Professor Smyth was a student at Ballarat High School, the alma mater of Geoffrey Blainey, who lectured him at Melbourne University years later. Professor Smyth admits he was not the most applied of pupils. In fact, a man with six university degrees, who has written 'something like 40 books' and published over 400 scholarly papers, says the advice he received in high school was to 'leave and get a job'.

But like so many students regarded as unlikely to succeed, one teacher saw something in John Smyth and encouraged him to continue.

"My father wanted me to be a pharmacist," he says.

"I failed every bloody science subject in year 12: the lot, English included, so it looked like they were right. I had a job lined up sweeping the floor of Channel 6. I went back to school over summer and spoke to my English teacher. He said, 'Come back and have another go; do the social science stuff.'

"I got into that: I did economics, I did two histories and I repeated chemistry. So got a first-class honours in economics and second-class honors in the two histories, and I still failed chemistry. I could get into pharmacy college on the results, but my conscience wouldn't let me be a pharmacist," he laughs.

Having lived and lectured all over the world - Texas, Papua New Guinea, England and Canada - Professor Smyth and his wife Solveiga now live in Mt Helen. An emeritus professor at Federation University, he's as far from a stereotyped pipe-smoking, tweed and leather patches academic as possible. On the day we talk he's sporting five stitches in his calf, the melanomic legacy of many sun-drenched trips to Australia's outback.

Another passion is the history of working classes. Professor Smyth says his choice of residencies for teaching has always been guided by the social perspective or placement of the institution. While at Maryborough High School in the early 1970s, he realised the class he was teaching would be better served by spending the year outdoors. They subsequently went mapping and recording the history of the town, which became the subject of an ABC report.

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His latest work has been to pore over the decades of rate books of East Ballarat, and especially that 'most boisterous mile-and-a-half of road that ever existed in Australia', according to the late Weston Bate - Main Road.

Professor Smyth offers pictures of the grocers and drapers of main time, their stores piled high inside and out with goods, much of it locally produced. He says one of the marked changes in Ballarat has been the decline of security of supply during COVID, but also the downturn in local industry and manufacture. Another change is the disappearance of many places of ill-repute.

"I'm finding some really fascinating stuff; I've tried to contain myself because you could go everywhere this."

"I found about 12 opium dealers along the street. I found umpteen what were called 'gamesters': they were gamblers. So there were gambling shops along there. You discover something and you say, 'What the hell's that... oyster saloons?' How in the hell can you have a bloody 'oyster saloon' when you're two weeks from the sea at Geelong? That's how long it took the bullock drays to get here, you couldn't get to Melbourne. I don't think they were flogging oysters at all. You go back and look at the history of oyster salons; they were the all-night dens of iniquity...you wanted to go out and have a few jars and maybe meet a few girls, you went there."

He says a marked distinction remains between West Ballarat where streets were named for notables - politicians, police commissioners and planners - and East Ballarat, where he quotes the writer and journalist William Withers: 'We name streets after our noble selves'.

The other mark of note is the number of Jewish merchants in the rate books, which is borne out by the existence of Ballarat's elegant synagogue. One of the most established businesses was Bond and Phillips, a partnership between two of the 'merchant princes' of the city who saw more profit in goods than gold. Joseph Phillips was Jewish, the 'man behind the counter'. Bond was behind the scenes. They were incredibly successful partners. In death, the pair were buried almost side by side, a lifetime of business together.

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