Level 3 Mortlock Wing State Library of South Australia North Terrace Adelaide SA 5000

Lectures

The RGSSA hosts a series of stimulating lectures on a broad range of geographical topics, both current and historical.

Experience. Geography. Together.TM

Lecture Program

Monthly Lectures are generally held on the third Thursday of the month at 5.30 pm, preceded by drinks and nibbles from 5:00 pm in the Hetzel Theatre, Institute Building on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue.  Members are requested to make a gold coin donation to help offset the cost of hospitality. The cost for non-members is $10.  Meetings may be followed by an optional light dinner at a local venue.

Lunchtime meetings are held during the cooler months of the year.  Members are requested to make a gold coin donation while the cost for non-members is $5.

Videos of some previous lectures are available on YouTube.

The Royal Geographical Society of South Australia Lecture Program is supported by the State Library of South Australia.

Upcoming Lectures

Freycinet 5

27 March 2025 | 5:30 pm

Monthly Lecture

French exploration in South Australia

Could Australia ever have been French? For this talk, Danielle will narrate a richly illustrated documentary film exploring the role French exploration played in Australia's colonial history.

Col Light Dumpy Level

10 April 2025 | 5:30 pm

Monthly Lecture

How High am I? The history of the Australian Height Datum

Understanding your elevation is integral to many decision-making processes; from determining a safe development threshold to avoid flood risk, for monitoring sea-levels, through to making sure sewers flow downhill as designed. But have you ever wondered how a vertical datum is defined and how you then establish this for a country that is also a continent? 

Gardens

8 May 2025 | 5:30 pm

Monthly Lecture

Save the World with Gardening

Come and be inspired by Sophie who believes that aside from the obvious environmental benefits, gardening improves our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing as well as that of the broader community.

Rose Marie Pinon de Freycinet

12 June 2025 | 12:00 pm

Lunchtime Meeting

A Woman’s Voice: Translating Rose de Freycinet’s Journal

Rose de Freycinet’s Journal covered a three-year circumnavigation around the World from 1817 to 1820, including a shipwreck. 

Is it more enriching for the Anglophone reader to hear the woman traveller’s own voice, albeit in translation, than to take cognizance of Rose’s adventures in a third-person narrative, as told by several scholars?

Professor Rivière is a recipient of an RGSSA Library Research Fellowship.

Image from Rose de Freycinet - Wikipedia

Previous Lectures