Land of Promise

When Richard Waterhouse turned his attention to his own family and antecedents, he discovered an Australian story. This book records over 200 years of history through revolution and war, boom and bust, relocation and work, and births, deaths and marriages over seven generations. The narrative extends from Lyon, France to London and the English provinces, to Marvellous Melbourne, to Sydney and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, to the Second AIF battles in north Africa and the skies of the Pacific War... and to universities at home and abroad. Some antecedents arrived in chains, a fact lost to family lore. The Drake family's blood connection to Sir Francis Drake was not lost, but is exploded as a family myth. In contradiction of Victorian notions of respectability Waterhouse's great great grandfather lived with a woman who was not his wife and claimed two of her children by her real husband as his own, a then shameful secret which they both took to their colonial graves - until 1999, in fact. He had always known his squadron-leader father was attached to a RAAF Catalina flying-boat unit, but was astonished to learn of his central role in planning the 'Black Cat' mine-laying missions in Japanese-held harbours and sea lanes, missions carried out metres from the sea, often while under fire. His small-compass family studies offer major insights into the wider processes of cultural and social change in Australia over the last four centuries.