The place of manners and etiquette in colonial Australia is the topic of the next Theo Barker Memorial Lecture at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst on Friday 12 August. An organiser of the free public lecture, CSU adjunct lecturer Dr Rob McLachlan, said, “This is the fourth biennial Theo Barker Memorial Lecture co-sponsored by Charles Sturt University and the Bathurst District Historical Society. This lecture, titled Tea, Talk and Town Life: The Manners of Colonial Australia, will be delivered by Associate Professor Penny Russell from The University of Sydney. Her latest book, Savage or Civilised?, provides the insights she will share with her audience. The lecture will be both entertaining and educational – with some delicious morsels of gossip and scandal.” Professor Russell has found many examples of colonists for whom good manners mattered very much. She said, “In this lecture I will examine the tensions between rural and urban manners, the social ramifications of the tea table, and the significant social meaning of different modes of speech, such as slang, swearing and gossip. I will show that manners mattered then to how individuals understood themselves, and to how we should understand our history now.”