Twilight Talks – Ballarat’s Henry Lawson

This series is hosted by Dr Phil Roberts OAM with guest speaker Hedley Thomson.

The young Henry Lawson visited Ballarat, specifically to bone up on the happenings at Eureka on Sunday 3 December 1854. He proceeded to write numerous poems and prose pieces about the battle and the effects of its outcome on the developing Australian national identity. Many of his pieces mention Ballarat in the same context.

As with so many iconic personalities across history, there's much that is not well-known about their lives and achievements. Henry Lawson is a case in point, with the special appeal that in 1889, as a twenty two-year old, he actually came to Ballarat and that the visit materially affected his subsequent writings over the course of his nearly forty-year career.

To help make up for that deficiency, as the first of the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute's Spring 2025 Twilight Talks, Hedley Thomson – local actor and a big Lawson fan – will be presenting a talk on Lawson's time in Ballarat, which will include performances of several of the more notable pieces (both poetry and prose) that Lawson was inspired to write following his Ballarat visit.