About me.

Here’s some info about me. It’s current as of December 2021 and I’ll update it from time to time.

If you’re needing a bio of me in preparation for an event (or whatever), feel free to assemble something (as brief as you like) from the details. I’ve included a short version, should you prefer to cut to the chase.
Also below are a couple of photos for promotional use. Please credit: Photo by Penny Ryan. For further information, contact Mrs Bradley.

→Please note: I resigned from the Library Board of Victoria in 2012, and I no longer write for the Monthly.

Robyn Annear is author of six books of history, including Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne, winner of a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 1995 and still in print today. Her other books are: Nothing But Gold: The diggers of 1852, The Man Who Lost Himself, Fly a Rebel Flag, A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, and Nothing New: A history of second-hand, and Adrift in Melbourne: Seven Walks with Robyn Annear.

As a curator, Robyn has explored aspects of Melbourne and Victoria’s history in exhibitions at the State Library of Victoria and the City Gallery (‘Up’, ‘Royal Melbourne’, & ‘Special’), besides writing exhibition text for the blockbuster A Day in Pompeii show at Melbourne Museum in 2009, and for the Museum’s permanent exhibition, The Melbourne Story.

Robyn has appeared on TV, talking about goldfields history, in Victoria Wood’s BBC documentary series, Victoria’s Empire (Episode 3), and on Tony Robinson Explores Australia (Episode 4: Eureka). In 2014, storyteller Jan Wositzky interviewed Robyn about pre-Eureka strife on the goldfields in his video series on the 1851 Monster Meeting at Forest Creek. Her most recent TV appearance was in The Crown and Us, which aired on ABC-TV in 2019 (and in endless repeats).

Robyn won the Civic Choice award in the 2015 Melbourne Prize for Literature with her essay, ‘Places Without Poetry’. She is a past member of the Library Board of Victoria and was one of the State Library’s inaugural Creative Fellows.

In 2018, Robyn launched a podcast, Nothing on TV, which ransacks Trove Newspapers, the National Library of Australia’s digital repository of historical newsprint, for stories from a time when there was, literally, nothing on TV.

Her latest book, Adrift in Melbourne, taking the reader on seven walks through Melbourne’s history, was published by Text in 2021.

Short version –

Robyn Annear is author of six books of history, including Bearbrass, A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, and Adrift in Melbourne: Seven Walks with Robyn Annear. Her podcast, Nothing on TV, present stories from Trove historical newspapers.

Please credit: Photo by Penny Ryan.