William Cox Historical Festival

This year the William Cox Festival celebrates the bicentenary of one of the most important achievements in our early colonial history - the building of the road across the Blue Mountains, which opened up inland New South Wales to European settlement.

Details of this event to e held on July 20, 1914 can be found here:

http://mgnsw.org.au/events/william-cox-festival-and-open-day/

Book Launch

In a recent newsletter the Society received from the RAHS there was the following  notification of a book launch that may only be open to RAHS members. The author, Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker, was our guest at our 50th anniversary celebrations last year. If you are interested in attending further details can be found here on the RAHS site.

Members may be interested in putting this title on their "To purchase" list.

----------------------------------------------------

Join us at History House on Wednesday 16 April 2014 at 5.30pm for the launch of our President, Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker's new book entitled William Cox and Cox’s Road: a bicentenary souvenir commemorates William Cox and the road he built in 1814–1815 which first expanded European settlement outside the Sydney basin. It contains a new transcript of Cox’s journal as well as seminal documents from Governor Macquarie and a list of the men who ‘laboured for their liberty’ to build the road. It also presents a new biographical study of William Cox, and details of his 13 children and 88 grandchildren from hitherto-unpublished family papers. Most important of all it includes a field guide for intrepid history buffs on where they can see the road and important features associated with it.

Anne-Maree Harriet Cox Whitaker is William Cox’s great-great-granddaughter and the President of the Royal Australian Historical Society. She has a doctorate in history and has written ten books and numerous journal articles. Public recognition of her expertise as a historian includes shortlisting for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2001 and receipt of a National Trust Heritage Award in 2010. Anne-Maree is also a Fellow of both the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Royal Historical Society (UK).
 

The book will be launched by Dr Siobhan Lavelle OAM, whose book 1813: a tale that grew in the telling told the story of the First Crossing and its commemorations over the past 200 years.