RAHS Day Lecture – Local History, Family History, Personal History, National History

Case studies and the complexity of Australia’s European Past

Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 6 May 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)

Cost: Free

Event Description:

This presentation will explore how these four historical approaches can be combined to establish more complex understandings not only of the history of individual families but also of the histories of localities and the nation. To illustrate these arguments, I will present four examples.

The first focuses on the Entwistle family, including Martha and her son William, both convicted of forgery, who arrived in NSW as convicts and succeeded in creating new lives for themselves and their families. The second deals with William and Mary Susannah Waterhouse, respectable citizens of nineteenth-century Grafton, who lived with a deeply buried secret- they were not married, and their two children’s real father was a man Susannah had abandoned in Melbourne. Victorian respectability, it seems, was not always what it claimed to be. The third example focuses on Earle Waterhouse, a Mudgee schoolteacher who joined the RAAF in World War II and rose to the rank of Squadron Leader. Although he experienced a series of major traumas during the war, he also made a significant contribution to Allied success in the Pacific through his role in organising all Allied mine-laying missions in the period from June 1944 through to the end of the war. His life is a case study in the enduring cost of war.

About the speaker:

Richard Waterhouse is Emeritus Professor of History, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Sydney. He was formerly Bicentennial Professor of Australian History and Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the same institution. He is the author of six books and more than 70 articles and chapters on aspects of Australian and United States history. His most recent book is Land of Promise: a history of European Australia through the lives of seven generations of my family (Kerr Publishing, 2025).