Victorian Archives Centre features Reception This Way

The Victorian Archives Centre in North Melbourne is holding a new exhibition, giving Melburnians the opportunity to take a step back in time and revisit some classic Australian motels. 

Reception This Way is a photographic exhibition that visually chronicles the arrival of motels in Australia in the 1950s, paying homage to a new form of accommodation that revolutionised the domestic tourism market. 

According to Catriona Donnelly, who is a curator at the National Archives of Australia, it will have you reminiscing about holidays at the beach and the excitement you felt as your breakfast tray was delivered to your room through a little hatch. 

“Motels were the height of luxury and sophistication,” she said. Combined with the rise of car ownership they gave Australians the freedom to travel at their own pace wherever they liked.

The exhibition opened on July 27 and runs until October 27 at the Victorian Archives Centre, 99 Shiel St, North Melbourne. 

Exhibitions such as these are just a taste of what the centre has on offer, according to communications and public programming officer for the Victorian Archives Centre Natasha Cantwell. 

The centre, which is open to the public Monday to Friday between 10.30am and 4.30pm, holds records for “important parts” of Australian history. 

It is the home of the criminal record, letters, and legal documents of the notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly among hundreds of thousands of other historical documents. 

The centre holds around 100 kilometres of hard copy records and 600,000 digital records dating from 1836 to the present day, with more records in all formats transferred to the Public Record Office of Victoria every year. 

Many records in the collection are open and accessible to researchers either in the centre’s reading rooms or online. 

In the coming months, Natasha Cantwell is excited about the range of events that will be held at the centre. 

On Friday, August 30, award-winning author Hazal Edwards will be hosting a workshop on Writing a Non-Boring Family Story for a Significant Child. 

Edwards who is the author of beloved picture book series There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake will teach the 25 participants of the workshop skills in researching, interviewing, writing, editing and audience engagement.

Later in the year, historian Dr Yves Rees who is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University will also be speaking at the Travelling to Tomorrow event where she will take a deep dive into influential Australian women in the United States between 1910 and 1960. 

North West City News took a behind-the-scenes tour of the centre during the Open House Melbourne weekend in July.

For anyone wanting to learn more about Australian history, there is no better place to start than the Victorian Archives Centre. •