State Library Victoria

What's your plan? You're gonna go over there and just ask people questions?

Have, have they taken over the State Library? Do they own the State Library?

No, they've taken over, they're just-

So what's the problem with, like, us walking there?

Like, I, I, I support you guys, but, but, but stand up for defending, like, doing your job, not, not, not protecting terrorists

Just talk over there, and I'll come back to you in a minute

Effectively, a small group of people have taken over the, over the whole front of the State Library, and they've done this over multiple times, uh, over the years, and you're seeing the police in Victoria are still allowing them to do this, uh, which is disgusting and ridiculous, especially, guys, on October 7th, a day where they raped, pillaged, and murdered children, women, girls, men in number at the Nova Festival, the slaughter that they did, and here we are in Australia, our police protecting these groups.

It's ridiculous what's happened to our country.

Imagine the biggest library you've ever seen.

Bigger than the State Library on Swanston Street.

Bigger than every library in the world put together.

And imagine new books are being added every second of every day.

Been here for about 17 years working with rare books.

Before that, I was at the State Library of Victoria in their manuscripts and rare books collections, and I worked in public libraries before that for a while.

So I'm a librarian by trade.

Did the good old arts degree, so history and English-

Yeah, you-

And so in Melbourne, if you're wanting to get a bit of a history hit, where, where can you go to, to get a bit of a historic vibe in Melbourne?

Well, the State Library of Victoria.

Yeah.

It is the anniversary of the Hamas slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, and the, uh, rape, of course, of women and the beheading of men, the kidnapping, and then ultimate murder of children.

Yet pro-Palestine extremists, uh, Peter, they're gonna defile that day by planning an anti-Israel gathering at Sydney's Town Hall and a sit-in vigil outside the Melbourne St- uh, Melbourne State Library.

Should governments act here? Or is this, you know, "Oh, well, it's a free society," even for such sick puppies?

Yeah, they're sick puppies, aren't they? Demented, delusional, uh, forces of hate and division.

You're listening to Tuesday Breakfast, and now for the events for the week.

So this Wednesday, the 7th of October, at 5:00 PM, there will be a Gaza vigil taking place at the State Library of Victoria, and then outside the State Li- brary of Victoria, rather.

And then on Saturday, the 10th of October, there's, at 6:00 PM, the AP- APAN Melbourne Fundraising Dinner taking place at 149 Donald Street, um, in Brunswick East, um, which is a ticketed event.

Um, and then finally, there's also, um, until the 17th of October, which is until next week, um, the exhibition Cultural Inheritance: Fracture, Change and Transformation at the Austra- Australasian, um, Cultural, um, [lips smack] Exchange, um, Gallery, so ACAE, at 82A Wellington Street in Collingwood.

...

the Love Letter exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.

Not related, not, not our love letter.

No, it's very interesting.

Under the floorboards, under the church, what have we just found? I think we've just found something massive.

When we go on the State Library Victoria's website, and we scroll down, and we read that something spans an entire city block where there are many hidden spaces and stories, and you will descend into the hidden catacombs below the library's floors.

And this is only located .5 miles away from the St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Why is there all this grass right here surrounding this area? What is underneath the stadiums? How many people are down there? We are just getting started.

So quickly, last question.

In the 1980s, you were employed as a field officer at the State Library of Victoria.

Yeah.

A job that you've described as involving the acquisition of historical manuscripts, pictures for the library's Australian research collections.

Thank you.

And I do, well, once a field officer, always a field officer.

I am definitely, I've been doing that work all my life, whether I've been employed by the State Library of Victoria or not.

And I think many historians do, don't we? You know, you realise that the raw materials of history are sometimes in libraries and archives, but more often they're out there in the storytelling, the oral histories, the attics and the barns and the precious written records.