A few fortunate people gathered around a table to view John Lewin’s Birds of New South Wales, published in 1813, was the first natural history book and the first illustrated book printed in Australia. We heard about the story of Lewin’s early natural history illustrations and this rare publication  and viewed other amazing illustrated bird, animal and insect books from Lewin and early Australian illustrators.

I did not feel like drawing with my Lamy Safari Joy ink pen, and wanted something a little softer so I used my watercolour pencils taking the colour off the tip of the pencil with the waterbrush and painting on the page.

Illustrated books delight children and adults alike. Pictures can often affect how the reader reacts intellectually and emotionally with the book. This talk was a whirlwind tour through the history of illustrated books, showing highlights in various genres and some of the techniques involved.

I sketched with a 2B pencil

Professor Geoffrey Blainey has been described as the “most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia’s living historians”. It is 50 years since the publication of his most famous book The Tyranny of Distance by Sun Books in 1966. The book was a bestseller and its title entered the language. It provoked a vigorous debate among historians on the origins of Australian settlement. Yet it also deserves to be remembered as a landmark in Australian publishing, for it was then unusual for a serious study of history to be first published as a paperback by a relatively new and unknown Australian publishing house.In this session, Professor Blainey recalled the genesis of the book and Graeme Davison, Emeritus Professor of History at Monash University, assessed its impact on the writing and publishing of Australian history