wattle’:Scottish and Australian Presences in Early C20th School Readings

In the first of two lectures, in this richly-illustrated presentation, Dr. Rosalie Triolo showcases examples of Torrance’s and other Scottish and Australian writers’ and artists’ works circulating in Victorian and other schools at the time. It explains why the items were chosen and why the same then found their way into Victoria’s and the other States’ homes.

The poems in different editions of Joan Torrance’s 'Twixt Heather and Wattle were recommended by Victoria’s Education Department for use by teachers and pupils in local State schools while also finding their ways into other Victorian as well as Tasmanian and Western Australian schools and homes. Torrance’s title beautifully captures the dual patriotic biology of Australia in the early C20th; what was still loved and ‘turned to’ botanically of an old home half a world away, and what was increasingly celebrated in a new home of often very different surrounds. In Torrance’s as well as other Scottish writings, Scotland’s plants, symbols and ways of life did not compete with Australia’s emerging ‘bush legend’ or other facets of Australian national identity; indeed, for a large percentage of the population, the two comfortably co-existed.

WHEN: SATURDAY 5TH JULY 2025 AT 2.00PM.

WHERE: LEVEL 1, THE ASSEMBLY HALL, (NEXT TO THE SCOTS’ CHURCH), 156 COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE

BOOK TICKETS HERE

Scots as ‘sodgers’ [soldiers] in the School Paper and as teachers on the battlefield,THE Great War, 1914-18

In this second of two lectures, Dr. Rosalie Triolo highlights some of the war-related Scottish stories, poems and songs circulating in schools and homes. It offers also a representative sample of some of the wartime and immediate post-war experiences of the Victorian Education Department’s Australo-Scottish teachers.

Victoria’s Education Department called on its whole school and wider family communities to contribute in every possible way to Australia’s effort in the Great War. Some calls catered directly to the ‘other’ patriotic identity of many Australians, with some appealing directly to the Scottishness of a high percentage of Australians at the time, including Department teachers of Scottish descent. The School Paper, which was compulsory pupil and teacher reading, published, all the more during the war, Scottish stories, poems and songs of martial success, and of survival, if not good humour, under duress. The Education Department’s Record of War Service, published in 1921, indicated that many teachers of Scottish descent did, indeed, give themselves to whatever Fate would make of their enlistment. No man could have returned unaffected in some way. Too many men never returned. The accounts are sombre, if not wholly tragic.

WHEN: SATURDAY 15TH JULY 2025 AT 2.00PM.

WHERE: LEVEL 1, THE ASSEMBLY HALL (NEXT TO THE SCOTS’ CHURCH), 156 COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE

BOOK TICKETS HERE