Lunch Hour Talks

Image credit: Fernanda Pedroso

Thursday 19 June 2025

Join Sita Sargeant on a journey through Australia as she uncovers the stories of over 250 extraordinary women and places that have shaped our country’s history. In this talk, Sita will share insights from her travels across the country while researching She Shapes History: Guided Walks & Untold Stories About Great Australian Women (Hardie Grant Publishing).

With a special focus on stories from Sydney and New South Wales, Sita will reveal how these histories inspired the development of her newest walking tour in Sydney. Her talk delves into the journey of uncovering unsung heroines, the challenges of sharing women’s stories through tourism, and the experience of travelling solo across Australia for six months to research women’s history. It offers a fresh perspective on the narratives that have shaped our country and how they continue to shape our lives today.

Sita Sargeant is a tour guide, feminist, history nerd, and the founder of She Shapes History, a tourism company working to promote gender equality by making women’s and queer history engaging, accessible, and relevant through historical tourism. She is also the author of She Shapes History: Guided Walks & Untold Stories About Great Australian Women.

Where –  The meeting room at the Customs House Library, at Circular Quay. 31 Alfred St – at Circular Quay, opposite the station. Take the lift (back LH corner of the foyer) to the second floor.
When –  The talk will begin at 12.15, The room is open from 11.30 for tea/coffee/sandwiches.
Entry – $20 JSNWL members $25 non-members
PLEASE BOOK BY NOON Monday 16 June 2025
Phone the library on (02) 9571 5359 or email .au

Image credit: Tolga Tuncay

Thursday 17 April 2025

While writing Cold War in a Hot Kitchen: a memoir of mid-century Melbourne, Margaret Spence delved into history to understand the political and social tensions that pervaded her childhood home as well as society at large: immigration, inflation and industrial unrest, government secrecy and suspicion, the legacy of the masculinist culture of mining on her paternal grandmother and father, and a disturbing career vs. child choice faced by her adored aunt, later known as the feminist journalist Nan Hutton. With a domestic cold war mimicking the external Cold War, Margaret considers the influences and challenges facing women then and now.

Margaret Ann Spence’s first novel, Lipstick on the Strawberry, was a winner in the First Coast Romance Writers 2015 Beacon Contest and her second, Joyous Lies, was a finalist in the 2021 Somerset Book Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction. She now lives in the United States.

Where –  The meeting room at the Customs House Library, at Circular Quay.
When –  The talk will begin at 12.15, The room is open from 11.30 for tea/coffee/sandwiches.
Entry – $20 JSNWL members $25 non-members
PLEASE BOOK BY NOON Monday 17 February 2025
Phone the library on (02) 9571 5359 or email .au